Page 7 of Peace Under Fire

He scrubbed a hand down his face, shame heating his gut. Even after he’d completely humiliated her, she’d still tried to warn him.

She was a better person than he was.

“You know, there’s a rumor that the CIA has an off-the-books division that uses psychics.” As Squish digested that, Tex went on. “Russia, Germany, the UK, China—hell, they’re all rumored to have their own psychic spy networks.”

“Do you believe in that shit?” Squish asked, as a drugged feeling swept over him. The pill was kicking in.

“Hell…” Tex fell silent a moment before saying, “I don’t know.” There was a shrug in his voice. “But I’m not ruling it out, either.”

“Same,” Squish admitted quietly, settling deeper into the mattress as all his muscles relaxed.

“I checked into the number she called you from. It was a burner.”

Tex’s voice came from a distance, down a long, echoing tunnel, even though the phone was still in his hand, pressed to his ear.

“No surprise there,” Squish murmured.

If someone was on the run—and they were smart—they’d avoid personal cell service for fear the phone could be traced. Mandy was a lot of things—a beautiful, distracting pain in the ass—but she wasn’t stupid.

Tex made a scoff of acknowledgement. A sound that echoed endlessly in Squish’s head.

“You got a picture of this girl?”

“Negative.” He’d been too busy avoiding her.

“Anything you can tell me that might help track her down? Did she say where she was from or where she went to school? Did you notice a regional accent or speech pattern? Any tattoos? Birthmarks? Did she have a favorite sport, or sports team?”

“No. Nothing.” He hadn’t realized until he’d tried to find her just how secretive she’d been. He knew nothing about the woman.

For someone who’d been so set on catching him, she’d been damn stingy with her own history. Of course, he hadn’t exactly welcomed her conversations. He hadn’t given her reason to share her background. If she’d tried, he would have shut her down hard. The less he’d known about her, the easier it had been to adhere to his hands-off policy.

“It sounds like she saw the bastards who took Lucky. Maybe she saw where they took him.”

It took a few seconds to pick out Tex’s words. They were wavering in and out of range like someone shouting into the wind.

“Yeah.” Squish swallowed hard. Finally, Tex was on the same page. Finally, there was a glimmer of hope.

“Maybe the guy who crushed the tracker was our traitor,” Tex said, an ugly edge creeping into his voice. “It fits with our theory that you boys were betrayed.”

“You still haven’t figured out who the fucktard is?” Squish asked, then winced at the accusation in his own voice.

“Not yet.” A cold front iced Tex’s voice. “Everyone—and I mean everyone—who could have accessed that data is squeaky clean. No sudden deposits in their bank or stock accounts. No offshore accounts. No suspicious new purchases. No phone records or email accounts that raise flags. No secret identities with secret accounts and credit cards. Fucking. Squeaky. Clean. Every damn one of them.”

“You’ll find him.” Squish had no doubt of that.

“You bet—ass—will.”

Tex’s voice was breaking up. A bad sign. The disjointedness wasn’t because of a bad phone connection, either. More like Squish’s synapses were on the fritz.

He needed to end the call, like now. Falling unconscious during the convo wouldn’t do him any favors.

Tex might send one of the boys over to check on him.

Thankfully, Tex signed off soon after, and then it was just him, with his icepack and the encroaching darkness. As he fell asleep, he prayed. He, who never prayed, prayed that Tex would find Mandy, and she’d lead him to Lucky. And that when they finally found him, his buddy would still be alive.

* * *

Amanda Wilde—aka Amanda Reynolds, aka Amanda Rose, aka Melissa Talbot, aka the dozen other names she’d lived under during her twenty-eight years of life—peered through the sliver of glass down at the parking lot below.

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