his skin. He squirmed in pain whilst a noise made him jolt. He heard it again. Then again. Only this time it was nearer. Closer. Much closer.
He swivelled round, panicked, unable to see through the hood, but he suddenly froze. He felt the breath on his back. Warm. A different voice. A gentle voice. Which said,
‘Bonjour monsieur…’
A pain he didn’t think imaginable sped through his body as his eyes were driven down into his skull. He felt the pressure and then the pull and the digging and the gouging and blood streamed down his face. He retched with agony, choking on his own vomit as more quiet words were spoken.
‘C’est bon, vomis le diable… Vomit up the devil… That’s it, you did well my brother, you did well.’
He felt a soothing hand on his head, mixed in with his pain as he was carried. Lifted. Thrown. Hitting a hard surface with force.
Feeling something next to him, he realized there were others there. And too terrified to speak, too raked with pain to cry for help, he heard the voices of several men followed by the sound of an engine, driving him away, taking him somewhere he didn’t want to go, somewhere he didn’t know. A place he was sure he was never coming back from.
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
