A Soldier's Revenge: A Will Cochrane Novel by Matthew Dunn

legion of people who wanted me dead.
    I entered my cash card and keyed in my details. Insufficient funds. I tried again. Same response. I checked my balance. Zero.
    Shit.
    For the first time since waking in the Waldorf, genuine panic struck me with such force that I had to grip the side of the ATM to avoid crumpling to my knees.
    Had the cops done this to my account? Taken everything away from me so that I couldn’t move? I doubted that. The police thought I was a desperate killer. Doing this to me would make me even more desperate. In the law’s eyes, I would become an even bigger danger to American citizens.
    No, this was the work of the man or people who’d orchestrated this nightmare.
    That was the other thing that kept me moving.
    I wanted to come face-to-face with him.
    When that happened, I’d show him what I was capable of.

CHAPTER 11
    T echnically, Billy and Tom were playing outside of their great-uncle and -aunt’s home. But once out of eyeshot of Robert and Celia, they gave up any pretense of looking happy. Instead, the ten-year-old twins sat together and spoke in the way that young children do when they’re confused by events around them and unsettled.
    Below them was the beautiful valley that so often had been the place of their adventures, where they could let their imaginations roam as they pretended to be Native Americans hunting for fish or other wild creatures, soldiers in a jungle, Hobbits looking for Treebeard, anything that engaged their fertile minds.
    Now the valley with its river and woodlands didn’t register. The boys were lost in thought, their eyes burning, feeling that everything was being churned up.
    “Uncle Robert and Aunt Celia are acting a bit strange,” Tom declared.
    Billy nodded while circling his finger in the ground. “I think they must be mad at Uncle Will for being late. Aunt Faye is mad, too.”
    “Why is he late?”
    “He’s lost, remember?”
    “He should ask a policeman to help him.”
    “Probably that’s what he’ll do.”
    It came from nowhere, but suddenly Tom burst into tears, his body shaking. “I miss Mommy and Daddy.”
    Billy started crying, too. He hugged his brother. “Me, too . . . me, too.”
    “Daddy shouldn’t have been in the . . . in the . . .”
    “SEALs.” Billy always remembered the name of Roger Koenig’s former unit by associating it to the sea mammal.
    “And the other thing he did. The secret stuff. I think that’s why Mom was killed. Somebody bad came looking for him.”
    No one in their family had told the boys what had really happened. Roger had already been dead when Katy Koenig was brutally stabbed to death by an assassin. He’d been working on a highly classified mission as a CIA paramilitary operative in Beirut when men shot him in cold blood. Katy was murdered by the same men back in the U.S., simply to send a message to Will Cochrane that more of his beloved friends would die if he didn’t back down from seeking revenge for his dear friend Roger’s death.
    Billy stood up, not caring that he had bits of gravel and soil stuck to the skin below his shorts. “Is Aunt Faye here to look after us until Uncle Will arrives? She seemed so sad when she looked after us before.”
    “She was Mom’s sister. That’s why.” Tom tried to rally his immature brain into some semblance of adult insight. “Maybe she’s here again to learn how to look after us again. Uncle Robert and Aunt Celia are helping her.”
    Billy agreed. “I hope Uncle Will gets here soon. I can’t wait to see our new home.”
    The boys were no longer crying. Tom suddenly felt a moment of hope. “He always buys us toys. Do you think he’s got us some new ones in the house?”
    Billy’s thoughts were now on the same topic. “Maybe some new DS games. If he’s got a Microsoft account, he can download some games on our Kindles.”
    “If not, we can show him how to get an account.”
    In tandem, the twins looked at the valley and beyond, genuinely