Crave

Out in the Boston suburb of Malden, Jim and Adrian and Eddie were nothing but shadows in the dense darkness as they approached a half-finished office building. The structure was part of a shaggy, abandoned development that had some fifteen or more of the suckers . . . and not a single one of them was in use or even completed. Which suggested the financer/owner was bleeding mortally from his bank account.

Assuming he hadn't already toe-tagged himself with Chapter 7 paperwork and jumped into a liquidation grave.

The unit they'd come to see had a circle of lawn that cut into the balding forest in back, and the three of them stayed among the trees while surveilling the layout: The five-story-high skeleton was up and sealed with plum-colored glass windows, but there were no lights on and nothing but packed dirt for the parking lot in the rear.

Place was utterly abandoned.

Well, by lawful visitors, that was.

Illegal trespassers were streaming in, their cars and trucks forming a surprisingly orderly row not far from where Jim and his boys were.

Looked like the intel from that fireman back at the gym had been solid.

"You know," Adrian said, "I could get in the ring. Throw some fists. Maybe a human or two."

Jim shook his head. "I don't think we need that right now."

"In an earlier life, were you a pair of brakes?"

"Try a brick wall. Come on, let's get down there."

Blending in among the other men heading for the back entrance, Jim searched for Isaac--in the unlikely event the guy had gotten out of jail and still wanted to fight. But more significantly, he kept his eyes peeled for someone who looked like a soldier: hard, tight in the head, and there to get a job done instead of play spectator.

He was after the one who was supposed to kill Isaac.

With the way the XOps team worked, it would be somebody they'd both worked with: Given the amount of screening and training and proving ground you had to go through to get on the team, there was a limited pool of guys who made it, and new recruits took years to develop. Jim had been out only about six months; he was going to know the assassin.

And so would Isaac.

"You guys head in," he said to his boys as they came up to a door propped open by a cinder block. "I'm going to hang out here. Let me know if you see Rothe."

Except he was going to bet they didn't. If the soldier was here at all, he'd be hiding somewhere and scoping out who had come before making himself known. After all, it didn't take a genius to figure out that getting popped by the police was tantamount to sticking a red flag in your ass.

Which was why in some respects, intercepting the assassin was even more important than running into Isaac.

As Eddie and Ad slipped through the fire door, Jim faded back so that he was standing in the lee of the building. Which was out of habit rather than necessity--no one could see him.

Another bene of being an angel: He could choose when he was visible to mortals.

Lighting up a Marlboro that he kept as hidden as his leather jacket and his combats, he tracked the crowd as it filed in. Tonight's peanut gallery was made up of your standard-issue Joes: Lot of junior-varsity beer guts--that in another five years were going to be state champs. Patriots and Red Sox hats only. Couple of Chelmsford High School sweatshirts.

When the influx became just a trickle, he was ready to curse. Maybe he should have infiltrated the damn jail--although that would have been complicated. Lot of eyes, and even though he could pull off the not-there, if he had to kill somebody or save someone? He'd make any audience schizoid and probably show up in a blurry "Aliens Exist!" article in the National Enquirer --

A lone man emerged from the ring of trees. He was huge and the black windbreaker he wore did absolutely nothing to shrink the size of his shoulders. As he approached, he walked like the soldier he'd been trained to be, swinging his gaze around and keeping both hands in his pockets--likely gripping one or maybe two guns.

"Hello, Isaac . . ." As soon as the name left his lips, Jim was struck by a powerful, inescapable pull that made the man not just a target, but a destination.

The original plan had been to find the guy and throw him on a plane out of the country with some resources--just to help him along his way.

Now, though, he realized he needed to do more than that.

Chalking up the sea change to seeing Rothe for the first time since that night in the desert, Jim did not run up to the guy or shout his name or do anything that would spook the fucker. Instead, he summoned illumination to himself, calling it out of the darkness by agitating the molecules around his body.

He made sure his hands were up and his palms were empty. And that Isaac was the only one who saw him.

Isaac's head snapped around. And a nasty-looking gun appeared from out of that windbreaker.

Jim didn't move and just shook his head, the universal sign for "I'm not here to cap your ass."

When Isaac finally came forward, he took no chances. As he stepped up, another gun came out of a pocket to hang discreetly at his side. Both weapons had silencers and blended in with his black track pants.

For a moment, the pair of them just stared at each other like a couple of idiots, and Jim had an absurd impulse to hug the motherfucker--although he doused that quick. One, there was no reason to be a nancy. And two, it would likely get him shot at point-blank range: XOps soldiers weren't snugglers --unless they planned on killing someone.

"Hey," Jim said roughly.

Isaac cleared his throat. Twice. "What are you doing here?"

"Just passing through. Thought I'd take you to dinner."

That got a slow smile, the kind that smacked of the past. "Payback?"

"Yeah." Jim's eyes traced the rear lot and saw only a couple of stragglers. "You could call it that."

"I thought you were out."

"I am."

"So . . ." When Jim didn't immediately answer, the guy's icy eyes grew shrewd. "He sent you to kill me. Didn't he."

"I needed a favor and it was expensive."

"So why are we talking?"

"I don't take orders from Matthias anymore."

Isaac frowned. "Stupid ass. He's going to hunt you now, too. Unless you blow my head off here and now."

Jim put his cigarette between his teeth and held his palms out. "I'm unarmed. Pat me down."

It was entirely unsurprising that Isaac disappeared one of his guns, and with his free hand, did a quick review of Jim's territory.

That frown rode the guy's brow even harder. "What the fuck are you thinking."

"Right now? Oh . . . let's see, that you should not be fighting in there, for starters. After all, I'm assuming you're not here as part of the popcorn-and- Raisinets set. Instead, I want you to come with me and let me help you get out of the country safely."

Isaac's voice was ancient as he shook his head. "You know I can't trust you. I'm sorry, man. But I can't."

Fucking hell.

Bottom line, though, was you couldn't fault the reasoning: In XOps, even when you were on assignments with your compadres, it was each man for himself. Decide to leave the fold? If you were smart, you wouldn't put your life or your faith in your own mother's hands.

Jim took a drag and focused on the other man's face, feeling that burning drive in his chest get hotter. Hard to explain the "why" of it . . . but he couldn't pull out now that he'd found Isaac. Even if that compromised his battle with Devina. Even if Isaac didn't want his help. Even if it put himself in danger.

Isaac Rothe had to be saved.

"I'm sorry," he heard himself say. "But I need to help you. And you're going to let me."

The other man's eyes narrowed into slits. "Excuse me?"

Jim glanced over to the door. Adrian and Eddie had reappeared and . . . the two of them were looking like this was all supposed to happen. As if they had known all along that Isaac would show up here. And Jim would talk to the guy. And . . .

On a quick tilt of the head, Jim regarded the dark heavens, and thought about the way his first assignment had gone: no coincidences in any of the chain of events. Everyone and everything he'd met up with had woven into his task. And golly gee-fuckin'-whiz, it was so not hard to imagine that Matthias was playing on Devina's team. The guy had done evil wherever he went, perpetrating acts of violence and deceit that had both shaped the world on a global scale as well as altered private lives forever.

Jim refocused on Isaac. Maybe being so damned committed to this AWOL soldier wasn't just a page out of his past . . . Hell, Nigel, his new boss, hadn't seemed easygoing in the slightest--and yet the archangel had rolled over the instant Jim had announced he was going after Isaac: Not the kind of thing that you did if you were team captain and your quarterback started running for your own goal line.

Exactly the kind of thing you did if your boy was right where you wanted him.

Holy shit . . . Isaac was his next assignment.

Man, that shit he'd pulled over his own corpse at the funeral home was going to prove to be a stroke of genius.

"You're going to need me," he pronounced.

"I can take care of myself."

As Isaac went to leave, Jim snagged his arm. "You know you can't do this alone. Don't be an asshole."

There was a long moment.

"What are you thinking, Jim." The guy's pale eyes were haunted. "You were out. You were free. You were the one who got away. Why would you go back into the hellhole?"

Jim led with a logic that the other man could believe in--and something that was also the truth; just not the only one. "I owe you. You know that. I owe you for that night."

Jim Heron was exactly as Isaac remembered him: big, jacked, and nothing but business. The blue eyes were the same, the blond hair was still mostly buzzed off, the face was freshly shaven as always. He even had a Marlboro quietly smoldering in his hand.

But there was something a little different, some kind of vibe that was just . . . off, though not in a bad way.

Maybe the lucky bastard had taken to actually sleeping at night, as opposed to keeping a gun in his palm and waking up at every sound.

God, when he'd heard Heron had pulled out of XOps, he'd never expected to see the man again--either because Matthias rethought the soldier's bye- bye-birdie card and put a bullet into his think tank or because Jim wisely stayed away from anyone and anything that had to do with his former life.

And yet here he was.

As Isaac stared into the guy's eyes, he found himself believing, as much as he could, that Heron had come to help because of that debt created in the land of sand and sun. Besides, if the SOB had wanted Isaac dead, that would have happened long before any of this conversating had gotten rolling.

"If I'd come to kill you," Jim murmured, "you'd be on the ground already."

Bingo.

"Okay," Isaac said. "You hold my shit while I fight. We can start there."

Well, didn't that call out the fuck-no in the guy's face. "You can't get in that ring. Between the flyer I saw and the arrest, you might as well have a GPS tracker shoved up your ass."

"I need the money."

"I have cash."

Isaac glanced over by the exit and realized that there were two big men hanging by the door. When they raised their hands in greeting, he asked, "They with you?"

Jim seemed surprised. "Ah, yeah. They are."

"You starting your own crew? Going freelance?"

"You could say that. But we were talking about you and how you're not fighting."

To piss with that. He wasn't stiffing that attorney for twenty-five grand, and the two thousand dollars he had left after that wasn't going to get him far. And although Matthias could send a guy into the ring who could kill him in front of a hundred witnesses and still make it look like an accident, what choice did he have? He was no one's charity case--he'd learned that long ago--and he wasn't about to be in debt to Jim, either, just to settle an old score.

In ten minutes, he could earn another a grand or two. And if he got shanked by Matthias's second in command, the one who'd showed up last night? It didn't really matter. He'd known the moment he bolted from the team that a funeral was waiting for him, except he was like someone with a mortal disease: The cure for going AWOL was a bitch and likely to kill him, but at least he was putting up a fight and dying on his own terms.

Staying in XOps? Shit, he was dead even though he had a heartbeat.

He was so hollow at this point he might as well be in his grave.

"I'm fighting," he said. "And I'll give you my stuff to hold while I'm in the octagon. That's as much help as I'll accept tonight."

No reason to tell the guy how much cash was in the windbreaker. And Heron already knew about the guns--but clearly wasn't of a mind to use them.

"This is a huge mistake."

Isaac frowned. "Lot of people would have told you to leave Matthias out in that desert to die, but you brought him back because you had to--and you wouldn't have let anyone talk you out of it. Same thing here. Either get on board or get out of my way."

A curse word. Then another. Finally, Jim took a last inhale on the cigarette and ground the butt out on the bottom of his combat boot. "Fine. But I will intercede--are we clear? You get in the ring with the wrong asswipe, I'm going to shut the fight down."

"Why the hell are you doing this?" Isaac said hoarsely.

"Why the hell did you go out to find me and Matthias that night?"

Memories of two years ago bubbled up and Isaac went back to the desert, back to the moment when the encrypted radio had squawked and he'd picked it up and heard Jim's thready voice.

Ten minutes was all it took to make the arrangements: medic to their tent, airlift out waiting, and a trauma team over the border, boom, boom, boom. And then he'd sat there and waited for about a minute and a half.

The Land Rover he'd found had been parked with the keys in it and Isaac had gotten behind the wheel and gone gunning. What Jim hadn't known was that when Matthias and he had left, Isaac had hung back and watched the direction they'd headed. Something just hadn't seemed right about the trip out into the dunes: Nobody went anywhere alone with Matthias. It was like asking an Ebola patient to cough on you.

Making big fat sweeps out from camp, he'd found them an hour later a good five miles away from where he'd started: In his night-vision goggles, he'd zeroed in on something moving slowly across a rise, and considering that trolls didn't really exist, he could only assume it was a man hefting another man through the sand.

As he'd driven over to them, he'd thought about how funny deserts were: Like their polar opposite, the ocean, at night they melded into the sky at the far distance, and it wasn't until you had a reference point, like a shrub or a ship--or a dumb-ass idea like Jim's savior shit--that you had visual confirmation the earth was in fact round, and not square.

And that Heaven was not where you were.

He'd been traveling without headlights and he didn't turn them on. Instead, he took a white undershirt and held the thing out of the window, knowing that Jim would see it and hopefully not think it was the enemy. Fucker had been armed like a tank battalion when he'd left camp.

As Isaac had eased to a halt, he'd gotten out with both hands fully visible and allowed Jim to approach. The guy had looked exhausted, but then he'd been carrying Matthias's deadweight across his back for God only knew how many miles through the shifting sand.

It had not been a surprise that Jim had glared at the knight-in-shining routine--in spite of their boss's condition, which was clearly critical.

Just passing through, Isaac had said. Thought I'd take you to dinner.

With a shake, he came back to this night, here in . . . Where was he? Malden?

His voice held the same exhaustion Jim's had had way back when. "Don't get yourself killed because of me, okay?"

Jim muttered something that sounded like, A little late for that . But clearly, that hadn't been the words.

Forcing his head back into the game, Isaac left the past and his emotions in the dust, his focus shifting to the present as he turned away and started walking into the entrance to the building.

As he stepped inside, Jim and the guy's two buddies were tight on him and he had to wonder why Heron wasn't wearing a hat to hide his face or anything to disguise who he was. Dumb son of a bitch. Gets free . . . only to come back in.

Crazy.

Fucking nuts.

But he had his own problems to worry about, and God knew, Jim was an adult and therefore allowed to be a moron when it came to his own life.

While Isaac went along, the rear hallway of the abandoned office building was an obstacle course, thanks to countless empty drywall buckets and a thousand half-drunk bottles of Mountain Dew and Coke. But it had been a while since anyone had lifted a finger here--there was dust all over the debris.

Clearly, the money had run out just as the screwdriver-and-monkey-wrench crowd had come in: Naked electrical wires snaked across the unhung ceiling, along with partially completed HVAC ducts and plumbing pipes. Illumination came from battery-operated lanterns placed every five feet on the floor, and the air was cool to the point of being cold. At least until they got into the huge lobby of the place. In spite of the cathedral ceiling, the fifty or so guys milling around on the raw concrete floor kicked up the temp, thanks to body heat.

It was clear why this was a perfect place to fight: The architects had planned some kind of glass extravaganza for the front entrance, but like so much else, it hadn't been completed. Instead of a whole lot of see-through panes, there were plywood sheets nailed onto the girders.

So the lighting and the crowd were hidden.

The octagon had been set up in the center of the space, and as soon as Isaac walked into the crowd, the cheering started. As strangers slapped him on the back and congratulated him for getting out of jail, cell phones flipped up to all kinds of ears, the network going to town, with news that he was good to go even after the bust.

The promoter rushed up to him. "Holy fuck, they're going wild already! This rocks . . . !"

Blah, blah, blah.

Isaac scanned the faces as he went over to the far corner and settled in to wait. As Jim eased into a lean beside him, he found himself saying, "Last night, an old friend of ours showed up."

"Who."

"And what do you know," Isaac said grimly, "he's back."

Over where the bouncers were taking the gambling money and the fighting fees, Matthias's number two was getting a wallet out of his pocket. As cash changed hands, the guy looked over and smiled like a crocodile.

Then he pointed right at Isaac's chest.

"You're not getting in that ring," Jim bit out, stepping in front and blocking the sight line.

Isaac stared over Heron's heavy shoulder, right into the face of the man who'd been sent to kill him. "Yeah. I am."