“Isn’t that what you want, Halina? To live a normal life again? To be you? Do what you want, go where you want, eat and shop and play the way you want? What’s the point of living if you can’t enjoy your life?”
“You probably never heard the words ‘you don’t always get what you want’ growing up, did you?”
“Sure. Heard ’em all the time.” A smile broke over his face. “And I lived to prove them wrong.”
She dropped her head and rubbed her temple. “God. Your poor parents.”
Mitch took her chin in his fingers and lifted her face until she was looking into his eyes again. “Together we’re strong.”
“Together, I’m putting the rest of you at a much higher risk.” She crossed her arms, shook her head. “One loss versus a dozen, Mitch. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be near you or any of these people.”
He gripped her bicep in an aggressive move so totally at odds with the innocence he held gently in the other arm that Halina startled.
“Halina.” Her name was a harsh reprimand. “You are not dispensable. Your life is not worth any less than anyone else’s, and I don’t ever want to hear that come out of your mouth again.”
He clenched his teeth and when he spoke again, his tone leveled. “Seven years ago, you should have trusted me. You should have told me what was happening so we could have dealt with it together. You didn’t give me the chance to prove I wouldn’t let you down. I want—” He stopped, took a breath. “I’m asking . . . for that chance now.”
Bruce Abernathy wound the beaten truck over the firebreaks of Tahoe National Forest along the east border of Teague and Alyssa Creek’s property in Truckee, California.
His leg ached like a sonofabitch. Every dip in the road shot so much pain through his pelvis and up his back, he was sweating and panting. Working alone, he wasn’t set up for all this confrontation or chase. He should have gone in for the hard kill right away. Hit with shock and awe and pulled Beloi out. He’d underestimated both Foster and Beloi, but he was done screwing around.
Nearing the heavily wooded spot he’d chosen after scouting via satellite and referring to weather maps, he focused in on the snowflakes as they hit the windshield and melted, then whisked away by the wipers. Damn, this was beautiful country. Maybe he’d get a place here when this all finally paid off. Once he had Beloi, everything would snap into place. He’d have those crazy-ass smart soldiers on the ground within a year. Good-bye Taliban. Good-bye North Korea. Good-bye Anonymous for that matter. Americans would be safe from threats both outside and inside the nation. And he would finally reap a financial reward equal to his sacrifices for this country. He’d sure as hell left that in Schaeffer’s hands too long.
He parked at the rear of the thickly wooded ledge and unpacked his gear. Before he found his way to the edge of the cliff, open to the opposite end of the meadow facing Creek’s home, he climbed into the ghillie suit he’d thrown together specifically for this location. With white ski pants and jacket layered with brown netting, heavily taped with local pine and manzanita branches, once he took position, he’d blend right into the forest floor. For now, his ghillie provided camouflage for setup.
The canopy went up first—an expanse of burlap spray-painted white and forest green to blend with the snow-coated trees and hung in the branches above. Couldn’t make a good shot with snow blocking a lens. Once cover was in place, he tossed down a dirt-brown plastic tarp and broke out the rifle.
Within twenty minutes, he lay belly down on the edge of a two-hundred-foot ledge looking over a snow-filled mountain meadow. Across that meadow, the Creek home nestled among the trees. Its A-line face with those amazing floor-to-ceiling windows gazed out over a view that had to be as stunningly picturesque as the one he stared at now. He pulled in a breath of the icy air and it scraped his lungs.
A stillness filled his chest. Migrated to his head. His hands.
Pristine. Peace. Perfection.
Damn, that felt . . . unbelievably right. More right than anywhere on earth he’d ever been—and he’d been to every godforsaken corner of this planet.
Yeah. He definitely needed a place here. The sooner, the better.
To get a clear view of the target, without so much as a pine needle between his barrel and the house, he edged forward from the manzanita thicket beneath the towering pines. He found a position and slid the rifle out in front, across an exposed section of flat river rock. Squinting at the house across the frozen meadow, he reached forward and released the bipod, giving the rifle legs and stabilizing his aim.
Something rustled the brush behind him. Flash fire burned in the pit of his stomach. He tensed, waited. When the sound faded, he trained his breathing back into a shallow, measured rhythm. He swiped snow off the rock face, lay a swatch of fleece down, and pressed his cheek against it, gazing through the scope.
After sweeping the area with his rifle scope, he homed in on the vast expanse of glass and flipped down a magnifier. And suddenly, he was in the living room with them. A ghost floating among them. Whispering at their ear with the barrel of a rifle. And they were oblivious.
Adrenaline swirled and eddied in his veins. He’d almost forgotten the force of these emotions. How moving control and power could be. How intoxicating.
He slowly panned the living room and kitchen beyond, pausing to center each face in the crosshairs of his scope. The wooden beams between windowpanes created blind spots, but he waited for the perfect shot, and when he had it, just for the satisfaction, he punctuated each satisfactory aim with, “Click, dead.”
Luke Ransom, Keira O’Shay-soon-to-be-Ransom, Kai Ryder, Cash O’Shay, and Alyssa and Teague Creek. And even though he hated killing kids, that talented Mateo would have to go too. He knew as much as the rest of them, and, with time, would probably more dangerous than all the current adults combined. But the man he wanted to kill most, Mitch Foster, wasn’t in the room. And Beloi was missing too. As were Q and his wife, Jessica.
He’d only get one shot at sending Foster’s brains across the room. Only one chance for Beloi to witness the event that would give her the incentive to cooperate. The next time he confronted her, he didn’t want an ounce of resistance. Honestly, in his condition, he doubted being able to win. And he never went into a fight at a disadvantage—not if he could help it.
Discipline. Patience. He could wait.
TWELVE
All she wanted to do was run. But at least Mitch had gotten her mind to bend in another direction. If she could open up, if she could trust him, and if he could forgive . . .
There were a lot of ifs in there, but for another shot with Halina, ifs were better than nos.
He led her into the living area where all the rooms were open to each other. Kai mixed drinks in the kitchen on the left, Keira and Luke sat at the dining room table straight ahead, each with a computer and a notepad, Cash beside them furiously scribbling on another pad, his fingers pulling absently at his hair. To the right, a huge sectional sofa and several club chairs delineated the living room, but the entire space flowed together without any walls.
Mitch tried not to let the sour note between him and Halina darken the joy of holding Brady. For a moment, a crystal-clear, painfully sharp moment, he could have sworn he and Halina had connected on a level nearly as deep as they had all those years ago. Looking at Brady with the very real possibility of having a child of their own . . .