Page 96

Up in the front seat, the guys’ conversation went low again. Though I knew they were mostly just trying to protect my feelings, it might be time to remind them again about how we’d all agreed to keep everything transparent.

Eventually we crested the final rise, and Kane

rolled us to a dusty stop. He parked back a ways from the lip of our cliff face, a good thirty or so paces from the edge.

“Let’s check it out,” said Maddox.

I walked with them wordlessly, listening to the dull silence of the desert. The dying sun felt good on my face. The wind had a faint vanilla scent to it as it swept through my hair. Both men pulled out very expensive-looking military binoculars, making minor adjustments as they pointed them down into the valley below.

“There,” said Kane. “Right near the overhang.”

I squinted hard, straining to see.

“You could’ve brought three sets of binoculars, you know.”

Kane ignored me completely. Maddox spun one of the dials with his index finger. “Yeah,” he said distantly. “Sorry.”

I started thinking about Connor. Wondering if my brother had stood at this exact vantage point, looking down over the same section of valley. I decided he probably had. They’d all had the same training, shared the same basic tactics and knowledge.

He might’ve been my brother by blood… but he was also their brother in every other sense of the word.

I felt a tap, and Kane was handing me his binoculars. They were three times heavier than they actually looked. I peered through them, trying to see the same things they did.

“See that spot,” he murmured into my ear. “Where the sand is a little bit darker?”

I saw. I nodded.

“What else do you see?”

I focused. Scanned. Concentrated.

“Tire tracks.”

“Yup.”

I sighed and handed the equipment back to Kane. “What now?”

Maddox lowered his own optics and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Now… we wait.”

Fifty-Three

DALLAS

The first set of headlights showed up well after dark. In the clear desert night we could see them coming for miles away, bouncing their way along into the valley below.

“Chevy pickup,” said Maddox, peering through the view-piece. He’d already changed over to a night-vision setting. “Brown. Maybe blue.”

Kane and I huddled on the cold ridge, just next to him and slightly behind. The truck drew slowly closer. When it got beneath the rock outcropping it stopped, and the doors opened.

“Three men,” said Maddox. “All of them armed.” His voice went lower. “They’re scanning around. Stay absolutely still.”

Seconds passed, with only the slow click of the binoculars to mark the passing of time. And then:

“They’re unloading something,” Maddox went on. “Four packages. Now six…”

I was trying not to shiver. At first I thought my body was coming alive with the thrill of danger, the rush of adrenaline, but I quickly came to realize something entirely different:

It was fucking freezing outside.