Read The Edge of Trust: Team Edge for Free Online Page B

he wanted it on his terms.
    John continued on about America’s Grave Injustice until Dillon finally stopped him mid-sentence.  “I hear what you’re saying.  I get that.  I agree with you.  But again, I’m asking, why me?  Why now?”
    John slipped his wire-rimmed glasses on as though he needed them to figure out why Dillon, one of his top operatives, was sitting in his office, in a burgundy leather chair, asking such moronic questions.  “Last month ten members of a special Senate Judiciary subcommittee spent a week in El Paso taking a closer look at the drug-related violence at the border.  Now three of them are riding my ass on this.  Including the chairman.”
    “Senator Cummings?”
    John nodded.  “Cummings wants this stopped yesterday.  The SBC is responsible for the majority of what’s happening along our border.  You know how Sanchez thinks better than anyone else.  His drug money is buying weapons and funding wars.  We need you to end this.”
    A nice, prosaic answer.  Dillon closed his eyes, imagining a long, narrow rifle slug entering Rafe’s frontal lobe.  Then watching the back of his head explode in a spray of justifiable vengeance.
    He opened his eyes and quietly asked, “Then why did you pull me out in the first place?”
    “Sanchez made you.  End of story.”
    Oh, no.  No, no, no.  “Tell me, John, how exactly did Sanchez make me?  You figure that part out yet?”
    “I’m working on it.”
    Dillon pushed his hand angrily through his hair.  “This is bullshit.  You covering your ass or saving your pension?”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Sorry?  You had no problem shoving me back in six months ago.  After, I might add, my cover had been blown.”  He lowered his voice, made it cold, hard.  “You remember that night, don’t you, John?  You snapped your manicured fingers and I jumped just like you knew I would.  Only everything went wrong, didn’t it?”  Dillon leaned toward the Admiral, grief and rage blazing, “Did you know Sanchez would be there?”
    “My intel said Vega would do the hand-off.  Sanchez was nowhere in the picture.  Your cover, blown or not, shouldn’t have played into it.  That op was supposed to be simple.  Cut and dried.  I had no idea--”
    “No idea?  No idea about what?  That I was being set up?  That Sanchez had organized a fucking death squad?  Hell, Vega didn’t even show!”
    “Like I said, I--”
    “Isn’t it your job to know such things?”
    A ghost of pain flickered in the admiral’s eyes.  “I didn’t know Sara would be there.”
    “Either way, I was still a dead man.  And okay, my life’s expendable, I accept that.  Only, gee, I didn’t die, my wife did.  How would you like to see your wife blown to hell because your boss didn’t have his friggin’ act together?”
    “My wife, as you know, is deceased.”
    Dillon sat back.  “With all due respect, Admiral, no.  You’re using me.  Again.”
    “I’m sick and damn tired of having my hands tied!”
    “Find.  Someone.  Else.”
    “I’m giving you a shot at vengeance.  After everything that’s happened to you, your entire family--” 
    “I tried.  I lost.”
    “You didn’t lose.  You quit.”
    And, snap, there went Dillon’s control.  He shot out of his chair.  “Damn straight I quit!  I gave you three years of substantiated evidence.  Three long, miserable years’ worth.  Enough to put Sanchez, and his brothers, away for twenty lifetimes.  And what happened to all that evidence?  Hmm, let me see.  One day it’s there, the next it’s just, poof, gone.  My cover’s blown to hell and back, I’m almost killed, and that would’ve been all well and good.  But no, I got to live while Sanchez murdered my sister, my parents, and my wife!”
    Grief thrummed in his chest, up to his throat, and suddenly Dillon couldn’t do this.  He clamped his mouth shut and let the admiral have his say.
    “And after all that, you’re going to let