Beneath the Surface Read Online Free Page A

what makes those ragheads so goddamn dangerous. She was warned to stop and kept driving at us, what the fuck were we supposed to do?”
    “She had a fucking kid in the car.”
    “Then she should have stopped the goddamn car when she was warned. It wouldn’t be the first time one of those radical bastards blew up a kid.”
    Asher shook his head. “I wish I had your conscience.” He grabbed the AR off the rest and carried it back up to the house. “I sure as hell would be sleeping a lot better.”
    “You just got to turn it off, man. Quit fucking caring about shit.”
    That sounded tempting, but Asher knew it wasn’t that easy. Every action caused a reaction and every decision came with a consequence. Asher suspected Jayce’s had cost him his soul a long time ago. The man had changed since they’d served together in Recon Six. Then again, hadn’t they all? Who was he to cast judgment? They were all just trying to make it through, one day at a time.
    Asher mounted the steps of the back porch and entered the kitchen.
    “Nice place you got here,” Jayce commented, following him inside.
    “Thanks.” He wasn’t one for company, but Jayce had dropped by today to see him about getting his AR-15 modified to fully automatic. He’d turned his cell off a couple of weeks ago when Peterson’s trial began and the press started swarming him like fucking piranha. Asher walked over to the pantry cupboard he’d modified into a weapons safe and opened the door.
    “You build it yourself?” Jayce glanced around the kitchen, craning his head to peer around the corner into the living room.
    “Most of it.” He entered the key code and turned the lever. “The logs are from the property. I had it shelled when we were on our last ops. Been working on it since we got back.”
    The one-bedroom log house tucked in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains wasn’t anything you’d find on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous , but he wasn’t about luxury. Sniper’s blood ran through Asher’s veins. He was reclusive by nature and there was no undoing the years of training and conditioning that had turned him into a hardened soldier—a killer. The A-frame was a basic design with a master bedroom loft that led to a balcony off the front. The vantage point and height elevation gave him the perfect view to monitor the inner perimeter of the property.
    Jayce chuckled. “Who would have thought, carpenter by day, Black Ops soldier by night. Impressive . . .”
    “The labor’s cathartic. It’s nice to build something rather than destroying it for a change.”
    “How many acres you got here?”
    “A hundred and fifty. They head up into the mountains.”
    Asher opened the safe door and set the AR back in its place. He was closing it when Jayce said, “Holy shit, man. You preparing for a war?”
    The safe was stocked with guns and a multitude of armaments—military issue shit he could probably get in a hell of a lot of trouble for having, but over the years he had collected quite a diverse stockpile. Asher shrugged. “You never know, right?” He closed the door, then the pantry cupboard. “Want a beer?”
    “Sure.”
    Asher crossed the kitchen and opened the fridge, pulling out two Landsharks. Sliding one down the table toward Jayce, he took a seat across from him and stretched out into a lazy sprawl.
    “You heard from the boys?” Jayce twisted off the cap and took a pull from his beer.
    He posed the question as casually as if inquiring about the weather, but Asher wasn’t fooled. “Not since the depositions.”
    “It wasn’t your fault, you know. Nobody blames you.”
    “You can keep sayin’ that, but it doesn’t change a thing. It was my team, my mission—I’m responsible for those men, it was my fuckup to hire Peterson.”
    “I don’t blame Peterson.”
    Of course he didn’t. These were two very opposite sides of the coin they stood on, a sensitive subject they’d both be better off not broaching.
    “His trial will