Chapter 11
Kat woke up the next morning to voices at the door. She bolted upright to see Badger fully dressed, talking to someone outside in the hall. She checked her watch, seeing it was 6:10. Surprisingly she’d fallen asleep right away while Badger was in the shower. She had wanted to ask him about his leg, but he was stubborn, and the junkyard dog was always sitting at the edge whenever she came close to the subject.
She brushed her hair off her face and called out, “I’m awake. You don’t need to be quiet.”
Badger turned around to look at her. “Do you mind if they come in?”
She shook her head, shifted so she leaned against the headboard and pulled her sheet up across her chest. When Erick came in with a cup of coffee for her, she beamed. “Wow, this is special treatment. I can’t remember the last time I got coffee in bed.”
The guys shook their heads. “You’re sleeping with the wrong man then,” Erick said with a grin and a nod toward the bed Badger had obviously slept in.
She smiled up at him. “No, I don’t think so. Just so you know, we’re not sleeping together.” She accepted the cup of coffee from him, placing it on the night table beside her. “So what did you guys find out?”
Talon gave her an innocent look. “What makes you think we were looking for anything?”
She snorted. “Of course you were. You wanted to make sure Badger wasn’t shot and to catch the guy who shot the informant.”
Talon shrugged. “I went back to the apartment building. The police crime scene tape was up, so they have obviously found the body. I didn’t try to go in. None of the neighbors seem to know anything. Or, if they do, they’re not talking.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Were you expecting anyone to talk to at this hour? Won’t they be pissed off at being woken up?”
“Some were just coming home from working the night shift,” he said with a smirk. As if the nature of that work was questionable.
“In which case they probably don’t even know what happened yet. What about the guy at the desk or the manager or the maintenance guy?”
“Checked with whoever I could find. Nobody knows anything.”
“I, on the other hand,” Erick said, “contacted my buddy at the police station. He said the information was slammed shut. He wanted to know how I knew about it.”
“What did you say?” Badger asked, a frown creasing his forehead.
“I told him that we’d been in the pub, and we heard something weird, but we didn’t see anything.”
She stared at him and laughed. “So, give him a little bit of the truth to keep him happy, just not enough to make him question it.”
He nodded, giving her that knowing smile. “Exactly.”
They were seated at the back of the hotel restaurant, finishing their late breakfast. Badger wanted to cut Kat loose for the day so he could go to the apartment building and the room the shooter had to have been in. He knew there was a good chance the cops would be on-site. But there was also a good chance they’d already moved on. He doubted a drug-addicted, washed-out guy like his informant would garner a whole lot of police investigation hours. Sure, they did their job, but it was an area with a high crime rate. Unless they got any decent leads, there was no way to close the case.
Not only was Kat not having anything to do with his idea, neither were the guys.
Talon was being most adamant. “We stick together.”
Badger glared at him. “Why now? We’ve always gone off in teams of one or two, gathering intel before.”
Talon shrugged. “But we currently have somebody we’re protecting at the same time.”
“Exactly. No way I want to add her into the mix,” Badger said. “She’s already got enough headaches. This could put her in more danger.”
“So we don’t mix the two,” Talon said. “Let me go. Nobody here knows me. Nobody back home from her situation knows me. I’ll scope out the apartment. You take her to the vet clinic she wants to go to.”
Badger fought it, but the voice of reason finally prevailed. As a last parting shot, he said, “What about your logic that we needed to stick together?”
“That was to stop you from going off on your own,” Talon said with a big grin.
Badger checked his watch. “We’ll check in on the hour.” He glanced at Kat. “How long until your meeting?”
“It’s at eleven. He doesn’t have much time to spare. If I had longer, I’d probably stay and watch as he did surgeries. But I’m not sure that invitation is in the offing.”
The men nodded. Talon said, “I have my own set of wheels, so we’ll see how it goes.”
He went to stand, and Cade stood with him. Talon looked at him in surprise. Cade just gave him a blank look back. Badger smirked. “Two at a time.”
Talon shrugged, as if not caring either way, and walked out. Badger turned to Erick and Kat. “It’s about an hour’s drive once we get out of the city, maybe a little more. And at least fifteen minutes to get out of the city.”
She nodded. “In that case, I have time for another cup of coffee.”
He motioned for the waitress who came over with the coffeepot. She refilled everyone’s cups.
Once she was out of earshot, Kat said in a low tone, “Will they be okay?”
Badger nodded. “Chances are they’ll be back here before we’re even gone.”
She gave him a frown that made him smile. She asked him, “Is there anything you can do that’s effective while we’re here?”
He shrugged. “We’re looking for another informant. People are analyzing the audio file. The names in question are being researched. It’s all going on in the background. That doesn’t mean there’s anything in particular we can do about it yet.”
“Before we head out, I want to check in with Jim.”
He nodded. “In that case, as soon as you’re done with your coffee, we’ll go back up to the hotel room, and you can use the landline there.”
She thought about that. “No, it’s the wrong time for Jim. I’ll wait until this afternoon. Do we have time for more coffee?”
He glanced at his watch. “Well, if we don’t linger, you’ll be fine.” He watched as she dumped extra cream into her coffee and drank it down in several big gulps. “I didn’t mean you had to inhale it.”
She grinned. “I’d inject it if I could.”
With Erick laughing out loud, the three made their way back to their rooms. As they approached Kat and Badger’s room, Badger held up a hand. Erick slid against the wall, coming up to the side of the door. Badger motioned Kat behind him flat against the wall and whispered, “The door is open.”
He heard her sucked-in breath but didn’t have time to reassure her. Inside they could hear someone moving around.
Erick motioned with three fingers, dropped one, then another, and casually walked inside. “Hey, what are you doing in here?”
With a sharp word to Kat to “Stay here,” Badger raced inside after him.
Erick was in the middle of a fight with a small wiry man. Badger wrapped his arms around the man’s neck, put him in a chokehold, tossed him on the bed and thrust his knee into the center of his shoulder blades. With a look at Erick, he said, “Get Kat in here.”
But Kat was already at the door, slamming it shut. “Kat, stay here. Kat, come in. I do have a brain, you know? I can understand when it’s dangerous and when I need to get the hell out of the hallway because you guys are making a ruckus in the room.”
Badger glared at her. But he was relieved to see she wasn’t upset. If anything, she looked energized at this turn of events.
She walked over and stared at the man and shrugged. “I don’t know who he is. Do you guys?”
Badger shook his head.
Erick checked the man’s pockets. He pulled out a wallet and flipped it open. “Well, look at this.” He held up an MI6 ID card. “Jonas Halpern.”
Badger whistled a low-key sharp sound that filled the room. He slowly eased back, checking for weapons, and found two, one in a shoulder holster and one in Jonas’s boot. With both of those removed, Badger sat back and let the man sit up. “So what the hell does MI6 have to do with searching my room illegally?”
“What the hell are you doing over here in the first place with your cohorts?” Jonas snapped. “And I’ll have my ID back please.”
Erick was busy taking a photo of it. Once he was happy with that, he returned it. “We’d like an explanation, Jonas.”
Jonas shrugged. “You guys arrive. Some guy is dead. Calls are made. Your name never quite gets mentioned, and then I start getting phone calls from friends on the US side. It’s enough to peak my interest. So I came calling.”
Badger laughed. “Close but not close enough. MI6 should never have been alerted. This was a simple police case. And your friends from the USA don’t have any reason to suspect any of us in any wrongdoing.”
“No, but I did receive a call from an informant, saying you were asking questions that would get some people shot.” Jonas gave Badger a hard grin and said, “And look at that. Somebody got shot.”
Badger stared at him for a long moment. His heart sank. “What the hell does MI6 have to do with this?”
“Maybe nothing. But I have informants all around the world. And, when something goes down in my backyard, I’d like to know what it’s about.” His gaze went from the two men to Kat. “Particularly when I run her name and find out several suspicious deaths and multiple shootings surround her.”
Kat glared. “I don’t know who you think you are,” she snapped, “but none of those cases had anything to do with me.”
Jonas snickered. “And yet you were kidnapped and shot at?”
She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I don’t like you.”
His response came quickly. “I don’t give a shit if you do or if you don’t. I want an explanation as to why you’re over here.”
“Not until we find out who it is you talked to in the US,” Badger said quietly. “And just in case you think I don’t have anything on you, you’re wrong. I have lots of connections in MI6 myself. You entered our room illegally and were doing a full-bore search illegally. Without suspicion, without cause.”
“It depends if I find any of your DNA in a room where a man was shot last night,” the agent said coolly. “But let’s cut the crap. You’re over here to do a job. I don’t know what the job is. But, so far, one man is dead. I don’t want any more dead.”
“Agreed. Sorry about the dead man,” Badger said in a cool tone.
“Now you see? That apology would work better if I didn’t believe you were there or at least somewhere around there.”
“As we already gave a statement that we were at the pub around the corner, obviously we were there,” Erick said in exasperation. “There’s an easy answer for all of us. But it means the two of you need to stop bristling at each other so we can talk.”
Jonas gave a quick nod. “You first. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
Erick and Badger exchanged hard glances, then Badger said, “We had reason to believe an informant had intel regarding a directive that was changed when we were on an active mission. That change in orders ended up with seven men blown to hell and one man killed.”
Jonas’s gaze sharpened as he digested that information. “And what information did you find here?”
“The information that caused the change in orders came from somebody who doesn’t exist,” Badger said quietly. “And I received an audio file of that conversation last night.”
“Did you shoot the informant?”
Badger shook his head. “No. But he was shot in front of me from across the road. Another apartment building.”
“Damn.” Jonas scratched the back of his head. “I really wish you’d keep your shit on your side of the ocean.”
“It would have saved us time and money if our informant wasn’t over here.”
“Was the information good?”
“He’s the one who took down the new intel and supplied it to our superiors without checking and confirming it.” Badger sighed. “To give him a little bit of leeway on that lack of diligence—don’t forget we weren’t expecting a particular problem, and we were all out in the field—when he got the information, he told his superiors the orders were changed, our route was changed, and we were blown up by an antitank land mine.”
Jonas’s gaze narrowed as he studied Badger and then Erick. “You were in the truck that was blown up?”
Badger nodded. “There were eight of us, and one died in the accident.”
“Did the audio file have anything worthwhile on it?”
“We’re waiting for somebody to get back to us on that.”
“How did you find the informant?”
Badger gave him a steely smile. “The usual way. Another informant. And money. Lots of money.”
They all sat in silence for a long moment.
“I’m sorry for your friend,” Jonas said. “And particularly if you think this was done on purpose.”
“I always believed it was done on purpose,” Badger said. “But I could never find any proof. How does one accept intel from somebody who doesn’t exist?”
“Yeah. It means the intel is something you don’t want to be traced back to you.” Jonas nodded. “I would have preferred that you brought this to me in the first place, but I can understand why you didn’t. The thing is, I can’t have you shooting up any more of our citizens.” He held up a hand, stopping Badger from protesting once again. “You may not have done the shooting, but, because of your arrival, the man is dead.”
“Agreed.” Erick stepped forward. “Did you guys find any forensic evidence from the shooter?”
Jonas shook his head. “No, not yet. And I highly doubt there will be any. It was a sniper rifle. Barely caused any damage to the glass. No shell casings. No forensics that we could find at this time. Testing is still ongoing with carpet strands and a few hairs. But it’s a rent-by-the-week flophouse, so there’ll be hair and other forensics. None of it’ll necessarily pinpoint who our shooter was. In fact, I’m sure he went in completely gloved and suited up in order to not leave anything in the room itself.”
Badger felt a hand slide into his. He glanced down to see Kat standing beside him, her fingers laced with his. “Do you have any cameras on the area?”
Jonas glanced at her, but, instead of answering her question, he asked her one of his own. “What is this going on in your world?”
She winced. “It looks like my brother met somebody in jail and made a pact to kill my uncle for some rare coins. Only I inherited them, so they decided to kill me.”
He stared at her for a long moment and then shook his head, pointing from Badger to Kat. “Wow, you two deserve each other.”
Badger squeezed her fingers and chuckled. “You might think so, based on that,” he said, but his tone didn’t show the same lightheartedness as his laughter. “But know this, neither one of us would choose these circumstances. We just want to have a decent life again.”
“You’re obviously not too badly hurt …” Jonas studied him and then Erick. “Although I imagine antitank land mines means you didn’t get off lightly.”
“We all lost limbs, muscle function, incurred some major internal damage. We’re all wearing steel plates we weren’t born with,” Erick said in a dark tone. “We all spent months, some of us longer, in hospitals. For the last two years we’ve done nothing but recover and work toward getting back to normal since it happened.”
Jonas sighed and stood. He held out his hands for his weapons.
Badger handed them over without hesitation.
Jonas slipped them back into his holster and his boot. “I took a bullet, just missed my heart by a hair, and I was out for months. I can’t imagine the damage done by a land mine. But vengeance, although it might have gotten you through the recovery process, is a pretty sick pill to be swallowing every day of your life. Answers are hard to come by with something like this.”
“Which is why you can understand our trip here to gain even the smallest of leads to help get to the bottom of this.”
“Now what?”
“Well, if you could find the shooter, we would much appreciate it,” Kat said in a steely tone. “And then, given the fact that maybe the police have things calmed at my home and have picked up everyone responsible for the shootings and the murder of my uncle and God only knows what else, we’ll be happy to go back to our normal lives.”
“What is that normal life for you, Doc?”
“I’m a prosthetic designer. I work with all these men to try to give them full mobility again.”
Jonas walked toward the door. “There’s not a whole lot I can tell you. But, if I get any leads, I’ll pass them on.”
Erick handed him a card as he stepped out the door. “Stay in touch.”
Jonas smiled. “I’d like to say it was nice meeting you, but …”
Erick gave him a half grin and added, “Likewise.”