Free Alicia Myles 2 - Crusader's Gold by David Leadbeater

needs men to make an opportunity but he’ll want to do this himself.”
    “So the big question,” Caitlyn said. “Is why?”
    “Riley was SAS.” Crouch launched into the explanation as if from an often-revisited memory. “We trained together. He was good. We were good.” Crouch shook his head. “I underestimated him badly. More than once. Riley excelled right up until the last week of training . . .” He knocked back a neat shot. “When he disappeared. Now that just doesn’t happen, not when a man’s training for the Regiment. I was twenty three at the time and my friend had just caused one of the great mysteries within the SAS. Riley simply vanished out of sight, the promising career gone, his entire life gone. Left behind.”
    “So what happened?” Russo asked.
    Crouch spread his hands. “It’s still unexplained.”
    Alicia tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “I still don’t get why he wants to kill you so . . . intensely.”
    “Well, that’s because you don’t know the whole story yet. Riley was essentially dead to us for five years. You wonder about someone for that long, believe me, the reasons and scenarios you come up with would make for a fantasy novel. It became so bad I used to revisit the places I knew he’d frequented, make a nuisance of myself at his old haunts. No way could I believe a man like Riley could just disappear off the face of the fucking earth.” Crouch took a few moments and polished off a second miniature.
    “Grief changes you,” Caitlyn said matter-of-factly. “Turns you into a different person. There’s no way you can be the person you were ever again.”
    Alicia found her glance flicking momentarily toward the young girl. Caitlyn had experienced an immense upheaval recently in her life, something that had affected her entire way of existing. Alicia had been meaning to broach the subject but, as usual, incident and adventure had taken her away.
    Crouch continued. “Indeed. As for Daniel Riley, my fears were not only unjustified but hugely wayward. Riley turned up five years later as a ruthless criminal, a tyrant with his filthy little fingers into just about everything. Some said he’d used the British Army to get his training, with a plan in mind all along. Others said he’d been recruited along the way and later killed his boss to take his place. The myths around Riley are numerous and relentless. I tend to think he was always bad, which is why I always believe that I intensely underestimated him.” Crouch shook his head, finishing the third whiskey. “It never happened again.”
    Alicia noted that an hour had passed since they departed Istanbul. Soon, they would be descending toward Venice’s Marco Polo airport. “I’m guessing you two locked horns later?”
    “The SAS were informed of Riley’s re-emergence days after it happened, but didn’t actually encounter him until 1997, some twelve years later. I was thirty five then and no longer a new recruit. I was a captain. Riley popped back up our radar simply because he’d gotten himself into a fix by meeting a client in a hotel lobby in India. This client was a notorious bomb maker, a known killer, and we were already on the scene, having no knowledge that Riley would be there. Seeing an opportunity I walked into the lobby, alone, to reason with them . . .”
    Crouch felt himself growing distant, remembering the events of that day with a memory too clear, a conscience too bruised. It had been more than an awakening; beyond even a grueling rite of passage. As he entered a lobby packed with unwitting bystanders he thought about all that the reports said Riley had done. The murders. The tortures. The kidnappings. Deals with the Devil. It couldn’t be true, not totally. Riley had to have some ulterior motive. Perhaps he was working for one of the more covert government agencies. Undercover. Perhaps Crouch could now find out the truth.
    The first person he saw was the bomb maker—tall, wrapped in