am, not killing you. Helping you. Trusting you, in fact.”
“Yeah.” Duarte grunted, watching the former Marine sniper with more than a little caution. “The question is, what for?”
“Semper fi and all that shit, I guess.”
After they positioned the dead man behind the wheel, Duarte stood back. “Go get the gas.”
Alec gave him a cautious look, but the cocky bastard had balls enough to grin at the same time. “You’re not gonna throw a match on me now, are you?”
“Not today.” Duarte smirked in spite of himself. “Semper fi and all that shit.”
Chuckling, Alec swaggered back to the trunk for the container of gasoline they’d brought along from the cabin. He opened the cap on the red plastic can and gave the Camry a good dousing, shaking some of the gas out inside the vehicle and onto the body as well. Once the can was empty, he tossed it in the backseat and came over to stand beside Duarte.
“So, you’ve been living up here this whole time, I take it?”
Duarte nodded. “You?”
“Got a place down near the beach in Miami.”
“Let me guess. One of those sleek high-rise condos with glass walls and ocean views for miles?”
It was no secret that Alec Colton came from money—very old, very established East Coast money—even if he was the unabashed black sheep of his well-heeled family. He’d joined the Marines soon after the Trade Center attack, just like Duarte and Kyle Becker had, but Alec had also admitted he’d done it to escape the yoke and disapproval of his family.
Now, there was no going back. None of the former Phoenix operatives could go back to what they’d once had.
“Nah, nothing like that,” Alec said. “That never was my style, man. I’m renting a sweet little Airstream in a trailer park a few blocks from the water. I keep my head down and my ear to the ground, online and otherwise.”
“What’s your cover down there? Doing anything for work?”
“I pick up the odd job here and there. Nobody to answer to, nobody telling me how to live my life, which is how I prefer things these days.” He paused for a long moment. “So... you and Lisa.”
“Yeah,” Duarte said. “Me and Lisa. Long story. Private one, and I’m not of a mind to get into it with you at the moment.”
Alec nodded slowly, studying him now. “You trust her, though?”
“I trust her.”
“Well, that’s good, because that dead guy we’re about to toast isn’t the last of her problems. Not the last of ours either, my friend.”
Duarte had a feeling he knew where Alec was heading with this. The same thing had been bugging him since they’d dragged the would-be assassin out of the ditch. “The pistol he was carrying—”
“Isn’t a SIG,” Alec finished. “It’s not the one I saw in my vision.”
Not the one Duarte had seen either. Which meant that whatever this man had intended by tracking Lisa up the mountain with a weapon drawn, even though he was now dead, her life was still in danger. The thought put a knot of fury and dread in Duarte’s chest. “I’m not going to let her get hurt. Anyone tries, and they’ll have to come through me first.”
“Even her brother?”
Duarte narrowed his eyes. “What do you know about him?”
“Like I said, I’ve been having a lot of visions lately. One of them involves Talon.”
“As in?”
“As in, him working with the bad guys. Giving them intel, using his ability to help them put hits out on other Phoenix operatives.” When Duarte cursed, Alec went on. “The vision first came to me a couple of months ago, but it was hazy. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.”
“Then maybe you were wrong. Hazy could mean you’re mistaken.”
“I’ve seen it a few times now, each one clearer than the last. Enough to know that it’s real.” Alec’s expression was as sober as his tone. “Once the premonitions started, I dug into Becker’s sister online, began keeping a covert eye on her from a distance, in case she might lead me to him. But nope. Not even a blip of activity on that front. Then, last week, I got the vision of her being held at gunpoint and I decided it was time to move in for a closer look.”
Duarte raked a hand over his jaw. He’d been having his own share of disturbing premonitions, too, but the news about Kyle Becker was difficult to reconcile.
None of the three of them was a saint, but Talon a traitor to Phoenix