Hard as It Gets (33 page)

“
What
?” Shane asked, echoing Rixey’s own thoughts.

“If you don’t, they’ll know I helped you. And I can’t . . .” Agitation overtook all her delicate features. “You have to. Please.” Apology in her eyes, she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Please.”

“Pretend to fall and cradle your stomach.” Shane swung like he was punching her.

She dove, her head and back hitting the wall and the tray of food flying.

They bolted through the door.

Aw, thank fuck for Easy. He had his rental SUV sitting right there, back door open. Shane dove in first. Nick flipped Charlie off his shoulder, and Shane hauled him in. Rixey’s ass was still flapping in the breeze when Easy peeled out and men exploded through the door they’d just come through.

Gunshots erupted in a barrage that sprayed the back of the SUV.

Shane and Nick went flat, covering Charlie, who was completely out now. Probably for the best.

More gunfire again. The back window shattered in a hail of glass.

“Do whatever you have to do to avoid a tail, man,” Nick called.

“On it.”

Shane groaned. “Motherfuck.”

“What?” Nick asked as Easy tore out of the lot, cutting off traffic and sending oncoming cars into tailspins that luckily blocked the road.

“I’m hit.” Shane pulled a handful of blood away from his right shoulder. “Flesh wound, I’m pretty sure. Sonsabitches.”

“You need a hand?” Nick asked.

“No, goddamnit,” Shane said, cussing up a blue streak under his breath. Yeah, he was good.

Nick scanned out the back window. Course that would’ve been too easy. Two SUVs had gone offroading onto the sidewalk around the cars blocking the road. “We have company.”

“Yup,” Easy said.

“A-Team, vehicles are in pursuit. Do you have everyone?” came Jeremy’s voice.

An occasional round was still hitting home on their rear end.

Grabbing his gun, Rixey lowered the passenger window and leaned his upper body out enough to line up a shot. He pulled the trigger, and the first tail swerved and lost control, crashing into a parked car.

“Get us gone, E,” he hollered.

They ran a red light, which Rixey only realized after the fact when cars went screeching sideways in their wake. He approved. But the damn tail still wasn’t giving up. The road opened into two lanes lined with clubs and bars and restaurants, and traffic picked up. Couldn’t damn well shoot now. Nick sat heavily in his seat just as Easy cut across two lanes of traffic and made a right turn at the last possible minute.

Rixey careened into Charlie and Shane, whose injured shoulder slammed into the door, sending off more colorful curses.

The turn-and-slide didn’t stop there. Easy took the first left. Right again. And then another right, taking them back in the direction from which they’d come. No sign of the tail. Had they lost him? Nick kept a vigilant gaze out the back. Easy took the next left to cut across the city from east to west, continuing to zigzag to make sure they were tail-free. But he kept his speed down and drove carefully. Last thing they wanted was to get stopped by a cop for speeding or running a red light. Not when they were in the free and motherfucking clear.

Rixey blew out a breath and sagged against the seat. It might’ve been the first time he’d fully breathed in fifteen minutes. “Everybody okay?” He got two affirmatives, and hit his com button. “Eileen? This is A1. We have the package. I say again, we have the package.”

“They have him,” Jeremy said.

Some sort of static filled Nick’s earpiece for a moment, then Becca cried out, “You have him? You really have him?”

Man, the joy in her voice made him feel ten feet tall.

“Yeah, sunshine. I’m bringing him home.”

Chapter 23

B
ecca had been sitting by Charlie’s makeshift bedside for eight hours, willing him with everything inside her to wake up long enough to let her know he was really okay.

Before they’d even returned to Hard Ink, Nick had given her a rundown of the injuries already identified: dehydration, probable broken ribs, multiple cuts and contusions, burn marks, infection in the amputation sites. They’d cut off two of his fingers. The macabre list went on and on, forcing her to detach from the idea of him as her brother long enough to treat him as a patient. Her attempted abduction proved they couldn’t trust hospitals to be safe right now.

Somewhere along the way, B-Team had met up with A and escorted them back. Marz had been shot three times in his lower right leg—the one with the prosthesis. His jeans were literally Swiss cheese, but otherwise B-Team had escaped the firefight at the storage center intact.

By the time both teams returned home, Becca and Jeremy had set up a trauma station using a table from the tattoo parlor and the supplies from her and Shane’s packs, which thankfully included IV fluids and antibiotics. Shane had helped her treat Charlie, and then she’d patched up Shane’s GSW. Thank God he’d only been grazed.

Once she’d done everything she could for Charlie, and thanked everyone, and welcomed them home safe and sound, she’d broken down in Nick’s arms.

After Charlie’d had two bags of saline and a bag of IV antibiotics, the guys had brought a mattress into the gym from the apartment so he could be moved off the firm table without jostling him too much.

She’d been sitting in this chair almost the entire time since then, alternating between sleeping against Nick, who sat beside her, staring at Charlie and willing him awake, and playing with her bracelet until she drove herself crazy with the jingle. She finally took it off and laid it at the foot of the mattress.

She wasn’t alone. Every member of the team had sat or slept around her and Charlie.

If she hadn’t already known before then, she knew exactly why Nick Rixey loved every one of these people. Becca didn’t know how she’d ever repay them.

Actually, yes she did. She and Charlie had to help them clear their names.

Another hour passed, and Becca fell asleep on Rixey’s shoulder again.

“Becca? Hey, wake up, sunshine.”

Eyes still unfocused, she lifted her head. And realized she was looking at an awake but very groggy Charlie.

She flew from her seat, eased to her knees, and leaned against the mattress. Unsure where to touch him that didn’t hurt, she stopped short. “Charlie. Thank God. I’m so sorry,” she said. “You were right. And I’m sorry.” Lightly, she brushed the mop of blond waves out of his face. He always kept his hair longish—it used to drive their father crazy—but he usually kept it pulled back in a ponytail.

He shook his head, his movements sluggish. “No worries.” Typical Charlie. “Thanks for not giving up on me,” he managed.

“I would never. Do you hear me? Never. I love you.”

“Me, too, sis.” The swallowing sound he made was hard and rough. “I would kill for a Mountain Dew.”

She laughed. “How about some water to start.”

He grunted but took a long draw from the cup she held. “Where am I?” he asked, eyes darting over the rough industrial space of the gym.

“A friend’s house,” she said for now. But she smiled at Rixey, and he winked.

Charlie’s eyes scanned around the gathered group. Everyone had gotten up when she’d said his name. “The Colonel’s team,” he stated, using the name he’d called their father for years. It was like he’d recognized them right off. “And some other dudes,” he said, eyeballing Jeremy and Miguel.

“How do you know us?” Nick asked. “I’m Nick Rixey, by the way.”

Charlie nodded. “My dad had some files on a thumb drive. Just personnel records, like patrol schedules and fitness reports, and stuff.” He shrugged. “I was able to patch together the names of most of the team.”

“No shit? There were fitness reports?” Marz said, looking at the other guys. “That’ll give us Merritt’s own copies to challenge the official records. Oh, I’m Derek DiMarzio, by the way. Any chance you still have those?”

“Yeah. I still have the drive.”

Becca sat on the edge of the mattress. “How, Charlie? Your place was tossed. So was mine, actually.”

He frowned and shifted like he was trying to get comfortable. “Thumb drives are hidden inside the wall of a motel I stayed in.” Holy crap. One of the ones they’d gone to, presumably.

Wide-eyed, Nick stepped to the edge of the mattress and looked down on her brother. “Can you start from the beginning and tell us what you found, what Church’s guys are looking for, and why you told Becca to find me?”

Becca looked between the two men she loved most in the world. Her heart ached for Charlie to know something that might help the team.

“Water again first, please?” Charlie said, reaching out. The guys all edged closer as he drank. He passed the cup back to her. How she wished she could do more for him. “Two months ago, I got a letter from a Singapore bank in the mail. It was addressed to my father at my apartment, which was frackin’ hilarious because he never once stepped foot in my place and wouldn’t have trusted me to handle his affairs. Letter said that per the account holder’s request, notification was being sent because of prolonged inactivity on the account. It’d be closed unless the account holder contacted them within ninety days.” He met Becca’s gaze, his blue eyes so like their father’s. His whole face, really.

“The bank wouldn’t give me the money or any other account information since my name wasn’t on the account and I didn’t have the passcode, even though I explained the account holder was dead. I even sent a copy of his death certificate, but they kept denying me. So I hacked in. Every single deposit was made by the same depositor. A company, presumably, called WCE. They deposited twelve million dollars.”

She gasped. Curses and mutters went around the room. God, there it was in a numerical value. What it had taken for her father to throw away everything he’d ever valued. The price put on the lives of Nick’s six comrades who’d died there on a dirt road in Afghanistan. It made her nauseous. “That’s what the 12M stood for in the note you hid in my jewelry box?” She reached up a hand to Nick. His expression was a storm about to open up. He sat down and kept his fingers intertwined with hers.

“You found that? Yeah. When things started getting dicey, I needed to make some copies of the info. I put it in Mom’s necklace, too, but I lost it.”

“I found it at a motel. How did you get the necklace, though?”

A sheepish expression came over his exhausted face. “I broke into your back door. Needed to hide some stuff without you knowing.”

“Charlie! I thought I was going crazy! What else did you hide?”

“Two of my laptops are in your basement crawl space.”

Becca shook her head, completely overwhelmed by Charlie’s story.

“Back up. What is WCE?” Marz asked.

“Never did find out. As soon as I started searching for it, attacks against my firewalls began. Someone must’ve set up a tracer alerting them of searches for that set of characters and was trying to figure out who was doing the searching. So I started moving locations. Lasted for a while. Until it didn’t.” He shrugged. “Guys who held me were hot as hell to find out how I’d learned about WCE, but I didn’t say a word. Figured they were going to kill me either way.”

Pride and sadness roared through Becca. How courageous he’d been. Her gaze dropped to the bandages on his hand. And how he’d paid for it. The guys were looking at him with a new respect, too.

“Well, hell, good to know about the tracing. Before I start hitting the bank information, I’ll make sure the IP address is buried so deep no one can track it back to us,” Marz said.

“Marz is their computer expert,” Becca said. Marz and Charlie exchanged nods. She could totally see them getting along.

“In addition to digging into WCE, I dug into my father in Afghanistan. That’s when I noticed that in the few accounts of the ambush I could find, they made it sound like everyone had died, when DoD records I later hacked trying to learn more indicated there were survivors. And the fitness reports in your official records don’t match the ones I have on the thumb drive. The circumstances of the Colonel’s death didn’t add up. Seemed like you might be an ally in getting to the bottom of it all,” he said to Nick.

“Jesus,” Beckett bit out. “Do you realize how scary him and Marz would be together.”

Charlie frowned. Marz grinned.

Charlie pushed his hair off his face and yawned with a grimace. “The Colonel was on the take from somebody. Big time. Someone with the power to trace my digital signatures and to grab me off the street. So it wasn’t just any Joe Schmo. It has something to do with heroin. Main and most lucrative economic activity in Afghanistan plus main drug trade of the Churchmen equals way too coincidental when you’re talking that kind of coin . . .” Charlie broke off, his gaze fixated and then narrowed at the end of the bed where Becca had discarded her bracelet. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at it.

“This? It’s a bracelet Dad gave me for my birthday last year.” She grasped it. “Kinda funky for his taste, but . . .” She shrugged.

He frowned. “Can I see it?” She handed it to him, and he spread it out on his lap. “Bec, these charms . . . this is binary code.”

She leaned in. “What do you mean?”

His eyes went wide, and the other men stepped closer. “I mean, zeroes and ones. Binary code. Someone have paper?”

“Holy shit. He might be right,” Marz said, handing him a legal pad and a pen.

“Oh, never mind.” He held up his wrapped right hand.

“Tell me what to write,” she said, taking the pad. He read out the code, and she wrote it down. “I can’t believe I’ve been wearing some kind of code on my wrist for the last year.” She’d thought that once they had Charlie back, everything would make sense. But the situation was as surreal as it had ever been.

“Write it down this way, too,” he said, turning the bracelet around and reciting the string of zeroes and ones backward.

“You think this is the passcode you mentioned?” Nick asked.

“Not this, but maybe the decimal equivalent. Which the Colonel would’ve known I could figure out. Damn, the guys who held me kept asking about the passcode, too. And here you might have been wearing it on your wrist all this time. God, if they’d known.” Charlie’s voice hitched. Shaking his head, he grasped the notepad and focused on the numbers, frowning. “This way it reads . . . 631780.” He dragged a finger along the second line of numbers. “And this way . . . 162905.”

“Shit, he’s right,” Marz said as he brought his laptop over. “You just converted that in your head?”

Charlie shrugged.

“Why all the cloak and dagger, though?” Becca said, frustration welling up inside her. “If he was going to send us information, why not just be straightforward about it? Do you think he was trying to sneak us access to that money? Because, God, I wouldn’t want it.”

“Problem is, the bank passcode is a seven-digit number. I found that much out,” Charlie said. “These are six. It’s not for the bank after all.”

“What the hell does the bracelet go to, then?” Nick asked, tension rolling off him. Becca squeezed his hand, exhaustion making it hard to keep up with all this information.

“Jesus,” Shane said. “Charlie’s story raises as many questions as it answers.”

Charlie yawned and grimaced. “God, I feel a lot like death warmed over.”

“Take these,” Becca said, handing him some pain medicine and water. He drank it down, and Becca was so grateful he was okay. Thankful to these men all around them.

Nick turned, his intense gaze raking over each person. “This isn’t over. Whatever this is, it’s just beginning.”

Beckett hammered his finger into his palm. “Who or what is WCE? How was Merritt connected to them? To Church? What were they looking for when they ransacked both your houses? Who was the ‘company’ tonight at the club? What do these codes go to? When will they strike again, because you know they will. The list of what we don’t know goes on and on.”

You could almost feel the consensus build in the room around them.

“I want my honor back. My reputation. My career,” Easy said from where he sat on a bench press. Blazing dark eyes flashed, and he gestured to the group. “Only way that happens is if we stay together and follow the leads wherever they go.”

“Fuckin’ A. I couldn’t agree more,” Shane bit out. “There’s something here. And it just might lead to redemption.”

Beckett stepped forward, shoulders tense, expression dark. “We did nothing wrong. It’s time we take back what was stolen from us. Count me in.”

“Shit, yeah. I’m prepared to fight,” Marz said.

“What are they—”

“Whatever your father was into,” Nick interrupted Charlie, “someone or some group was powerful enough to cover it up and blame the ambush on us. We were all discharged and discredited. Every member of the team who survived the attack had served ten or more years in the Special Forces, and someone just took that the fuck away.” Becca rubbed Nick’s back, hating the anguish layered beneath the rage in his voice.