Now that he was awake, he remembered why the nightmare been so vivid this time. It was exactly three years ago today since she had been taken from them. He and Zeke had celebrated the anniversary eve by getting wasted and not talking about it. Raoul still almost tore his buddy’s head off whenever he mentioned her name. In Raoul’s case, talking most definitely did not ease the pain. Instead, it just reinforced his devastating loss.
With a jackhammer beating away inside his skull, he got out of bed, opened a drawer, and took out the only thing he kept in it. The pink panties that Cantara had recklessly thrown at him on the day she did her striptease for him and Zeke. They were his talisman, his lucky charm, his remaining connection to the love of his life. Zeke tried all the time to get Raoul to move on with his life. To find someone new and start again, but Raoul couldn’t do it. There wasn’t another woman on the planet who could replace Cantara, or erase his guilt for letting her down. And for all his talk, Raoul knew Zeke felt the same way.
Besides, there was unfinished business they needed to attend to before they gave any thought to their long term future.
Levi, the man who had caused Cantara’s death by leaking word of her marriage to Raoul to the wrong people, had escaped from Israeli military detention and was still on the run. Raoul shook his head, mindless of the headache pounding at his temple. So much for Israeli swift and brutal punishment. They couldn’t even keep one man locked up. Someone had to have helped the guy, Raoul reasoned. Presumably the same people who persuaded him to turn traitor. He and Zeke needed to stop feeling sorry for themselves and assuage their guilt by finding the answers that continued to elude them. No more hanging out in Wyoming, waiting for something to happen. It was time to be proactive. They would exact justice for Cantara, cut down in her prime, when all she had wanted to do was make a difference to a troubled part of the world that she loved so much. It was the very least they could do to keep her memory alive.
Levi had left his wife and family and hadn’t been heard from since he went on the run. Allegedly. Raoul wasn’t sure he believed that, so it might be time to pay Mrs. Levi a personal visit and put some pressure on. He had people looking everywhere—places where the average citizen would never gain admittance—convinced Levi would surface eventually. But so far he hadn’t. It took money and influence to disappear completely when so many people wanted you found.
“We’ll get the bastard, babe,” he said, rubbing the panties against his cheek, convinced her perfume still lingered on them.
He replaced them carefully and wandered into his bathroom to splash water on his face before diving into the shower and turning the jets to freezing—a surefire hangover cure. He forced himself to endure the cold water cascading down on the top of his head for two minutes, distracting himself by recalling what had happened after Levi’s escape and Pool’s embarrassing efforts to save face. The man was a walking disaster area, Raoul thought as he gratefully shut off the faucet, stepped from the shower stall, and vigorously rubbed his limbs to install some warmth into them.
When it became apparent that nothing was being done to track down the people who had taken Cantara for fear of derailing the peace talks, such as they were, Raoul and Zeke became totally disillusioned. They decided they’d had enough of taking orders from incompetent men like Pool and that it was time to dish them out instead. They wanted out, and forced Pool’s hand to make it happen, even though they both officially had time to serve.
They left the army and set up the Clandestine Affairs Investigation Agency, which they ran from their high-tech ranch buried in the Wyoming countryside. It was manned by tough ex-forces guys for whom kicking butt was a way of life. Few people knew of the agency’s existence, and Raoul and Zeke were very selective about which assignments they took on.
Raoul didn’t need a shrink to tell him why he had decided to become an investigator. His operatives worked under the radar, obeying no one’s dictates other than those of their own consciences, delivering their own form of justice that didn’t allow the guilty to escape. The irony was that a lot of their assignments now came from the military hierarchy, who couldn’t be seen to get involved in sorting out their own screw-ups. Raoul took pleasure in charging top dollar to clean up after them.
He had managed to right no end of wrongs—except the one that mattered the most. Despite all the money and expertise he had thrown into the search, he still hadn’t found Levi.
But, he decided, his jaw jutting with determination—that was about to change.
Raoul pulled on his normal uniform of jeans and T-shirt and wandered into the kitchen, unsurprised to find that Zeke already had the coffee going. They had spent hours planning their retirement to Wyoming, Zeke’s home state, where he was brought up with the Arapahos. Cantara loved horses, so Zeke and Raoul bred horses, imagining Cantara there with them, black hair streaming out behind her as she galloped hell for leather across the endless plains of their ranch. She would have loved every minute of it.
She would never get to see it.
“Tough night, bud?” Zeke asked, pouring Raoul a cup of strong, black java.
“Yeah. You?”
Zeke nodded. “It don’t get any easier.”
“Tell me about it.” Raoul prowled around the spacious room, moody and restless, feeling like something significant was about to happen. “Where the fuck is Levi?” he asked.
Zeke didn’t answer, probably because it was a rhetorical question Raoul had asked dozens of times before that frustrated the hell out of them both. The sound of their private line ringing cut through the ensuing silence. Few people had that number, and when it rang it usually spelt trouble. Still, today of all days, trouble was what he was in the market for. Raoul, spoiling for a fight, pushed the button for the speaker phone.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Washington?”
Raoul exchanged a glance with Zeke, wondering if he was going insane, or if he was still dreaming. He had never expected to hear that voice again, mainly because he thought the man who owned it was too cowardly to speak to him. Not that Raoul had anything to say to the bastard, but still…