Читать книгу The Killing Grounds: an explosive and gripping thriller for fans of James Patterson - Jack Ford, Jack Ford - Страница 19

8

Throwing the empty pill bottle into the glove compartment of his classic Chevrolet truck, Cooper saw the small airstrip of the Onyx Asset Recovery Company come into view as he drove up the dusty, cactus-lined road whilst swallowing, with some difficulty, the two pills in his mouth.

The office he’d been working out of for the past five years was built in the middle of four hundred acres of wilderness. Hot. Remote. Dry desert land, based just outside North Scottsdale, Arizona, with panoramic views of the Granite Mountain. It was one helluva place.

It was mainly himself, Granger, Levi and Maddie, along with a scattering of aircraft engineers who worked out of the Scottsdale office. Granger had other investigators out in the field on an ad hoc basis, but his core staff rarely changed. Partly due to trust and partly due to Granger believing he already had the best team in the business.

There were huge risks involved with every job, with all of them feeling like legal heists. Granger’s motto was, No job is too big or too much trouble, though at times Cooper doubted that was true. Many times. Especially when the jobs he’d been sent on involved trying to recover Russian-bought military jets from a remote, perilous location in Belize, in the middle of a multi-million dollar dispute with an Austrian import-export company. Or when a court order had been acquired to impound a sixty-million-dollar plane from the middle of Ecuador, and the owners happened to be a drugs cartel who were after his butt to the point he’d found himself hiding out in a derelict house in the city of Guayaquil for four days without food or water. Or when he was facing the irate owner of a helicopter who hadn’t kept up with the repayments, in the heart of Mexico, who greeted him with a smile and an Uzi Pro 9mm which could blow his head off in an instant. It was then that Granger’s motto, No job is too big or too much trouble, made him want to stick those words right up his ass and ask Granger, too much trouble for who?

With Onyx being one of the most successful high asset recovery firms worldwide, with a hit rate of just over ninety-seven percent, several of the companies and banks they dealt with wanted the business to expand, encouraging Granger with monetary incentives to open other branches in major cities, as well as wanting him to take the head office to New York. But Granger, being Granger, refused point blank. Not wanting to risk weakening the firm by expansion. Believing that by keeping it small but strong it would hold onto its powerful reputation for reliability and results. But ultimately not wanting to leave the isolated, yet picturesque part of Arizona that Granger called God’s country.

Cooper sighed. Pushing the thought of Maddie out of his head. Hell, he was going to see her soon enough and he hoped by then she would have calmed down and realized he hadn’t meant any harm. Never did.

Putting his foot down on the gas, he was surprised how good it felt to see the place again. Even broke a smile. The past couple of weeks he’d rather forget. They’d been tough. Real tough. Tougher than he wanted to admit, and strangely he’d spent a lot of the time thinking about his Uncle Beau, and his days in Missouri, something he rarely let himself do. He and the past just didn’t go.

Levi waved as Cooper pulled up.

‘Hey, Coop, thought you’d be at the ranch for another few days. How you feeling? I bet you never thought you’d see this place again.’

It was a good sight. A friendly face. Something he needed right now.

Leaning out of the driver’s window, Cooper’s smile turned into a grin. His strawberry blonde hair, in dire need of a cut, fell over his eyes. ‘I hope you’ve been practising your pool, Levi, you owe me a game. What is it now? Eight-one down?’

‘Eight-two. And it would’ve been three if it wasn’t for the fact you decided to call it a night.’

Cooper’s deeply tanned face lit up. ‘Levi, don’t push it. If I remember rightly, it was actually you who called it a night… or was it Dorothy, when she found out where you were hiding your butt?’

Levi laughed. Couldn’t deny it. Knew what Cooper was saying held more than a ring of truth. Though his laugh was quickly replaced by concern. ‘I’ve spoken to Maddie. She told me. I’m sorry, but I guess it was a long time coming.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Levi screwed up his face, beads of sweat pushing out between the creases. ‘You and her. You do know she’s left you?’

Cooper closed his eyes then slowly opened them enough to squint at Levi through the rays of the Arizona sun. And the OxyContin began to hit and he rolled his tongue round his dry mouth. ‘Yeah, she came over to the ranch. She said a lot of stuff but I don’t think she was being serious. You know how she get sometimes when I mess up. She just needs a couple of days to calm down.’

Levi let out a long whistle. ‘Coop, I love you man but get real, you’ve just pushed her too far this time. It’s like from nowhere you’ve stepped back to how it was a few years ago. Gone all crazy on our ass. You can’t expect her to go through all what she did before.’

Cooper rested his head on the steering wheel. ‘I know she’s hurting but I got things going on, Levi.’

‘Like what, Coop? Whatever it is it’s in your head, because from where I’m standing, you got it made, bro. A great job. A great daughter and a great wife. Maddie, she’s one of the best… Look, why don’t you come across to stay with Dorothy and I? She’d like that. She worries about you like the rest of us.’

‘I appreciate the offer but I’ll just find a motel. Give me time to think and try to sort things out with her.’

‘And what about the job?’

Rubbing his chin and watching specs of sand be blown on and off the car window, Cooper said, ‘What about it?’

‘You and Maddie. Won’t it be awkward the two of you working together?’

‘Levi, you’re taking all this too far but to answer your question, no it won’t. Why would it? Nothing’s changed. But if it’s really a case of her taking some time out from me, which I don’t think it is, well we’re both grown-ups. Both trained in the military just to get on with the job at hand. We still care for each other. Still respect each other. Want the best for each other and our daughter… I can’t see there’d be a problem.’

‘You’re serious aren’t you…? Coop, let me tell you something, brother… You’ve got a hell of a lot to learn about women.’

And with that, Levi’s laughter soared once more, cutting through the Arizona air.

‘All this is funny to you, isn’t it?’ Granger’s voice broke through the banter. Silenced the moment as he stalked towards them. ‘It’s all one big joke to you, Cooper. Maybe I should’ve punched you harder. Knock some sense into you.’

Cooper stared at Granger. He hadn’t seen him since the airport in Scottsdale. After that he’d headed out, taking the five-hundred-mile journey back to the ranch just outside Telluride, Colorado.

He felt the vein in his temple throbbing as he clenched his jaw. A habit. Not a particularly bad one as his habits went. Absentmindedly, he rubbed the side of his head as he got out of the truck. Without bothering or wanting or needing to look at Granger, Cooper said, ‘I can think of a lot of things to call the last couple of weeks, but a joke sure isn’t one of them.’

‘And that’s my fault, is it? You’re a mess, Cooper. A total bag of mess. But like always you expect the rest of us to clear up. Look at your eyes… I see you’re back popping those pills.’

Cooper shot him a stare. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. So let’s just drop it, hey?’

‘You’d like that wouldn’t you, Cooper? Drop everything. That should be your middle name.’

Cooper shook his head and kicked up the bleached white gravel with his desert boots and felt the warm Arizona winds whip up the dusty ground and maybe it was just tiredness and maybe it was his own shame but he was pissed. Real pissed with what Granger had just said.

‘I don’t want anyone to clear up my mess. I never have done, never will do, and you of all people know that.’

‘Really? Try telling that to Levi and Maddie. They clear up your mess that often, sometimes I get them mixed up with the garbage men.’

‘Real funny, Granger. Look…’

‘Save it, Cooper, it’ll just turn out to be bull anyway. Oh, and Maddie told me the news about you two. I should say I’m sorry, but I’m not. She deserves better.’

‘I know that, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep out of my business.’

Granger sniffed loudly, emphasizing the words he was about to say. ‘I know you would but when it’s going to affect my business then it becomes my business.’

‘Nothing’s going to affect anything. What is it with everyone, huh? Just because Maddie and I are having… I don’t know… difficulties, that doesn’t mean it’s going to alter anything.’

Granger’s blue eyes cut Cooper a stare. ‘I wouldn’t call leaving somebody difficulties. And if you think it’s going to be a bed of roses, you clearly don’t know women.’

‘So everyone likes to tell me, and maybe you guys are right, I don’t know women. But I do know Maddie, and I know she and I are going to be fine with it all. I’ll sort it out.’

‘You think you’ve got it all sewn up don’t you Cooper? The sun always shines out of your ass.’

Cooper chewed the inside of his cheek. Even before Eritrea, he and Granger had been at loggerheads. Seemed like nothing had changed. Hell, he doubted it ever would. And he knew it wasn’t just because he’d screwed up with the last assignment. No, Granger’s problem was with him and him alone.

There’d always been the snipes, and until recently he’d left it. Letting it ride. Always. Usually. Not this time. ‘What’s your goddamn problem, Granger? The fact that you didn’t get the plane back from Eritrea, or the fact that it was me that didn’t get the plane back?’

‘You know what my problem is, Cooper, so why don’t you do us all a favor and grow up.’

Maddie, who’d now come outside into Onyx’s parking lot, stood back and watched. Listened.

Cooper could feel the anger rising up. Something he felt a lot these days. He said, ‘You want me gone, Granger? Just say the word, and you won’t see me again.’

Granger, at five foot three, stood a foot shorter than Cooper, though his height had never hindered him in any way; taking on one or three men at a time, if justified, was all the same to him. His face was gnarled and ruddy. And Cooper thought he was doing a good impression of a man who hated him.

‘What I want, Cooper, is for you to take responsibility. Be accountable.’

‘Like you, Granger?’

‘Hey, I can live with the decisions I’ve made. Question is, can you?’

‘Why don’t you say what’s really bugging you, Granger. Let’s clear the air once and for all.’

Maddie cut in. ‘Hey guys, this is stupid. We’re all on the same side here… Tom, leave it.’

Although once, a long time ago, he’d had the ability not to be goaded into arguments, that was no longer the case. She knew it. He knew it. Hell, and so did Granger. ‘No, Maddie, I want to hear what Granger has to say.’

Not backing down either, Granger stepped forward. Real close. ‘You can’t deal with what I’ve got to say.’

‘Guys! Come on! Stop this… Tom, for God’s sake, come on! Please.’ Maddie signalled to Levi to do something other than just stand there. Cooper ignored anything other than what Granger was saying to him.

‘Try me. Come on.’

The bitterness was entrenched in Granger’s words. Shovelled on like tar on a highway. ‘Try you? Yeah? Is that what you want? Well let’s see. You want to talk about responsibility, then why don’t we talk about just that. Let’s talk about my daughter, Ellie, and let’s talk about why you actually went to Eritrea and how it’s connected. And why when I’d given someone else the job, and I’d specifically told you not to go there, you still did.’

Cooper crashed into silence. Span there fast. Stared ahead, not seeing Levi’s concerned expression. Not seeing Maddie’s unease. All he could see was the moment. All he could hear was Ellie shouting his name. All he…

Jesus… No… No… He shook himself both physically and mentally out of the mesmeric memory. He wasn’t going to go there for anyone. Couldn’t go there. He stared at Granger, then looked at Levi and felt the strain in his chest. He touched his back pocket of his blue jeans feeling the blister packet of pills. Somehow comforting.

‘Granger, what are you talking about?’

Dax Granger swung round. ‘Hasn’t he told you Maddison?’

‘Tom, what’s he talking about?’

Granger pushed. And hard. ‘Tell them, Cooper. Tell them what this is all about.’

‘It’s not about anything. I just thought I’d be better doing the job than the other guy.’

‘Without consulting me?’

Cooper said, ‘Yeah.’

Granger, not intrinsically cruel but beyond angry, pushed again. Tone bitter. ‘Oh come on, Cooper, don’t give me that. That’s not how things work. You and I both know why this is happening again, why you’ve decided to throw away everything you’ve built over the past few years. Come on, tell your wife why. Surely she deserves to know doesn’t she?’

‘Shut up, Granger.’

‘Why can’t you be like the rest of us, hey? Having to deal with things even though we don’t want to. You don’t see me reaching for the funny pills or running amok or putting my wife and friend in jeopardy! But then, you know what I think. I think it’s all just one big excuse to be that prize jackass which is always bursting to get out of you… Go on, tell them. Tell them why you’ve begun to search again.’

Cooper knew he sounded like a broken man. ‘Please, Granger, don’t do this.’

Maddie’s face was a picture of anguish and pain and hurt. ‘Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?’

‘You want to tell her?’

Cooper spoke in a controlled whisper. A mixture of pain and steely resolve.

‘Leave it. Okay…? Just leave it. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll give you anything, Granger. But I can’t give you that… So yeah, you’re right. I can’t deal with it. I can’t talk about your daughter.’