Into the Crossfire Read Online Free PDF Page A

clean, she was home safe and free.
    Setting her up in her new life with new ID had cost $10,000 and Sam had
    given her $5,000 in cash as start-up money.
    Nightingale, in her new home and new life, had joined dove, falcon, finch,
    flamingo, gull, heron, hummingbird, ibis, macaw and mockingbird in theirs so far
    this year. Eleven women and seven kids, safe, because Sam had been able to
    provide that safety.
    His clients funded it. They could all afford it.
    Sam opened the file on his ship-owner client and added $15,000 in
    expenses with a great deal of satisfaction. He'd saved the ship owner more than
    $10 million; the ship owner could fucking well give something back.
    Corporate America, via the US government, had spent millions of dollars
    training him, including SERE school. The US government had made him an expert
    at escape and evasion.
    It gave him enormous pleasure to make corporate America pay for the lost
    ones, the weak ones, the ones who slipped through the cracks, the ones no one
    cared about.
    Oh yeah, that felt good.
    Man, Nightingale had landed, scumbags were going to prison forever and
    he had a date with Nicole Pearce. All was right with the world.
    "Wow. Sam Reston, smiling. Jesus, break out the beer. What happened?
    You get word that Colonel Stewart got his balls caught in a thresher?" Colonel
    Roland Stewart, the sadistic son of a bitch who had been Sam's commanding
    officer for one and a half years of hell, had left a trail of hatred behind him as he
    slimed his way up the promotion ladder. Stewart getting his balls caught in a
    thresher would definitely qualify for a smile.
    "I wish. Son of a bitch's in the Pentagon now, balls secure."
    His other brother, Harry Bolt, placed two crutches against the wall and
    leaned his trembling right shoulder against the door of Sam's office. Sam watched
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    and said nothing. It had all been said before, over and over, loudly, by both Sam
    and Mike.
    Harry had no business trying to stand without crutches. He had no business
    standing at all, since the last orthopaedic surgeon had said he had to stay in the
    wheelchair for at least another month while his bones knitted.
    Harry was his own worst enemy. Sam had found him a small apartment in
    his own building in Coronado Shores so he could make sure Harry didn't do
    something terminally stupid.
    Harry had come back from Afghanistan with a broken body and demons in
    his head only whiskey and, lately, some jazz singer he listened to endlessly in the
    dark could keep at bay. He couldn't be trusted with his own health. The more the
    doctors told him to take it easy, the more he rebelled. He'd already fallen badly
    twice, setting his recovery back by months.
    Finally, in exasperation, Sam had asked him to come in to the office,
    simply so he could keep an eye on him. If Harry fell, at least Sam would be there
    to catch him.
    Reston Security was expanding fast and it sounded natural for Sam to say
    he needed a hand. But then Harry turned out to be more than just an extra pair of
    hands--he was an enormous asset to the company. He was better with computers
    than Sam, a goddamned genius actually, and he had more patience with dumb
    clients than Sam did, so he was seconded to the array of latest-generation
    computers in a quiet room off Sam's office and to the Asshole Client Detail.
    Harry tried looking nonchalant, bony shoulder pressed hard against the
    doorjamb for balance, but his legs were trembling.
    Sam knew better than to protest. His brother had a head as hard as the steel
    that held his hip, right thigh and left shoulder together.
    Harry ragging on him was brand new, though. Maybe it meant he was
    healing some. He'd come back from Afghanistan with barely a pulse, and had
    completely lost his sense of humor.
    Sam and Mike were Harry's only family, down in Harry's file as the persons
    to contact in case of death. When Sam and Mike had flown to Ramstein to take
    him home, Harry had been more dead than alive.
    Worse than the