Chapter 3

Major Nate Walker screamed out in darkness. His arms flailed, words dried in his parched throat. A loud crash jerked him up, soaked and shaking. Where am I? He opened his eyes. Right. His shitty motel room.

Stale air burned his nose. The nightmare receded while his body convulsed in the aftermath. He swung his legs off the bed and ran his hands through his damp hair. Unable to remember. Desperate to forget.

The shadowed room offered no answers, nor did the slivers of light slashing through the closed plantation shutters on the doors leading to the balcony. The clock radio lay upside down on the floor. His beat-up bike stood against the far wall. He inhaled, orienting himself between the present in this motel room and his recent past, and reached for the medal around his neck. Except it wasn’t there. His head pounded in that oh-so-fucking-familiar way. Like an ax had been jammed into his skull.

Get your shit together, Walker.

He stumbled to the dingy bathroom and stepped into the shower to scrub himself raw with generic soap under the hot water. Why had he taken this assignment? Right. To get half of his men out of jail and keep the other half from going to jail.

Groaning, he shut off the water, dried off with the world’s thinnest towel, and left the room, slamming his forehead on the lintel. Welcome back, full throttle headache.

The ringing phone snapped him to attention. He found his cell beneath the bed. Next to his weapon. What happened while he slept? Grabbing both, he answered, “Walker.”

“You’re up,” Pete said. “Good. I’m on my way.”

Naked, sweating, and standing to the side of the plantation shutter, Nate opened a slat with his gun’s barrel. Not enough to show his assets but enough to scan his perimeter and let in some sunlight. From the third floor, he saw a barge inching up the Savannah River, a heroin addict sleeping in the no-man’s land between the riverbank and railroad tracks, and four CSX train cars overfilled with coal stopped at the track switch. His CO’s earlier warning circled around him, igniting sparks in the moldy air. Always beware the not unusual.

His hands jerked, his blood hummed, and he gripped his weapon until his fingers ached. “Bring coffee. And something to eat.”

“Got it. And I have a guest. He may have intel. I want you to meet him.”

Nate reached for his jeans and shoved one leg through, and then the other, phone tucked between ear and shoulder. “If he can’t help us, I’m not interested. I’ve no friends and more enemies than I can count.” He shrugged his jeans up over his hips and zipped. He reached for a black T-shirt. Clean? Hopefully a harbinger of a better day.

“I’m your friend. Even if you’re my boss.”

Nate pulled the T-shirt over his head and shoved the white handkerchief in his back pocket. “Not your executive officer anymore, bro.” The truth was he’d once had many friends and an A-team under his command. Now he had Pete, a bullshit mission, and a time limit he wouldn’t meet.

“Once an XO, always an XO. I’ll be by in a few.”

Nate headed to the bathroom. He hated having hair hang to his shoulders. But he’d been ordered to grow it years ago, and until he was ordered to cut it, it stayed long. He reached for a brush. The fact that he even owned a brush made him feel like a girl. Fucking pansy.

By the time he pulled his wet hair back in a rubber band, knocks pounded. He palmed his gun against his thigh, the weight easing the tension in his lower stomach.

He opened the door with no ceremony or greeting.

“Hey.” Pete White Horse, shorter than Nate but wide as a Humvee, carried in a drink holder with two large cups and a bag from the coffee shop.

Despite Pete’s long black hair plaited down his back until it hit his ass, a black tee barely covering the Mohawk tribal tattoos on his biceps, black commando pants, and combat boots, he managed to walk around without being stopped by the cops. Nate just hoped his buddy had a ready answer for why he looked like a rogue Mossad agent who—Nate knew—carried five concealed weapons: one nine-mil on his left leg, a forty-five on the right, and three knives tucked into his many pockets.

Except with the level-ten frown on his friend’s face, Nate doubted anyone, even the police, would have the balls to go near him today.

Pete handed him a coffee. “We’re screwed.”

Nate took the cup and shoved his gun in his back waistband. “More than usual?”

“Oh yeah.” Pete threw a nod toward the man outside the door and deposited everything on the table in the corner.

The stranger in a seersucker suit refused to cross the threshold. Instead, he collected and stored everything within his field of vision.

Sweat pricked the back of Nate’s neck, and he fought the urge to shut the door. But the contempt in the stranger’s blue gaze stopped him. He’d never backed down from a fight and wouldn’t start today. But that didn’t mean he had to be polite. “You are?”

The man tilted his head and crossed his arms, his fingers tapping his bicep. Instead of showing his pearlies, he kept his lips sealed and secured. His starched white shirt and blue silk tie worked into a complicated knot screamed trust fund. A Southern gentleman from his Italian leather shoes to his gold signet ring.

Nate squared his shoulders, but he couldn’t stop watching the man’s fingers keep time to some unknown beat. “Are you deaf?”

The man exhaled in a long hiss.

Nate flexed his fingers until Pete clapped him on the shoulder.

“Give Calum a chance, Nate. You want to hear what he has to say.”

Nate scowled, but he trusted Pete. So, despite the fact that Calum’s eyes were too bright and his blond hair too neat, Nate stepped back, Calum entered, and Pete shut the door.

Calum moved into the room and unfastened the shutters and the French doors.

Nate inhaled the fresh air, tasting both mold and sulfur, and blinked. Nothing primed his headaches like the smells of ruin and decay. “What’s going on?”

Pete opened the bakery bag on the table and parked his ass in the only chair, guarding the only exit. “According to Calum, we’re screwed and he’s the one person who can help.”

Since Pete was the optimistic man in their unit of two, Nate drank his coffee and embraced the scorch.

Calum leaned against the jamb, backlit by the morning sun. “With the muscle you and Mr. White Horse bring to the club, it’s not surprising you were hired without background checks.”

Nate put his cup on the table and shifted his weight to his heels. He’d been well trained in diversionary tactics. “Not our problem if the club doesn’t do its job.”

“Fair enough, Major Walker.”

Nate’s head filled with a loud rush. “How do you know my rank?”

“I know everything about you and Captain White Horse.”

Nate threw Calum up against the wall with a loud umph and bared his teeth.

“Don’t hurt him, Nate.” Pete took another drink of coffee and sighed. “I should’ve told you before. Calum owns the club. And we need those jobs.”

Nate dropped him like a hot shell casing but stayed in his personal space.

Calum straightened his jacket. “I also own many of the buildings in this city. And my twin sister is a Georgia senator.”

Well, la-di-fucking-da.

“So not only do I know your names and ranks, I know what you and Pete were, what you are, and what you’re looking for.”

Nate ran his hands over his head, stretching his biceps. “No idea what you’re talking about.”

Pete looked up from his precious coffee. “Actually, Calum does.”

In no reality was that possible.

“You,” Calum said to Nate, “are a dishonorably discharged ex-Green Beret looking for evidence to exonerate his men—most of whom are in prison—before the rest of his unit, including Pete, goes to trial. You have two weeks to succeed, or you’ll return to prison where the rest of your men are waiting. Or, depending on the state of your migraines, back to the Army’s prison hospital in Maine. I know what you’re looking for, and I know someone who can help.” Calum took a note from his jacket pocket. “But since nothing’s free, you’ll do me a favor.”

Nate shrugged. “Why would I do you a favor? Hell, why would I trust you?”

“I also own this hotel. The only hotel in the city that takes cash.”

The tic above Nate’s eye kicked in. Since he’d been discharged and had no money, and Pete and the rest of the unit had had their pay suspended and bank accounts frozen until the trials, they lived a cash-only life. Even their burner phones were paid for with twenties. “If we don’t help you, we’re jobless, homeless, and on the streets with all those heroin addicts.”

“Yes.”

“See?” Pete shook his head and took another sip. “Screwed.”

Nate settled his hands on his hips. “What do you want?” Did defeat always sound so bitter? Or maybe it wasn’t the situation. Maybe it was him.

Calum handed Nate a business card and a throwaway cell phone. “This is your info if someone wants to meet you. When this phone rings and someone asks you if you’re a parole officer, say yes. Do that, and you can keep your jobs and your home.”

Nate shoved the card and phone into Calum’s jacket chest pocket. “No deal.” He didn’t work blind anymore. Last time he had, there’d been explosions, downed helos, and men in pieces. That was before the prison camps.

Calum handed the phone and card to Pete.

“Come on.” Pete tossed Nate the cell phone. “We can do this.”

Nate breathed deeply to fight off the light-headedness.

“Not you, Mr. White Horse. It must be Major—I mean Mr. Walker. Except you’ll go by the name Nathan Wall.”

Now they’d entered the land of the absurd. “And whose PO am I supposed to be?”

“A former teammate and friend of yours.”

Nate weighed the phone in his palm. “I don’t have friends.”

“You did. Once. Sergeant Rafe Montfort.”

Nate stumbled back, and Pete’s eyes widened into black moons. Nate made it to the edge of the bed and sat down, leaning forward with his elbows digging into his thighs. “Are you telling us Rafe Montfort, that lying, betraying, AWOLing sack of shit, is out of prison?”

“Rafe needs your help. In return, he’ll help you,” Calum said. “And from your reactions, Rafe’s release is a detail your boss decided wasn’t important enough to tell you. Unless Colonel Kells Torridan doesn’t know?”

“Rafe Montfort is a traitor,” Pete said.

Nate stood, keeping his hands fisted. “Rafe abandoned his A-team. My A-team.”

Calum slipped his hands into the pressed jacket pockets. “Are you giving up on this mission because of your pride?”

“This has nothing to do with my pride.”

“Maybe you’d just like to avoid Juliet Capel.”

Pete moved until his shoulder touched Nate’s. A brother protecting a brother. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?” Calum’s sneer carved lines in his patrician features. “Unfortunately for you, Juliet is my friend.”

Nate’s heart pounded so fast it chafed his ribs. If Calum knew what’d happened between him and Juliet in a windowless shipping container eight years ago, it would explain the hatred. But not the offer of help. “You sure Rafe will help us?”

“After what you did to the woman he loves? I doubt it. But since he’s your only chance to finish this mission and save your men, I suggest you make sure he doesn’t find out. You can’t help your men if you’re dead.”