Page 63 of Turn the Tide
Sanborn’s face clouded over and his steely gaze drifted to the windows, but he looked as if he was staring into space. Rain beat a steady tattoo against the roof. “I’m done with all this.” His tone was weary, defeated. A first. “I retire in June.”
And unicorns were real. The only way he’d retire was with a bullet. “Come on, Sanborn, I think your nose just grew a couple of inches. Tell the truth and shame the devil. With your stellar record, you’re a shoo-in to make deputy and replace the D/CIA when she steps down.” The Agency would be better for it, too, under his razor-sharp leadership.
Sanborn stared at Logan, his intense brown eyes deadly serious. “Stay in this dirty game too long, it devours you. You end up sacrificing everything you hold dear. Even your soul.”
Holy shit.Penny had done the impossible and gotten him to turn in his paperwork. At barbecues and dinner parties they held for the Special Operations Group, his socialite wife used to threaten divorce, always veiled behind a joke and a smile, if he didn’t agree to early retirement.
Life in this business was brutal, grueling, and often depressing. It spilled over at home in more ways than one, taking a toll on a spouse as well.
“Penny finally twisted your arm,” Logan said. “Good for her. Nice to know there’s someone in this world who can bend you to their will.”
Sanborn’s eyebrows lifted in reluctant agreement, but he didn’t respond.
“Will you get on a plane and help us?” Knox asked.
Click-click. Logan’s throat tightened.
He hadn’t been in the field for two years. Sometimes his PTSD still flared. His instincts were rusty, he was half blind, half deaf, and half the operative he once was.
But Ashley was out there, alone, in danger.
“No, I won’t help you.” Maggots of unease slithered in his gut, and he gritted his teeth. “But I will help Ash. You need to understand, I’m not going in to recover your thumb drive. My priority, theonlything I care about, is Ashley. Bringing her home safe is my mission.”
Sanborn didn’t bat a lash, too calm, too collected. Textbook composure. “Understood.” He shot Knox an unreadable glance that telegraphed something important, but Logan had been out of the game too long to decipher what it was.
Knox’s blue eyes gave away nothing. “You and I have a plane to Munich waiting.”
Sanborn was staying behind to safeguard his kingdom. Was he really going to give up the throne, retire at forty-three, when he could have a legacy that’d live forever?
“If Ash is alive,” Logan said, clenching and unclenching his hands, his skin gooseflesh, “she isn’t in Munich.” She’d go somewhere she felt safe and had friends. Someplace not in her file. Ash’s mom was born in Dusseldorf, but that’s not the city she’d called home. “She’s in Berlin.”
Sanborn gave a smug smile and exchanged a sly look with Knox.
Logan stood. “One of you should take off your suit jacket and grab a shovel.”
“Why is that?” Knox asked.
“You need to bury that box four feet deeper in the hole outside while I clean up.”
***
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean
Friday, March 4, 4:15 p.m. EST/ 10:15 p.m. CET
Knox sat across from Logan on the Gulfstream V, dragging his gaze over him.
A hint of his old friend was there beneath the scars. A battle-brother he loved and admired for not giving in to the darkness that had threatened to finish what the car bomb had failed to do. Logan was spit-shine clean down to his fingertips, had taken clippers to his wildebeest hair, and trimmed his forest of a beard. A hatchet job at best, but an improvement.
They’d spoken little on the plane, the silence between them honest. Knox didn’t pretend not to know the details of Logan’s life. Logan didn’t pretend to care about an update on Knox’s.
With dark shadows under his eyes, Logan looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. He inhaled the in-flight meal like he hadn’t eaten in months. Private plane food was grade-A restaurant quality, but still. While Logan had showered, Knox had deepened the infernal hole four feet, burying a box of booze, and Sanborn had searched the kitchen.
Logan Silva, once one of the best CIA operations officers on the planet, subsisted off ravioli, beans, Spam, tuna, and protein shakes. Between the disability payments and handsome consulting fees, he eked out plenty to splurge at Whole Foods. Knox and Sanborn both took great pride that he’d gotten sober and put his crackerjack skills to good use freelancing for top firms.
But from the state they’d found him, something in Logan was broken. Knox suspected the disfigurement on the right side of Logan’s face reflected his internal loss. With one droopy eye, lid soldered half-closed, and burn scars along his back, he was no longer a flagrant playboy.
A wonder and a shame he never hooked up with Ashley years ago. Their chemistry had been as blatant as Fourth of July fireworks. Those two had been inseparable.
