Page 106 of Lethal Threat

Marshall hits a few keys on his keyboard. “According to an informant, there were some guys in Bryan’s Army Ranger unit that were suspected of being in some kind of drug ring, and B-zene was one drug they might have been handling.”

This shouldn’t shock me but it does. I rub my temple. “You mean, his Ranger unit wassmuggling drugs?”

“It’s never been proven. Word on the street is they’ve got a pretty big operation going. But my source tells me they’ve got connections, and no one has been busted yet.”

Fuck.Really?I lean forward in my seat and say, “But command would know if the guys in the unit were all strung out.”

“Of course. But guess what? The best drug dealers in the world don’t do drugs. It’s bad for business.”

Shaking my head, I try to process the idea of a rogueSpecial Forces unit. That’s so far from how the teams I worked with were that it’s almost unimaginable. “Wow. That’s disturbing. Are they still active duty?”

Clearly as unhappy as I am, he says, “I’ve got someone looking into that right now.”

My unease grows as I steeple my fingers. “Do you think Bryan is dead, then?”

“If not, there’s probably a reason they want him alive. Maybe he’s got something on them. Supposedly, these guys are bad news.”

All the blood in my body chills. “Christ, Marshall. If Sierra’s going to go out looking for her brother...”

Simona appears beside my shoulder. “What if she didn’t get her memory back?”

“I know she did. That’s why she came back to Virginia.”

Simona’s thinking. She chews on her nail. “Isn’t she a trained Air Force officer? So, she has skills.”

Grimly, I say, “If she can remember them. But these men are trained killers. She’s not. She never was. And there’s no reason for her to have left if she didn’t get her memories back. At least some of them. My worst fear is that she's walking right into the middle of this.”

Marshall’s eyes flash black. “Not if we can stop her first.”

If. A big damned if. We’re hours behind her.

White knuckling the table, I ask, “Does this plane go any faster?”

“No. The pilot knows we need to get there as fast as possible.”

My sheer agony is interrupted by the satellite phone on the desk ringing. Marshall picks it up with his scarred hand. He says, “Agile Security and Rescue, this is Marshall Lake, go ahead.”

His eyes shift to me, then he passes the phone over. “For you. Cade Slaughter.”

I don’t give Cade the time to speak before I say, “Where the hell have you been?”

I freeze when he tells me he’s been on a training exercise. Flying jets. “So you haven’t gotten over to Sierra’s?”

The tips of my fingers tap a furious rhythm on the table as he says it’s going to be several more hours before he can get there.

He asks, “Are you close?”

“No. We’re in the air. Another couple hours.”

The silence on the other end cues me in that he’s holding something back. My worry amplifies to a near screaming roar. Marshall watches me as my veins start to pop. “What aren’t you saying?”

“My buddy, this old retired guy that lives in my apartment complex, is a police scanner junkie. I asked him if he’d heard any weird calls. He heard one in the middle of the night for Sierra’s apartment complex. A bunch of car alarms were going off.”

I hinge forward. “What the hell was going on?”

Cade says, “Two officers responded and found nothing other than car alarms randomly going off, according to the info he heard over the scanner.”

“Fuck, I don’t like this.”