ever getting back.
But he didn’t really care about her. His fixation was Robie and Reel. Jessica Reel was in his crosshairs. She was the trigger woman on his former DD and an analyst whom she had shot in the back.
Illegal. Treasonous. Unforgivable.
Tucker didn’t care what her reasons were. That was why they had courts and judges and juries. And executioners. Reel had taken it upon herself to be all of those things. Then she had jumped right to the execution part. For that she had been allowed to walk free and even given a medal.
That stark injustice made Tucker seethe.
Well, he was not without influence or resources. He would use both to make sure that the appropriate punishment was meted out to her. And Robie too, if he was idiotic enough to stick with her.
The fact was, Tucker knew that he would likely be resorting to his Plan B on the upcoming mission. The odds were very high that Robie and Reel were not going to make it out of the Burner Box. So if justice could not prevail in a court of law, it would still triumph somewhere in the wilderness of North Carolina.
Tucker knew that he was staking everything on this. The mission he was engaged in with General Pak would be the pinnacle of his career. Or the catalyst for his downfall. For what they were proposing to do was quite illegal, even if the president had signed off on it. Tucker had not believed that the current occupant of the Oval Office had the cojones to make that sort of call. But the president had surprised Tucker and done so. Now the die was cast. There was no going back.
In a perfect world, the mission would succeed and Robie and Reel would be history.
A perfect world. The only problem was, his world was about as imperfect as it could possibly be.
He cradled his drink, took a sip, and sat back. Another long day of keeping everyone safe. It was a dirty, filthy business, what he did. And no one involved in it was anything other than filthy.
Including me, thought Evan Tucker. Most of all, me.
Chapter
8
EARL FONTAINE SAT BACK IN his bed and let out a contented sigh.
The visit had been a successful one. The two men had been all that they had claimed to be when they had first contacted him. It was a little surprising to Earl that he was allowed visitors at this point, but perhaps the warden didn’t think he was dangerous anymore since he was old and dying in a crappy prison hospital ward.
Well, the man could not have been more wrong. Maybe his stinger had been pulled, but Earl had other resources, starting with the two men in the black suits toting the Bibles. And they had others, lots of others, to work with them.
The Bibles were a nice touch, he thought. Bibles put people at ease, when they should be on the highest alert. Good for Earl. Bad for the law. In fact, what was bad for the law was always great for Earl Fontaine.
The men in black had done their part. They were all ready. Now it was time for Earl to do his part.
He grabbed at his belly and hacked up what felt like part of his left lung. That was really the only one he had left. They’d cut most of the other one out years ago in an effort to stem the cancer. They’d only done it to try to get him healthy so they could kill him. But he’d beaten them on that. He wasn’t getting healthier. He was dying. Dying fast, but not too fast.
Ironically, the only thing keeping him going was the idea that if he could accomplish this last thing in his life, he could die easy. It was all he thought about. He was obsessed with it. It was the only thing keeping his good lung moving, his diseased heart pumping, and the pain relatively at bay.
He caught his breath, wiped the sweat from his face, and struggled to a sitting position. It was hot. It was always hot here. Apparently, Alabama didn’t enjoy a winter season. For over twenty years the sweat had spilled off him day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute—but he had endured, eventually making clever jokes about the heat that had passed from one cell to the next, making Earl a bit of a celebrity in here.
He looked down at the tube. He got