Hunter (In the Company of Snipers Book 14)

by Irish Winters

  “You got ’em all?” an unfamiliar man’s tense voice called from across the camp.

  Who is that? Gulping back the suffocating terror climbing up her throat, she very quietly doused the flashlight and removed her revolver from her cosmetic case. This was no game. Those gunshots were real. She listened, her ear to the door and her knees shaking.

  Heavy footsteps pounded alongside the shower. “Only saw the three.” Another male. Neither familiar. Definitely not her guys or the guys from The TEAM.

  “Burdette ain’t gonna like this. Did you at least nail the woman like he wanted? She’s the only damned reason we’re here.”

  She lifted her fingers to her mouth. Nail the woman? Me? As in… r-r-rape me?

  “I can’t shoot what I can’t see.”

  “Shit. Where’d she go?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “You tell him then.”

  “I ain’t telling him nothin’. Burdette’s an ass. Let him think she’s dead for all I care.”

  The men’s footsteps faded, but it sounded as if they’d stopped at the MI tent.

  “Hey, Jonesy,” one of them called out. “Come look at this guy. He’s still alive. See if he knows where she is.”

  Very quietly, Meredith unlatched the heavy-duty plastic shower door enough to peer around it without drawing attention to herself. The soft glow from the two LED torches outside the tent door revealed two men in identical black pants and shirts standing over another man on the ground just outside the door to the tent. Her lead. Her friend. Teague Horton. What were they going to do with him?

  One of the guys crouched, the barrel of his rifle poking Teague’s bicep. “Where’s the woman, tough guy? You send her someplace safe? You know we were coming for you?”

  When Teague groaned, the man gripped her boss’s chin and jerked his face upward. “I asked, where’s Flynn? Don’t be a hero. You talk, I’ll kill you fast. You don’t, I’ll leave you for bait. There’s plenty of animals wouldn’t mind dragging your sorry carcass off for dinner.”

  Let him go, you jerk. Meredith lifted her pistol, the saliva gone from her mouth and lips. She’d practiced plenty at the indoor range she frequented, but this—this was real. Still on her knees, she cupped the weapon with both hands and took as careful aim as possible, her whole body shaking.

  “Look at me.” The guy slapped Teague’s face, knocking his head side to side. “Focus, Horton. Don’t go dying on me. I need the woman who came with you. Where’s Flynn? She shacking up with them other guys down by the river? Is that where she’s at?”

  When Teague groaned an answer, the guy punched him. “Speak up.”

  Meredith lined the one still standing in her sights. The other was crouched too close to Teague—she couldn’t take the chance she might hit him. Her pocket-sized pistol came with an accurate laser scope on the top rack. She’d always expected her ex to surprise her in the middle of the night, so she’d prepared well and had intended to surprise him right back. Now maybe she could save Teague’s life. Planting her butt firmly against the doorjamb, she sucked in a trembling breath and—she fired.

  Both men turned in surprise, but the one standing dropped to one knee. She’d hit him! He extended his injured leg and cried, “There she is! Git her! The damned bitch shot me!”

  She fired again before either could shoot back, her brain pinging with adrenaline. Where were the guys from The TEAM? Couldn’t they hear the racket? Were they dead, too? Was she the only one left?

  The uninjured guy pulled his buddy off the ground, spraying the shower with automatic fire as he backed away, his aim going too high to hit her. She ducked lower, one knee bent, the other straight, and one hand to the dirt. At the same time, the injured man’s knees buckled, and, when he fell, his buddy’s rifle tilted upward. Meredith pushed up from the ground and fired two more rounds. If she couldn’t kill them, she could at least force them to run for cover and leave Teague alone.

  It worked. The first guy backed out of the camp, dragging his wounded partner and cursing all the way. “You think just because you got a gun you’re untouchable? Think again, Flynn. We’ll be back, bitch.”

  Meredith ran to Teague. Sweat glistened off his handsome face, but his chest was wet with blood. His bicep, too. “You’re hurt,” she cried like he didn’t already know, running her fingers along the wound in his shoulder, hoping the round had gone through.

  “Meredith,” he rasped. “Run. Hide.”

  “No. I’m not leaving you.”

  His gaze filled with pain and tenderness. “Have to. Go. Save yourself.”

  “No, I can save you.” She looked up to the sound of thundering footsteps pounding straight for her. Lifting her pistol again, her hands shaking, she aimed high and prepared for the worst. But it was Hunter who burst into the clearing, his belt flopping loose at his waist, his ink-covered chest bare and glistening in the lantern light, his rifle pointed in her direction. As soon as he saw her, he averted his aim. “What the hell happened?”

  She pointed the opposite direction. “Two men. They went that way, but they—”

  He rushed to her side and knelt, his hands instantly on the hole in Teague’s chest. “Hang on, buddy.”

  “No.” Teague grabbed Hunter’s wrist. “Leave me. Save her. They’ll be back. They want her, not me. Run. Hide.”

  Hunter shook his head. “Not going without you,” he said gently as he shouldered his rifle. “Hang tight. I’ll get you ready to travel.”

  Without a word, he pushed off the ground and ran into the MI tent. Meredith’s gaze swept over their camp. She hadn’t noticed until then, but the place had been ransacked. Cots were overturned. Their supplies scattered. The backpack she’d brought with all of her clothes lay inside the tent, her things pulled out like trash on the floor.

  So where was everyone else? Lyle? Dan? Ky and Seth? Eric?

  Hunter was back in seconds with one of the MI medical kits. “Sorry,” he told Teague, “but you’re not dying on my watch.” Ripping Teague’s shirt open, he laid his chest bare. Blood seeped out of the bullet hole.

  “Give me all the cotton packing,” he ordered Meredith. She already had it in her hands, and handed it over. With his thumb, he jammed a thick wad of the packing directly into the wound to the side of Teague’s left nipple.

  He arched his back and groaned. Tears ran down the sides of his head, and she wanted to cry with him. “Stop,” he groaned. “Just take her and go.”

  “You’re hurting him,” Meredith cried. Hunter seemed so—angry. Did he mean to hurt Teague?

  “Cry later. Pressure bandage now,” he snapped, his palm up, his fingers curling. “Now!”

  She scrambled to obey, ripping the bandage out of its sterile wrapper, but just as fast as she handed it over he demanded, “Another!”

  She couldn’t move quickly enough. His brows narrowed into a vicious V. He snapped his fingers for another while her friend writhed beneath the relentless pressure of Hunter’s other hand, and Meredith wanted him to stop hurting Teague. Tears flooded her eyes at the merciless way he worked. He didn’t let up. Not for a second. He’d become a demon, growling when she wasn’t quick enough. “Damn it, keep up!”

  Teague gasped in pain.

  “Give it to me,” Hunter barked, his brown eyes gone black, devoid of compassion and his lips twisted with cruelty.

  “I am,” she shot back at him, nearly tossing the bandage. Icy coldness shuddered off of him. “How many more do you need? I’ve only got three left.”

  He didn’t answer, just leaned into Teague with one hand clasped over the other, compressing the wound in the poor man’s chest. Hunter’s thick biceps bunched. The veins on his muscular arms stood out rigid in the dim light, bringing that snake tattoo back to life. Beads of sweat turned to trickles at his temples, dripping down his chest and into the deeply carved rift between his pecs. His chest heaved. “Sorry, Horton, but you’re not letting go. Hold on, damn it. We’ve almost got this licked.”

>   Meredith sat back on her thighs, exhausted and ready to assist but unable to do what Hunter seemed determined to do. If sheer willpower alone could save Teague, Hunter had it in spades.

  At last, the clingy bandages held. The blood seeping around the bandages slowed to a trickle. Hunter eased up on his patient, but Teague was out cold by then. Meredith let out the breath she’d been holding in one trembling sigh.

  Hunter turned on her, recrimination raking over her nearly bare breasts and her abdomen to parts below. To her underwear. “Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head and raked a handful of her hair over her shoulder, fully aware what she must look like. When she didn’t speak, he grasped her chin with two bloody fingers, anger fierce in his eyes. “Merry, look at me. I asked you a question. Did they hurt you?”

  For the first time, she noticed the glint of sweat shimmering on the eagle, globe, and anchor etched over his sternum, its wings unfurled in majestic, colorful detail, surrounded by profane words against Jihadists and Al Qaeda. Against betrayers and liars. The man was a walking USMC declaration of “up yours.”

  The snake that ended with a silent hiss on his middle finger extended in writhing circles up his arm, evolving into a sleeve of detailed scales up and over his shoulder as if he were the snake. A skull with dripping teeth marked his other bicep.

  Meredith lifted her chin, determined that Hunter Christian couldn’t scare her. Not him. Not her friend. “No, I’m fine. I was in the shower when I heard shooting. I shot the one guy—”

  His nostrils twitched. Angry dark eyes drilled into her. Hostility shuddered off of him in heated waves she could almost feel as sarcasm poured out of him. “You shot one of them? Did you kill him?”

  She understood then. He’d thought because she was mostly undressed that she’d been assaulted or nailed, to use those assassins’ crude descriptor, or—could he be thinking she was hooking up with one of her teammates? How could he think that? Of her? Did she look that desperate?

  In the long run, it didn’t matter. She had more pressing things to worry about—like staying alive. “No. I heard shooting. I just thought it was fireworks, that you guys were trying to scare me, but when I opened the shower, I saw two men with rifles.” She spared a quick glance at her destroyed camp before her gaze came back to rest on Teague, his face white and his breathing shallow. “Where’s Lyle? Where’s Dan? Why didn’t they come help us?”

  “Dead,” Hunter said bluntly. “Both took one to the head. Other side of your tent. Looks like they were executed. What’d the shooters say? Did you hear anything?”

  “Yes,” she remembered then. “They were looking for me. Somebody... Mr. Burdette, I think they said, sent them to get me. W-w-why me?” She hated the weak question the moment she voiced it. It made her sound selfish. Everything wasn’t always about her, but had these men died because of her?

  Hunter pushed off the ground instead of answering. “Let’s get somewhere safe.” Striding into the tent again, she caught sight of another tattoo up high on the back of his shoulder. A man’s boot print. The snake she got, but this was weird.

  He returned quickly with one of the four cots. All four legs had been broken off, making it sturdy enough to hold a man’s weight. With his rifle still at his back, he aligned it alongside Teague. “Slide this under him when I lift.”

  Meredith hurried to obey. As Hunter logrolled Teague to his side, she pushed the cot as far beneath her boss as she could. Gently, Hunter eased Teague onto the vinyl webbing. Instantly, they were mobile, and Hunter was on the move again, collecting what, she didn’t know, from the tent. Her team had been murdered or were half-dead, and her head was reeling. Who could’ve done this? Why?

  She pushed a hank of wet hair over her shoulder and went in pursuit of Hunter. When she caught up with him, he was halfway out of the tent pulling one of MI’s wheeled, ruggedized supply crates. More than four feet high, the three-by-three container protected part of the team’s supplies, foodstuffs, and the drinking water for the duration of the beta test. Hunter passed the retractable handle grip off to her the moment he spotted her. “Bring this with you and keep up.”

  She balked, her palms lowered to indicate her obvious state of undress in case he was blind and as rude as could be. “I can’t go like this. At least let me get dressed.”

  Without answering, he turned on her, and headed back to Teague, loosening the belt from his waist as he went. “Then do it. We don’t have all night.”

  What a total jerk. Before she called him on his atrocious attitude, loud, angry voices filtered through the jungle behind her. The killers were back.

  “Move!” Hunter hissed, his rifle aimed toward the jungle.

  Instead of wasting time explaining, she ran to the shower stall, yanked open the bullet-riddled door, and snatched her cosmetic bag and clothes. Fear climbed up her back, urging her legs to move faster.

  “Don’t let her get away this time,” came that same stranger’s voice, closer now.

  “I say we kill her and be done with it,” a different man’s voice added. “The bounty says dead or alive, don’t it? If Burdette wants her breathing, he can come out here and find her himself.”

  Flashlight beams zipped high and low, casting scary shadows everywhere. Meredith ran back to the male security Hunter offered, scared to death. But she ran too fast. Tripping over an errant root, she stumbled to her hands and knees at his feet, skinning all four points of contact with the compacted earth and tossing everything she’d just risked her life to save onto the ground.

  Growling, Hunter latched onto her elbow, pulling her up like she was nothing but a ragdoll. Disgust poured over his face when he spied her pink cosmetic bag near his boot. “We don’t have time for this bullshit, damn it. Move your ass.”

  “I-I am,” she stuttered. Too rattled to think, she left everything behind and ran with him. Once under the cover of the jungle, Hunter again shouldered his rifle and dragged Teague while she struggled with the supply crate, tugging it over roots and rocks, twisted weeds and sharp grass. When the path narrowed, he nodded for her to take the lead.

  Somewhere along the line, he’d used his belt to secure Teague to the cot, but damn. The fear of being shot or assaulted screamed at her to leave the bulky crate behind and run. But she didn’t. Teague and Hunter needed these supplies. Shaking with outright terror at what would happen to her if she were caught, Meredith remained obedient to Hunter.

  Catcalls and hoots of derision echoed behind her. Those thugs were back in her camp, not bothering to lower their voices. One mocked, “Wherever she is, she’s stark-assed naked. Shouldn’t be too hard to find her now.”

  She cringed. They’d found the clothes she’d left behind when she panicked, damn it. She needed them. Her bug spray. Her anti-itch cream, too. Even moving as quickly as she was, insects were biting every inch of her exposed flesh, and she had a lot of it.

  Hunter tossed an aggravated glare at her when she risked a furtive look over her shoulder. “I said keep moving.”

  She did, the terror of him being shot from behind adding speed to her sore, bare feet. “It’s too dark. I can barely see. Where am I going?”

  “Veer starboard,” he ordered grimly.

  When she looked both ways, wondering which was starboard, he snapped, “To your right.”

  Okay then. He didn’t intend to head back to his camp, which she’d expected. Instead, they headed off the beaten path and into deeper, darker, thicker brush and long hanging liana vines. What she wouldn’t give for her flashlight.

  The sound of angry men’s voices faded, and she was running blind. Only the slap and whip of sharp stalks and stems against her bare flesh and Hunter’s pants made any sound. And, oh yeah, the buzz of those insects, and all the sinister noises that lurked within the pitch-black shadows.

  “Why aren’t they chasing us?” she asked in a whisper.

  Hunter didn’t answer, just kept dragging the litter, grunting when it snagged on the same roots and tangle
s biting into the soles of her feet. Meredith didn’t speak again. He gave the orders, directing her when and where to turn. She obeyed, wondering how he could see when she couldn’t.

  At least the ruggedized supply crate had balloon tires that made it easy to pull. Hunter had the heavier load, the trailing poles of the cot digging into the ground. She had to give him credit. He’d turned into a machine, a beast of burden, pausing only to force his load over any impediment, jostling Teague with every step but moving relentlessly forward.

  “Stop,” he finally murmured, weariness in his tone.

  She set the container flat to its bottom, breathing hard and unable to see where they were. How Hunter knew where to stop, she had no idea. The man must have natural night vision.

  Her heart still pounded, but gradually, she detected what looked to be twelve-foot-tall stalks of bamboo. Silvery shades of moonlight glinted off the knife-shaped leaves as a slow breeze twisted through them. At last. Some place to hide.

  He assumed the lead. The tall plants bent easily to the battering ram of Hunter’s bare, broad shoulders and his muscled chest. If they didn’t move, he slowed enough to shift them out of his way, but carefully. He didn’t break them; just bent them to his iron will as he forged a path.

  Once he’d gone several feet into the grove, he eased Teague to the ground, then flattened a six-foot-wide landing for them to stand in. He motioned her into the center of their bamboo shelter. “We’ll be safe here.”

  Good thing, too. Her hands were blistered from the container’s handles. Her feet felt as if she’d walked over hot coals, and she needed to catch her breath. She parked the container to the side, angling it into the bamboo to give Hunter enough room to settle Teague to the ground without setting him on bamboo stalks.

  The thick patch she found herself in seemed thick and wide—in the dark. Meredith scrubbed her palms up and down her biceps, worried she and the guys were still easy to find. Having Hunter there with her helped. The rifle at his back gave her some measure of security, too. But bamboo was just a bunch of plants and bullets could still reach her. Those men, too.