Page 25 of Justice for the SEAL
Cowboy held his gun at the ready as Jax kicked open the door with his foot. The offending odor of decay hung on the air, slamming Cowboy in the face likeablow.
Jax went to the left and Cowboy went to the right, holding his gun at the ready as he checked for anyone inside. He rounded the last corner in the kitchen, he and Noah holding their firearms at each other. They both put them down. “Clear,” Cowboyyelled.
“Clear,” Jax yelled from the other side of thehouse.
“What the fuck is that smell?”askedNoah.
“That would be dinner.” Cowboy gestured to the stove, where a rotting carcass of a small animal sat in a pan. “Looks like a groundhog. You know, when the shit hits the fan you’re going to wish you had that. Want me to wrap it up for youto-go?”
Noah ignored him. “It was left as a present for any company that might wanderinside.”
“Come here,” called Jax. “You’ve got toseethis.”
They found him in tiny room that opened to a bed with filthy blankets and a stained pillow. But it was what Cowboy saw next that made his musclestwitch.
The walls were plastered with photographs and clippings, his eyes instantly drawn to a picture of himself and Charlotte. “Holy Christ.” He crossed to it, plucking it from the wall as he clenchedhisjaw.
There were pictures of Jax too, along with one of Jessa driving her car with the window down. But the worst was a snapshot of a baby lying inacrib.
Oh,fuck.
Cowboy looked at Jax. “Is that yourdaughter?”
“Yes.”
“We have to get this guy.” Every muscle in Cowboy’s body was pumped and ready to attack. Cole was after his family. That’s what these people were. His brothers in arms. His sisters. A child who might as well be his niece, and the woman he loved more than anyone. “This shit just gotpersonal.”
Jax’s face registered no emotion. “Dead, Leo. He needs to be dead. Just like hisbrother.”
Cowboy’s eyes shot to Noah’s. If he’d heard Jax, he gave no indication. Noah simply turned and moved to a second wall, this one covered with clippings of a different sort. “Is this thebrother?”
Cowboy turned around. “That’s him allright.”
NAVY SEAL KILLED IN FREAKACCIDENT.
The paper was yellowwithage.
LOCAL SOLDIER WITH PTSD DIES AT SHOOTINGRANGE.
Noah took a step back. “I’m going to check out thatfootlocker.”
Cowboy moved closer a framed picture, Garrison Cole stared back at him in his dress blues, the American flag in the background. The last time Cowboy had seen those eyes, they’d been staring at the sky,lifeless.
I didn’t mean todoit.
Call 9-1-1.
I thought she wasolder.
“Holy shit,” Noah’s voice brought Cowboy back from the past. “We have aproblem.”
Cowboy turned around. Inside the military footlocker at the end of the bed was a red LED timer countingbackwards.
Twenty-eightseconds.
“It’s a bomb!” he yelled. “We must have tripped something on our way in. Get the fuckout.Now!”
The men ran out the door, across the cinderblock porch and into the blinding sunshine. The explosion threw them through the air, everything in slow motion, and Cowboy wondered at that moment if Royce was somewhere inside that cabin. Had they killed him just by lookingforhim?
