Allison Brennan - Fear No Evil

“Paige died because of him .” Quinn slapped his hand on the photograph of Adam Scott.

They were in a holding area of a small military facility. If it could be called a military facility. It looked more like a makeshift training camp in the middle of the desert. Red Rock, Jack had said, but Kate told Dillon they were at least twenty miles from Red Rock and she wasn’t one hundred percent sure where they were without looking at her maps. Dillon didn’t buy into conspiracy theories, but right now he would have believed virtually anything anyone told him about this place. Off the grid, Dillon thought. The men were not in standard military gear, and everyone knew Jack Kincaid.

Kate paced anxiously, like a caged tigress. “What’s taking so long?”

Dillon couldn’t say, so he didn’t answer. Instead he asked, “What kind of place is this?”

Kate shrugged. “Looks like a private mercenary training camp, except that their equipment isn’t surplus. State of the art. Did you catch a glimpse of the radar system at the airport?”

“No.” Didn’t look like an airport, either. One runway and a solitary building in the middle of nowhere. They were being held underground. “So is this run by the military or not?”

“Depends who you ask and when you ask it.”

“You’re as helpful as Jack.”

“You really don’t know what your brother does?”

“I haven’t seen him in eleven years.”

That surprised Kate. “Really?”

“Why are you surprised?”

“Because…I don’t know. You seem close.”

“We were, at one time.” And seeing Jack again conflicted Dillon. They were different people today, with no way to regain what they’d had growing up. They’d grown apart, leading different lives, going down dramatically different paths. Dillon hadn’t been faced with the choices Jack had, but deep down Dillon knew he couldn’t walk away from his family forever, to only show up at funerals. His parents, his brothers and sisters, they were as much part of Dillon’s life as his work.

“Jack joined the army right out of high school. He was going to put in the minimum years required to qualify for the free college education. Something happened his first tour. He’s never spoken of it, but he became career military and chose to keep his family at arm’s length.” Dillon rubbed his face. “Before that, we were close. If you’d asked me twenty years ago if Jack would stop speaking to his family without an explanation, I’d have laughed. But it happened and we’ve learned to live with it.”

“That doesn’t explain why he’s helping you now, when he doesn’t even know his sister.”

“Loyalty,” Dillon said. “A sense of duty.” He stared at Kate. “Very much the same reasons you’ve been hiding out and breaking the law-your loyalty and duty to your partner.”

Kate stopped pacing for a minute and looked at him. He was standing by the door, looking out the lone window into a hallway that was gray and empty. Though the room was underground and air-conditioned, it was still blazing hot. June in the Nevada desert.

She wanted to argue with him, explain that it was more than simply loyalty that had her dedicated to stopping Trask. But he wasn’t thinking about her. His eyes were far off. Thinking about the missing years with his brother? Or what future Lucy might-or might not-have?

“We’re going to get her in time,” Kate said quietly.

Dillon turned to face her. She was complex, and he couldn’t say that he knew her. He couldn’t even say that he would have made the choices she’d made in life. But something deep down in her core, which shone through in her vibrant blue eyes, told him she was all there. Not a renegade FBI agent, not a narrow-minded revenge nut, but a disciplined and trained federal cop.

It was the action that did it, he realized. She’d been pent up for two years at the observatory, on the run for three years before that. Yet six hours on the move and she had developed a calm-pacing notwithstanding.

“Lucy’s a smart kid,” he said, not knowing what to say about his sister. Dillon had been twenty when she was born. Already out of the house, in college. Planning on medical school. Even Patrick was thirteen years older than Lucy. She was practically an only child. She’d grown up fast-not only because of her older brothers and sisters, but because she’d seen death at an early age. She’d been seven when Justin-her seven-year-old nephew-was killed. They’d shielded her to some extent, but it had affected all of them.

“Smart and sassy and spoiled,” Dillon said, his voice cracking.

Kate reached up and touched his shoulders. “Lucy is lucky to have family who loves her so much,” she said quietly.

Dillon took Kate’s hand. “You didn’t.”

She shook her head. “Maybe that’s why I fight for the underdog. I’m okay, Dillon. I know you think I’m this fly-off-the-handle maverick, but I am okay. I accept that I could die. It’s not a death wish, it’s not being stupid. But if I go in with fear, I’ll never be able to do my job.”

“You don’t have a job. You’re doing this for revenge.” Or was she? Maybe not revenge so much as justice. He began to see and admire Kate in a whole different light.

“Maybe. But I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do. Trask will kill Lucy without a second thought if the feds swarm the island. She won’t have a chance. Either the house is rigged to explode or he’ll put a bullet in her head. He doesn’t want to be caught, but more than that he doesn’t want her to live.”

“You and Jack seem to agree on this.”

“Jack’s seen a hell of a lot more than I have.” She searched his eyes. “So have you. You’ve been inside the criminal minds of sadistic men and women like Trask. You try to make sense of it to stop it. To be honest, I’d rather take my chances face-to-face than look inside their heads to figure out what makes them tick. But without men like you, we’d never be able to learn why. And maybe stop it from happening in the future.”

Dillon touched Kate’s cheek. She leaned into his hand and closed her eyes. For a brief moment, he felt her strength and vulnerability. Saw her loneliness, how weary she was of this hunt. But it was her vocation; she would not give up.

Dillon’s phone vibrated and he pulled it from his pocket. A picture came in with a message from Quinn Peterson.

Show to Kate.

He turned the image to show Kate. “Know him?”

She stared, her face going white. “Trask.” She swallowed. “Where did you get that?”

“Peterson.” He was about to call.

“Don’t. Text him. It’ll take him longer to trace it, and we should be gone by then.”

“I thought we agreed that Peterson needs to be clued into the two sets of coordinates.” But he sent the text message. “He’s not coming after you.”

“Maybe not, but others will.”

“Who?”

“Jeff Merritt, for one.”

“Who’s he?”

“He used to be my direct supervisor, Paige’s as well. He and Paige were also…involved.”

“Isn’t that a conflict?”

She shrugged. “It happens. It wasn’t a problem until he started pulling us off the Trask Enterprises investigation. It caused a huge problem between him and Paige and we-Paige and I-got reckless.”

Kate sighed, ran a hand through her short blond hair. “Merritt was worried about her safety, and because of that pulled us instead of giving us backup. We were pissed. Paige went to him, and I thought she had gotten sanction, but…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me, Kate.”

She was obviously torn. “When we stormed the warehouse after getting the tip from Denise about the Russian girls being illegally brought in, I thought we had backup. Paige said-implied-that we were covered. But…” She shrugged.