“I was never safe.” His chest squeezed and his eyes burned and he didn’t want to remember. When he dragged air down into his lungs, his body flared with phantom aches, old remembered wounds and indignities. He panted. “Don’t pretend to think I should be loyal to your cause. You were never loyal to me. Your own flesh and blood.”
“It was never about you.”
“No,” he agreed, bitterly, “not for anyone.”
Vlad turned his head, and gave a hand signal. Val hadn’t noticed there were human attendants lingering at the door, but they stepped into view now, carrying armfuls of things that Val didn’t want to look at, much less think about.
“What are you doing?” He hated how his voice wavered, but he couldn’t control it. His hands shook and he curled them into fists to quiet them.
Vlad sighed. “Hobbling you.”
They opened the cell with its key, and Vlad stepped inside, a stun baton in one hand. The techs came in, trailing equipment, and Val shut his eyes.
Mia, he thought, aching. He hadn’t gotten a chance to say goodbye.
38
Topeka, Kansas
“But you cut grass,” Rooster said, stubbornly disbelieving.
They’d stopped to refuel, at a small landing pad with attached maintenance shed, small barracks, and fuel station.
Deshawn folded his arms and leaned against the brick side of the shed, shaking his head, small, rueful smile on his lips. “On paper I do, yeah.”
“But…you got out.”
“I did. And then I got pulled into something else. Here.” He thrust a bottle of blue Gatorade into Rooster’s lax hand. “Drink that before you fall over.”
Rooster made a face, but took a dutiful sip. He’d spotted a bench before, when he’d first put his back to the wall, and he sank down until it caught him now. His left knee flickered a moment, an echo of the pain that would eventually flare to life and cripple him if he didn’t get back to Red soon. If he didn’t–
“Okay, start talking,” he said. He needed a distraction. A mission.
“Alright,” Deshawn said, with a deep breath and the air of a man who’d practiced having this conversation. A few times. “So. It happened like this. After you up and took off, before I came home, Ash started digging into the Institute.”
The idea terrified Rooster. Ashley didn’t let things go, as a general rule, and she could have been silenced for her meddling. “She shouldn’t,” he started, and Deshawn waved him to silence.
“You gonna let me tell this, or not?”
Rooster grumbled, but motioned for him to go on.
“We talked about it on the phone every time we talked. It became her damn crusade: get the guys who tried to get you. And, well, her and Des, too. But. She went to the facility – the place in Queens – stood outside and tried to talk to the people who came out.”
“Oh my God,” Rooster groaned.
“I know, right? But she was on to something. By the time I got out, she had fifteen malpractice lawsuits all lined up. People who’d taken some kinda experimental drug from this place and had really, really bad reactions to it. Three were dead, and their families were suing on their behalf.”
“Jesus. But–”
“Oh, yeah, they’d all signed the waivers, but that didn’t stop Ash. And you know what? Turns out there weren’t any medical boards that had signed off on this trial. The whole thing was shady as shit. Ash knew it, and the Institute knew it. So when I got home, I started making some phone calls, seeing what I could learn about the place through military contacts. All the plaintiffs in her cases? Vets. That’s all the Institute works on: vets with medical discharges.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. And, apparently, some high-up suits somewhere didn’t like me digging. Homeland showed up at the house.”
“Deshawn.”
“Yeah, yeah. I wasn’t careful early on. I know that, and it’s on me. But then.” His voice changed, lightened in a way that drew Rooster’s nerves tight. “I was approached by someone else.”
Rooster waited.
Deshawn drew something from his back pocket – a business card – and handed it over.
Matte black. A phone number on one side, and a logo on the other. An elegant embossed lion done in a few minimalist lines.
“What is this?”
“The defense contractor I work for.”
“Defense contractor,” Rooster said levelly. “You went Blackwater?”
“No,” Deshawn said, firmly. “It’s not like that. A guy reached out, said he had some of the answers I wanted, and a job if I was interested.”
“And you took it?”
“Not at first.” Deshawn dropped down onto the bench beside him, their shoulders touching. “I got this phone call. At home.” He stressed that; Rooster felt a flicker of tension move through him where they touched. “Guy was real polite. British. Said his name was Scarlet, and he’d heard my name was pinging all these Homeland lists because I was digging into shit I shouldn’t have been. Not his words – he said, ‘Sticking your nose into corners better left alone.’” He snorted. “Then he said that if retirement wasn’t sitting well with me, they’d be happy to interview me for their security firm. I said I wasn’t interested, and that was it. Or, I thought so.
“A week later Ash got this package delivered to the office.”
Rooster swallowed hard against a curse.
“It was a pigeon with its neck broken. ‘Drop it,’ the note said. She was working on the most promising of the Institute cases at the time. I just.” He clenched his jaw tight, emotion held barely in check. “So I called that Scarlet guy, asked him what he knew. The next day, there was an envelope thick as my hand in the mailbox. A whole damn file on the Institute. The shit that was in there…I agreed to a meeting. And I joined up.”
“I get it,” Rooster said, and he did. “Ash is safe now? Des?”
“As houses. And the shit I’ve seen.” He whistled. “I’d say you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but your girl can start fires, so.” He glanced over, faintly amused, but concerned underneath. Checking for Rooster’s reaction.
“What do y’all do?”
“Freelance security,” Deshawn said, like it was simple. “Special cases only. Under the radar. Payment in full upfront and in cash.”
It sounded completely illegal, and nothing that anything straight-laced, all-As, family man Deshawn would have ever touched with a ten-foot pole.
But Rooster owed his friend the chance to make it make sense.
“You’ll understand when we get there,” Deshawn promised.
Rooster nodded, trusting him. “What’s it called?”
Deshawn’s lips quirked, a small smile. “Lionheart.”
*
Rooster grew disoriented long before the helo entered an enveloping shroud of mist.
Deshawn stared out the window, at the expanse of gray, and smiled quietly to himself.
“Where are we?” Rooster asked.
“Appalachia.”
Okay. Sure.
They swayed in their seats as Dunbar started to set the helo down. Down, down, down through the mist. And then it began to clear, thinning until the rotors shredded it like wet paper, slender tendrils clinging and whirling past the windows. And there were the mountains: jagged black teeth stamped against a backdrop of white cloud, striated with shadows, great rippled folds of earth.
It was evening, and they slid down out of the clouds as they descended, until they passed through blinding bars of light from the sunset. Rooster squinted against them and saw that a destination was taking shape: a compound nestled in the crook between two peaks, ribbons of unpaved roads snaking out from it. The closer they drew, the larger he realized it was, a sprawling tract of mountain land, dotted with buildings of all shapes and sizes.
“What the hell is this place?” he asked, shouting to be heard over the rotors.
Deshawn grinned at him with teeth. “You’ll see!”
Dunbar set them gently down on a tarmac pad roughly the size of a football field. Rooster spotted other birds: all of them outdated, but immaculate. The engine died away with a slow wine, the rotors slowed, and Dunbar led them out across the tarmac toward a waiting Jeep. One man stayed behind the wheel, but the passenger got out and walked around to meet them.