The Reaper (The Phoenix Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  “I won’t hesitate,” said another man as he cocked his gun.

  Taylor cursed as he rose to his feet, placing his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender.

  “That’s right,” Walton said, trying to save face after Taylor had just embarrassed the cattle drive leader. “You got one minute to grab your stuff and get outta here. I’ll mail you your check.”

  Hawk told Taylor to collect his things and saddle up.

  “And where are we going?” Taylor asked. “You gonna put me on a horse and make me target practice for some deadeye up there?”

  Hawk nodded at the man with the gun trained on Taylor. “It’s kind of an odds proposition for you. There’s deadeye from a thousand meters away or Wyatt Earp here from ten feet away. I think I know what I’d choose.”

  “This is wrong, and you know it,” Taylor said.

  “I’ll get you to safety in one piece,” Hawk said. “That much I can promise you. In terms of difficulty, this isn’t even in my top twenty. Besides, I’ve got a way out.”

  Taylor sneered as he slung his pack over his saddle and climbed on top of the horse. “Lead the way.”

  Hawk instructed Taylor that they needed to run the horses for a couple of minutes before reaching a hillside that would provide protection from where the likely assassin was.

  As they approached a bend in the path, Hawk felt a chill on his face. The wind had picked up, turning the odds in their favor. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he heard a bullet ping off a nearby boulder.

  “Pick up the pace,” Hawk said.

  Taylor didn’t need to be told twice, digging his heels into his horse and pleading with the animal to run faster.

  CHAPTER 30

  Los Angeles

  BIG EARV RACED into the water near the Santa Monica pier in search of Mia. He’d abandoned all his tech gear, leaving it all in the van when she didn’t answer. He heard people shouting from the shore as he swam out to get her. However, she wasn’t the only one in the water.

  Big Earv came across a young boy with blood on his face, paddling fiercely to stay afloat.

  “Mia!” Big Earv shouted. “Are you out here?”

  He saw a hand raised about fifty yards away near the pier. “I’m good,” she shouted. “Just a little wet.”

  Mia was clinging to a piece of the wood from the boardwalk.

  “Meet me at the van,” Big Earv said as he swam toward the boy.

  The boy was clad in a Los Angeles Lakers jersey four sizes too big and seemed weighed down by it.

  “Come here, little man,” Big Earv said, scooping the kid up.

  After inspecting his face, Big Earv washed off the blood and determined the wound wasn’t life-threatening.

  “If you get on my back, can you hold on?” Big Earv asked.

  The boy nodded before Big Earv situated him and started swimming for shore. Paramedics rushed toward the shore to help those exiting the water with injuries. Big Earv got the boy to a paramedic before swimming back out to retrieve an elderly woman struggling against the tide. He delivered her to medical personnel before scanning the water for Mia.

  Big Earv found her strolling out of the water. She refused medical attention and walked in the direction of the van. He scanned the area to see if anyone was watching her but didn’t see anyone right away. The attack’s perpetrator was likely gone, if he was even ever there.

  Once Big Earv and Mia reunited at the van, neither said a word as he peeled out of his parking spot and headed toward his apartment.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Just a few cuts and nicks from shrapnel,” she said. “But no scars to show my kids one day.”

  Big Earv chuckled as he peeled back his shirt over his right shoulder. “You mean you didn’t get one of those?”

  Her eyes widened as she looked at the scar on his arm. “Where’d that come from?”

  “Protecting the president,” he said. “Long story. I’ll tell you about it sometime, but I want to know if you noticed anything out of the ordinary before the explosion.”

  She shook her head. “I know I’m not as well trained as you are and belong in the office—which is where I intend to stay for a long time after what happened today—but nothing struck me as odd, right up until I got close enough to realize that there wasn’t really a person sitting on that bench.”

  “I’m glad you reacted so quickly,” Big Earv said. “You were almost fish food, scattered all over the Pacific.”

  “Thanks to you, I wasn’t. If you hadn’t said anything—”

  He put his hand up. “Let’s not dwell on that. We have more important issues to discuss.”

  “Like who did this?”

  He nodded. “And I know who did it.”

  “How?”

  Big Earv shrugged. “Well, I’m about ninety-five percent sure I know who this is.”

  “That’s quite a bit of margin of error.”

  “Let’s get you cleaned up and we can discuss this further. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  “What exactly are we doing?”

  He smiled wryly. “We’re going to go talk with the mole.”

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, Big Earv drove across the city in relative silence. Mia was still trying to wake up in the passenger seat, though the cup of coffee he’d picked up in the drive-thru was helping that situation.

  “So, how exactly are we going to question, Tony?” she asked, breaking the quiet after a few minutes.

  Tony Vella was a data analyst for the Magnum Group who’d been around since the organization started. Due to the way Big Earv leaked the intel, he embedded a way to search for where the information had become stored. Vella had long been on Big Earv’s radar as a potential mole, but now there was little doubt that the analyst had attempted to sell information in the past as well.

  “You take the front door and I’ll take the back,” Big Earv said. “I absolutely despise the fools who try to run.”

  “You think he’ll try to run? I thought the plan was just to ask him some questions,” she said.

  “Yeah, but when we show up at his house? He’ll figure something is up.”

  “So, I ask him a couple of uncomfortable questions and that’ll make him run out the backdoor in your arms. Is that the plan?”

  Big Earv nodded. “It’ll be fun. I’ll get to slam him to the ground with a flying tackle. I haven’t done that since my linebacker days in college.”

  “What makes you think he won’t run past me and try to go out the front?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “Probably the gun you’re going to be wielding if he even considers leaving.”

  “What exactly do you want me to ask him?”

  Big Earv grunted. “Who cares? Ask him about the weather or how many beers he had last night, anything to keep him talking and distracted.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’ll handle the rest,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Just be patient. You’ll see soon enough,” Big Earv said.

  Once they neared the front of the house, Big Earv squeezed his truck into a parking spot and then they walked together toward Tony Vella’s house.

  And in a matter of seconds, they hustled around to their respective positions and waited. There was no answer.

  Mia remained at the door. Meanwhile, Big Earv, positioned at the back door, could see through the house to the front door. She knocked again. He watched Mia nervously shift her weight from one foot to the other.

  Still nothing.

  He gestured for her to try the doorknob. Big Earv tried the one on the backdoor, but it didn’t budge.

  After casting a few furtive glances toward the street, she opened the door.

  Almost instantly, she yelped. Big Earv wasn’t sure if she was reacting because she was in pain or something else had happened.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, peering through the window to see what she
saw.

  Mia pointed at something and then covered her face with her hands. He peered inside to see what was the source. Then she motioned for him to join her inside.

  Big Earv hustled around to the front and drew his weapon as he barged inside.

  As he rounded the corner, he wasn’t sure why Mia was waving her arms so wildly. Then he froze, examining the soon-to-be crime scene.

  Lying on the floor in a puddle of blood was Tony Vella.

  Big Earv had more questions for Tony, but they’d be left unanswered for the time being. Big Earv would have to put together the pieces of how the whole leak unfolded on his own.

  “You all right?” Big Earv asked Mia.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “But at least this is all over. Tony’s dead.”

  “It’s far from being over,” Big Earv said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Big Earv stooped over the body and studied it for a moment. “Tony didn’t kill himself. This was staged.”

  CHAPTER 31

  AFTER HAWK AND TAYLOR darted around the bend and evaded the shooter’s line of sight, Hawk slowed down. He guided Taylor down into a ravine, coming to a halt near a truck with a horse trailer attached. They loaded the horses and drove out.

  Taylor slammed his fist on the dashboard and let out a string of expletives. “Nobody knew where I was before you came along.”

  “If I found you, it was only a matter of time before that man up there did.”

  “You led him straight to me.”

  Hawk shrugged. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. That doesn’t really matter all that much now. Sooner or later, he would’ve found you. And if you had no warning, you could’ve gone to sleep by a campfire one night and never woken up.”

  “You want me to thank you? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I understand you’re angry. I really do. But I’m hoping that you’ll come to see this interruption in your life as a good thing, not a source of resentment.”

  Taylor set his jaw and slowly shook his head, staring vacantly at the road ahead of them. But he didn’t say anything for a few miles.

  “Why exactly are you running?” Hawk asked.

  Taylor narrowed his eyes as he turned slowly toward Hawk. “Is that a serious question? Did you already forget someone was shooting at us? Between Walton and the sniper on the ridge, I didn’t have much choice, did I?”

  “Don’t be obtuse. You know what I mean.”

  Taylor sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “We’ve got a long drive,” Hawk said. “Or we could just listen to my extensive collection of 1970s classic rock.”

  “I’m still not sure I trust you.”

  “Well, I am among three people you’ve interacted with today. Two of them tried to kill you. I wasn’t one of them. As far as your trust goes, I should be high up on your list.”

  “If I tell you why someone is trying to kill me, you’ll probably finish the job for them.”

  Hawk reached a paved road and turned left. They traveled a few more miles in silence before Hawk eased into a gas station. He unhitched the trailer near another truck before handing the man some money.

  “Who was that?” Taylor asked.

  “A ranch hand for the man who owns all the cattle you were just driving,” Hawk said. “Now, I want to hear your story.”

  “It’s not as exciting as you might think it is.”

  “Try me.”

  “My time with Special Forces was eye-opening, to say the least,” Taylor said.

  “In what way?”

  Taylor rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb and looked out the window. “You know the thing we’re supposed to be fighting for? Well, we’re not always fighting for that. Sometimes we’re settling some general’s petty score with a foreign dignitary, or we’re being used to put pressure on another country. And sometimes, they sacrifice you to form a pretext for war.”

  “And?”

  “What do you mean and?” Taylor asked. “That’s awful. Our military is comprised of a bunch of monsters. And there’s not a damn thing either one of us can do about it.”

  “We can stand up to them.”

  Taylor cocked his head to one side and turned slowly toward Hawk. “Do you remember in Jurassic Park when the guy gets eaten by the dinosaur? The guy’s legs are hanging out of the T-Rex’s mouth as he screams?”

  “It’s a funny scene. Almost as funny as the guy reading a magazine on an outhouse toilet when the dinosaur exposes him.”

  “That clip might be funny, but that’s the equivalent of what people at the Pentagon will do to us if we get in their way.”

  “That’s why you have to learn how to play their game,” Hawk said. “If you’re willing to learn, I can teach you.”

  “I want nothing to do with those people.”

  Hawk sighed and nodded. “I understand. But that can’t be why someone is trying to kill you. Someone having their eyes opened to the nefarious actions of bureaucratic bums is hardly an offense.”

  “If that was a sin deserving of corporal punishment, let’s just say it wouldn’t rank in the top thousand things I’ve done.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you don’t want to talk about it?” Hawk asked.

  Taylor nodded.

  “Okay then. Let’s make this drive to Seattle more fun. Let’s talk about your favorite weapon.”

  * * *

  HAWK MADE GOOD time cruising west along I-90 toward Seattle. As they drew nearer to the city, Mt. Rainier could be seen through a slight haze to the south, while the Space Needle soared over the city’s sprawling landscape. During the drive, he constantly checked behind him to see if any cars were following him, but there weren’t. Heading in the opposite direction of rush hour traffic made the trip into downtown more enjoyable for Hawk.

  “Look, I know this might sound like an odd request, but can we stop at Pike’s Place Market?” Taylor asked. “There’s something there I need to see.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Hawk said without flinching.

  “Why not? It won’t take long.”

  Hawk sighed. “What do you need to see?”

  “The fish market.”

  “If you’re hungry—”

  “It’s nothing like that,” Taylor said. “As I’m sure you already know, I grew up in Seattle. My dad used to take me down to the market and watch the guys toss fish.”

  “So you want to take a walk down memory lane?”

  Taylor nodded as he turned and looked out the passenger side window. “My dad died eight years ago today.”

  Hawk didn’t like the idea, nor could he verify the story. He considered standing firm, but decided showing Taylor a bit of empathy might go a long way in him explaining why he was being targeted by an assassin.

  “Okay, fine,” Hawk said. “We’ll swing by the market. But only for a few minutes. The feds have plenty of questions for you, from what I understand.”

  “I’ll make it quick,” Taylor said.

  Hawk took the exit for the market and parked in an underground lot. The two men got out and headed straight toward the fish market. Taylor’s eyes lit up as he watched a pair of men toss fish around. The entertainment delighted the crowd that had gathered. It grew with each passing minute.

  After five minutes, Hawk tapped Taylor on his arm. “It’s time to go.”

  Taylor nodded. “I need to use the restroom before we do.”

  “Seriously? You can’t wait five minutes?” Hawk said as he glanced at his watch.

  “I’ll be in and out before you know it,” Taylor said.

  “I might as well go, too,” Hawk said.

  The two men marched to the restroom about fifty meters away. Hawk finished his business first at a urinal, while Taylor sought privacy inside a stall.

  “I’ll be right outside,” Hawk said.

  Hawk leaned against the wall and pulled out his phone, dialing Alex’s number.

  “You heading home now?” s
he asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “We’re in Seattle and just making a pit stop before we go to the office. But I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Whatever you need.”

  Hawk asked her to double check Taylor’s files, ensuring that everything he said was true.

  “What’d he tell you?” Alex asked.

  Hawk listed all the details that Taylor had mentioned while they were driving.

  “This will take a few minutes to sift through this,” she said. “I’ll text you as soon as I find everything. Oh, and, honey—”

  “Yeah?”

  “I just got a bulletin that Reaper was seen on the Washington-Oregon border a few days ago.”

  Hawk furrowed his brow. “What would he be doing there?”

  “Not sure. But facial recognition picked him up on a traffic cam at the toll stop on the Bridge of the Gods.”

  “Which direction was he going?”

  “Not sure. The bulletin didn’t say.”

  Hawk said goodbye and ended the call. He scanned the area again. The endless stream of people strolled past him in both directions, mostly wide-eyed tourists in search of or leaving the fish market. He smiled as he heard the two men shouting back and forth to one another, entertaining their latest crowd.

  Then Hawk noticed a janitor walking toward him with his hat pulled down low and wearing a pair of sunglasses.

  “Sir, I need to service the restroom,” the man said, gesturing for Hawk to move.

  Hawk eyed the man closely for a moment. He was about the same build as Reaper, but he couldn’t identify him for certain with the combination of sunglasses, facial hair, and baseball cap. Instead of acquiescing to the janitor’s demands, Hawk ripped the sunglasses and hat off the man.

  “Hey, fella,” the man protested. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Sorry,” Hawk said. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “Get outta here or I’m gonna call security.”

  Hawk shuffled away, embarrassed that his paranoia manifested itself like it did. He remained on the other side of the corridor, watching the bathroom door for Taylor to re-emerge. After he started to get anxious, he checked his watch. Five minutes had elapsed.

  Damn it. I should’ve stayed in the restroom.