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“Doyouthink it’s him?” Evan asked, turning around. “Be honest.”
Cole sipped at his double-whiskey, leaning back into the bar. He had his feet crossed at the ankles, his gaze fixed downward. For a moment I wasn’t sure he even heard me.
“Yes,” he finally admitted, scratching at his beard. “I do.”
I scattered the rest of the balls from Evan’s missed break with a hard shot down the middle. A couple went in. I didn’t see which. Not that it mattered anyway, really. We’d had the pool table for six months now, but we still hadn’t started keeping score.
“All these long years in hiding, and suddenly he sends an email from apubliccomputer?” Evan marveled. “In one of the biggest cities on the planet?”
“Sydney’s as good a place to hide as any,” I shrugged. “Besides, his location could be a decoy. He could’ve gotten anyone to log in and send that message.”
“Yeah maybe,” Evan agreed. “But for what gain? He’s not asking for anything. He doesn’t want help, or money, or resources, or—”
“He’s in trouble,” Cole cut in. “Big enough trouble that it scared him out of his cushy little hole.” He downed his whiskey and began pouring himself another. “He’s probably two continents away from Australia by now, if I know Ripley. But before he left, he took the risk of shooting us a warning. And that’s not something we’re going to ignore.”
No,I agreed silently.We’re certainly not.
I thought about what happened to Dawson. To Beckett. To every other man who’d been there on the day we’d returned from Bolivia. Those men had been careful, or so they thought. But not nearly as careful as Ripley.
“If they got to Ripley they can get to us,” I said, musing aloud. “He kept on moving. We put down roots.”
“Ripley lived like a nomad,” Evan agreed. “Traveling constantly, never staying in one place for too long. The man was a goddamn gypsy.”
I nodded silently, thinking about what our friend had gone through. False names, fake passports. No contact whatsoever with his previous life. These methods worked for him, for all these years. But the price had been high.
“Ripley’s managed to stay safe, I’ll give him that,” Cole agreed solemnly. “Even so, that’s no way to live.”
We’d decided our own fate long ago, for almost as long as our brothers-in-arms had been disappearing. Yet the others were careless. They remained loners, whereas Evan, Cole, and I, had stuck together. All throughout our service — and well beyond, into our mercenary years — we had each other’s backs. We’d kept each other safe. Protected. Damn-near fucking invulnerable.
And we were determined to never, ever run.
“It’s no coincidence that Ripley justhappensto be flushed from hiding the very same week Evan gets attacked,” said Cole.
“I didn’t get attacked,” Evan protested. “I was the one who did the attacking.”
“And thenshegets followed,” Cole continued, ignoring him. “By the same people—”
“We don’t know that for a fact,” I pointed out. “Those two events might not even be related at all.”
I was lying, probably, and mostly to myself. Mainly because I didn’twantthem to be related. I wanted the scumbag who was following Quinn to be nothing more than a mugger or pervert or simple attacker, rather than someone in town on a blood vendetta that had anything to do with… well…
Us.
I shuddered at the idea.
Go ahead, say it. There’s a good chance she might be in danger, all because of us.
Dawson came to mind again. He’d been one of the last of our company left, until one day he washed up on a Long Island beach.
No, not beach. Beaches.
I shivered again. They found several parts of our friend over the course of an entire summer, scattered over a five-mile stretch of surf. But they hadn’t found all of him.
And then there was Beckett, who met an even worse fate. Cole found him tied to a chair in his second home, bloodied all over, beaten so badly every one of his ribs was cracked. His phone was submerged in a sink full of water, a bloody thumbprint on its face. Evan was able to pull up the last page accessed: his bank account. Only the account wasn’t emptied. It had only been checked…
Beckett died badly. Dawson too. And each man had one thing in common: they’d both died alone.
“Damn it, we should never have left her!”
