have your hooks in her.”
Sandman smothered his reaction to the sound of her name. There was no room for weakness in UI, not even in this small observation room with a tech expert. Everything was noted and analyzed for the ultimate preservation of Messenger and UI.
This was a c oincidence, nothing more. Galloway wasn’t referring to the Renata that Sandman knew. No . He would not believe it. The Renata he knew was too wild, too pampered, and far too precious to have gotten tangled up with Messenger.
He turned to Tisdale. “Pictures.” He forced the word past the dry lump in his throat.
“ Coming up now.”
Sandman couldn’t breathe as candid shots of Renata – his Renata – popped up and filled the monitor. There were shots of her alone, with Galloway, with other men and women in both professional and casual settings.
As much as he wanted it to be someone else, it was her. Could Galloway’s outlandish theory be true? He refused to believe it. This couldn’t be happening.
This just got too personal and UI agents weren’t allowed to have personal lives. Connections from the past were never tolerated.
“ If you give me the location of your hostage,” Messenger said, his voice almost friendly, “I can give you options.”
Galloway ’s sneer faded to something closer to curiosity. “What kind of options?”
No . It was eerily similar to his first meeting with Messenger years ago. His blood slogged through his ears as the memory rushed to the front of his mind.
One day he ’d been having a picnic with Renata, the next he was in a sniper’s nest providing cover for the team on the ground in a hot, dusty desert. Two days after that he was on the wrong side of what had suddenly become an unauthorized kill.
Messenger had shown up at the base and methodically reviewed the mountain of evidence against him. From an unfavorable psych profile he’d never seen to statements from the ground team that they’d never been in danger. No one cared about his differing perspective from the nest. There was no mention of the original order and no one could find any mention of the go-order telling him to take the shot. The communications records had been corrupted beyond recovery. It had been clear a court martial would not go his way.
Eventually the man in the gray suit had extended an offer to join a developmental team, a covert program that would use his sniper skills for the honorable cause of national security. He wouldn’t be a Marine, but his life wouldn’t be a waste. All he had to do was abandon everything he’d known, everything he’d been and volunteer to become someone else – someone better according to the propaganda.
Galloway started talking, but it was only more bullshit. Sandman would not stand by quietly and watch Messenger bring a treacherous mercenary like Galloway into the UI system. He pulled out his phone and sent a text message to Messenger, then watched through the one-way glass as the head of UI reacted.
“ Wait here,” Messenger said, cutting short Galloway’s rambling.
The prisoner made a smug sound that crawled under Sandman ’s skin, exacerbating the pressure building inside him. “Send everything you have on Galloway and the hostage to my phone,” Sandman barked at Tisdale.
“ Sure thing.”
Finally, M essenger left the interrogation room.
Sandman waited another two seconds. “Turn off anything that’s recording in there,” he said.
“ But –”
Sandman had one hand on the door handle. “Do it.” He jerked open the door, cleared the hall and ducked into the interrogation room.
He didn ’t much care if Tisdale did record what he was about to do. They’d tasked him with a hostage rescue and damn it, he was going to make sure the mission stayed a rescue.
Galloway, the arrogant bastard, didn’t even turn around. “That was fast.”
Sandman stepped up behind him and slammed the man’s head against the table. Blood spurted from the resulting gash in his
Longarm, the Bandit Queen