Protecting Dallas

Kane hissed through clenched teeth and shifted uncomfortably. The movement was subtle, but there.

“I noticed,” Dietz went on. “Not them, though. Just me.” He shrugged. “It’s the only reason you’re still alive. The only reason I even came here. In fact—”

“Did you hurt my brother?”

Dallas’s words came out deadly calm. But there was an underlying tension though, a sense that at any point her resolve could break.

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

Karl Dietz lowered his chin to his chest. His expression softened. He looked troubled.

Dallas edged closer. She knelt down, squatting until her face was mere inches from his. The arm still holding the glass of water was trembling.

“I said,” she growled, “do you know who—”

“HOLD HOLD HOLD…”

Austin flew into the kitchen, surprising us all. He had both hands held outward, looking rushed, hurried. He didn’t even bother to close the door behind him.

“Stop,” he said. “Everyone just stop.”

He pulled out his knife. I watched as he approached our captive, sitting in his chair…

With one swift movement he sawed through the zip-ties, cutting them off. The man in the middle of our kitchen began rubbing his wrists.

“Trust me,” said Austin, as he sheathed his blade. “Dietz is okay.”

Fifty-Seven

DALLAS

I wasn’t sure what was going on, where Austin had come from, or how things had gotten to this point. There was only one thing I was sure of, however.

The man in our kitchen looked pissed.

“Got anything other than water?” he grunted, still holding my towel against his mouth. Maddox went to the fridge and returned with a beer. Dietz took it without thanking him, twisting the cap off in one big hand.

Everyone else remained standing, while the others greeted Austin in turn. When he reached me, I gave him the biggest hug I could manage.

“Everything alright?”

He nodded and smiled. “Yeah. Better than alright.”

My body relaxed just the tiniest bit. That was good news at least.

“Who’s talking first?” Kane asked, arms folded. “Seems we don’t have much time.”

“You don’t,” Dietz confirmed. “So… me.”

He lowered his bottle to the table. Half the beer was gone already. He sucked in a long breath, then launched into his story right away.

“It all started about two years ago…”

The stranger in our kitchen talked, and the four of us listened. Most of what he said at first was military jargon; stuff I could only marginally understand. The gist of it was he’d fallen in with some bad people. Or rather, fallen in was a bad word. He’d inserted himself into something in order to gain trust and intelligence, at the behest of one of his commanding officers.

And then halfway through it… that commanding officer had been killed.