Call Sign: Redemption Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Patricia Eddy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design

  Cover Photo: Paul Henry Serres

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Patricia D. Eddy

  Prologue

  Five Years Ago

  Trevor

  The abandoned office building on the outskirts of downtown Caracas is missing half of its windows. A hint of the sea carried on the winds tempers the stench of piss and death. One day, I’d like to be sent on a mission to a nice resort. Or a golf course. Hell, even a college locker room would smell better than this place.

  Moving silently through the fifteenth floor, I scan for hostiles. Half a dozen desks are turned on their sides, but most of the building has been trashed. My targets are two floors below me, and by the heat signatures, I’m looking at two guerrillas and three hostages. Any other time, I’d call those good odds. Especially since one of the hostages is Air Force Lieutenant Commander Austin Pritchard. The man’s a legend. He has more combat medals than anyone I know, which is saying something. But he’s been held for almost a week now, and I have no idea what they’ve done to him.

  This mission has been fucked from the start. By rights, I shouldn’t be here. My handler tried to keep me out of this, but I told him I didn’t give a fuck what he—or anyone else up the chain—wanted. I was doing this. Sanctioned or not.

  I’m the only one who can. And after this job, I’m out. For good.

  As I reach the edge of the building, the wind picks up. Fuck. If there’s anyone hiding on this floor, even the slight sound of my pants whipping around my legs could get me killed. They’re made for stealth and flexibility—like the rest of my clothing—but that means they’re not skin-tight. Dropping to my knees, I pull out my rappelling gear.

  Two floors. Eight meters. A little under twenty-seven feet.

  One last check on the thermals. Same three hostages. Kneeling, by the looks of it. Hands probably bound.

  Two hostiles. One leaning against the wall three meters from the hostages, another circling them. I don’t give a fuck about the one moving. He’ll be dead before my feet touch the ground.

  The other one…he’s the reason I’m here.

  The rope knots around one of the window supports, and I check that it’s secure enough for my weight. One breath. Two. Three.

  Bring him in. This is what you were trained to do.

  If there weren’t two men with very lethal guns waiting to kill me as soon as I breach the thirteenth floor, I’d laugh. No one’s trained for this. Not when one of the hostiles is your best fucking friend. Or was.

  Gripping the rappelling release in one hand and my gun in the other, I balance my arches on the edge of the window.

  Do it.

  I push off and let myself fall, squeezing the control handle so I slide down the rope until physics takes over, and I swing back towards the window.

  My first bullet shatters the window, and I burst through in a shower of broken glass, releasing the rope, tucking, and rolling forward until I come to my feet again. The second shot takes out the guerrilla circling the hostages, and then it’s just them, me…and Gil. The man I’m supposed to retrieve.

  “I should have known they’d send you,” Gil says as he springs for Pritchard. Hauling his hostage up by his bound arms, Gil presses a knife to Austin’s throat. One of the man’s eyes is swollen shut, blood trickles from his split lip, and he groans as his feet scramble for purchase on the dusty floor.

  “They didn’t. I demanded to be the one to bring you in.” I don’t take my eyes off of Gil as I sidestep one of the other hostages, a man a good fifty pounds overweight who’s breathing heavily. One of Venezuela’s richest bankers, and one of the most vocal opposers of El Presidente, Marcos Farías.

  “Not happening. Walk away, Trev.” He presses the serrated blade harder against Pritchard’s throat, and a trickle of blood wells on the dark steel. “Walk away and I might even let big brother here live.”

  “Gil,” Pritchard rasps, “think of Dani.”

  At the mention of his sister, Gil’s brown eyes turn cold. “Dani turned away from me the day she started calling your parents mom and dad.”

  “We…welcomed you…into our family,” Austin manages as the knife digs deeper.

  “Gil, you’re going to kill him. There’s no coming back from that.” I take a single step closer, my gun steady. “Let him go, or I end you.”

  “And fail your mission? That’s not the man I know. The one who follows orders blindly. Without question. Without giving a single shit who you destroy along the way.” Gil shifts his hold on the knife. “Last warning, Trev. Drop the gun.”

  Blood flows freely down Austin’s neck. The blade is less than a centimeter from his carotid artery, and if I don’t stop the bastard now, he’ll kill the man who saved me from myself after I broke Dani’s heart all those years ago. Meeting Austin’s gaze, I wait for understanding to dawn in his hazel eyes.

  “Okay. Okay.” I raise my hands, taking my finger off the trigger. The moment of shock registers on Gil’s face for a split second before Pritchard draws in a breath and slams his head back against Gil’s nose.

  Blood spurts, and I fire a single shot, hitting Gil in the right arm. The knife clatters to the ground, and I tackle him as Austin collapses.

  My first punch slams Gil’s head to one side, but he wraps his legs around my waist and flips me over. I register the scrape of the blade on the dirty floor a second too late, and Gil drives the knife deep into my shoulder.

  The pain steals my breath, but I still manage to bring the gun up and wedge it under his chin. “Give…it up,” I manage. “You’re…coming back…with me.”

  “Never.” He twists the blade, and the sound that comes out of my mouth is something between a groan and a whimper. It feels like someone’s shooting me full of electricity while simultaneously setting me on fire.

  Pritchard, who’s managed to free himself from the zip ties, hauls Gil off of me and throws him five feet into a half-rotten desk before he staggers and falls to his knees. “How could you do this to Dani? To me. You’re my fucking brother.” His voice is hoarse and weak, but there’s
an edge that tells me he’s not in danger of dying. Not yet.

  Gil springs up, a pistol he pulls from an ankle holster in his hand. “I’m not. Your parents only wanted her. I found my home. My father’s people welcomed me with open arms. With the Loma Collectivo, I’m who I was always meant to be.”

  I wrench the blade from my shoulder and struggle to my feet, blood running down my arm and soaking my black shirt. The wound isn’t fatal, but it hurts like a son of a bitch and I’m getting light headed.

  “Gil, last warning.” I lean against a pillar, using the exposed metal beams to steady myself. “You know I’m faster. Better. We have to take you in.”

  “To a black site where they’ll torture me until I don’t know my own name?” Gil laughs as he sights Pritchard, who’s grabbed the dead guerilla’s gun and is now drawing down on Gil with me. “Never.” He aims at Pritchard’s heart. Fuck. Austin’s not wearing body armor, but I am.

  I see it in Gil’s eyes a split second before he squeezes the trigger. Desperation. The boy I met in my very first foster home, the one who taught me so much about how to survive in the system, the man I trained with for five years, the one who had my back and saved my life a dozen times…he’s begging me. And I can’t let him down.

  I jump in front of Austin, and as Gil fires, so do I.

  “Trevor? Breathe, man. Breathe!” Austin’s voice echoes like I’m underwater.

  Forcing my eyes open, I groan and rub my chest. The bullet hit just right of my heart, and I try to do as ordered, but fuck. I think it cracked a rib. “Shit.”

  Austin’s face says it all. I did what I was trained to do. Fire a kill shot under the worst of conditions. Only this time, I didn’t just kill an enemy combatant. I killed my best friend. And Austin’s brother.

  “Got an exfil plan?” Austin asks. Grief flashes across his features, but a moment later, he schools his face into a mask. “Ruiz can’t walk. Gil broke his leg when they captured us. And I don’t have long before I’m going to need medical.”

  With a grunt, I push up to sitting. “Roof. Give me a minute. I can help carry him.”

  “No. Fogerty and I can handle him.” With a nod at the other hostage, a thin, wiry man wearing a shell-shocked look on his face, Pritchard grabs a roll of duct tape from a duffel bag next to Gil’s body, pointedly not looking at the man his family adopted as a teenager, then proceeds to bind my shoulder.

  “Thanks.” I test my arm, finding it better than I expect, and stare at the man I just executed. His eyes are open and fixed on the ceiling. The bullet wound to his forehead is neat and clean, just a drop of blood around one edge and some burned and blackened skin. He looks...almost at peace. “We can’t leave his body here. You and Fogerty get Ruiz. I’ll take Gil.”

  Meeting Austin’s gaze, I wait for him to say something. Anything. I just killed his fucking brother. But then...I don’t know what the hell Gil did to Pritchard the week he held him prisoner.

  Finally, Austin claps a hand on my uninjured shoulder and squeezes. “I’m glad it was you, Trev. Anyone else...”

  “I know.” Anyone else would have done their job. Taken Gil in, let him disappear into the CIA’s worst-kept secret. Hell, that’s what I should have done too. Because now, anything Gil knew about the Loma Collectivo is gone. They’re a scourge on the Venezuelan people, kidnapping, terrorizing, and more. And we just lost our only link to their leader—Gil’s birth father, Jorge Sosa.

  “He didn’t want redemption.” Austin stumbles as he heads for Ruiz and Fogerty, but braces himself on one of the overturned desks, takes a shuddering breath, and then, with some effort, straightens. “You took his pain away.”

  God, I hope I did. That I didn’t just make the biggest mistake of my life. I fired the shot for Gil. For Austin. For Dani. But most of all, I did it for me. Because I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I hadn’t.

  Hauling Gil’s body in a fireman’s carry, I’m hyper-aware of the distinct lack of a heartbeat. And that I’m the one who killed him. I jerk my head towards the stairs. “Time to get the fuck out of here.”

  In more ways than one. As soon as we land back on United States soil, I’m turning in my resignation. I can’t take another life on order. Not after tonight. It would end me.

  Four Days Later

  Standing in front of my handler, Oliver, I adopt the standard at ease position, hands crossed behind my back, prepared for my dressing down.

  “You realize we’ll never get intel on the Loma Collectivo if we can’t detain one of their members, right?”

  “I’m aware, Ollie. Do you realize it was kill or be killed?”

  “You had a vest.”

  I roll my eyes. “And how often have we seen Kevlar fail? He could have tried to shoot me in the head. I made a decision. You weren’t there.”

  He sits back, steepling his fingers in front of him. “No, I wasn’t. But the two hostages you didn’t know gave me a pretty detailed account of how things went down. Pritchard backed you. Of course.”

  Shit.

  “Who are you going to trust? A banker and a contractor who were so scared they’d pissed themselves? Or me and Pritchard?” I reach into my jacket pocket for the envelope that’s weighed heavily there since I got dressed this morning. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.” Dropping the envelope in front of him, I swallow hard. “I’m out.”

  “What?”

  “I quit.” I turn to leave, not knowing what else to say.

  “Sit your ass down,” he snaps. When I do, he levels me with a hard stare, his dark brown eyes almost black. “You’re going to let this op be the end of your career? For fuck’s sake, Trevor. You’re the best damn SSO we have. You think on your feet like no one else I’ve trained in fifteen years, and you’re throwing it all away?”

  “I’m not ‘throwing it all away,’” I say, unable to keep the harsh edge from my voice. “I’m taking a path that doesn’t force me to choose between my best fucking friend and my country.”

  “This is a mistake.” Oliver shakes his head. “I won’t sign off on this.”

  “Then I’ll take it to Smythe. Because I can’t kill another person on orders. There’s too much blood in my ledger already, and Gil...shit. I know it was the right thing to do. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to sleep easy again. Ever.”

  Ollie stares at me like he doesn’t know who I am anymore, and he’s probably right. After all, I don’t know who I am.

  “Take a week to think this over, Trev. Please.”

  “Answer’s going to be the same. I wrote that letter before I left for Venezuela.” With a small shrug, I run a hand through my hair and wince as my stitches pull taut. “I’m done. Don’t try to delay the inevitable.”

  Picking up his desk phone, the man I’ve worked under for five years punches a four-digit number. “This is Senior SSO Oliver Benton. I need an SSO processed out. Trevor Moana. Do it today. He’ll be in your office within ten minutes.”

  The tension I’ve carried since leaving for Venezuela rushes out of me so completely, I’m surprised Ollie doesn’t hear the whoosh. “Thank you,” I say quietly as I push to my feet and offer Ollie my hand. “If there’d been any other way...”

  “There was,” he replies as his fingers tighten on mine. “I should have stopped you from going to Venezuela. I’m sorry, Trev.”

  “That wouldn’t have kept me here.” As I turn for the door, I blow out a deep breath. “You’d have needed to stop Gil from turning in the first place. Everyone dropped the ball on that one. But no one more than me.”

  The bar on the outskirts of Langley is quiet for a reason. Special soundproofing makes each booth practically a cocoon. Austin’s waiting for me when I arrive, a pint of beer cupped in his large hands.

  “You do it?” he asks after I give the bartender my order and slide in across from him.

  “Yep.”

  The man looks like he’s about to punch something. Or crumble into pieces. “I told Dani,” he says. “Some of i
t.”

  “Did you tell her why?” The bartender brings over a pint of pilsner, and I nod my thanks.

  “No. She doesn’t have a lot of memories of him. She should keep the good ones. Not the ones we...” Austin trails off, then rubs his fist against his heart. “All she knows is that you and I were injured in the same op that killed Gil. And that he died quickly. Mom and Dad…they don’t know either. We’re having a family memorial at the house next week. Nothing formal. If you can come…”

  “No.”

  “Trev—“

  I can’t be there. Can’t pretend I’m not the reason the whole family’s grieving. “I should have seen the signs. Done something sooner. He almost killed you.”

  Austin stares at his hands folded on the table as I look him up and down. He hid his pain from me until we got on the transpo out of Caracas. Gil broke two of his ribs, then tortured him with hundreds of shallow cuts to his torso the day before I flew in. No wonder his voice was so strained. I don’t know how he managed to stay upright.

  “We both should have. You’re…” Pain tightens small lines around his lips, and emotion churns in his eyes. “You’re practically family, Trevor. Shit. How many nights did you eat dinner at our house when we were in high school? You spent spring break with us every single year.”

  “And I’m the one who put a bullet in his brain.”

  Austin opens and shuts his mouth, then shakes his head. “Fine.”

  We sip our beers in silence until I can muster the courage to ask the one question I can’t get out of my head. “How’d Dani take it?”