The Disavowed Book 2 - In Harm's Way Read online

  IN HARM’S WAY

  (THE DISAVOWED #2)

  BY

  DAVID LEADBEATER

  Copyright © 2014 by David Leadbeater

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher/author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  This one’s for all the readers I get to know through e-mails and social media. Thank you for the kind words and great support!

  Other Books by David Leadbeater

  The Bones of Odin (Matt Drake #1)

  The Blood King Conspiracy (Matt Drake #2)

  The Gates of Hell (Matt Drake 3)

  The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake #4)

  Brothers in Arms (Matt Drake #5)

  Swords of Babylon (Matt Drake #6)

  Blood Vengeance (Matt Drake #7)

  Chosen (The Chosen Few trilogy #1)

  The Razor's Edge (Disavowed #1)

  Walking with Ghosts (A short story)

  A Whispering of Ghosts (A short story)

  Connect with David on Twitter - dleadbeater2011

  Visit David’s NEW website – davidleadbeater.com

  Follow David’s Blog - http://davidleadbeaternovels.blogspot.co.uk/

  All helpful, genuine comments are welcome. I would love to hear from you.

  [email protected]

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  Other Books by David Leadbeater

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

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  19

  20

  21

  22

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  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

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  41

  42

  43

  44

  1

  1993:

  The thief draped himself in darkness.

  Through hardship, pain and blood he had learned how to use the shadows, cleverly enlisting them as his silent accomplice. He knew what the passing strangers feared. They feared the man in the hood, the man half concealed, the man skulking in the alleyway. But they did not fear the man hidden so deep that they couldn’t even sense him. And consequently they did not fear the man walking alongside them, dressed like them, acting like them.

  It was the finesse between good and bad, or at least society’s perception of good and bad. Society didn’t allow for the man in the hood being a lost, frightened girl; the skulker being a man more wary of the stranger than the stranger was of him; the half-concealed man wanting desperately to ask for help but not knowing how to try.

  In Silk’s world, black was never black and white was never white. The entire spectrum merged into a fragmented, blurred kaleidoscope. At fifteen, the world had already bitten Adam Silk more times than he could count. Life was nothing more than something with which to endure a daily battle. He was alone, mostly starving, so tired and weary at fifteen that he was finding it harder and harder to outrun the evil men who would do him harm on the drug-inflamed streets of LA.

  But Adam Silk was a survivor. And even when, like now, his vision blurred through exhaustion, he still sought the elusive way out.

  There was a girl, there always is, and Silk’s girl used to sneak into his part of the orphanage at night, snuggle up beside him on his creaky, crappy bed, and whisper in his ear about all things good. She’d talked about the beach, the mall, the Hills, the sunset and rock music. Things Silk barely remembered from his life before. Back then things had seemed so much better. There had been a future infused with so much brightness, so much innocence and so much promise.

  But she’d taught him to dream. The bright future was always there, just around the corner. They had to be tough and clever enough to reach out and grab it.

  This girl, her name . . . Silk thought back. What was her name?

  In his exhausted state, in the fog of past memory that he actively sought to forget, the name of this wonderful girl eluded him.

  There was a night when she had stopped coming to him. A night of so much misery he swore he had felt his heart break. Silk had looked for her, waited for her, searched the cold rooms for her. But he never saw her again. The girl—his light and hope—was gone.

  The way out. It had been one of her preachings, an important one. At fifteen this girl had been one of the wisest, cleverest people Silk would ever know, and he modelled himself upon her. She had often spoken of the ways out. Like everything in life, they had embraced both the light and the dark.

  In darkness, there were drugs. “Seriously,” she’d told him, “it’s an option if things get really bad.” Back then, Silk hadn’t known what ‘really bad’ actually meant. He did now. “But drugs will take you away,” she had said, “make you another person so that the awful things some men do to you feel like they’re being done to someone else. You enter another level, a different plane of existence, and that body of yours, that wretched, dirty, broken thing, seems far removed from the new reality where you exist.”

  At the same level, there was suicide. Even in the orphanage there were ways. And she’d told him about many.

  “Fighting?” Silk had asked. “Should we fight them?”

  “Our bodies are too weak,” she’d told him. “That’s why these terrible men yearn for us. They want someone who can struggle, but can still easily be overcome. That’s what drives them to do the evil that they do.”

  And so to the light. She had spoken of running, and never looking back. Hitting that open road with nothing but the torn clothes on your back and taking your chances with fate. It couldn’t be worse than the orphanage. She’d spoken of finding someone, perhaps nothing more than a pipe dream, who took a shine to you, who saw the good in you; someone who would help you and put you to good work, let you prove that you could shine back.

  And she’d spoken of misdirection. Something she called the finesse. The act of making someone believe you were something you weren’t in order to get something from them. Could be something huge. Could be something small . . . like a new life.

  All these options. And Silk never knew which one she had chosen—this shining, sparkling girl—and though the horrible events of those days before he ran away from the orphanage were all but lost to him, her face sometimes still floated up from the depths of a beautiful memory, glowing with life and goodness and hidden agony.

  He had chosen to run, he knew that much. But now, months later; lost, desperate, practically penniless and without a friend or a hope in the world, that foundering, sinking raft loaded with ways out floated invitingly before his eyes.

  There was a black van. Silk had been watching it for hours. Occasionally it rocked slightly, indicating the presence of occupants. But that was all. Silk didn’t know what the van was doing there on the city str
eet this late at night. If she had been here, in the flesh and not just an immaculate memory, the girl would have told him. But Silk was alone. He studied the van hard, not because he had any intentions of stealing it, but because on the one occasion when one of the occupants had climbed out to take a leak, Silk had seen what was inside.

  An open-topped bag containing a bundle of money. Silk had only seen the top layer, but the size of the bag indicated the amount could be substantial.

  It called for a finesse. It called for her. The situation demanded greatness if it was to be taken advantage of, but he was just a simple fifteen-year-old runaway.

  Or was he?

  The sequence of events came to him then, as if born on psychic wings. Maybe she had heard him, the girl, from wherever she was in the world. Maybe she had helped. He liked to think that way. Liked to believe he wasn’t alone and that the girl, his guardian angel, always watched over him where no one else ever had.

  I’ll always have your back, Silk. He remembered her words. So long as I’m alive I will have your back.

  Fear of the unknown tugged at his heartstrings as he made the decision. Of the few items he would need, he knew that all of them could be sourced locally and quickly. It would mean leaving the scene, but the van didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Silk placed his hand on a nearby rough brick wall as if to gain fortitude from the hard, uneven surface. In another moment he’d slipped around its corner and started the walk two blocks south. A hardware shop sat on the corner of ‘this street’ and ‘that street’. Silk hadn’t learned the names yet, but he knew the back streets of his little corner of LA like the back of his orphanage master’s hand.

  Behind the hardware shop sat an open dumpster half full of discarded materials. Silk leaned in and grabbed two bolts and a nut. He also found a paper bag flapping against a rusty fire escape, trapped between the rungs. That came too. Next he visited the local store and came away with a small matchbook. The matchbook represented most of the remainder of his money, so he’d better make sure it turned out to be a sound investment. He made one other quick stop then hurried away without daring to look back.

  Back to the van and Silk took about three minutes to make a poor-man’s banger. His fingers worked quickly and with dexterity, always in tune with his mind. Once the banger was prepared he sat back on his haunches to wait.

  Now came the real test. Will they do it?

  The van trembled as its occupants shifted. An airplane rumbled through the murky sky. Silk fancied he could see a faint blue glow emanating from the top of one of the buildings down the street—a rooftop pool—but no lights shone down here among the multitude. This was where the wild things walked, the ignorant herd, crawling through dirt just to make a buck.

  His attention was grabbed by the emergence of the two down-and-outs. As instructed they shambled toward the van. The stench they brought with them washed across Silk’s nostrils, making him flinch. One of the men fell against the side of the van; the other faced him for a second then belched and launched his own body against the van. The men were dressed in rags that left stains on the paintwork.

  Silk readied himself.

  It didn’t take long. The van’s back door flew open and two men jumped out, both dressed, absurdly, in suits. They came around the van quickly; faces set hard, then pulled up sharp when they registered the scene.

  The tramps grabbed at each other, then both of them fell hard against the van.

  “Beat it!” one of the men cried. “Get the hell out of here!”

  Silk still had one man to contend with. As the tramps continued to fight—though Silk saw it as more of an enthusiastic cuddle than fisticuffs—the boy crept past the open van door and launched his banger up into the air. He was aiming for the windscreen and his aim was good. The makeshift cracker hit the glass and exploded on impact, the sound as loud as a gunshot. With a curse the third man jumped out and tore around the side to help his friends who, by this time, were engaged in a filthy tussle with the two tramps. Silk saw a handgun clutched in the man’s left hand and experienced a hard moment of doubt.

  But the prize was right there. The open bag of money, sitting just inside the door. All Silk had to do was slink into range, reach out and grab it. Doubts beset him. This act would change everything, turn him from one of the exploited to one of the opportunists. It could even define the rest of his life.

  Silk fought his fears. He sneaked forward, snagged the bag and retreated swiftly back into shadow. He heard the third agent tapping his gun against the side of the van and screaming at the tramps.

  He heard a phone ringing inside the van and thought that might be his cue to get the hell out of there.

  *

  The CIA agent held the receiver close to his ear and spoke with a gentle reserve. “Plumb, is that you? How’s it goin’ down there? You guys in control?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Couple of bozos letting off steam, that’s all.”

  “Is that right?” The CIA agent lowered the infra-red glasses from his eyes. “Tell me, Plumb, how’d you feel about Nova Scotia this time of year?”

  There was a brief silence. “I . . . guess it would be cold, boss.”

  “Then you had best go home and start packing your winter woollies. You just got robbed.”

  “What? Now, Doug, listen—”

  “And you blew the op. Much more noise and the cops would be all over the surveillance van. Bad guys are gone, Plumb.”

  “R . . . robbed?” Plumb stammered. “Gone?” Then a girlish cry. “Where’s the goddamn money?”

  Doug dropped the phone, slowly shaking his head. At a push he could have chased down the clever perpetrator, but Doug had gotten a good look at him. Some thin, desperate, starving kid risking everything for a few thousand dollars. Let that chimp, Plumb, take the fall for it. Guy was a damn liability anyway.

  And the boy? The hackles were raised all the way up and down Doug’s spine, a sure-fire sign that he was on to something. Talent sometimes revealed itself in odd ways. He would keep an eye on the kid.

  2

  Present Day:

  The mouth-watering smell of Jenny’s homemade goulash drifted tantalizingly through the open windows and out across the yard. Silk was polishing the car to a deep-red luster and had just taken a few steps back to admire his handiwork when the marvelous aroma skipped temptingly across his senses not unlike a maestro tickling the keys of a grand piano. Silk stopped what he was doing and closed his eyes. Ah, the comforts of home.

  He stepped out of the shadow of the house, letting the warm Californian sunshine soak into his body. Thirty five was not a good age to have accumulated such a mass of aches and pains. Elbow joints stung if they were bent too long. Old breaks throbbed when they took even the slightest of knocks. His lower back hurt like a bitch if he slept the wrong way.

  Products and reminders of a neglected youth. Souvenirs from his life as a spy.

  He screwed up the leather and flung it onto the hood of the car. Polishing could wait. Jenny’s culinary perfections always took priority in this part of Hollywood; lazy, sunny mid-afternoon or not. He entered the house and stood in the kitchen doorway, hands hooked around the top of the frame, sniffing the air.

  Jenny flicked a glance at him. “If you’re planning on snuggling up to watch Arrow with me after lunch you’d best go grab a shower. And quick. Goulash is done.”

  Silk sniffed his armpits. “That bad, huh?”

  “I’ve smelled less whiffy tramps.”

  Silk doubted it but held his tongue and headed for the shower. Though Jenny and he were happy together and open, there still existed a little artifice between them. He would never reveal the true horrors of the old days to her, not even to Trent and Radford. Ghosts as old and powerful as that should never be resurrected.

  The train of thought brought him around to the present day: a much more appealing prospect. Despite their disavowing, life had been looking up recently for the three ex-spies. Money was no longer a problem. The pressures a
nd hassles of work had long since dissipated. And Doug the Trout threw them a few leads here and there; mostly easy jobs to help keep their hands in.

  The biggest surprise was that Agent Collins had turned out to be such a paradox. By day the hard-assed FBI agent, by night the untouchable yet accommodating party girl. Was it an act? Trent had made further inquiries about her through the Trout, but had failed to learn anything beyond that which they already knew: She was a ballbuster, a get-goer, and outstanding at her job. The woman demanded respect and, for the most part, got it.

  To top that off, the Edge hadn’t seen an awful lot of her lately. The recent terrorist attack in Washington had seen to that.

  Silk ambled back into the kitchen, naked. Jenny didn’t look twice. Time was she’d have jumped his bones then and there. But mood and sensitivities changed with time, and her reaction today compared to her reaction a few years ago was surely more a sign of her contentment and general ease than anything else. Silk didn’t sweat it. He shrugged into a comfortable old t-shirt and a pair of faded jeans whilst studying the view across the canyon toward the landmark Hollywood sign. Trouble had been brewing over there recently, even more than usual, about the influx of tourists who stopped outside local homes to take pictures of the sign. Silk’s answer to the local canvasser had been, “Hey, you buy a house near the sign what the hell do you expect?” Some people just wanted it all their own way.

  Smiling with contentment, he padded barefoot back to the kitchen. Jenny was just ladling out the goulash. With her brown hair tied back into a bun and her cotton apron around her waist she looked for all the world like a mother figure, far removed from the women of his past. The solace, cheer and security she offered helped toward restoring something he had lost in early childhood. It was surely never too late to rediscover the comforts of home.