“Aaron?” he mumbled. “Don’t do that, man.” The shaking was making him nauseous.
“Yeah, it’s me, Aaron,” the man replied, sounding relieved. “Can you see me okay? Can you hear me?”
“You’re a little fuzzy, but yeah, I think so,” Xavier replied, trying to sit up. He winced as a jolt of pain rushed through his system again. He sank back down, letting out a groan as the memories began to surface.
“Do you know where you’re bleeding from?” Aaron asked.
“My head,” Xavier mumbled. “The back of my head, I think.” He tried to reach up to touch it, but Aaron caught his hand.
“Let’s not do that, all right? We’ll get it looked over,” Aaron promised. “Come on, let’s see if we can get you up.”
He managed to lift Xavier off the ground and get him planted on the edge of his bed, the mattress barely still on the frame. Everything was spinning.
Aaron sat beside him to get a look at his wound just as Lawson appeared in the doorway to his room.
“What the hell is going on?” Lawson demanded.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Aaron replied. “I heard a commotion in here, and when I came in, Xavier was down for the count but no one else was around. That’s when I called you.”
“Damn,” Lawson muttered, shooting a look of concern at Xavier. But more than anything, Xavier could see the anger in his eyes. He knew that was how Lawson dealt with shock, but right now, he needed his best friend on his side.
“Do you know who attacked you?” Lawson demanded.
“Jed,” Xavier replied, wincing as Aaron poked around at the back of his skull.
“Jed?” Lawson sounded surprised. “What happened?”
“I came to grab a change of clothes for the shower and the door was open again. I noticed the room trashed and was going to grab my gun and he nailed me from behind. We fought some and he got in a final hit and took off.”
Lawson frowned in confusion. “Why would he attack you and trash your room? That doesn’t make sense.”
Xavier closed his eyes, trying to fight the nausea rolling up his throat. “Jed’s looking for something he thought I had.” He paused and sighed. “It’s complicated.” He chanced a quick look at Aaron, then locked his eyes on Lawson.
“He’s not working alone,” Xavier replied, starting to shake his head, then thought better of it. The movement was making his eyesight worse. “He called me something—a name I haven’t heard since my CIA days. I’m certain he’s working with someone I used to know. Someone called… Sampson.”
Saying the name out loud seemed like a bad omen. But he knew he had to. He had tried to leave that part of his life behind, but clearly, he wasn’t going to be able to get away quite so easily.
“Sampson?” Lawson asked, frowning. “You never mentioned anything about a Sampson before. And I don’t remember meeting anyone by that name at the agency.”
“He was another operative I worked with when we were on separate squads at the agency,” Xavier explained. “The two of us had a few difficult missions together. I always got a strange vibe from him, but he never really did anything that gave me a concrete reason for that. It was just more of an unease of how he carried himself and certain things he said, so I just pushed it to the back of my mind and kept doing my job. Figured that was the best thing for me to do. Not make extra waves and complicate things further.”
“But?” Lawson prompted him.
“The last mission we were on, it went sideways,” Xavier explained with a sigh. He hadn’t thought about this in so long. He had hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with it ever again. He’d tried so hard to leave it in the past.
“In what way?” Aaron asked him.
Xavier reached to the back of his head, brushing his fingers against the bloody gash in his skull. He winced. He was going to need to be stitched up and checked for a concussion sooner or later, but right now, they had to deal with the issue at hand. “We were assigned to this case, tracking a lost arms shipment that we had reason to believe was going to fall into the wrong hands,” he explained. “But the more time I spent on the case, the more obvious it became to me that Sampsonwasthe wrong hands. He dropped a few hints about the two of us working together, coming up with a cover story so we could sell them ourselves.”
“So what exactly are they looking for here?” Lawson asked. “What do they think you have?”
“A USB drive.” Xavier sighed. “It was the one with all the information about the shipment, all the tracking details we had on it. I was supposed to pass it on to Sampson so we could find the container, but I destroyed it before he could get his hands on it. I knew I couldn’t risk firepower like that ending up in rotationwith the wrong kind of people. It was a tough choice, but I know it was the right one.”
“But he doesn’t know you’ve destroyed it,” Aaron surmised. “And he sent someone to infiltrate the lodge to try to find out where you were keeping it.”
“That’s what I think,” Xavier agreed.
“You think he would kill to get his hands on it?” Lawson’s voice hardened.
