Hot Target Read Free Page B

infinitive-splitting profanity and done that little verb switcheroo. Cosmo couldn’t blame them. It made for higher drama.
    He himself was partially to blame, because he’d never bothered to correct it.
    The op in question had happened years ago, early in his career. SEAL Team Sixteen had been sent to a terrorist hotbed of a country known as “the Pit.” In the mountains up north, two warring factions had been duking it out, and someone in a remote little village had pissed off one of the warlords, who had wreaked that terrible havoc.
    The SEALs’ orders had been to escort negotiators into the mountains, to help get talks started to end the bloodshed, and to keep other villagers in the area safe.
    Several of the officers were given an order—to locate the warlord’s encampment. A squad had left to do just that.
    Cosmo, though, had helped handle the cleanup. Even though it was winter, something had to be done about the dozens of bodies lying in the village square.
    He’d done some crap jobs in his life, but that one had been the worst. It made yesterday’s garbage chute seem like a picnic in the park with Nicole Kidman.
    And
Renée Zellweger.
    “The theory is that he discovered the location of the warlord’s camp,” Collins told Vlachic now.
    By
he
he meant Cosmo, who now surrendered. He sat down in Mikey’s office chair, put his head back and his feet up, and closed his eyes. This was going to take a while.
    “No one remembers seeing him at the briefing,” Collins continued, “but he could have been listening outside of the tent. During the night, it’s said that he went into the mountains and paid that warlord a little visit. And instead of negotiating a meeting, the next morning those diplomats ended up helping load up a hundred more body bags. That warlord and most of his men were dead.”
    “And everyone’s certain it was Chief Richter?” Vlachic questioned.
    “No,” Collins said. “But apparently he was unaccounted for that night—just short of UA. And—if he was doing something else, why doesn’t he talk about it and end the speculation, huh?”
    Because what he’d done one night, all those years ago, was no one’s freaking business. Cosmo almost got up and said it aloud as he walked out into the hall. But he stayed seated. Vlachic was a good kid. It would embarrass him to be caught gossiping this way.
    Collins, however, was one of those cocky young officers that the chiefs prayed would either move quickly into the civilian sector or grow up—preferably
before
he got someone killed.
    “And,” Collins continued, “get this: a SEAL name of Hoskins—he’s no longer with the Teams, but he hangs out sometimes at the Ladybug Lounge, so you can ask him yourself—he says he spotted the chief around dawn, heading toward the river to get cleaned up because his uniform was covered with blood. And Bill Silverman—you’ve met him, right? He heard one of the village elders thanking Cos, like ‘I can never repay you for what you have done.’ ”
    “Shit,” Vlachic said, the word filled with meaning.
    “Yeah,” Collins responded. “But seeing as how it brought peace to the region, at least until a new warlord moved in . . .”
    Their voices faded as they finally moved off down the corridor.
    “Do you think he did it?” Cosmo heard Vlachic ask. “Killed all those men?”
    He couldn’t hear Collins’s reply.
    He waited until he heard the door closing down at the end of the hall. He reached for his sunglasses as he got to his feet. “Free at last.” It was little more than an exhale, barely audible and certainly not meant to be overheard.
    “Are you?” a voice asked. It was female and faintly Hispanic, and he recognized right away that it belonged to Sister Mary Grace, the youngest of his three nuns.
    Despite that, it took everything he had to keep himself from jumping. How was it possible that he hadn’t heard her approach?
    The sky outside the window was overcast, but he put his