by Cynthia Eden
His Sydney. Going home.
He knew exactly where her home was. Since her place near EOD headquarters had been torched, she’d return to the only safe haven that she had—in Louisiana.
Now would be the perfect time to get to Sydney. She’d be alone, isolated in Baton Rouge as she hadn’t been with Gunner dodging her steps in D.C.
Her guard would be lowered. No more EOD agents trailing underfoot.
Just Sydney.
Just me.
“This is where we say goodbye,” Cale told him.
Slade turned toward him. “No more guard duty?”
“You were the one who was right all along. You’ll be getting a full apology from the EOD, and compensation, of course.”
Of course.
Cale offered his hand. “I wish things could have been different.”
Slade took his hand. Shook it. “Maybe they will be now.” Everything could be different.
He’d once planned to take Sydney away, to start a new life with her. Sure, he couldn’t tell her about what he’d really done down in South America, but why should she ever have to learn that truth?
Maybe it would be the time for them to start fresh. To start over.
Cale walked away.
Slade began to whistle.
And if Sydney didn’t want him...if she refused the offer that he made to her, then, while she was all alone in the swamps that she foolishly loved so much, he’d kill her.
Her mistake to leave all the protection around her. Sydney had always thought she was so smart and tough.
When, all along, he’d been the one pulling the puppet strings.
He walked down the sidewalk, still whistling and planning for his reunion in Baton Rouge.
* * *
THE HOUSE WAS too quiet. Sydney stood in her living room, far too aware of the silence that surrounded her. She was back in Baton Rouge, back in the house that she’d loved so much, for so long.
The place seemed to be filled with memories of Gunner.
She turned toward the large window in her den. If Slade showed up—when, not if—she was supposed to keep him in front of that window. Because this position would give Gunner a perfect shot at the other man.
Exhaling slowly, she looked out of that window. The edge of the swamp and twisting cypress trees stared back at her. She saw no sign of Gunner, but she could feel him.
Watching.
Protecting.
Cale was out there, as well. Stationed at another watch point and staring down his scope, too. They had the main windows under watch so that they could see into the house.
She’d taken care of making sure they could hear what was happening inside the house. A bit of surveillance equipment, carefully hidden, and they were linked into the audio feed. They’d hear anything that would be said tonight.
Logan would also see what went down, since he was in the surveillance van hidden in her garage, and he was watching every single thing that happened on the monitors in there.
Their intel had already told them that Slade had hopped a plane out of D.C. He was coming after her; it was just a matter of time.
Sydney kept staring out of that window.
When she’d first come home, she’d felt Gunner all around her. Remembered the way they’d made love in that house. She could even have sworn that the sheets in her room still carried his scent.
She’d seen the memory of him at the kitchen table—Gunner staring at her with his dark gaze, watching her so hungrily.
He was everywhere.
Did he understand how completely he fit into her life?
Headlights appeared in the darkness. Her heart beat a little faster.
Almost showtime.
Almost.
She put her hand on the glass. I’ll be safe, Gunner.
Then she turned away.
* * *
GUNNER WATCHED SYDNEY put her hand on the glass pane. His own hand was curled around the weapon in his hand. He could see her lovely face so perfectly through the scope.
“Target is on scene,” Logan said in his earpiece.
Just as they’d planned. So far, everything was going just according to Sydney and Mercer’s plan.
They’d wanted to pull Slade out of D.C., to make him think that he was safe, that no eyes were on him.
Insects chirped around Gunner, and the swamp behind him stretched for miles.
The place was secluded, all right, and Slade would no doubt think it was the perfect spot for him to approach Sydney.
He’d be wrong.
But I still don’t like this.
No way did he want Sydney alone in the room with his brother. Slade had become twisted, whether from the drugs or something else, and Gunner knew there were no limits to what the man might do.
Gunner wouldn’t feel safe until Sydney was in his arms again.
“I have a visual.” This came from Cale. “Target is leaving the vehicle and approaching the house.”
Now they would see just what secrets Sydney would learn, and just how very far his brother had fallen.
* * *
“WE’RE OKAY,” SYDNEY whispered as she belted her fluffy, terry-cloth robe. The robe was huge, but that was the point, right? To disguise what she was wearing underneath it.
A bulletproof vest.
Gunner had been adamant on that point. He wanted their babies protected. She did, too. She just had to make sure that Slade didn’t see any sign of that vest.
The doorbell pealed. She glanced at the clock. Just a little after midnight. Her hand quickly ran through her hair, tousling it so that it would look as if she’d gotten out of bed. Then she waited a few moments, not wanting to rush to the door too quickly.
The doorbell pealed again.
With quick steps, she made her way to the door. She glanced through the peephole. Saw Slade’s face under her porch light. Her hand flipped the lock and she opened the door. “Slade! What are you doing here?” Sydney thought she did a pretty good job of projecting surprise into her voice.
He smiled at her, the smile that had once made her think he was such a charming guy. The smile she now understood was a lie.
“I couldn’t let you be all by yourself, sweetheart. Not when you were so broken up.” He stepped over the threshold. She eased back, carefully putting distance between them. “You might think everyone has let you down, but I haven’t.”
Yes, you have.
He shut the door behind him, locked it. When he moved, she saw the slight bulge under his jacket. He’d come to comfort her, but he’d also brought a weapon?
He came to kill me.
Her breath felt cold in her lungs. She’d thought that he’d try to keep charming her first. Sydney hadn’t believed that he’d go straight for the kill.
She backed up another few steps. He followed her, falling into line with her picture window. Perfect positioning.
“It’s after midnight,” she told him as she pretended to try to smooth her hair. “You shouldn’t be here now.”
“I needed to see you.” His gaze raked over her robe. He frowned. “And you wanted to see me, or else you wouldn’t have let me in the door.”
Her head moved in a faint nod. “I needed to...I needed to talk with you. About Gunner. I didn’t know that—”
“—he was a monster?” His gaze came back to her face. “Now you do. Now you know you were with the right brother in the beginning.”
The right brother has you in his sights now.
She locked her jaw. “I didn’t think that I could be so blind.” She’d arranged things deliberately in the den. Her hand waved toward her computer. The screen was off now, but papers were scattered across the desk, making it look as if she’d been hard at work earlier in the night. “So I started digging on my own. The powers-that-be at the EOD might be satisfied with the way this scene played out, but I’m not.”
Because she was looking so carefully for it, Sydney caught the faint hardening of Slade’s eyes.
/> “The EOD did its job.”
But Sydney shook her head. “I’m not sure of that. Gunner was swearing to me that he was innocent, that he’d never hurt me, never do all of those things...”
“He’s a liar, sweetheart.” He stepped closer to her. Her gaze slid down to his legs, then rose.
She held her ground this time. She wanted to make sure they both stood in front of that window. With the lights on in the den, they would be shown perfectly. Perfect targets.
“I’m sorry, but you were wrong about him.”
Another hard shake of her head. “I—I can’t be wrong.” Then she lifted her chin. “I went back, pulled all the records that I could find on the fire at Sarah Bell’s house.”
A long sigh broke from him. “Why put so much faith in him? You’re only hurting yourself.” His hand lifted. Trailed over her cheek. “Let me help you heal.”
She hated his touch. “I found an old article online. Gunner’s football team...they won the state championship that same weekend. The weekend of the fire at the Bell home.”
His nostrils flared. “So?”
“So the state championship game was held in a city four hours away. Gunner was with his team the whole time. They went on a bus together. They came back on a bus together...He didn’t start that fire.”
His hand fell away.
She shoved her fingers into the heavy pockets on her robe. She had her own weapon stashed in one of those pockets.
“I did more checking,” she whispered.
He spun away from her and paced toward the window. “On damn Gunner? Always...Gunner.”
“No. On you.”
His shoulders stiffened. With it being just the two of them, he wasn’t working nearly as hard to conceal his reactions. Maybe because he didn’t care.
He’d also lost his limp.
“Sydney...” He sighed out her name. “I came down here to comfort you so we could be together again. I know you’ve always loved me.”
“I did love you. Once.” That feeling was nothing like what she felt for Gunner.
He was still staring out of the window, and presenting such a fine target. “Before Gunner,” he growled.
“Before you started to change,” she whispered back.
* * *
SLADE’S FACE FILLED Gunner’s scope. The rage there, the hate, was frightening to see.
But Sydney wouldn’t see it. She couldn’t. Slade wasn’t looking at her. He was just staring out into the darkness.
Planning his attack.
Gunner’s left hand pressed against his transmitter. “He’s going to make a move soon. Be ready.” That much fury couldn’t be held in check for long.
They were wired into the audio feed that Sydney had set up, so they were hearing every word that she said. She was baiting Slade, pushing him.
That pushing was working.
Gunner hadn’t been at a state championship game the weekend that Sarah Bell died. The game had been two weekends after the fire. But it looked as though Slade didn’t remember that.
A flaw in his plan.
Then Sydney started talking again, and Gunner felt sweat trickle down the side of his face.
* * *
“YOU MADE SO many trips down to South America before—before—”
“Before Gunner left me for dead?” He turned toward her, his face expressionless. “Let’s not forget that part. Gunner and you both left me.”
“I wondered about all of those charter trips. Especially when I discovered that every account you had was empty. Cleaned out.”
His lips curved. The sight was chilling.
“You’d become angry before that last trip, too. I remember the fights we had. You accused me—”
“—of cheating?” he finished. He glanced down at his hands. Both hands had fisted. “I thought you might be sleeping with Gunner back then. I saw the way he looked at you, and the way you looked at him.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Not then. But now?” His eyebrows climbed. “You’re going to try telling me that the baby you’re carrying isn’t his?”
“It is.” They are. “And that’s why I had to keep digging. I couldn’t give up on him. I couldn’t.”
“You should have.” So soft.
She kept talking. “It was when I was digging, trying to find where all your money went to...that was when I discovered that you’d set up extra accounts in the Caymans.”
He laughed. “You and your damn computers. You could always find out too much on them.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out his weapon. “Like I said, you should have stopped.”
* * *
GUNNER’S FINGER TIGHTENED around the trigger.
“Hold!” This was Logan’s order, growled through the transmitter. “She’s still got him talking. We need to learn as much as we can.”
They needed to make sure that not a single bullet so much as grazed her skin.
“Hold, Gunner. That’s a direct order.”
He wasn’t following orders now. He was protecting the woman he loved.
Slade hadn’t aimed the gun at her yet. It was still by his side. The second that gun started to rise...
Gunner would fire. Brother or no brother.
* * *
“I FOUND OUT you were never the man I thought you were. Even before your plane went down...back then, you were drug running, weren’t you?”
He laughed, and completely dropped the mask that he’d been wearing. The twisted fury and hate was there for her to see, burning so hot. “Yeah, I was. I was earning more money than I’d ever made in my life. Those jerks at the EOD had turned me away. Said I was too unstable. Screw that! I was the best they could’ve had, and they wouldn’t even give me a chance.”
Her hand tightened around the weapon that was still concealed in her oversize robe pocket. “So you took your own chance?”
“I took the jobs that came to me. I made connections...money...so much money.” He rolled his shoulders. “You don’t know what it’s like to have nothing. I do. I grew up with nothing. Dirt-poor on a reservation in the middle of nowhere. No father. No mother. I wasn’t even raised by my blood. The grandfather that Gunner talks about so much? Not mine.”
“But he took you in,” Sydney said. “He helped—”
“My father signed custody of me over to him. Said I’d be with family. I didn’t want to be with them. I didn’t want Gunner’s castoffs. Didn’t want to always be in his shadow.”
There was pain there, breaking through the fury.
“I swore I’d do anything I had to do in order to get out of that place. I wouldn’t be poor again. No one would look down on me.” His smile flashed—not the charming one, But the cold grin of a killer. “Do you have any idea how much money I have? How much power?”
“No...” Tell me.
“I am muerte. I found it on one of my runs. I knew I could take over down there. When you and Gunner came for me the first time—”
When they’d all nearly died.
“I was fighting for power then. Your entrance, your backup...it was appreciated.” The grin kept chilling her. “Of course, it would have helped more if you hadn’t abandoned me.”
“You were dead!”
“Actually, yes, I was.”
Her breath burned in her lungs as surprise rolled through her.
“But thanks to the muerte, I came back.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My men dragged a doctor to me—some relief worker they found. He brought me back, I don’t even know how...injections, luck. Hell, maybe the devil just didn’t want me. The doc even said that the muerte might have saved me, that it was working in my body, stopping the blood loss.”
“What happened to the doctor?”
“When I recovered, I slit his throat.”
Brutal. But she knew that was exactly who—what—Slade was. A brutal killer. “And you became the cartel ruler down there?”
“I am muerte.”
“Because I was ready to expand. I knew that you’d taken out Guerrero recently....”
The Mexican arms dealer. Now everything was connecting. Her heart thudded into her chest. “He had links to the drug trade. That’s why you accessed his file at the EOD, you wanted to know—”
“I wanted to know what assets of his I could still use in Mexico, and what assets I needed to eliminate.”
“You mean kill.”
“Yes.” A shrug. “I knew it would be easy enough to get that intel from inside the EOD.”
“So you worked us all...you threatened Hal—”
Another cold laugh. “I paid him. There was no threat. Of course, I never intended for him to live long enough to collect his cash.”
“And the shooter? The man who fired at me—”
“I connected with him while in rehab.” The gun was held loosely in his hand at his side. She was tense, her gaze drifting to the gun far too often, but he acted as if he wasn’t even aware he’d pulled out the weapon. “You can meet the most useful contacts in the oddest places.”
“You hooked the guy up with muerte.”
“In return, he agreed to take a shot at you. I did tell him to miss, by the way. That was just a scare shot.”
“And at my house? The fire—”
His smile vanished. “I was supposed to be the one to save you.”
“Were you supposed to save Sarah, too?” Whispered.
“No, I wanted her to burn.”
She had never known him at all. “What about when we were in Peru—that shot on the beach? That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Guilty.”
How had he gotten the gun then? Had he arranged for one of his men to meet him?
“Figured it was never too early...to start driving a wedge between you and Gunner.” He glanced down at the weapon. His sigh seemed a little sad. “Now, I’m afraid, you are going to have to die.”
She shook her head. “Slade, no, don’t do this!”
“But I don’t have a choice. As soon as I heard what you had to say...that you’d found evidence, your fate was set.” He was still staring at the gun. “You won’t stay quiet, and I can’t take the chance of you ruining things for me. I’ve got big plans. I’ll use the assets of Guerrero’s that will work for me. I’ll bring my trade right up the border...I’ll have so much money and power that no one will ever be able to touch me.” His gaze came back to her. “But you have to die first.”