Thrill Ride (20 page)

“Of course not,” Rock snorted derisively. “And that’s because the world’s greatest crooks are nearly impossible to catch and prosecute.” He looked around the conference table at the people he’d come to think of as family. The people who’d never stopped believing in him and who’d put their lives on the line, who’d gambled their reputations—who were
still
putting their lives on the line and gambling their reputations—to help him clear his name, and hoped like hell they’d be able to understand why he’d done what he’d done. “
Connards
like these men, men with connections and money and power, cloak themselves behind dummy corporations and under layers of cover. It’s the middlemen who get caught in sting operations. But these guys at the top? They almost always get away to either start another racket or simply amp up their current ones.”

“Seriously,” Ozzie concurred, nodding sagely. “You guys watched
The
Wire
, right? The head honcho always seemed to slip away and—”

“Must it
always
come down to music, movies, or television with you?” Boss interrupted exasperatedly. “I mean, not all of life’s problems can be boiled down to pithy lyrics or witty dialogue.”

“Says you,” Ozzie snorted, shaking his head. “From an anthropological point of view, pop culture is a way to express the—”

“Ozzie’s right about the head honchos,” Rock cut in before the conversation digressed any further—as it had the tendency to do when Ozzie was in the room. “And because our justice system is both righteous on the one hand and flawed on the other, these guys are left to go about their business, killin’ and maimin’ and generally wreakin’ havoc on humanity. These men were domestic terrorists in every form of the word. And it was my job to apprehend them and get them to confess to their crimes, to make them spill their vile guts, catching the filth they spewed on tape.”

“And after the confessions?” Boss asked.

“I let them go,” Rock shrugged. “But not before I sent the tape to Rwanda Don. And from there I washed my hands of it.”

“What do you mean?” Ozzie asked. “You didn’t know they were being killed?”

“Oh, I read in the paper how a couple of them died, seemingly of natural causes, but I didn’t know the rest were six feet under until I got tagged for killing them and started doing my own investigations. Up ’til that point, I just assumed my interrogation tapes were being used in open and ongoing cases to bring the sonsofbitches to justice.”

“And you don’t know who killed them? If it was this Rwanda Don person or—”

“
Non
.” Rock shook his head. “Don was the brains behind The Project, not the muscle. Maybe he was the one who did the research on the men, found the ties to black market operations or murders…I don’t really know. All I know is, I was given a thorough,
incred
ibly
thorough file on each man. These files would not only document what information could be gleaned about this individual’s nefarious activities, but also his personal habits. His likes, his dislikes, his familial ties. Everything. And that’s what I’d use to get inside his head.”

“These were the same files The Company found in your PO box?” Boss asked. “The ones that implicated you in the men’s deaths?”

Rock shook his head. “
Merde
. I don’t know why I kept them. It’s almost like I wanted them for proof. Proof of what I’d managed to get those monsters to admit to. Proof that The Project was working. But you take those files and the fact that all those men are dead, some later proven by foul means, and it’s pretty damnin’ evidence, even if I do say so myself. Somehow, Rwanda Don knew about the PO box. Knew just where to point the CIA so I’d get fingered for it all.”

Boss sat back in his chair, his eyes narrowed on Rock’s face. “Why do I get the impression the word
project
is capitalized?”

Rock lifted a shoulder, his lips twisting. “Probably because you’ve been in the spec-ops community long enough to smell the stench of a hush-hush, backdoor operation when it’s sitting in the same room with you…”

R.D. frowned at the number on the cell phone’s screen.

Why
is
he
calling?
They’d agreed to sever ties unless The Cleaner showed up and—

The Cleaner…
Oh, shit.

“Hello?” R.D.’s hand was shaking. Just the thought of what that man was capable of, combined with the fact that he’d gone missing soon after Rock’s Burn and Delete notice went out over the wires, made R.D. incredibly wary.

No, wary wasn’t the word. Maybe
downright
terrified
was a better turn of phrase.

“My guy didn’t kill Babineaux,” the CIA agent said, disregarding a salutation.

For a long moment, R.D. was speechless. Then, finally, “What? What do you mean he didn’t kill Rock? I thought you said—”

“I know what I said,” the agent spat. “But I got that information from the CIA, not the actual man in the field. My guy called me not five minutes ago to say he wasn’t the one to make the kill. That it was the other guy.”

Now R.D. was
really
confused. “What the hell are you
talking
about?
What
other guy?”

“The other shooter,” the agent stressed, and R.D.’s heart stopped. There wasn’t supposed to
be
another shooter. Unless…

Could it have been The Cleaner?

But why? Why would The Cleaner go after Rock? Unless the man had heard of the charges leveled against Rock and wanted to make sure he actually took the fall for them. But that didn’t jive with what R.D. knew of the man…

“What did he look like?” R.D. demanded. “This other shooter? Did your man get a look?”

“Nope.” There was heavy disgust in the agent’s voice, and R.D. could picture the man frowning fiercely. “He said he was already in the process of pulling the trigger when the first three shots hit Babineaux mid-chest. He said his round only glanced off Babineaux’s ear because Babineaux was already stumbling back like a drunkard from the other shots. Then, according to his story, he had to hightail it outta there or risk The Company boys coming down on his head. So he didn’t have time to get a look at the other triggerman.”

Oh, shit. Oh,
shit. Other
triggerman? What did this mean? What did—

“Do you…” R.D. had to swallow before trying again. “Do you think it was The Cleaner?”

“Why? What purpose could the man have for going after Babineaux?”

“To make sure Rock took the fall for the murders, of course.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, and R.D.’s pounding heart caused blood to rush hot and fast. Then, finally, “If that’s the case, then he’s probably looking to tie up all the loose ends.”

Yes. And that was exactly what R.D. was afraid of…

***

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Becky cut into the question Boss was poised to ask, and Rock turned his attention toward her. She was frowning around the lollipop sucker protruding from her mouth. “Why’d somebody have these guys killed? I mean, I understand why they
needed
to be killed…” And Becky didn’t know it, but that simple phrase helped alleviate some of Rock’s trepidation. “…but if you got them to confess, and you had it recorded, couldn’t your contact, this Rwanda Don person, just turn them and the tape over to the police? Let them face a judge and jury?”

“No way in hell,” Ozzie answered before Rock could. “A confession coerced from a man under duress would be nothing more than empty words. I mean, how would the police know whether Rock had tortured the guy or not, forcing him to admit to whatever Rock told him to admit to?”

“You didn’t torture them, did you?” Becky turned to him, dark eyes wide.

“
Non.
Of course not.” He hadn’t needed to use any physical force, because the CIA had taught him ways of peeling back the layers of a person’s mind, of wheedling and picking and prying until the individual being interrogated almost begged to confess.

“So let me get this straight,” Boss interjected. “Are you telling me this
Project
,” he made the quote marks with his big fingers, “was a government-sanctioned endeavor that assassinated those American criminals who were either too slippery or too careful to be caught by standard police methods? Is that what you’re saying?”

“In a nutshell. Although, like I said, I didn’t know about the assassination part until after I was burned.” But he hadn’t looked very hard. Truth was, after delving into their degenerate minds, he’d tried very hard to forget they existed. “Sometimes these guys didn’t die until months, even a year later.”

“Fuck me.” Boss shook his head at the same time Ghost grunted and Ozzie let loose with a string of profanities.

“What?” Becky asked, glancing around the table. “What’s so bad about that? I mean, if there’d been a way to prove their guilt, and depending on what state they lived in, they’d have likely ended up with a needle in their arm so—”

“Posse Comitatus is a document forbidding the use of Federal troops inside the U.S.—which Rock certainly
was
when he was part of the SEALs.” Boss explained. “Then, of course, there’s our Constitution, which prohibits the government from taking action against any individuals outside of what can be proven by law.”

“So you’re saying this Project was…what?” Becky blinked. “Illegal?”

“According to everything I know about how our judicial system works,” Boss said.

“But these were terrible men,” she argued. “I mean murder? Slave trading? Child prostitution? These guys were bottom feeders. No,” she shook her head, her blond ponytail whipping across her shoulders, “they were worse than that; they were friggin’ slopsuckers.”

“No denying that,” Boss agreed, and another thread of anxiety that’d been tied around Rock’s heart loosened. Of all the Knights, that he’d been most worried about how Boss would react to the news that he’d been involved with The Project. Because even though Boss had been known to bend the rules with the best of them, the fact remained, the man rarely broke them.

And The Project? Well, to his utter regret, it appeared The Project had broken
all
the rules…

“Which brings us around to the question of
who
exactly you were working for in the CIA,” Ozzie said.

And now they were getting to the meat of
one
of Rock’s problems. Because the truth was… “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“You don’t know?” Boss frowned, his brow furrowed in a series of deep lines. “So then who set up the interrogation rooms for you? Who helped you snatch these guys? I mean, they were all wealthy, right? Their security had to be ultra tight.”

“The location of an interrogation room, always in some abandoned building, was part of their file. It was ready for me when I needed it. And as far as kidnapping them?” He lifted a shoulder. “You always did say I was a slippery sonofagun. I just bided my time, slipped into their inner circle, and grabbed them when they least expected it.” And there were a few times he’d almost been caught.

“Jesus, Rock,” Boss breathed, shaking his head in disbelief.
Oui
, sometimes Rock had a hard time believing it himself. And saying it all out loud? Well, it sounded even
more
preposterous than it did in his head. “Okay,” Boss continued, “so then who the hell was this Rwanda Don person you told us about?”

And again, all he could answer with was, “I don’t know.”

Boss growled, running a hand through his hair. “Okay, man, so let’s start at the beginning. How did the CIA recruit you into this…this Project?”

And
so
it
begins…
The sad, complicated,
twisted
tale of his life.

Rock took a deep breath, laced his fingers together on the table, and started in on a story even
he
sometimes had a hard time believing. Because it was the stuff of B-rated spy films and really bad thriller novels. And, in his case, it also happened to be true…

“After I applied for BUD/S, I was contacted, via telephone, by a guy from the CIA callin’ himself Rwanda Don,” he began. “His voice was altered, using one of those gizmos that made him sound like he was a throat cancer survivor.”

For a second, his eyes snagged on Vanessa’s. And there it was again. That look of absolute conviction. Even after all he’d just told them, there was no censure, no judgment in her eyes.
Non.
There she sat, steadfast in her belief that what he’d done was right. And he had the thought again…

Mon
dieu, she’s some kind of woman.
And he wished…

Hell, he didn’t know
what
he wished anymore. And then an image of Lacy popped into his head. The way she’d looked in those last days, so skinny and sickly, and his heart hardened.

Non.
Don’t second-guess yourself,
mon ami
. You know what loving someone can cost you. And you can’t put that kind of burden, that kind of pain, onto someone else.
Because his job with the Black Knights—not to mention his affiliation with The Project—all but guaranteed the likelihood of him meeting an untimely death, and he refused to allow someone who loved him to suffer the kind of loss he’d suffered after Lacy died. The thought was simply unbearable…

He shook his head and continued, “Well, anyway, I was asked if I was interested in comin’ in for an interview.”

“Coming in where?” Boss asked.

“That’s the thing. I was interviewed right there in Coronado. It wasn’t Langley or the Pentagon or somewhere in DC. I went to an abandoned building where I was shown a bunch of CIA credentials before I was hustled into a room by a couple of dudes wearin’ face masks. Once there, I was questioned by Rwanda Don and a few other people who were sitting on the other side of a two-way mirror, with all their voices disguised. I’d heard The Company could be pretty loopy when it came to recruiting new agents for new projects, so I went along with it and answered all the questions as honestly as I could.”

“And what kind of questions were you asked?” Ozzie said, rising from his chair to stroll over to the conference table. He pulled out a seat to join the group but not before plunking a razor-thin laptop down in front of him.

“The standard fare,” Rock admitted, thinking back on that day and how nervous he’d been. It was the first clue he’d had of what a crazy, almost
unbelievable
world the spec-ops community really was. “I was asked about my reasons for wantin’ to join the SEALs. About my thoughts on certain government policies. How I felt about the possibility of having to take a life in the line of duty, yada, yada. And then it got weird.”

“Weird?” Becky asked, crunching down on the sucker in her mouth. “How so?”

“They started askin’ me about my folks’ deaths. About how I’d feel if I discovered they hadn’t died in an accident. About what I’d do to the man who’d killed them if I could get my hands on him.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Boss held up a hand. “I thought your parents died in a boating accident down in Louisiana.”

“
Oui,
” Rock nodded. “So did I for the longest time. But at this interview, they showed me information that pointed the finger at Halsey Chemical Company.”

Ozzie’s fingers began clicking on the keyboard of his laptop before he mumbled, “Halsey Chemical Company. Why does that ring a bell?”

“Probably because fifteen years ago, and then again twelve years ago, they made the headlines,” Rock said. “See, Halsey had been dumpin’ waste into the bayou near my parents’ home for years. Everyone who lived in those parts knew it. A class action lawsuit was brought against the company while I was still in boot camp.”

“
Two
class action lawsuits,” Ozzie said, eyeing his screen, no doubt having pulled up boatloads of information about Halsey Chemicals and the lengthy trials.

“I’m talkin’ about the first one right now,” Rock clarified.

“Which was won by the plaintiffs.”

“
Oui
,” he nodded. “A few mid-level administrative types within the company copped to knowing about the chemical dumps, and they received pretty hefty sentences. The company paid restitution to those families who’d suffered physical ailments, but, you know,” he shrugged, his heart thudding slow and hard against his ribs, just like it did every time he thought of the awful injustice perpetrated down in Louisiana, “how do you put a price on a life?”

And for the first time since they’d gathered around the conference table, no one tried to answer a question when it was posed. Probably because the answer was obvious.

You didn’t. You didn’t put a price on a life. It was impossible…

After a long silence, he murmured, “My best friend, B.B. Fournier, was one of the ones who fell ill. And after several rounds of chemotherapy, an amputated arm, and a shitload of radiation, B.B. finally succumbed to the disease those bastard chemical company suits had given him with their negligence and ambivalence. And then there was my uncle Leon and my cousin Jenna and…and Lacy…”

Sweet, soft Lacy. The girl who’d promised to wait for him to finish his military stint so he could go to college on the G.I. Bill. The girl who’d been long dead, the victim of a rare and aggressive brain tumor that’d metastasized into her lungs and liver by the time his four years in the Navy were up.

“Who was Lacy?” Becky asked quietly.

Rock glanced across at Vanessa and saw realization dawn in her big, dark eyes. “My fiancée,” he whispered.

“Jesus Christ, Rock!” Boss rumbled. “Why the hell didn’t you ever
say
anything about this to us?”

Probably because it wasn’t something he liked to talk about. The fact that everyone he’d ever loved was moldering away in a dank, dark crypt down at the edge of the bayou. But instead of admitting as much, he simply shrugged. “I guess because, as my daddy used to say, the only thing you get from digging up the past is dirty.”

“Yeah,” Boss said, “but still…”

“I didn’t want or need pity. There was nothin’ to be done for it. My family and my fiancée were all dead, and that was that.”