Hangman (Jason Trapp: Origin Story Book 1) Read online

  And perhaps more pertinently, did she want to hear it?

  Trapp came back upstairs about half an hour later, his cheeks reddened from manual labor, but not dark enough to indicate that it was truly taxing. He grinned at Shea, and she reflected that it was probably the most honest sign of enthusiasm she’d seen from him yet. He wore it well.

  “You mind if I wash up?” he asked, indicating the basin behind the bar.

  “Be my guest.”

  Shea picked up the card that Mike Lee from Atlanta Life had left behind. She spun it in her fingers as droplets of water splattered the metal sink. She watched as Trapp grabbed a rag and dried his hands. “So you’re taking the job?”

  He grinned and gave her a look that was a little shy of a wink. “Just till Independence Day. After that, no promises. Oh, and he wants me to build a seating area out back…”

  “Fair’s fair,” she said. She found herself hoping that he stuck around after that, no matter what she’d said outside. He had an easy smile and a way with words, when he bothered to use them, and anyway, a fresh face was as good as gold dust out here. Besides, she knew Lenny’s plans for the lot behind the bar, and they’d take more than a couple of weeks for one man to fulfil.

  He squinted, eyes drawn to her hand. “What’s that?”

  Shea kept her voice even but trained her attention on him. “Guy came by looking for you. Left his card.”

  He was startled, she saw. But not guarded. That was interesting, too. Whoever Mike Lee was, Jason had no idea. Or he was a damn good liar, and Shea trusted enough in her ability to read people that she was pretty sure that wasn’t the case.

  Don’t let me down, Jason.

  “You sure?” he said in a voice of utter bafflement. “For me?”

  “Unless you have a twin you didn’t tell me about?”

  Trapp shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

  There was something in that look, Shea saw. Something she couldn’t quite read. Sadness? Anger?

  She handed over the business card, and Trapp squinted at it. “Atlanta Life? What the heck is that? He say why he wanted me?”

  “Something about an insurance payout. You expecting one?”

  He really has no idea what this is, Shea knew. He wasn’t running from something he hadn’t told her about. Or if he was, he was in the dark just as sure as she was.

  “Insurance?” He shook his head. “Never owned a policy. Except for the bike, and I treat her like a firstborn child.”

  “Did Lenny say he needed you today?” Shea asked, throwing a curveball.

  It took Trapp a couple of seconds to recalibrate. “No, why?”

  “Listen,” Shea said slowly, weighing up the options and coming down on Trapp’s side. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this guy, all right? Like he’s a scam artist, or something. Do you trust me on that?”

  Trapp shrugged, still a pace behind. “Sure. You haven’t given me a reason not to.”

  “Good. Give me your keys, then head out back. There’s an alley runs behind the bar. Head out right, and it’ll take you to the end of the block. I’ll meet you there.”

  He cocked his head at that, and Shea noted with wry amusement that he truly was protective over his baby. “You know how to drive?” he asked cautiously.

  “Sure.” Shea grinned. “Can’t be much different from a push bike, can it?”

  “Don’t do that to me, Shea. You sure all this is necessary?”

  “Like I said, guy gave me the creeps. Maybe he really is from some insurance company. But if he is, you’ve got his card. A couple hours won’t make a blind bit of difference here or there.”

  Trapp shot her a thumbs-up. “Okay. You’re the boss.”

  13

  Wearing a pair of slate gray cargo pants, already dirtied at the knees after several days spent on all fours measuring up lumber for Lenny’s outside bar, topped with a slightly sweaty polo neck, Trapp didn’t exactly fit the bill of a regular library user.

  Then again, he mused as he stepped out of the roiling heat of a late afternoon in Texas and into a retail unit that looked like it had once housed a home video rental store, it was entirely possible that the little town of Goodmorning didn’t get many of those. Even the woman behind the reception desk looked up with surprise on her face as he entered.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  He stepped toward her, belatedly smoothing errant strands of damp hair in an attempt to make himself presentable. The heat inside wasn’t helping his body temperature any; the wall-mounted air conditioner was ancient and groaned as it struggled mightily to hold back the inevitable.

  “I hope so, Mrs.”—his eyes dropped to the nameplate on her desk—“Vickers. I was wondering –”

  “It’s Ms.”

  Trapp frowned, taking the woman in properly for the first time. She looked to be in her early 60s, was wearing what appeared to be most of a bale of purple curtain material and had one of those haircuts that stops at the jawbone and curls inwards. “I’m… I’m sorry?”

  “It’s Ms. Vickers, young man. And I’m not asking you to be sorry, just to be accurate.”

  Trapp concealed a smile at the woman’s demeanor. He was used to that kind of prickliness; it was the calling card of more middle-aged Army captains than he cared to remember, men whose careers had stopped advancing many years back, and who were beginning to recognize it. And women too, it seemed.

  “I will take that under advisement,” he agreed with an amiable smile. “I was hoping I might be able to use the computer over there.”

  Ms. Vickers’ nose crinkled. “Do you have a library card?”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I’m just… Well, I was passing through. Now I guess I’m sticking around. For the time being, at least.”

  The revelation didn’t appear to mollify the librarian. “Where?”

  “With the sheriff, ma’am.”

  “Another stray…” she murmured, either not realizing she was talking out loud or not caring. “I’m afraid if you don’t have a library card, I can’t help you.”

  Trapp shot her his best impression of a winning smile. “Maybe we can come to an arrangement?”

  “I don’t think so. No card, no access. Those are the rules.”

  “Hear me out,” he ventured. She looked like she wanted to object but didn’t, so he took his chance and pointed at the air conditioner. “Must get pretty hot in here, right?”

  “It certainly does,” she huffed. “I’ve been asking the county for a new one for, oh, two years now. That… sound is driving me insane.”

  “How about I take a look at it?” Trapp suggested. “If I get it working properly, I get an hour of screen time. Deal?”

  Ms. Vickers grimaced and stayed silent for so long Trapp began to wonder whether his proposition had simply short-circuited her operating system.

  “Well, it’s not in the rules…” she said with the tone of a woman who was looking for a way to make it work.

  “Do they say you can’t?” Trapp asked.

  “Well, no…”

  “It’s a deal then.” He grinned. His eyes dropped back to the desk and slid right toward a stack of notepads adorned with the logo of a pet shelter that sat next to a half-empty donation box. “And how about I sweeten it up and take one of those off your hands?”

  The woman’s demeanor finally—and decisively—softened. “Well, okay then. They are five dollars.”

  Gotcha.

  He handed over ten and told her to keep the change. “You have a dog?” he asked as she handed it over, throwing in a spare pen.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, the words positively gushing out of her now. “Maisie’s my world. The good Lord only knows what I’d be like without her.”

  Trapp agreed, yet again concealing a smile. He couldn’t imagine it either—and didn’t want to. “Let’s hope nobody ever has to find out.”

  The fix for the air conditioner was easy and quick, as he’d suspected it might be. The fan was clo
gged with a decade’s worth of fluff and dust, and once it was cleared away the machine purred away with almost as much gusto as its prime beneficiary, whose opinion of a sweaty young man had been entirely turned on its head.

  He sat in front of the computer, logged on with the details from a slip of paper that Ms.—now “call me Muriel”—Vickers handed over, and waited for the banshee-like squeal of the dial-up modem to fade, indicating that he had access to the Internet. He hoped that the connection would at least be faster than those he’d been burdened with on deployment, on the occasion he made it back to one of the larger bases.

  It wasn’t.

  Trapp pulled up a search box and typed in his query. Odysseus Private Security.

  It was fishing with a giant trawler net rather than a single line, but he wanted to get the lay of the land before he dug into the detail. He didn’t doubt that he would surface more than his share of jellyfish so long as he landed a tuna.

  A familiar row of dark blue links filled the screen as the page loaded from top to bottom.

  ODYSSEUS LANDS $67 MILLION ARMY SUPPLY CONTRACT

  VIOLENCE FALLING IN ERBIL, DOD SAYS ODYSSEUS TO THANK

  GREEN ZONE SECURITY HANDED TO ODYSSEUS

  The news stories were largely from the previous twelve months and spoke of a defense contractor that was on an almost unprecedented tear of success. There was nothing unusual about that, of course. After all, the US military was entering the second year of its war of occupation in Iraq. As Trapp was getting ready to leave, it had been obvious that contracts were being handed out right, left and center, in some—perhaps even most—cases with precious little oversight.

  But it looked like things had heated up even since he’d left the service. Odysseus was getting the pick of the reconstruction projects, everything from building US bases to providing chow to the troops. The really profitable contracts though, Trapp knew, were the security ones. Highly paid mercenaries—though they preferred to refer to themselves as private military contractors. That was where the margin was.

  He scribbled several pages of notes, taking down the name of every reporter’s byline, and every quoted DOD official. A guy called Dawes came up a few times, but that probably didn’t mean much of anything. There was no real method to his madness, just a sense in his gut that something wasn’t right. Maybe the details would come together in his head, and maybe they wouldn’t.

  What he planned to do if they did was even more amorphous, and that was probably ascribing to it a greater solidity then was truly warranted. But Trapp’s past had been chasing him for the previous five months, across twice that many states.

  It was time he dealt with it.

  “Bastards,” he growled under his breath—or so he thought.

  “Everything okay, sweetie?” Muriel called from behind her desk and the crossword she was busily filling out. “If the computer’s not working, I’ll have to call my son. I’m no good with the darn things.”

  “It’s just fine, Ms. Vickers,” he replied, turning and shooting her a half-felt smile. “Just clearing my throat.”

  “It’s the dry air.” She nodded knowingly. “Make sure you’re keeping yourself hydrated, dear.”

  Now she really did sound like an officer, Trapp thought. He smiled once more and turned back to the screen, rubbing the strain out of his eyes. He thought back to that night in the desert. His throat had been dry then, too, the air carrying no more moisture at two a.m. than it did at noon. He’d pulled a four-hour lookout duty that night, from oh dark to 0400, and the tension had nearly killed him, like it always did.

  There was something unnatural about being awake when your buddies were asleep. Every shadow in the distance, every scrape of a desert rodent looked and sounded like a threat a hundred times the size.

  And it wasn’t like there was no justification for the clawing, scratching ball of anxiety that pitted his stomach on nights like those. When the insurgents weren’t using the cover of darkness to mine the roads with IEDs, they discovered it also offered the perfect opportunity to lob a half dozen mortar shells over the walls, or fire a few hopeful sniper shots at whoever was standing post.

  Lucky for him, they couldn’t shoot for shit.

  Then.

  But they were practicing. His helmet bore a deep score that was proof of that.

  That was when he saw the truck. It was a standard five-ton transporter painted in desert camo, complete with canvas sides. Probably Army surplus, picked up by Odysseus on the cheap. Or maybe whoever was handing out the contracts threw in the trucks to sweeten the deal. That was way above Trapp’s pay grade.

  That night, like every other, Sgt. Jason Trapp was paid to look out the wire, not in. But that was what made the sight so surprising. A crew of half a dozen Odysseus contractors, mercenary types, not cooks, were gearing up to leave the safety of the operating post. They were real cowboys, complete with ripped-off sleeves that his staff sgt. would have chewed him out over, and mirrored sunglasses perched atop their buzz cuts, no matter the fact that it was four hours till dawn.

  He’d run it up the chain of command, and by the staff sgt. in question, who just shrugged his shoulders and grumbled, “If they wanna get their asses shot off, they can be my guest” before rolling back over and falling into unconsciousness.

  By noon the next day, the contractors were nowhere to be seen, but nearly 100 pissed-off locals turned up at the post’s gates demanding justice for a family of five, executed while they slept. Though they’d been awake for the worst of it. He knew that much.

  Trapp’s fingers quivered over the mouse as he tried to clear the memories from his mind. He could still taste the thick, unguent filth of the burn barrels at the back of his tongue, hear trucks rumbling in the distance, and the groan of HVAC units struggling with the desert’s relentless heat.

  He’d never looked for evidence about what happened that night, didn’t want to know what he might find. But he’d seen the aftermath, sent with the rest of his platoon to pull security at the site. The captain told the locals that his boys had nothing to do with it but paid the blood money anyway. It was like an insurance policy. Maybe a thousand bucks would stop them blowing up a supply convoy.

  Probably not.

  But a wad of greenbacks was cheaper than a Humvee worth of death benefits and a lifetime of disability payouts for the poor dumb bastard who survived, and cash was thrown around like candy in post-war Iraq anyway. It didn’t cost the captain nothing. He probably didn’t even have to fill out a form.

  He searched the date and location. Ramadi, 15 August, 2004.

  The blue links took even longer to appear this time as the modem near his knee warbled its wretched ballad. Trapp blinked, and a droplet of sweat fell onto the desk in front of him. As his eyes closed, he saw a room painted with blood, and the broken, stained body of a little girl, his mind supplying the images far faster than any phone line could.

  “Bastards.”

  He said it too quietly to attract attention this time, but had Muriel Vickers heard, the pain in his voice would have been unmistakable.

  Trapp blinked, clearing moisture from his eyes that hadn’t yet formed a full tear, and focused on the screen. He clicked the topmost link, only belatedly realizing that it was in French when he saw the Agence France-Presse icon above the article. He tried hitting the back button, but the page wasn’t done loading, and the Internet browser hung, its tiny mind split between two competing instructions.

  The computer’s fan whirred a little louder as it struggled to work through the backlog, but Trapp didn’t hear it. His eyes fixated on a single image just below the headline. It depicted a man in desert fatigues, wearing wraparound mirrored sunglasses and a thick ginger beard that hung so low it obscured some of the heavily-modded M4 carbine clutched to his chest. The beard was tapered to a point with a thin black scrunchie.

  He knew that man.

  Not by name, but he’d seen him before. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, but that was no surprise. Th
e mercenaries never did. They took their cue from the look favored by special forces, but invariably without bothering to crib from their role models either skill or honor.

  Trapp’s eyes found the photo’s caption without surprise. He didn’t know what most of the French words meant, but “Odysseus” was written in English, complete with quotation marks.

  But what the hell were they doing there?

  He scribbled another note.

  The computer finally executed his earlier instruction, and he found himself back at the search results page. He scanned through another half dozen articles without learning anything new. An Iraqi family had died, riddled with lead. That wasn’t news, not by the standards of the brutal Iraqi insurrection. The fact that a little girl had died wasn’t news either. Her, and a hundred just like her.

  And that was probably just that month.

  What had probably attracted the attention of the AFP reporter was that the victims were the family of the local police chief. And the chief himself, of course. He was a big, pot-bellied man, Trapp remembered. They’d found him stripped naked on a wooden chair, hands tied behind his back, rivulets of blood running from open wounds cut all across his body, and a single red hole between his eyes.

  But Odysseus had been there too, Trapp now knew. It looked like some kind of cleanup team, from the photo—but why? The captain had already paid the relatives off. Distasteful—reprehensible—as it was, the blood money was a full-service kind of deal. It salved some officer’s conscience and paid the funeral costs, all in one easy payment. That was American efficiency right there.

  So why—?

  But Trapp knew the answer to that, didn’t he? He’d watched the Odysseus truck roll out the wire the night before the bodies were found. He’d reported it and been ignored. And he had probably always known what had happened.

  Just not why.

  That part still wasn’t clear. What possible motive could a military contractor have to murder a family of Iraqis? Why take the risk of leaving the operating base at night, waiving the Army’s protection? There was a reason patrols didn’t go out at night unless they were loaded for bear. It was a death wish.