“I’ll find who hired Haly,” he promised.
“Marcus, don’t—”
But he was already gone.
Chapter Three
HORNET Headquarters, Wyoming
Ian Reinhardt rolled out of bed and stuffed his feet into his boots. The quick back-and-forth trip to Switzerland had thrown off his internal clock, and he wasn’t getting sleep any time soon. From the dog bed on the floor, Tank lifted his head from the pillow of his big paws and blinked sleepily.
On his way to the door, he rubbed a hand over his best friend’s—okay, shit, only friend’s—head. Tank gave an impressive yawn and looked at Ian like he was crazy for being up in the middle of the night.
Yeah, pal. You should know by now I’m batshit crazy.
It had been two years since he and the team rescued Tank from a bombed-out shell of a village in Afghanistan, but it still astonished him that the dog liked him. No-fucking-body liked him. He was an asshole on his best days, and a complete shit-heel bastard on his worst. He knew it, accepted it, was A-Okay with living his life that way. And, still, Tank thought the sun rose and fell at his command.
He patted the dog’s head. “Go back to sleep, pal. I’ll be home in a few.”
Tank hesitated and looked at the front window of their one-room cabin. Snow had built up six inches thick on the windowsill and icy flakes frosted the glass. He looked at Ian again. Dogs supposedly couldn’t express human emotions, but Ian saw disbelief written all over his black snout. Almost as if he was saying, You’re going out in that?
Yes. He was. And even if he wanted to, he couldn’t explain why.
“Stay,” he told Tank and snagged his jacket from the knob by the door.
Tank hesitated another beat, then plopped down on his bed with a huff. All… Fine. I didn’t want to go with you anyway, you big jerk.
Ian grinned as he opened the door. The cold hit him like a fist to the stomach, knocking the air out of his lungs. “Fucking Wyoming.” He kicked at the snow that had blown up against his door and was now tumbling inside. “Fucking Gabe and Quinn. They couldn’t set up shop in California or Florida or Hawaii. No, it had to be Wyoming.”
He glanced back inside before swinging the door shut. Tank was already snoring again. He envied his dog’s ability to sleep at the drop of a hat. Ian was lucky to sleep at all anymore.
It took fifteen minutes to clear the fresh snow off his truck and de-ice the windshield. When he finally climbed behind the wheel and put the thing into drive, he told himself he didn’t have a destination in mind.
Even as he pulled up in front of the half-finished dorm of HORNET’s training center, even as he shut the truck off, even as he got out and trudged through the snow to the front door, he told himself he had no particular destination in mind.
And he would’ve kept telling himself that until he got to the door of her cell, except he saw Marcus staggering through the swirling snow, headed in this same direction. Ian parked himself in front of the door, arms crossed.
Marcus didn’t notice anyone was gatekeeping until he nearly collided with Ian. The guy was shit-faced. Again. No big surprise there. It was his regular state of being since the whole Danny thing.
Ian ignored the sharp tug in his gut that happened every time he thought of that morning and watching Danny Giancarelli bleed out on the pristine sand of a Martinique beach. It wasn’t grief, goddammit. He didn’t care enough about any of these guys to grieve for the senseless, brutal loss of one of them.
People died. That’s what they were put on this planet to do. Live a shitty life and die shitting themselves. He couldn’t care about everyone who got themselves killed, especially in this line of work. Not caring was exhausting enough, thanks.
Marcus slurred something that might have been a sentence, but Ian couldn’t pick out any specific words. He planted his feet. Not that he thought Marcus had any chance of taking him on in his inebriated state. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Get outta my way.” More slurring. He carried a bottle in one hand and his weapon in the other. He waved the gun around in a big gesture. Pointing at what was anyone’s guess. Only thing he was threatening was the light over their heads, and even that was safe due to the fact he had more alcohol in his blood than plasma at the moment. “… the prisoner… knows more… I’mma find out…”
Yeah, nope. That wasn’t happening on Ian’s watch and was exactly the reason he’d been unable to shut his brain off tonight. A switch had flipped in Marcus back there in Switzerland. Ian had seen that switch before. Hell, he’d felt that switch before. He knew the rage and the driving need to kill to settle the score. He’d lived with it for years. Had channeled it. And was so damn close to being rid of it.
Given the shit Marcus had done to Mercedes Raya to get the intel on Sebastian Haly, murder wasn’t a stretch of the imagination. And Ian couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d wake up tomorrow morning and find Mercedes dead.
Not that he cared what happened to Mercedes. He didn’t. He hated her and everything she stood for. She was a reminder of exactly the thing he’d spent the last several years trying to forget. But he had plans for her, and they didn’t include her getting a .45 slug in the brainpan courtesy of a pissed-off Marcus.
If he ever wanted to be rid of the rage inside him, he needed her alive.
Marcus tried to shove by him. He didn’t budge, but Marcus stumbled down the steps and fell on his ass in the snow.
Ian shook his head. Pathetic. “Go home, Deangelo. Before you do something to piss me off.”
“Yer always pissssed off.” Marcus swayed to his feet, his gun forgotten in the snowbank where it had landed. He didn’t forget the booze, though. Oh, no. He snapped that bottle up like it was a lifesaver in a turbulent sea and took a huge swig. He swiped his mouth with the back of his hand and jabbed a wobbly finger in Ian’s general direction. “Yer p-protesting… erm, protecting…the enemy.”
“No. I’m keeping you from doing something that will weigh on your conscience for the rest of your life. Cold-blooded murder doesn’t make for a sound night’s sleep.” He should know. His teammates thought he was capable of murder—and, yeah, he was; he’d killed many times and would again—but none of them knew that the blood on his hands kept him awake at night. They thought he was a psycho, and he was fine with that.
Marcus shook his head so hard he threw himself off-balance. “Not cold-blooded. She killed Danny.”
“Sebastian Haly killed Danny. And he’s dead. You should take comfort in that.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“You should take comfort in that, too.”