Cassidy

by Irish Winters

  Slowly, Cassidy unbuttoned her shirt. She wasn’t getting into any damned boat, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to be this guy’s naked sacrifice. “Ricin,” she scoffed. “So you’re just going to kill me then, huh? You’re not much for mass destruction, are you?”

  “Shut up. There’s still a chance—”

  “Not from what I hear, dumbass.” She shrugged one arm out of its sleeve. “The Department of Defense quit playing with ricin a long time ago. Trust me. I checked. It wasn’t worth the bother. Everyone must know that but you.”

  “It would’ve worked,” he roared. “It still might. Armageddon always brings repentance.”

  She blinked at his vehemence. Was this guy for real? Armageddon? Repentance? What did they have to do with a ricin attack and her naked in a boat? This conversation was just too bizarre to be real. Intent on keeping Cain’s attention, she let the other sleeve slide down her arm. “What the shit are you talking about?”

  His entire forehead furrowed. “This—THIS!—is why men must dominate women. Your gender is too weak and too stupid to understand. Only with true repentance do all the conniving, guilty people turn to the Lord and think they can buy their way into heaven.”

  She cocked her head. “Excuse me? Is that what this is all about? Money?”

  “No,” he hissed, his teeth bared and clenched tight. “It’s about you dying. I mean for everyone to believe they can save the poor, naked woman floating down the river. The Coast Guard. The police. I want every lying reporter within distance to capture your story before they die, too.”

  Cassidy glimpsed Jude creeping through the brush, her pistol in his hand. She ran her index finger under her left bra strap to hold Cain’s attention. It worked. Mr. A’s tongue flicked over his bottom lip, the slimy snake.

  Jude gave her a quick nod, his lips pressed tight, his jaw set at a hard angle.

  She raised her shoulder just enough that her strap slid to the crook of her arm, baring the top of one breast.

  Cain jerked his gun at her. “Drop ’em both. Let’s see what you got, whore.”

  She feigned compliance, both hands behind her back, as if undoing the eyelets and hooks. If he was expecting big boobs to flop out of these tiny B cups, he was in for some serious disappointment. But if the sight of a naked, albeit inferior female body got Cain off and gave Jude time to move in, she was all for it. She lowered her bra and exposed herself.

  He sneered, not taking his eyes off her chest. “You women think you’re so much better than men. You steal our jobs. You sleep your way into promotions you don’t deserve. You lord your sex over us, and you lie. You bitches always lie. The only place you belonged was under the yoke of the prophet or beneath him in his bed, but you killed him!”

  “I did not. Not technically. I mean, I wanted to, but my boss beat me to it.” She jiggled her firm but itty-bitty boobs. Cain had to be out of his mind to be distracted by what little she had to offer. Still, if it worked...

  He cocked his head. She changed tactics, thinking he might have heard Jude in the bushes behind him. With one quick move, she unsnapped her bra and let it drop. His eyes lit with the glittering black light of a truly twisted mind. “That’s what I wanted. Now for everything—”

  “Don’t touch her!” Jude stepped out of the shadows, his weapon trained on Cain’s back. “On your knees. Now!”

  Cassidy took a deep breath. Jude was there. She was safe. But Cain whirled on Jude and—

  BLAM!

  Oh, my hell. Jude shot him. He really shot him. “I said don’t touch her!”

  Cain tilted to his left before one knee buckled, and down he went, stone, cold dead.

  The love of her life stood there with his glasses askew on his nose, looking as crazy-shocked as she was. Who is this guy? Cassidy couldn’t believe what she’d seen. Her timid accountant had changed into a man the likes of Alex. Fierce. Unforgiving. And a damned good shot.

  Genuine pride tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Where’s your shirt?”

  She didn’t get the chance to answer. Her world dropped out from beneath her when he fell to his knees, his hand to his chest. Only then did she see the crimson blossoming through his shirt. She ran to him, cradled him in her arms.

  The son-of-a-bitch shot Jude!

  She’d no more than lifted him against her bare breasts when Tucker Chase ran out of the bushes, his pistol lifted to the sky. “Goddamn you, Cannon, I was going to do that. Do you always have to get in my way?” He holstered his weapon and slouched out of his long-sleeved shirt. Tossing it at Cassidy, he growled, “Cover those tits, Dancer. He didn’t hurt you, too, did he?”

  “Help Jude!” she ordered while she angled into the proffered shirt, her heart in her throat. “Don’t you have a cell phone on you? Use it. Call for help.”

  “Keep your panties on. Police and ambulance are on their way.” Tucker dropped bare-chested beside her. He’d already stripped his T-shirt off and torn a piece of it for Cassidy. “Take the arm wound, Dancer. Press as hard as you can. Slow the damned bleeding.”

  Arm wound? She hadn’t detected another wound. But Tucker was right. Frantically, she ripped Jude’s sleeve up from the cuff for better access to the wound on his forearm. Not a bullet hole, though. More of a slice on his forearm. A two-inch slice pouring Jude’s life force into the muddy Saint John’s riverbank. She folded that scrap of shirt into a tight wad, intending to stick it inside the slice to stop the bleeding if she had to.

  “Where’s your blow-out kit?” she snapped. Rourke always carried one. She did, too. Usually. Not tonight though. Damn it.

  “Believe it or not, I don’t keep it on me twenty-four-seven,” Tucker muttered sarcastically. He leaned over Jude and applied his portion of the shirt to the bloody hole in Jude’s Chest. “This is gonna hurt, buddy.”

  Jude arched off the ground despite Tucker’s attempt to hold him down. “You’re killing me, Chase. Damn you. I’m not your buddy. Get off me.”

  “Stop whining. You’re not dying on my watch, so man up. Grit your teeth, asshole, and bear it.” He muttered at Cassidy. “Stewart said you were a spitfire, Dancer. That was a damned dangerous stunt you just pulled, leading Cain on.”

  “I thought I could take him,” she grunted, pressing as hard as Tucker. Maybe harder. “You’ve been waiting for Mr. A, haven’t you? That’s why you showed up. You’ve been here all along.”

  “Stewart and me been taking turns, yeah. Twelve on. Twelve off. Cain must’ve thought he had a green light when your boss left for the night. Guess you showed him.”

  “God, I never should’ve left.”

  “Shut up, Dancer. Me and Stewart had your back. You made a dumb decision. You were hurting too, now move on. Stop whining.” That’s what Rourke would have said. Exactly what…

  Cassidy nodded even as the terrible scene shimmered and turned surreal. She wasn’t cradling Jude. It was Rourke in her arms. On the ground. In the stars. She couldn’t catch a breath. The metallic smell of fresh blood sent her reeling back into a warp. She was that kite in the sky again, torn loose and lost. The helicopter would come soon and—

  “No! Not again. No!”

  “Settle down,” Tucker growled, annoyed. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “I can’t lose him,” she cried. “God, I can’t—”

  “You’re not going to lose him. I promise, baby. I promise.”

  She had to look twice at that unexpected endearment from a crass man, but had no time to care when Jude groaned. She forgot about Tucker and Cain and—and Rourke. “Stay with me,” she ordered. “Don’t you dare die.”

  A quiet moan lifted up from his throat. He closed his eyes. Cassidy glanced toward the house, afraid Judith might come running to her father. Afraid this was her last few seconds with the man she loved. The despair she thought she’d conquered through his gentle love returned with a roar. She had to infuse him with the will to live. To fight!

  “You can’t leave. Judith loves you,” she
cried, her tears dripping into his face. “And I love you. I can’t go on without you.”

  But nothing she said seemed to matter. Jude went limp, and it was happening all over again. Rourke, one of the toughest men she’d known, had died. Now Jude lay dying. Lightning did strike twice.

  But if this was it, if this truly was his last breath, Cassidy wanted it to be hers. Trembling, she covered his mouth with hers. Breathing all her heart and soul into that last kiss, she gave everything.

  “Cass—”

  “No,” she sobbed, elbowing Tucker away. “Let me be. I won’t leave him.”

  “Cass—”

  What? Who? It wasn’t Tucker calling her name. It was—Jude?

  His hand snaked around her wrist. One moment he was dying, the next he had a firm grip on her. “Need to tell you...”

  She tipped her head to his lips. “What?” she asked fearfully. Anything, but goodbye.

  “I’m not Rourke, damn it. My name’s Jude Cannon, you feel me, Dancer? I’m not leaving. Not now. Not ever. Now button your damned shirt before I bend you over and take you right here and now.” He tugged her into his face, and Cassidy got lost in the lips of the bravest man she’d ever known.

  At last, the medics took over and she saw with better eyes. The gunshot was high in his chest. Still frightening, but not fatal. Alex winked at her from where he stood talking with Tucker. No wonder Tucker didn’t have his blowout kit on him. He was wearing shorts. The big dummy. Kelsey was there with Judith. Best of all, the EMTs weren’t afraid to look her in the eye.

  “Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

  The EMT working on Jude’s shoulder muttered, “I’m not supposed to say, but, yeah. This guy’ll be up and dancing before long.”

  She exhaled a no-kidding sigh of relief, striving for calm. “I didn’t know you danced.”

  He winked. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Not me.” He’d better get that idea out of his head.

  “You’ll learn,” he teased.

  She would have argued, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  Jude wasn’t done with her. “You really love me, huh?” he asked, a salacious glint in his weary eyes. “It’s not just the extreme circumstance or the—”

  He never got another word out.

  She dove past the medics and kissed the ever-loving hell out of her man.

  Epilogue

  Life was full of paradoxes. Choices you should’ve made. Chances you should’ve taken. Some you shouldn’t have.

  Sometimes, it was hard to admit you’d made mistakes, that your innate way of handling life’s challenges might not have been the best. That someone else might have been right. Maybe smarter. That you might have caused more trouble than it was worth at the end of a long, hard operation. That you could have obeyed your superiors if you’d wanted to. That they actually might know more than you. It could happen.

  Back that boat up.

  Cassidy Dancer wasn’t ready to admit anything. Ahem. Make that Cassidy Cannon, as in Mrs. Jude Cannon, the new wife of the up-and-coming and very handsome manager at the Seattle/Tacoma accounting branch of the best construction company in the Pacific Northwest. The stepmother of one darling daughter, Judith, who would so, so live at the Seattle Opera if she thought she could get away with it.

  Yeah. That wasn’t going to happen, either.

  That girl had a definite athletic deficiency Cassidy intended to remedy. As soon as Judith got home from the latest showing of something called The Marriage of Figaro, whatever that was. Who was that guy Mozart anyway? Sheesh.

  Judith needed to join the local soccer club or learn to mountain climb. Baseball. Football. Something.

  Standing on her deck overlooking the lazy Puyallup River, Cassidy had a few minutes to herself. Who would have thought that rascal Tucker Chase had an inside track with a classy lady like Melissa McCormack? But he did.

  It was harder yet to believe that Alex and Tucker had worked together that last hectic night in Florida, but they had. That was the real reason Tucker had come to Florida. Despite his own wounds, he’d taken it upon himself to look out for Cassidy and Judith. He’d been there in the shadows the whole time, the sneaky—friend.

  And that tender light in Mark Houston’s eyes when he’d shown up at the Seattle office? Another surprise. He’d known precisely what Cassidy was going through, because he’d been there in the shadows with Tucker from the day Cassidy left for Florida to the morning she’d turned tail and ran out on Jude.

  It seemed Mark couldn’t hang around after that. Guess he had an important survival test to conduct somewhere in the mighty Hoh Rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula. He couldn’t miss it, so guess what? The man himself stepped in to babysit. Yes, Alex. Along with Kelsey, he watched over Judith while her frantic father went after the foolish, hardheaded woman of his dreams.

  The screwed up Church of the Palma Christi cult was no more. The FBI had dismantled the nefarious charitable corporation, returned what funds they could to its investors, a kinder description than most of them deserved. The rest was history.

  It seemed Aloysius, Lucien’s older brother, was the real mastermind behind the cult. He supplied the illegal weapons cache. The C4 came form a notorious local source, but the guns and ammo came from a certain South American cartel, which cannot be named. Classified intel, you understand.

  Aloysius employed more of those teenage thugs for other things than brutally murdering his opponents. While he wheeled and dealed with gun runners, a couple of his smarter punks trolled online social networks, obituaries, and social pages for vulnerable targets to convert. Once they zeroed in on a wealthy prospect, Aloysius sent Greg and Hank to wrap it up.

  Odd though. Aloysius might have set up his baby brother to be lord and master inside the walls of the cult, yet he never allowed Lucien access to the real world. Alex took that puzzle on as a personal challenge. Come to find out, Lucien Cain had been convicted of murdering a nine-year-old girl when he was sixteen. The prosecutor claimed depraved indifference, but the juvenile system sheltered Lucien until his big brother took over. We all know how that turned out…

  There was no second coming, not in the subways, the, metro, or the BART. That future event was still undetermined. One of those divine mysteries. Like a second coming should be.

  Cassidy had stopped being so damned willful. Most of the time. She took more time off to spend with her family and resisted volunteering for out-of-the-country ops. She didn’t feel like she had to prove something to her fellow guy agents, either. She actually let the guys win once in a while. She also learned to bake peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses melted on top. Jude’s favorite. Why not? It wasn’t like it was hard or anything.

  She’d let her feelings for Rourke go, but retained his excellent mentoring. He’d come into her life at the right time, and for that, she was grateful. He’d honed her natural talents the same way he’d tempered her rowdy side. He was responsible for the savvy TEAM agent she became.

  It was a good thing she and he had never hooked up. He wasn’t the one. Wasn’t even close to being the right one. How did she know? Because he was born tough. He knew it all along. He ate tough for breakfast, lived it, breathed it, and expected nothing less from others.

  But tougher than any black operator was the simple, ordinary man defending his family. The accountant who’d taken on the scariest mission of a lifetime without a minute of black-ops training. The man who had nothing more than heart to go on when he’d entered the cult’s walls. The guy who did what he had to do simply because it was his job. Jude hadn’t even owned a gun when he’d first sought out Lucien Cain. Just a hell-bent determination to rescue what mattered most to him. His child.

  Just thinking about her man sent a tropical heat wave straight to her core. He was definitely the one. The man who still didn’t see himself as a hero. The guy who preferred snuggling with his new wife and delightful daughter at the end of a long, hard day instead of upping his weapons proficiency a
t Nathan Dunn’s gun range. The guy who didn’t mind a strand or two of Miss Fluffy’s long, gray hair on his lapel when he left for work in the morning.

  Yeah. Him.

  Cassidy took in a deep breath of the amazing Pacific Northwest. Autumn rains were in the forecast. Nine months of mostly drizzle, low laying blankets of bone-chilling fog, and more drizzle were sure to follow. Why do you think the trees grow so tall there? It truly is the water and… All. That. Rain.

  Tonight Jude wanted to explore the available real estate on Gig Harbor when he got home from work, but for a moment, it was just Cassidy and her thoughts. The mistakes she’d thought she’d made no longer haunted her. She wasn’t that kite lost in the wind anymore, caught between decisions—one lost to her, one she’d been afraid to face.

  She didn’t have to take on the world alone, either. Jude had her six. Every day. Every night. Every second in between.

  Cassidy glanced at the sound of the front door opening behind her, and there he was, the doorknob in his hand, a crooked smile on his ruggedly handsome face. The guy with his sunglasses low on his nose, and the best words in the world on his lips.

  “Hi, beautiful. I’m home.”

  The End

  Sneak Preview of ADAM

  Book 11

  In the Company of Snipers

  There comes a time when a man has to do what a man has to do.

  Now was that moment.

  “Sir, we are currently at thirty-five thousand feet and holding.”

  Junior Agent Adam Torrey nodded one curt acknowledgment, stepped to the loading ramp of the lumbering C-130, and with a backward step and a cocky wave, he pitched his body into the midnight sky. The flight chief’s admonition, “Jumper away,” faded in his earpiece.

  Frigid air whipped around him, making him instantly thankful for the polypropylene thermal undergarments beneath his flight suit. He leveled his six-foot, three-inch frame into a belly dive, his arms and legs extended like a giant bug descending to the planet below.