Three

THREE

AUTUMN AT THE B one day there, one day gone—that sometimes when my sat phone rang or my comms went live, it was still him on the other end. How did that happen? More importantly, how could it?

Once my clearance was high enough, I understood. He moved from the Army to the CIA, killing for the good of the nation until he knew where enough bodies were buried—as he’d been the one who put them there—and could finally step away completely. Much like with Darius Hawthorne, killing them only opened the box and closed nothing. They had contingencies atop contingencies, and the glut of secrets coming to light was not survivable for too many people. Easier to let Chris go where he wanted and do as he pleased, especially since he just wanted to live a quiet life in Spain and take the occasional contract to kill someone the world would be better off without anyway. Better to leave him be.

All that flew out of the window at the moment as again, my mentor—and nowadays my friend—squinted at me.

“This is so not my fault,” Chris said defensively, pointing at the man tied up and gagged, sitting on the floor between us with the wall at his back. “Carmello Ortiz sent this guy after Dante, not me.”

This wasn’t helping anything.

“We don’t know that he’s after me,” Dante chimed in. “Besides, we have no idea if he’s one of Ortiz’s guys.”

But we really did. To point that out, I tipped my head at the tattoo on the left side of the guy’s neck.

“Okay, fine,” Dante amended. “He does in fact belong to the Jalisco cartel.”

“Which means this has nothing to do with me,” Chris averred, pointing at Dante. “He’s the one who sent his boy Garland into Mexico after his asset.”

“I did not. That wasn’t my op. That was the company, not me,” Dante said, then to me, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

My focused regard was because I was supposed to be getting married in three hours, and I did not need a sicario from the Jalisco cartel crashing my wedding. But also, I found myself looking at Dante Cerreto because everything was different now, and that had been a huge paradigm shift for me.

Last year, when I had originally been loaned by my boss, Miguel Romero, as a favor to Darius Hawthorne, to aid Colonel Jared Colter on a clandestine op in Thailand, I was in awe. It was my first contact with Dante Cerreto and Colonel Colter, and as they were legends in the counterintelligence community, to be doing anything with them had been both a privilege and an honor. Added to that was being asked for personally by Darius Hawthorne, which was overwhelming as well. Not only did the man now run the Vault, an organization that spanned every continent, but he had also been a top CIA operative and had forgotten more secrets than most agents knew to begin with.

The thing was, once you spent time with people, talked with them, watched them, and most importantly, had to save them, perceptions changed. Mine had been completely altered. I realized that my skill level and theirs were really not that far apart. What I had accepted as superhuman feats, a lot of times boiled down to the same expertise as mine: observational clarity, hair-trigger reflexes, and speed. Being a sniper, marksmanship was crucial, but so was the ability to remain calm under pressure. Also, the more times you accompanied others on missions, the more opportunities to experience the epiphany of everyone needing the same steely nerves, belief in the reason for the op, and intent to do the best job possible and not let anyone down. And none of this was to say I was better than them, but at the end of the day, they were all as fallible as me. That had been eye-opening. I tended to place people up on pedestals, thinking myself as less than. But the longer I worked special ops, the more I understood that I too could be counted on to perform as well as the others.

All this meant that the buffer of hero worship had thinned. There was this familiarity now, which was great nearly a hundred percent of the time, except at this very moment. Because I really needed my wedding to not go off the rails. Marrying Kurt was the most important thing I could do to make my life complete.

Finally, for the first time in my life, I had actually let another person all the way in. I had allowed Hannah to be close to me, but I never let her see everything. That might scare her off. It had many others in the past.

The difference with Kurt was that at some point in the last two years, I had come to think of him as my other half. It was both exciting and terrifying. I couldn’t have anything happen to him, and he certainly couldn’t leave me because I had allowed our wedding to be ruined by someone out to kill one of our guests.

People always asked me when the bullets started flying and we were not in the middle of a combat zone, how could I know that I myself was not the target? But that was easy. I was nameless, faceless, utterly lost in the crowd unless we were friends. No one knew who I was, unlike Dante Cerreto or Jared Colter or Darius Hawthorne or even my mentor, Chris.

“So,” Chris prodded Dante, “will you be conducting an interrogation anytime soon? We’re burnin’ daylight here.”

I liked that he tapped his watch for emphasis.

“If this guy is a sicario for one of the cartels, you think he’d cop to it?”

“Why not?” Chris shrugged.

“Fine. Ask him, then,” Dante suggested.

Chris squatted beside the man, looking him dead in the eyes as he removed his gag. “Who are you here to kill?”

“Are you Christopher Mancuso?”

“I told you,” Dante said with an aha! tone.

“I am,” Chris answered, ignoring his friend.

“You need to stay out of our way, or you’ll be sent video of your wife choking on her own blood.”

It was a disgusting threat, made even more so by the fact that I knew what a gentle soul Jill Mancuso was. She rescued dogs and cats, was kind to strangers, and for Chris to even imagine losing his wife, his soul mate, the linchpin of his entire family, would be too much to bear.

As soon as the words were out of the guy’s mouth, he flinched, and the color drained from his face. I understood why. I’d been a witness to the same reaction when I was in the field with Chris. Because when he looked at enemy combatants we’d secured, when they started spewing threats, it was all fine until someone stupidly mentioned his family. Chris was terrible at hiding his feelings.

Each and every time, his eyes did this thing that I always likened to a shark. They deadened, all trace of humanity replaced with absolute coldness. Chris never got angry; instead he ceased to care, which, ultimately, was far worse. The man had seconds to live.

But something occurred to me, and I took hold of Chris’s shoulder as I spoke to the man. “You said Mancuso needed to stay out of your way.”

“Weren’t you listening?” he spat at me.

I was actually, and neither Dante nor Chris seemed to have noticed the wording. Dante had no excuse, but the guy putting Jill into the mix was what had shorted out Chris’s brain. “Hey.”

Chris looked up at me.

“He’s warning you to stay outta the fuckin’ way.”

At first, he glared at me, but then, suddenly, his eyes widened with understanding.

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Shit,” Chris muttered, exhaling as he stood up beside me. “You’re saying I need to steer clear of you guys or my wife will suffer the consequences as a warning to me.”

“That’s what I just said,” he growled. “What the fuck?”

Both Chris and I turned to Dante then.

It took him a second to notice. “What?”

Chris gestured at the guy who was sitting between them looking back and forth. He was probably wondering how Dante even got the drop on him with how obtuse he was being now. “This is about you.”

“I have no idea what’s happening right now.”

“These guys want me to stand down so they can get to you.”

“No.”

Both Chris and I nodded.

“How have you lived so long, man?” the guy asked Dante.

“Hurtful,” he replied, then looked back at us. “This has to be a mistake. It can’t be me.”

“What have you done lately that has annoyed the Jalisco cartel enough to send a guy all the way out here to Maine to murder you?” Now I had to know.

Dante appeared pensive.

“I will tell you what?—”

“No,” Chris cut the guy off, leaning over and placing the gag in the man’s mouth.

“Why would you do that?” Dante barked at him.

“Because you should be able to figure out all by yourself why a cartel wants you dead.”

Dante glanced at me, and I shrugged.

“You’re taking his side?”

“I would prefer if you left this guy here and we all forgot about this until after I said I do, but that’s not gonna happen.”

“You want me to fill up my B and B with people trying to kill me?”

“Just for, like, the next six hours, yeah. I would appreciate it.”

Dante squinted at me.

“I’m being honest here.”

“Normally,” Chris said, “I would just shoot this asshole, but Dante won’t learn anything that way.”

Crossing my arms, I glared at Dante.

“I’m thinking,” he grumbled.

Because the guy had talked about his wife, Chris now needed to hear her voice. Walking a few feet away, he called her and put it on speaker.

“Hello, angel,” she greeted him, her voice a sultry, smoky sound, since she was talking to the man she’d loved for longer than I’d been alive.

“Hey,” he rumbled, and I watched his eyes narrow. “You drinking all Dante’s wine?”

“Yes, shhh, don’t tell him that Noah and I are hitting the good stuff in the very back of the wine cellar.”

Chris turned to Dante, grinning, and Dante flipped him off.

“Also, Owen and Jared are coming up to you in the attic with one of Kurt’s friends.”

One of Kurt’s friends? That made no sense.

“How did you know I was in the attic?”

“Oh, my darling, I always know where you are.”

She hung up then as the attic door opened to reveal retired Colonel Jared Colter and his fiancé, Owen Moss. They made a beautiful couple, the silver fox and his auburn-haired, green-eyed mate.

Behind them—and the one who didn’t fit—was their companion, Horace Gleason, supposedly a very angry man from Knoxville, Tennessee, who was both a skinhead and a terrorist. The latter was a ruse—he’d been undercover for just over six months. The group he’d infiltrated, the National Patriot Party, NPP, were a bunch of Neo-Nazi trash that the FBI had dismantled with the help of Horace’s life-and-death interactions. Now, as far as the NPP knew, Horace had been shot and killed in the raid on their camp outside Choteau, Montana. He was a hero, but no one would ever know that because the FBI operation was classified. The official, public version was that the NPP had wanted to take their racial war to the streets with a series of bombs and were stopped, the catastrophe averted.

Later, after the entire group was taken into custody, I had been assigned to protect him when he went to apologize to different people for things he’d had to say to keep his alias. It wasn’t necessary, but he felt so strongly about it that he’d been given the leave to explain. He was basically talking to all the law enforcement officers in Montana, sheriffs and deputies, state police and other assorted individuals he’d interacted with.

I had been the one assigned to go with him, as his boss at the bureau wanted him accompanied by someone who could both protect him and keep the process moving. Meaning, they were giving him some leeway because he was the hero, but he didn’t need to linger if someone was not open to hearing him out. I didn’t think the second part was necessary. Again, hero —who wouldn’t want to speak to him?

Surprisingly, though most people logically understood the sacrifice he’d made and the process, revisiting their interactions was not something they wanted to do.

“Not everyone wants to hear the epilogue,” he’d told me. “Some like to reframe the story in their minds and be done with it.”

Fair enough.

Others thought his coming back around was self-aggrandizing. Like yes, they all knew he was a hero, did he want a parade? Those were the hardest for him, and I felt for the guy. He was trying to apologize and clear the air; they just wanted him to go away.

Much like I did as soon as I saw him at my wedding venue.

“What’re you doing here?” I nearly yelled, because not only had I been appointed to travel with him for a couple of weeks, but also, he had served with me before he left to become an FBI agent. He had felt a higher calling, he said, when he resigned from the Army. I couldn’t imagine one greater than service to one’s country, but that was me. “And what the fuck are you doing telling people you’re my fiancé’s friend?”

“You have those two fuckers at the front door, and I needed to get in here.”

The fuckers were Kola Kage, Hannah’s brother, and my friend and Kola’s boyfriend, Finn Murray, who worked with me at Sutter. They were my ushers, directing people where to sit and making sure that if someone showed up—such as law enforcement types to take someone into custody—that they checked their documentation.

“You lied to them?”

“Yes, I lied to them,” Horace said crossly. “But still, the father of the one with the black hair asked the colonel here to escort me to you because his son didn’t like the look of me.”

I turned to Colter.

“I know Kola’s father, Sam Kage, and once he pointed Gleason out, I made sure Owen and I walked him up here.” Colter glanced at Chris. “I saw your lovely wife on the way. I’ll apologize later for lying to her, but she and Noah were together and I didn’t want to alarm them.”

“Meaning you lied to Noah as well,” Dante pointed out.

“Yes, I lied to Noah too, and I will apologize to him as well,” Colter said irritably.

“Just checking,” Dante said.

“I’m getting married!” I yelled, and everyone looked at me. “What the fuck?” I directed my anger at Horace.

“Listen, I’m sorry about this, I really am,” Horace said, “but we have very good intel that four hitters from the Aryan Purity League and two from Aryan Warriors for Truth?—”

“Are you kidding me with these names?” Owen commented.

“No, I’m not kidding you with these names,” he growled, turning on him fast, like a viper, and crossing his arms. “I can’t make this shit up.”

“When are they coming and why?” Colter demanded, bumping Owen gently with his shoulder so he didn’t interrupt again.

“Listen, the FBI want these fuckers, so I would appreciate it if no one shot at the incoming Black Hawk helicopters.”

“No, no, no,” Dante told him. “My place is off-limits. I have that in writing from the DOJ and the director, so fuck off.”

“Throttle back, old man.”

“Old man?” Dante repeated, glancing at Colter.

“Do not start with that shit,” Chris threatened Horace. “You wanna compare service records, asshole? Tell me if that’s what you wanna do.”

“Oh dear God, let’s not measure dicks,” Owen chimed in again, clearly unable to control himself.

“I’m just saying,” Horace doubled down, “it’s not my call how these fuckers are subdued and transferred outta here. Our intel says they will be here at approximately nineteen hundred hours, so we’ll be staking out the large area with the stained glass and?—”

“The hell you will,” Colter interrupted. “That glass is handmade and had to be flown in from Florence. We will not have bullets flying around in there.”

“You’re saying that glass is more precious than human life?”

“When did I say that?” Colter looked at Dante. “Did you hear me say that?”

“No, I did not.”

“The question is,” Colter went on, “why can these men—I assume they’re men?”

“Yes!” Horace yelled at him.

Colter’s eyes narrowed. “So help me, if you raise your voice to?—”

“Fuck off, Horace,” I told him. “Grab them outside, or me and Doyle will shoot their legs out from under them when they get outta their fuckin’ cars. You think anyone will get mad at me because I maim a few skinheads? Think about that.”

“ You think about it. We have the opportunity to?—”

“I don’t give a shit about that. I’m getting married today. I’ve brought it up several times, and you haven’t once answered me, but I’m telling you this: nothing, and I mean nothing , will be allowed to happen on my special day.”

“So getting married surpasses national secur?—”

“Why are they here?” I asked as the door opened again, and in came Efrem Lahm and Darius Hawthorne.

I met a lot of handsome men in my life, many already in the room with me. But really, after my gorgeous soon-to-be husband, Darius Hawthorne—the man who ran the Vault—was exceptionally stunning. Between the bright chartreuse eyes, deep umber skin with gold undertones, and his regal bearing, the man was as close to perfection as I was ever going to see.

“You invited the Vault to your wedding?” Horace asked, barely getting the words out.

“I invited my sister-in-law and her kids as well, and Sam Kage, the chief deputy of the Northern District of Illinois is here too, with both his kids and their plus-ones, so?—”

“The FBI does not sweat the US Marshals Service, especially when he’s out of his jurisdiction and?—”

“That’s not the point he’s making, you ignorant piece of shit! My wife is here,” Chris bellowed, and Horace stopped trying to interrupt. “All of us,” Chris continued, gesturing around the room, “have the people we love most in the world here with us, so if you think any of us would ever—and I mean fuckin’ ever — allow you to put any of them in danger, you’re a goddamn fuckin’ idiot!” he finished with a roar.

After a moment of silence, Hawthorne strode over to Horace, took a breath, and cleared his throat. “Things have changed, Gleason.”

“What?”

“Here’s what I did, I received the same intel you did, but I got in yesterday, not today.”

Horace Gleason gasped. He was a big man—six-three, with the classic dad bod, good musculature, carrying probably twenty extra pounds—and if it was you and him in a fight, he would make you bleed. But—and this was the crucial difference—most of the men in the room, other than Efrem and Owen, would just plain kill you.

“I called off your backup,” Hawthorne told him, “which means no helicopters flying around making lots of noise, and I spoke to the FBI director and explained that I would take care of this situation. I assured him I would neutralize the threat, meaning the six men, wring the needed information from them, and then make certain they could not pose any renewed danger to our national security.”

“Holy shit, Harris!” Horace exclaimed.

Not everyone knew Hawthorne’s real name. Many only knew a singular alias. I felt special to have been trusted with the truth.

“Jasper Linwood,” Hawthorne continued, turning to the rest of us, “sent those men here to kidnap Aaron Sutter and his husband, Police Commander Duncan Stiel, so they could leverage Sutter to do as they asked, or they would execute the police commander.”

Not a sound in the room as Hawthorne spoke.

“I sent my people this morning to Brentwood, Tennessee, where Mr. Linwood resides, and they quietly removed him from his home and turned him over to Homeland Security.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Oh, I can,” Hawthorne countered. “And I did. It’s done. He’s in custody, assets frozen, house raided, paper documents and all digital files seized.”

“The FBI was in charge of this operation.”

He pointed at me then. “This is not an operation. It’s a wedding. A small, intimate, beautiful affair that all of us here are excited to attend.”

“I—”

“Are you aware that Captain George Hunt is an Army Ranger and is deployed on covert missions across the globe to ensure the safety of our nation and allies?”

“Of course I?—”

“Then you goddamn act like it,” Hawthorne said, his voice low and cold. “We do not sacrifice the happiness, safety, or well-being of the people who protect us, Special Agent Horace Gleason. They are not disposable.”

“It was the perfect opportunity to catch?—”

“Because you made it known that Mr. Sutter would be here to draw out those skinhead psychopaths. You set Mr. Sutter up as bait, could have cared less that you put civilians in danger, and finally, gave no thought to the pain you would cause Captain Hunt, who is supposed to be your friend.”