Page 80 of Over the Top

The bait had been taken. Now all they could do was wait and hope the Oshiro gang took it and came after Poppy.

In the meantime, he was going to spend a few minutes playing with her before they had to return her to the safety of the Brentwoods’ estate across the street. He missed her laughter like crazy, as it turned out. And oddly enough, he missed squeezing her chubby little legs and tickling her feet until she laughed. It was official. He’d lost his mind.

Or maybe you’ve lost your heart. To a little girl with an infectious laugh.

CHAS WASsubdued at supper, but he took comfort in noting that Gunner was equally subdued. The two of them missed Poppy terribly, and neither of them had liked having to hand her back over to the nanny, even if it was for safekeeping.

Spencer was asking Drago, “The call with your buddy at the FBI went well?”

“Oh yeah,” Drago answered, grinning. “He was all over wanting to know where the shooters from Misty Falls might be. I told him I know they’re in the Washington DC area and that he should put a tactical team on standby.”

“Did he believe you?” Gunner asked.

“I gave him plenty of details that never made the news about the Misty Falls shooting. He and his team will come running if we need backup.”

“What’s to keep your buddy from tracing the phone call and figuring out who you are and where you are?” Chas asked curiously.

“I used a burner phone and routed the call through encrypted internet servers all over the world. He won’t be able to trace it.”

“May I just say, as a civilian, it’s scary as hell realizing how easily you guys can avoid law enforcement when you want to?”

Spencer leaned back, laying down his napkin. “That’s why we’re so particular about who we train to do what we do. People who go into our line of work are investigated exhaustively and then put through the emotional wringer. Our training is designed to strip away all layers of artifice and deception and lay bare the core of a person. Many a SEAL wannabe has washed out not because they couldn’t hack the training but because the instructors simply didn’t trust him.”

Chas frowned. “I get that young recruits start out as white-hatted hero types. But over time, as you all do… awful things… doesn’t that take a toll on a guy? Don’t people—what do you call it when a SEAL goes bad?”

“A big problem,” Gunner supplied dryly. “That’s what we call it.”

Spencer nodded. “Now and then somebody cracks. People thought I’d gone bad when I disobeyed my orders to arrest Drago and bring him home. There was a rather concerted effort to bring me in, get me off the street, and make sure I didn’t go on some kind of rampage.”

“Did you crack?” Chas asked curiously.

Spencer smiled over at Drago. “It was a close thing. But Dray got me through it in one piece.”

Drago reached out to squeeze Spencer’s hand affectionately. “We saved each other. I think I was in worse shape than he was when we found each other.”

Chas looked on with envy at the two warriors who’d found true love with each other. God, he would love to have that with Gunner. But the guy was so emotionally closed off, he didn’t think he’d ever get there. Sadness washed over him. Such a waste of a human heart.

Gunner stood up, gathering plates. “I’ll clear the table if you guys will lay out the topographical map. I want to go over the plan one more time. Now that I’ve walked the property and have visuals on it, I want to see it on paper.”

Spencer stood as well. “After we go over it here, how about we walk through it outside in night conditions?”

Gunner nodded. “Perfect.”

Chas winced. Not perfect. He hated running around in the dark, particularly when there were bad guys in the darkness out to kill him, or worse, out to kill Gunner. “How fast do you think your prisoner dude will get in touch with his friends and lead them here to attack us?”

“Two, maybe three days.”

“So, tonight?” Chas asked sarcastically.

Drago harrumphed. “Fuckers have been moving faster than we anticipated almost every step of the way.”

Spencer shrugged. “We’ll be ready for them tonight, regardless. They do seem desperate to impress the bosses back in Japan.”

Gunner added, “Either that, or the bosses in Japan are breathing fire at them to get the kid back so they don’t look like incompetent fuckups to the Yakuza brass.”

Chas fretted through the map session. His job was literally to stay in the house and stay out of the way. Period. He hated every second of the talk about the guys moving around in the woods trying to flush out targets, what search patterns they would use, and where they would go to hide if they got overwhelmed by too many bad guys at once.

Faced with three violent special operators, it wasn’t as if he could stand up and make an argument for finding a way to do this nonviolently. Maybe contact the Oshiro clan. Explain that they weren’t getting the kid back and should call off their war dogs. Maybe negotiate some sort of truce between Grandpa Tanaka and whoever was in charge of the Oshiro gang.

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