Absolution Read Free Page A

his palm brushing over the healed craniotomy site at the base of his skull. That inconvenient surgery had kept him sidelined while Tehrazzi made his flight into the mountains of Afghanistan. Now, Luke was more than ready to get over there and finish what he’d started all those years ago during the Russian-Afghan war in the name of defending democracy for the CIA.
    If only the Agency would let him get back to doing what he did best instead of gumming up the whole operation with enough red tape to gift wrap the Statue of Liberty. First it’d been because they wouldn’t give him medical clearance to go into the field. Once he’d cleared that hurdle, it was because they hadn’t signed off on the team he wanted. A former Green Beret named Davis was still over in A-11

    Kaylea Cross

    stan working his magic, infiltrating the tiny villages and getting cozy with the warlords to garner new intelligence. Right now, that was the only part Luke felt good about. If anyone could find out what Tehrazzi was up to, it was Davis. He was the best at counter insurgency that Luke had ever seen during his career in Special Ops.
    The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight, officially making it Boxing Day. Luke glanced around his spartan living room with a sigh.
    Not that yesterday had resembled anything close to Christmas. On the few occasions he came home during the holidays, he never bothered with a tree or lights. What was the point? It only reminded him he was alone, and by choice.
    This year, he didn’t even have a Christmas card sitting on his mantel. For the first time in over two decades, his ex-wife hadn’t sent him one. And she hadn’t returned his calls. He’d phoned her twice to find out if she was okay after her sudden departure from Vancouver when he’d come out of recovery, and left a message the last time. Nada. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit. She was responsible for a good percentage of the current tension in his gut. Luke set the pistol on the coffee table and sank onto the couch to open the laptop screen. Yep, quite a life he’d carved out for himself. He’d spent most of his days tracking down terrorists in every war-torn and backward country on the planet, first as a SEAL
    officer, and later in the shadowy realm of CIA paramilitary ops and contract work. He’d faced death more times than he could count, and taken more lives than he cared to remember. At this point, he didn’t care if he bought it on the next mission so long as he got Tehrazzi in the process. With everything he’d gone through in his life, it would be a relief for the pain to stop. Unless he went to hell.
    12

    Absolution

    Then his suffering would go on forever.
    If hell existed, he’d more than earned an eternity of torture and misery there. Though he doubted the devil could do much worse to him than he’d inflicted upon himself over his lifetime. If what he’d done in the name of duty didn’t earn him a place in the underworld once he croaked, he always had the trump card of abandoning his wife and young son all those years ago. That knowledge never went away, no matter what he did. It stayed buried in his heart like a razor blade.
    Christ, it was a miracle he’d been invited to his son’s wedding a month ago, and wouldn’t have been if he and Rayne hadn’t tried patching the cracks and fissures in their relationship—if someone could call it that—six months ago. On his way to the Baton Rouge airport Luke had almost turned around on the freeway and gone home. Would have been safer for everyone if he had. In the middle of a dance with Emily, the first time he’d touched her in over a decade, his head injury had finally taken its toll and landed him flat on his back in the middle of the dance floor. Out cold, and they’d dragged him off to the hospital. One brain surgery later, and voila, he was good as new.
    Absently he toyed with the St. Christopher medallion hanging from a gold chain around his neck. Em had