This wasn’t likely to be a friendly visit.
Harris was home. His car was in the driveway. The minivan wasn’t. Good. Likely his kids and his wife were out of the house.
Cruz wasted no time heading straight for the front door and ringing the doorbell.
It took no more than a minute for Harris to answer. “I already talked to you. We’re done.”
Before Harris could close the door, Cruz shoved his booted foot in the doorjamb. “Someone tried to run me down last night. Then they tried to run me and my friend off the road. You know anything about that?”
Surprise flashed across Harris’s face, then his mouth pressed in a grim line. “I told you I can’t talk to you.”
“Considering someone knew where to find me to make a go at me, I’d say they know I was here yesterday.” Cruz tipped his head. “They might even know I’m here again. Could be they’re planning on asking you what I wanted to talk to you about but I’m guessing they haven’t yet. Either way, they’re going to be making some assumptions. How much you want to bet they’ll err on the cautious side and assume you talked to me anyway?”
“How stupid are you, threatening me?” Harris’s face had turned a ruddy red.
“I’m not. I’m making some educated guesses.” Cruz kept one hand on the doorjamb and the other loose at his side. Nonthreatening, but ready to bring up to guard if Harris decided to throw a punch. Harris was probably in good shape. It’d be a challenge, but Cruz had been keeping up his conditioning, too. “And I’m going out on a limb figuring you’re a decent man who didn’t try to turn me into roadkill last night.”
The other man was definitely angry, but he wasn’t homicidal.
“Look. I was home all night. It wasn’t me.” Harris worked his jaw and then shook his head. “Why did you come back here? You don’t have enough evidence to convince you to stay out of this?”
Cruz shook his head slow. “Just getting started. Whatever this is, my friend died because of it.”
“It’s not espionage or a threat to the country or any of that shit.” Harris was loosening up, eyes darting past Cruz up and down the street.
Cruz was keeping an eye out himself, using the reflections in the small windows to either side of the door.
“This was just a business deal.” Despite his claim, Harris sounded like he was swallowing glass talking about it. “The kind of business that takes years to complete. We all needed to keep our mouths shut. Some of us didn’t.”
“Calhoun knew about this…deal?” No way. Calhoun had been a man of honor and he wouldn’t have gotten caught up in any shady dealings. He’d wanted to come home with nothing on his conscience, no guilt and no regrets.
Not likely to happen for any of them. A person had to make choices out there. Some of them weren’t black and white, right or wrong. But if a soldier could make the best decisions possible, then it made coming home easier.
Harris shook his head. “Nah. Your friend took a hit to the head from a stray piece of wall in a rundown building we were entering. He made it through the initial incursion but was down and unconscious while we were mopping up the site.”
“You call interrogating someone mopping up?” Cruz raised an eyebrow.
It might not be wise to let on how much Cruz did know about what was in those videos, but obviously Harris was still playing it safe. Cruz needed him sharing more. Give a little to get to what mattered.
Air rushed out of Harris in a whoosh, as if Cruz had sucker-punched him. “How much do you know? Forget it. Look. Your friend wasn’t awake when we interrogated that son of a bitch and didn’t make a deal. The rest of us, what the fuck were we supposed to do? Once some of us were in, we all had to be. None of us was willing to risk being the only man standing back from it.”
And now they were getting somewhere.
“What was it?” Cruz asked.
Harris held up his hands. “Doesn’t matter.”
“My friend thought it mattered enough to keep evidence,” Cruz growled. “Hiding it was a gamble with his life and he lost. I want to know why.”
“Evidence got your friend killed. Knowing too much gets a lot of people killed,” Harris shot back. He worked his jaw for a moment and then sighed. “But you know too much already. Look, it was a trade of services. Okay? We were asked to kill our target instead of taking him into custody. In exchange, our new business partner would take over the insurgent cell and after official military units were pulled out of the area, there’d be a need for private contracts. Those choice contracts would be offered to us first, once we’d retired from active duty and went private ourselves.”
Cruz raised his eyebrows. “Going for a long-term retirement plan.”