Free Talon: Combat Tracking Team (A Breed Apart) by Ronie Kendig

to her. “Forty-eight hours.”
    She scanned the information, tapped it against her hand, then bobbed her head. “I’ll be waiting.”
    The way she said that, why did he find himself reading into those words?
    He gave a curt nod to her and the others then climbed into the rental. As he aimed the sedan down the dusty road to the gate, he kept his gaze forward, though in his periphery he could tell Aspen watched. For that reason, he restrained the disgust spiraling through his veins. The urge to punch the dash. The fire that lit across his shoulders.
    It worked. Perfectly.
    She’d played right into his hands. Easiest deck he ever dealt. It could not have been scripted more precisely. He read her right. Read the men in her life right. Every ploy had been dead on. She responded as if he had puppeted her. He’d known—
known
—what was in her because of the hunger, the deep, burning ache for resolve where her brother was concerned. Resolution.
    He could relate. There were answers in his life he wanted, questions eliminated. Loved ones located.
    But that man no longer existed. Cardinal. That was his name. His identity. Bestowed on him by Burnett because of their first meeting at the church.
    That’s exactly what he needed right now. A church. Confession. To purge this evil he had allowed to seep into his soul. Cultivated by manipulating Aspen Courtland.
    She trusted him. Those blue eyes…so much like—
    Cardinal drove his fist into the dash. Pain and fire spiked through his knuckles and darted up his arm, nerves tingling. Teeth clamped, he accelerated. The faceplate of the stereo system cracked. Warmth sped down his arm, dripped onto the gearshift. He snatched his phone and coded in.
    “Go ahead, Cardinal.”
    “I need Burnett.”
    “He’s unavailable.”
    “Well, you tell him I’m through. I’m not doing this. I’m gone.”

    Seven    

Somewhere in Somalia
    P laster exploded.
    Neil Crane threw himself backward with a curse. Pulse hammering, he scrabbled over the dirt, dust, and Sheetrock. Light speared through the hole created by the bullet. As he checked his six, three more beams of light fractured the haven of darkness.
    AK-47 cradled in his arms, he sprinted through the darkened hall.
    “Go, go!” he shouted as he ran. Ahead, he saw her burst from behind another wall. In a dead run, she broke into the searing brightness of another brutally hot day.
    He caught up with her. Catching the drag strap of her vest, he prayed for just one more mercy. They’d lived every day of the last three months on nothing but mercy. That fed his conviction that they were doing the right thing. That they had a purpose beyond sucking up oxygen.
    “There.” He pointed to an alley to the right. “Go!”
    As he sprinted with her at his side into the narrow space between two buildings, he heard the shouts of their pursuers behind them.
    Thudding boots and creaking-groaning vehicles. More shouts. Rock and dirt burst up. From the side, wood splintered.
    She tripped. Went down.
    He dragged her back into motion.
    “There,” she gasped, her breath sucked in by the grueling pace.
    He searched, uncertain what she referred to. “Wha—?”
    With a grunt, she threw herself toward a wall.
    A split second of panic snatched the air from his lungs. Was she hit? Then he saw it.
    She rolled forward and dropped out of sight.
    In a dive, he prayed this worked as he dropped into the darkness. Into the stench.

A Breed Apart Ranch
Texas Hill Country
    The trail banked right and down. The cedar leaves provided little protection against the brutal summer heat. Aspen jogged around the bend, sweat dripping down her spine, her neck and temples. The swallow seemed to stick in her throat, the air so dry and dusty. With the lead wrapped around her waist and clipped to Talon, she glanced down at the animal she’d come to think of as a part of herself. Maybe that’s the way it’d been with Austin. Living day in and day out with a dog, becoming