Echoes Read online

  They hadn’t worked together immediately, at first intermittently crossing paths, but later they went on same missions several times, even ending up on the same bodyguard detail in the Middle East as their agencies sometimes worked together.

  He couldn’t say when it really happened, but over the next couple of years they’d become friends. Friends of a sort, anyway. Ryan had never been one to make many friends for a long time, and certainly none close. It was better that way. Aaron, just as quiet, just as thoughtful, never asked questions unless it was necessary. They understood each other.

  Aaron finally stopped working for others and set up his own security business.

  On a particular bloody mission, in the aftermath of a fight, with bodies on the ground and his team sweeping through the gully, there came a minute, a spilt second in time, that Ryan knew he was close to crossing a line. As the prisoners knelt down in surrender, he looked down at the leader, knew he was wanted alive for information, but his finger tightened on the trigger, went white. The need to shoot, to end his miserable life, then kill the rest was very near, very real. These prisoners, these scum who had killed so many, protected the worst of the worst, callously killed children, men, women - it didn’t matter who, they’d leaked information that had cost lives and now they knelt there, still alive, probably already getting ready to yammer about rights and shit when innocent people had died by their very hands. He’d always figured they were better off dead, but for a few brief seconds as he’d stood there in the hot night, the scent of dust and blood in the air, death hovering, a red haze had slipped over his eyes, seeped through him, the killer he’d become rising slowly to see these people in a new light. He actually contemplated it, thought how easy it would be to walk up to each and every person, male and female, and simply put a hole in their brains and rid the world of their murdering, vicious souls. He’d actually been getting ready, bringing up his gun, but at that precise second his commander had walked directly in front of him speaking on a communication device, and that brief flash of camouflage combat clothes, the voice, the orders, had snapped through the red haze, made him blink and realise what he’d nearly done, of the line he’d nearly crossed to killer. That he didn’t have far to step was a cold truth he accepted. He’d killed on orders, was one of the best snipers, had stealth and cold control on his side, but he acted under orders. There was no order to kill the prisoners, no need, but he’d been so close, so very close to doing it anyway.

  For the rest for that hellish time he’d worked on automatic in that gully, done as ordered, did his job thoroughly as always, but after that mission he resigned from the agency, simply walked away from it all and knocked on Aaron’s door looking for a job.

  The rest, as they said, was history.

  He’d been as at peace as he ever would be, though there was still an empty place in his heart, a place he never looked at, never probed for fear of disturbing the echoes that could so easily rise up to torment him. He’d locked the door on those memories a long time ago, and until recently those echoes had never sounded.

  “So,” Edward said cheerfully, “thought anymore about transferring across to us?”

  “No,” Ryan replied.

  “No, you haven’t thought about it, or no, you don’t want to?”

  “The last one.”

  “You have no idea what you’re missing.”

  Ryan was settled with no intention of leaving Wells Security.

  “The sheilas dig Federal Police. It’s the ‘federal’ part, the rep. And our uniforms. I can get you a real sweet uniform.”

  Ryan gazed levelly at him.

  “Just sayin’.” Edward held up his hands.

  Aaron arched an eyebrow at him. “If you’ve finished trying to poach my second-in-command, can we get down to why you’re here?’

  “God, you’re so touchy when it comes to your precious kids.”

  Aaron smiled slightly.

  Knowing full well that Edward hadn’t come here to shoot the shit, Ryan kept his attention on the fed cop.

  Growing serious, Edward took a file off the desk and flicked it open. “I’ve already been through this with Aaron, and we decided you needed to be brought up to speed. You’ve heard of the lawyer caught with underage girls.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s not the only one in that deviant club. In fact, he’s the second person caught. The first was a psychiatrist, very wealthy, very respected.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “Each time we’ve been tipped off. We’ve tried to catch these bastards, been watching but unable to discover all the members and nail them until we got these tip-offs. We’ve been trying to catch every man and woman in that damned club, but no one talks. It’s one of the best secret societies we’ve come across and believe me, we’ve come across a few. These members are wealthy, have high contacts, and a couple we suspect are high up in government. And you know where money is involved, a lot of people will look the other way.”

  Nothing new about that observation. Ryan patiently waited.

  “We’ve gone through the backgrounds of these two, their clients, everything. We discovered one couple who saw both the lawyer and psychiatrist. Another couple were represented by both the lawyer and psychiatrist.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “But we don’t think they’re the ones.” Edward looked down at the open file. “We cross-checked quite a few things. Interestingly, one person seems to just pop up now and again.”

  “You found the suspected informer.”

  “Could be.” Edward handed the file to Ryan. “What can you tell us about Ella Attwood?”

  What the hell? Ella? Only his iron control prevented Ryan from revealing shock.

  He regarded the contents of the file. Inside were a typed report, notes, and several photos. Slowly he reached out, lifted each photo, studied them. Ella on a dark street, entering a pub he recognised immediately, on a mobile, going into her place of work for night shift, coming and going from her house. Going to the airport.

  “She’s under surveillance?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You bugged her phone?”

  “No landline. Her mobile is basic conversation, nothing incriminating. If she’s using a burner we haven’t yet found it.”

  “You think she’s involved with this club? No.”

  “Not as a member, no, just as a person of interest.”

  Closing the file, Ryan placed it on the desk. “And you’re showing me this, why?”

  Leaning back in the chair, Edward regarded him coolly. “You have past links with this woman. I thought you’d be likely to know what she’s thinking, if she’d be capable of this.”

  “Of what?” It clicked. “Being the informer?”

  “Yes.”

  Not the Ella he’d known. Sweet Ella with her love of life. Sweet Ella with her kindness, her gentle ways. But it had been a long time, a lot had happened, and the woman he’d met several times in the last week was a long way from the woman he’d loved.

  Still loved.

  A wisp of thought, an insubstantial emotion that was immediately slammed down.

  “It was a long time ago,” Ryan said evenly.

  “No chance, you think?” Edward eyed him shrewdly.

  “A lot has happened to her.”

  “Yes, it has.”

  “How is she linked to these criminals?”

  “The lawyer and the psychiatrist.” When Ryan didn’t blink, he continued, “The lawyer represented her, was supposed to do his best to get the men who stabbed her, broke her leg, and left her on the side of the road to die, the longest gaol term he could. He did a shonky job, the worst job you could imagine, almost impossible for such a prestigious, well-known lawyer.”

  Even though he’d read about the attack, it didn’t stop Ryan’s fingers from pressing deeper into his thighs, his blood surging up to rush through his ears though his face remained blank.

  “The men,” Edward continued, “who did so much
damage to her she had to have a hysterectomy. That’s a lot for a young woman, any woman, to bear. The chance to procreate denied to her, the suffering she endured while lying on the side of the road until someone stopped to help her. The psychiatrist she saw after the attack and trusted, but the way he portrayed her in court was a subtle but unmistakeable twist on her thoughts and emotions of the time. Between the lawyer and psychiatrist, and someone higher up the chain pulling some strings, those men got a reduced sentence. This hints that they, too, may be involved somehow in the club.”

  He couldn’t get personally to the men who’d hurt his Ella, but there were ways to see justice done inside a gaol. There was only one huge bloody problem, and that was the fact that if those men got shanked by an inmate, the story would kick up again and Ella’s name would be right at the top, which would mean hounding by journalists all wanting an interview, throwing her right into not only the spotlight to relive everything, but also a possible investigation and putting her right in the crosshairs of dangerous people looking for an informer.

  His hands were bloody tied. But he could do something, and that was protect her as much as he could from whatever shit she might have dug herself into. He’d give his life for her without a second thought.

  “Now, do you think she’d be capable of finding information on the lawyer and psychiatrist and feeding it to us?” Edward asked.

  “If she is the informer, isn’t that a good thing for you?”

  Thoughtfully, Edward rubbed his jaw as he studied Ryan.

  Yeah, the fed might be all jolly, might be Aaron’s friend, might joke and be a total dick at times, but he wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t risen through the AFP ranks by being dim-witted. Jolly Edward was sharp, ruthless when required, and saw a hell of a lot more than people gave him credit.

  “Yes,” he replied. “It helps us, has helped us. But she’s putting herself right into the middle of an investigation, putting herself in the middle of a danger I don’t think she realises, if she is, indeed, our informer. And if she is, then she may know more that we need to know now.”

  “I knew her a long time ago, things have changed. I don’t know if she could be your informer or not,” Ryan said honestly.

  “You’ve been at her house a couple of times recently.”

  That didn’t surprise Ryan. If the feds had been watching Ella, they’d have noticed him. “We put security cameras up.”

  “You don’t normally follow-up another guard’s job. Kent did it, and he knows his job.”

  Ryan studied the fed.

  Exuding calm confidence, his hands linked loosely on the desk top, Aaron waited quietly.

  That his boss would be on his side, Ryan had no doubt. As long as it was the right side. Cooperation with enforcement agencies was something he fostered, but Ryan knew deep down Aaron wouldn’t throw any of his staff to the wolves unless he’d first investigated things himself, talked to them. He’d deal with them himself.

  He had a feeling Aaron was going to talk to him after this meeting.

  He had nothing to hide. “I met Ella the first time when she walked in here for security cameras for some vandalism trouble she was having. She wasn’t happy to see me, refused to have the cameras when she knew I worked here, I went around to her place and ended up speaking to her landlord. We had a relationship years ago, and I was curious about her, so I did a bit of internet searching and found the article on her attack.” His fingers tightened almost indiscernibly on his thighs, but there was no other sign betrayed by his tone or eyes. “I went back to see her, she wasn’t interested in telling me anything about the attack and I left. I haven’t seen her since or been in contact.”

  Edward looked at Aaron who simply retained his stoic expression, doing, as his younger brother Luke often said, ‘his zen thing’. Calm even during a shit storm.

  “Okay.” Edward nodded. “Things are moving fast, Ryan. We need to wrap this club up before anyone else is hurt. If Ella knows how to get information, she needs to talk directly to us. She needs to reveal her sources and everything she knows, not keep feeding us tid-bits. These people she’s messing with are dangerous. By now some of the members will be getting jittery, wondering if there’s a link, and if they start to connect the dots they’ll be hunting for the informer, and when they find her - or him - they’ll snuff them out without a thought. Plus we may never catch the ringleaders, resulting in more underage girls being hurt.”

  Ryan switched his gaze to Aaron. “We need to change the cameras on her home from simple security to monitored.”

  “If she’s the informant, yes,” Aaron agreed. “It hasn’t been established. Yet.”

  And there it was. He should have connected the dots sooner. “You want me to ask her.”

  “Edward wants,” Aaron corrected. “You know her, he thinks you might have more sway to get her to reveal her sources. If she has any.”

  Ella tell him anything? The amount she hated him, she’d probably spit in his face and slam the door. But if her life was in danger, if she was going into pubs to get - He stilled as the memory surged to the surface. That night she’d come home, the smell of cigarette smoke on her clothes, the alcohol. None of it on her breath, only on her clothes. The photo of that pub… Could it be? And something else, something odd… Flicking her keys onto the kitchen table, it had bounced onto a sheet of paper with a name on it. He wouldn’t have noticed the beer stain on it except he’d made sure the keys didn’t land on the still damp stain.

  He didn’t want to say anything yet, wanted to check for himself. Have time to digest what he’d heard. Normally he was quick, decisions fast and decisive, but he was also cautious.

  And this was Ella. His Ella.

  No, she’s not yours anymore, remember?

  The hell she isn’t. She’ll always be my Ella.

  “Ryan and I will discuss a few things and get back to you,” Aaron said.

  Edward was no fool. “For now, this discussion goes no further than we three. Only a very small group of us know about this. Until we can establish exactly who is involved, it goes no further. Hence another reason I don’t want to bring her in unless needed. The less who know, the better.” He stood. “I’ll just add, Ryan, that if you don’t talk to Ella, then she’ll be brought in for questioning if we believe she’s hiding information we deem pertinent to the case. Withholding information can be seen as perverting the course of justice.”

  Ryan cut his eyes to him.

  “If she is the informer, she doesn’t want that. If she’s a friend of yours, I don’t want that and nor do you.” Whatever he saw in Ryan’s eyes gave him pause, then Edward nodded and walked out, closing the door behind him.

  Ryan’s eyes cut back to Aaron.

  His boss leaned back in the chair, cocked his ankle on the opposite knee, rested his forearm on the desk and rubbed the back of his thumb across his bottom lip as he surveyed Ryan.

  No pressure. No immediately launching into questions and demanding answers. He just waited patiently, those calm, all-seeing pale blue eyes missing nothing.

  For the first time in years, Ryan was too restless to sit. Hands in pockets, he crossed to the window to look out at Shea’s shop next door. Shea, his boss’s beloved wife. Ryan had thought back then that getting involved with a con artist could be tricky, but compared to what Ella was - might - be involved in, Shea’s deception rated minor on the shit scale. Her danger, however, had been just as real, only she hadn’t seen it coming whereas Ella was knowingly skirting the edges of a very dangerous game.

  No. No, not a game.

  As he stared unseeingly out at the shop, he heard Aaron get up, the sound of the little ‘fridge at the side wall open then close. Turning, he watched his boss sit back in one of the two comfortable, old, battered brown armchairs in the corner of the room. He was opening a small carton of Iced Coffee. On the small table between the two armchairs was a second unopened carton of Iced Coffee.

  Informality gone, though there had never been formalit
y between them. Mostly because Ryan did the job, stayed quiet, and didn’t question his decisions, mostly because he agreed with them. Both being quiet men who played their cards close to their chests, they’d never joked much, never traded insults. They respected each other.

  This was about as informal as it would get, and he saw it as a sign of Aaron showing him that he was willing to listen to whatever Ryan had to say. But the levelness of those pale blue eyes, now somehow turning dark as the shadows of the corner fell over half his face, said that he expected answers.

  Fair enough. This was his business, and if one of his employees was involved with someone who could, in turn, be involved in a federal case, he needed to know. Couldn’t fault a man for being thorough, and Aaron was as thorough as a man could be.

  Ryan sat in the chair, picking up the Iced Coffee and opening it. As he leaned back in the armchair, feeling the comfortable old cushions sink around him, he noted his boss resuming his classic Aaron pose.

  No time to waste. Ryan started talking. “You know my background. You had me investigated before you hired me.”

  “As everyone is.”

  “You knew me before I even came knocking on your door.”

  “Yes.”

  No surprise there. “Did you know I was engaged to Ella?”

  “Yes.”

  Ryan knew exactly what he wanted. “How much?”

  “You be the judge.”

  Taking a mouthful of the delicious, cold milk drink, Ryan let it wash down his throat, pool in his belly, took another mouthful before resting the carton on his knee as he relaxed his legs, stretched them out and crossed his ankles.

  It wasn’t a pose he normally adopted while on the job, but this moment was anything but normal.

  “Ella and I met at high school. We clicked instantly, became best friends that blossomed into something more. I knew we’d get married, knew we’d have a family together. I had dreams of a life in the Army and my Ella waiting for me back home.” He didn’t even realise his slip of the tongue until too late, but Aaron said nothing, so he continued. “I joined the Army - first general then into the Commandos. I’d go home on leave, Ella was always there. We got engaged, moved in together. We rented while saving up a good down payment on a house of our own.” He didn’t have to be telling this much but now that he’d started, now that Ella was so fresh in his mind, he spoke as he remembered. “We were happy, but training changes you. Missions change you. The more dangerous the mission, the more it was sometimes hard to come home and act like you hadn’t been a sniper picking off the enemy. When people you were mates with die in enemy fire, it changes a man.”