Page 29 of The Devil's Ransom

The man on the stoop stood up, tossed his cigarette over the railing, and said something to Pike. Pike answered, pointing at the door. The man shook his head, waving Pike away. Pike insisted, and the man swung a right cross punch that caught Pike in the left temple, slamming him into the railing. She watched him fall down the stairs end over end and thought,Oh. My. God.

Not because of the strike, but what she knew was about to come from it.

Pike sat up, turned to the bottom of the landing, and said something. Then rose like a curtain of death. She saw the rage on his face and knew it was time. He charged up the stairs and the man who’d struck him pulled out a pistol.

Jennifer broke the trigger, splitting his head open.

A second man exited the front door, and Jennifer cracked the trigger again, dropping him. Pike, Knuckles, and Brett didn’t even break stride, launching over his body and entering the apartment.

Within seconds they were inside and she was panting, trying to control the adrenaline flowing through her.

I parked the car knowing I had overwatch from Jennifer, but still wasn’t sure if the juice was worth the squeeze on this thing. I’d done enough hits on SIGINT intelligence that went nowhere to understand that this was a long shot. But you never knew, so I continued forward.

Knuckles was in the backseat, and he was in a bad way. He wanted to kill anyone who’d had anything to do with Carly, and I understood that, but I couldn’t let his beast of vengeance consumewhat we were trying to accomplish. I turned off the engine and said, “You good here? Or do I just take Brett up there?”

He glared at me and said, “Let me know if it’s the place. If it is, I’m in. If not, okay.”

I looked at Brett and said, “Don’t let him do something stupid. This is probably nothing.”

Brett looked at Knuckles and said, “We’re good, right?”

Knuckles nodded with little enthusiasm, saying, “Yeah. We’re good.”

Then his voice turned cold, saying, “If this is it, I’m going in.”

I said, “Knuckles, let me sort it out first. Stop if it’s not the place. Don’t come running up just because you want to kill someone. It might be nothing.”

He said, “I’ll stop just like you did.”

I knew what he was talking about. I’d been where he was, and he’d help pull me out of the brink. I would do the same for him.

I said, “I was wrong then, and we want to be right here.”

He nodded and I got face-to-face with him, saying, “You get that, correct?”

His gaze penetrated me, and I saw the bloodlust. I slowly shook my head and said, “Stay in the car. I’ll deal with this.”

He said, “You don’t trust me? After all this time?”

“Not right now. You’ve got a little bit of an anger issue, and we don’t even know if this location has anything to do with Carly.”

He said, “This is the place. And I’m going to kill them.”

I said, “Stay in the car. I’ll be right back. If I see anything that looks bad, we can go up.”

I left him with Brett, who looked like he wanted to draw his Glock. Not a good way to run a team.

I walked up the stairs and met a man smoking a cigarette,with a swarthy complexion and a little bit of an Afghanistan vibe because of his dress. Nothing overt, but he was a little off, like a glitch in a computer game, but because I wasn’t an expert on Tajikistan, I let it roll. I said, “I’m trying to find a friend of mine. Came here from Afghanistan. He told me he was here.”

The man stood up, and he was big, about six feet two, and none of it was fat. He said, “Get out of here.”

Mildly surprised he spoke English, I said, “Okay, but I’m just trying to find my friend. Do you know anything about any Afghan people fleeing here, to Tajikistan?”

Out of nowhere, he swung a right cross that hit my left temple and knocked me into the railing of the stairs, hard enough to almost render me unconscious. I tumbled a few feet down, disbelieving that the guy would do that. I remained still for a second, my head on the stairs, then rose to a sitting position and looked back at him.

He pulled a pistol from his waist, putting the sights on me, but not firing. Just showing me he had it.

I glanced down to my car, feeling the rage build. Feeling the beast wanting to run free.

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