Chapter 8

My home is on the beach overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, but we couldn’t go there. The cops would have it under constant surveillance. So instead we went to another house I use, a few miles to the south. No one but Rink, Harvey Lucas, who is a friend out in Arkansas, and Walter Hayes Conrad, my old CIA controller, knew about this place. I parked Bryce’s brown sedan on a turning circle above the beach. Below us was tall grass that gave way to golden sand. Beyond the beach the sea was sparkling under the early morning sun like someone had taken a handful of diamonds and scattered them across the undulating water. The view was beautiful, but I couldn’t appreciate it. I was thinking ugly thoughts.

I was thinking about the boy lying dead in his mother’s arms all those years ago. It was an image that occasionally came back to haunt me when sleep evaded me. Most times I’d get up and throw on some shorts and run along the beach under the scowling eye of the moon until the effort and streaming perspiration shoved the image aside. Now the boy — whose name remained a mystery to me — was back, and this time there was no opportunity for a night-time run.

Bryce had become a catalyst for my nightmare. When Rink first mentioned Bryce’s name yesterday, the first thing I’d thought about was that boy. The second image had been one that I hadn’t witnessed, but one I could easily conjure: I saw Jack Schilling propped in a chair in some stinking apartment with his brains decorating the wall behind him. Now I actually had Bryce standing beside me and it looked like the nightmare wouldn’t recede any time soon.

‘We’ll talk inside,’ Bryce said.

‘Maybe we should.’ I set off for the house with Bryce following. He was alert, scanning the area for anything untoward. I didn’t let it show, but all my senses were on overdrive, except nothing in the natural flow of the day warned me of hidden danger.

At the door I checked for signs that someone had been there while I was out. The faint dusting of sand I’d scattered on the doorstep was unmarked. There were no glistening marks on the locks to show anyone had finessed their way inside. Someone could have entered by the back door, but I doubted that. Everything was still and silent and felt at peace. Bryce still looked like he was expecting to die at any second.

At least Bryce had seen enough sense to put the gun away. It was pleasing; I was growing a little tired at being threatened by someone I had deemed a friend.

We walked inside and I paused to get a feel for the house. It was as I’d left it. No eddies of air shifted to warn of stealthy movement nearby. There was no detectable odour of a nervous man waiting in concealment. I nodded Bryce inside. Bryce moved past me and if I wanted to I could have killed him easily. His fieldcraft had grown rusty, either that or the fear he was under had displaced the rules from his mind. Following him, I saw that his shoulders were rounded, as though he was already a defeated man.

I’d spent last night here, sleeping on a futon in one corner of the living room. The only other furniture was a deckchair. Bryce sat down in it uninvited.

‘Tell me everything, Bryce.’

He chewed his bottom lip. He was forced to lean back in the chair to look up at me. ‘First I want to apologise for holding a gun on you.’

‘That’d be a start. But forget it. I knew you wouldn’t use it.’

‘I’m surprised you let me get close enough to pull a gun on you.’

‘I was there as a friend,’ I reminded him.

Bryce indicated his breast pocket. ‘Not a gun this time.’

I nodded at him to go ahead and he withdrew an envelope and held it out to me. From his pinched expression, it held something nasty. The envelope disgorged a short stack of photographs.

The first photo showed a woman and a teenage boy lying dead in the street. They looked like they’d been gunned down as they were walking out the front door of their home. The second showed a woman lying in woodland. She was dead, too. Her eyes were rolled up in their sockets as though she was trying to focus on the single bullet hole in her forehead.

Sighing at the cruel nature of the world, I pushed these two photographs back in the envelope. I didn’t know any of the faces.

Photograph three was different, though.

The dark-haired man had been hacked with a heavy blade. What made things worse was the fact that he was bound in a chair and had no hope of avoiding the blows. His dead face was twisted in agony. But I still recognised it: the DAS agent, Victor.

‘Montoya,’ Bryce confirmed. He lifted a finger and tapped the photograph. ‘Also found dead in the same room were his wife and six-year-old daughter.’

Feeling my gut twist, I looked to the next photograph. Pete Hillman had been killed in an alley. There were at least five bullet wounds in his torso.

The final photograph was of Robert Muir. Muir was dead as well, and his decapitated head had been placed on a table next to his corpse. He too had been bound in a chair.

It was obvious why Bryce was feeling paranoid. We were the only two surviving members of the team sent to take out Jesus Henao Abadia.

Pulling out the first two photographs again, I said, ‘These people?’

Bryce pointed at the dead woman in the woods. ‘That’s Robert Muir’s wife. The woman and boy… they’re Pete Hillman’s wife and son. And, as you know, Victor Montoya’s family were found alongside him.’

Not only were the members of the hit team being targeted, but the families of those men.

‘Who’s behind this, Bryce?’

‘According to some people… you.’

That didn’t deserve a response.

‘It doesn’t help when Linden Case was tortured in a similar manner.’ Bryce, his eyes downcast, flicked a hand towards the photos in my hand. ‘Just like the rest, his family was targeted as well. Case said it was you…’

‘Someone told him my name. It doesn’t make me responsible.’

‘He described someone that fits your description.’

‘Bryce, by the definition of our job, we’re supposed to be the everyman. It wouldn’t be hard to find someone my size and build, cut their hair like mine, put contact lenses in. Why’d he even kill Case? He wasn’t a member of our team.’

‘Case was a decoy, I suppose. To set you up as the murderer. While the cops are hunting for you it allows the real killer to carry on with his plan.’

‘To kill us?’

Bryce shuddered. ‘We’re the only ones left.’

‘That brings us back to my first question. Who’s behind this?’

Bryce chewed his bottom lip. ‘My best guess? Could only be Abadia.’

‘Abadia’s dead. You were there, Bryce. Schilling riddled him with rounds from a machine gun.’

‘You know the protocol, Hunter.’

I should have made sure. I should have put a bullet in Abadia’s skull as operating procedure dictated.

‘He couldn’t have survived,’ I said. ‘Not possible.’

I looked at the stack of photographs fanned in my hand.

Anything’s possible, I corrected myself.

It looked like Abadia was back from the dead.

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