by S. M. Butler
Her Last Kill
A Reapers Strike Force Story
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author
S.M. Butler
Table of Contents
Her Last Kill
Blurb
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Author’s Afterword
About the Author
Other Books
Copyright
The Reapers aren't exactly what they seem. They're the most elite of the world's fighters--but all they have in common is that their countries and their families can never know that they exist.
Axel Martinez lived and breathed life as a Marine until his entire squad was massacred. A chance offer from a multi-billionaire provided him exactly the escape from his past he wanted and for eight years, he managed to forget his past. Until now.
Beatrice Li has been a gun-for-hire since she was old enough to pick up a knife. One strange meeting on a rooftop changed her life forever and now she saves the world, one assassination at a time.
But when Axel’s life is threatened by a ghost from Bea’s past, Bea’s going to have to use all her strength to keep up her guard—both from those that want to kill her sexy and seductive mechanic, and also from him chipping away at her carefully crafted walls around her heart. His smart mouth and cocky flirtations keep her on her toes, but she’ll give as good as she gets.
For those who stuck by me when I couldn’t stick by myself.
You know who you are.
-Suz
1
People sleep the deepest in the few hours just before they wake up for the day. Those early moments just before sunrise when folks slept so completely were prime time for attacks. Axel Martinez had that little fact ingrained into his head as neatly as his ability to walk or talk, a carryover from his days in the Marines.
Axel stopped in front of Hawk’s Automotive, staring into the darkness of the building. The waiting room area in front was encased in glass, and even though the place was unlit, he could see the outline of the main office beyond it. The other door beside his office went into the break room and his personal office, hidden behind the steel-reinforced wall. Those two rooms were the only ones not visible from his current position.
Rain poured down on him as he lifted his head and let the droplets fall against his hot skin. His morning run was one of his favorite rituals, even in the rain. It prepared him for the day, cleared his head of everything but the rhythmical pounding of his sneakers against the pavement. But today, he wasn’t feeling it. His mind was muddled with the dreams from the night before, the ones that sent him out of his bed and running across the town in the middle of a thunderstorm. He didn’t have to be at work for another couple of hours. He wasn’t even sure what had brought him to the door.
Well, that wasn’t right. He knew exactly what brought him here. A little part of him expected his little slice of the world to be gone if he left it for more than a few hours and it pushed its way to the front of his mind every time he had the dreams.
It had been almost nine years since he’d left the Marines. He was whole and healthy now—physically and mostly emotionally—but that nagging insecurity that his world might fall apart if he didn’t watch over it carefully enough still embedded itself deep into his blood, threatening to take over when he least expected the attack.
But everything here was exactly as he’d left it hours before and there was no reason he should think otherwise. Inside, the coffee maker in the waiting area was set, ready to start when he’d walk into the place in a few hours. The white-and-gray-speckled tile had a slight shine to it from regular buffing to keep the dirt and grime from the garage next door to it tracking across the floor. The magazines on the table in the center of the waiting area were neatly arranged, probably because of Beatrice Li, his receptionist. She had this thing about meticulously cleaning the place. No one would care if the magazines were slightly off center, yet she would fix it every time.
He really didn’t mind it, though. Even though he didn’t own the place—he just ran it for his boss, Nathan Hawk—he still took a measure of pride in how it looked. Like when he was in the military, cleanliness was next to godliness.
Satisfied that nothing had disappeared, he walked around the back side of the garage, to the neighboring apartment building where he lived. It was quaint little two-story building, built in another time. He wasn’t even sure how old the place was, but it was well-cared for, and Nathan had renovated the plumbing and electrical systems to keep up with the modern code. Because of course, the man owned that building too.
Four brown doors, two on each floor stood out proudly from the faded blue and gray paints. Even those paints had chipped away, revealing the oranges and browns of a different era. His best friend, Chris Hardy, had one of the apartments, and one of the other guys, Jordan Levi, had the one next to him. Both apartments were lights out as usual. The guys probably took another one of those trips Nathan sent them on again because none of them had been to work for the last two days.
Not that he needed them to work. Jubilee was a town of about four hundred people, and not many of them had need of a mechanic on a usual basis. The bulk of the business was maintenance and the care of farm equipment, something he’d had to learn about when he’d arrived there after getting out of the military.
Axel pulled his keys out of his pocket as he took the stairs up to his place two at a time. He stopped at his door and glanced around. Something pressed on his chest hard, from the inside. He knew that feeling. He’d felt it before, and it usually ended up with him getting shot at, but he’d not had that feeling for years.
He pushed that thought away. This was Jubilee, Texas. Small Town, USA. The last time someone had been shot at in Jubilee was when Gabriel Chase had fooled around with Mr. Gardner's daughter and they'd been caught together in Gardner's tool shed. But that was five years ago.
Underneath the covered part of the walkway to his apartment, the rain battered the metal roof over him. The hairs on his neck stood on end, not letting him ignore that stupid feeling anymore. He clenched his keys in his fist tightly, then forced himself to relax and unlock the door.
Honestly, it was probably another one of those women from Tessa’s nail salon again. Last time, Mrs. Jacob had broken her ankle while she’d been hiding in the bushes and had been laid up for weeks. The whole ordeal was downright embarrassing, for both of them.
He kept one hand on the door handle while he glanced around. It was still dark out, even more than usual because of the cloud cover from the rain. Light reflected off the raindrops falling from the sky, creating a weird texture in the air by the street lights.
It was times like these that made Axel glad that he had a gun stashed in his apartment. Not that Jubilee was the type of town where you needed one. Shit, most people didn’t even lock their doors at night here. But still… something didn’t seem right.
Axel drew his fingers to his palm in tight fists, squeezing his keys against his skin. The weight from inside his chest increased, making it hard to breathe. He glanced down then took a breath as a bright red dot appeared on his clothes.
He swore and dove inside his open apartment. The gunfire made no so
und save the whoosh of the bullet as it tore through the air, hitting the wall behind where he’d stood. The gunfire continued to follow him, shattering the glass on his living room window above him.
Fuck.
He flattened himself on the floor, feeling like a sitting duck as he covered his head and hoped a ricochet bullet didn’t find its way into his skull. The falling glass hit his skin, cutting across his uncovered arms, his face, and his legs. The light outside his door shattered into darkness and then there was nothing to see anymore.
The gunfire stopped. He waited, the sound of his heart beat echoing in his ears. He rolled to the side, biting his lip to keep the hiss on his lips from escaping as something sliced into his shoulder. His hand shook as he reached to his shoulder to find a small sliver of glass sticking out of it.
“Damn it,” he muttered as he yanked it out with a wince and tossed the offending object away. Adrenaline was pumping hard enough that it didn’t hurt that much, but he knew that was going to smart later.
He had two options. He had a baseball bat by the door, but it was standing open and he didn’t want to provide whoever was shooting with the opportunity to try again.
…Or there was the Glock underneath the sink in the bathroom.
Yeah, that was a better plan.
Maybe they thought they got him. Maybe they thought he was dead or at least incapacitated, but he had a small window of quiet time to figure out what exactly he was going to do.
Panic welled up inside him as he pushed his way to his knees, careful to keep below the bottom of his window. Pain lanced through his shoulder, but he ignored both. He focused on his breathing. In. Out. Nice and easy. In. Out. No panicking.
Don’t, mother fucker! I’m talking to my wife! His old buddy Wilson's voice echoed in his head, followed by the ghostly memories of the screams that had followed, surfacing the old anxiety he thought he’d outgrown.
With brutal force, he pushed that voice out of his head. He couldn't get lost in old wounds right now. He had to get through this alive, then he could break down when he wasn't about to get shot.
His heart pounded against his chest as he crawled across the floor, the glass nicking his knees and anywhere else on his legs that scraped across the glass. His palms stung with cuts and he knew he was probably leaving a nice trail of blood across his living room floor. That shit was never going to come out of the carpet.
The bathroom door was open already, and the tile was cool against his exposed skin as he wrenched open the cabinet door beneath the sink and pulled out the Glock. He had no idea why someone was shooting at him, but he was going to make sure they didn’t live to regret it.
Beyond the bathroom, he heard the creak of his front door as someone pushed it open. It was like something right out of a horror movie. Slow, light footsteps approached. Axel forced his body to move, rising up to a kneeling position where most of his body was behind the wall opposite from the hinges of the bathroom door, but where he could still see out into the dark living room.
His eyes had adjusted somewhat during the time it had taken his attackers to stop shooting and walk into his apartment. There were two, both male from the stature of the outline, and both had guns in their hands.
He had one chance to stop this. He had to hit both where they weren’t going to get up again. He’d have preferred to have one alive to ask him what the fuck was going on but being alive after this was way more important.
He aimed, keeping both hands on the gun to keep it steady and fired in quick succession. The first bullet found its purchase somewhere in the torso area he thought, but he fired again just to make sure. Then he fired at the other guy, but only managed to clip the arm since the guy had already turned to fire on him.
Axel rushed the guy instead, knocking the gun from his hands. His assailant was strong, almost Axel’s size anyway. And from the smell of blood, Axel imagined he was fighting an injury too. Axel slammed his fist into the man’s face, and the head snapped back to the carpeted floor with a deep grunt of pain.
But he didn’t even slow down. He hit back, one hit right into his shoulder, where the glass had gone in. Axel let out a cry of pain and the man followed it with a kick to the groin.
All air left Axel’s body. He wheezed hard, the pain radiating from between his legs like someone had sat a piano on his dick. Then the guy was gone, scrambled out the door like a wounded ghost.
“Oh, my god…” he gasped out as he tried to pull himself together with shaking hands. But it took too long. A lifetime.
Cheap. Fucking. Shot.
Axel groaned as he sat up from the floor, dragging in breath by breath. His entire body was in pain and a rolling nausea from getting kicked in the nuts threatened to expel his early breakfast. He slowly pushed his way to his feet and approached the downed man. He raised his gun and stared at the lump of flesh on his floor. Was he dead? Axel didn’t want to get close enough to find out.
Now… what the hell was he going to do now?
~*~*~
Shooting people was an art form in a way. Not close up, where missing would have to take an act of God, but from far away? Shooting from a distance wasn't as easy as people thought.
A sniper had to factor wind direction, speed, and distance from the target in order to make a shot. A sniper had to know about anatomy to know the best place to hit.
But calculating that aim was less about art and more about math. So, when a teacher says that “you’re going to use that math in your everyday life one day” and you decide to be a sniper when you grow up, believe them.
Beatrice Li hadn’t excelled in algebra. Actually, she hadn’t excelled in school at all. She didn’t even finish school. The only thing she’d found she’d been good at was killing people and stealing shit. And she wasn’t just good at it. She was fantastic, and she’d never missed a mark in the last twelve years.
Tonight was no different than the last twelve years. Except now she wasn’t a freelancer. She was owned, lock, stock, and barrel by a multibillionaire who ran a secret intelligence team. They had no country allegiances, no loyalties. They did as Nathan Hawk bid them to do. For Bea, it wasn’t much different than the life she’d given up.
Bea’s sniper rifle was still hot as she dismantled it, noted in her mind that she needed to clean it when she got back and packed it away. She slung the case over her shoulder and made her way back to her exit. Attaching the rope to herself with a carabiner, she climbed up to the ledge and started her climb down the outside wall of the building she’d been sitting on for hours before her target had appeared.
She paused long enough to tap her headset as she descended. “It’s done. I’m heading out now.”
Nathan Hawk’s voice crackled in her ear over the wireless. “The Ghosts are waiting at the extraction point. Five minutes, so no dawdling.”
“Do I ever?” She replied flatly.
He didn’t answer immediately. Then the response. “Good job, Miss Li. See you at the office.”
At the office. The underground facility in Jubilee was more lair than office, but for some reason Nathan preferred to call it the office. The place was entirely too big for their now four-person team. It was obviously meant for much bigger operations.
But they were only four now. They’d lost one of their team last year, though it wasn’t death that took him. Though the traitor probably was as good as dead at this point. If she’d still been with Genevieve, the guy would have been dead before he’d ever hit the floor. One did not suffer disloyalty. Wasn't that always Genevieve's number one rule?
She supposed that was the main difference between her old mentor and her new boss. Nathan didn’t kill indiscriminately, and he dealt with people in information. So, if he thought he could get anything out of Scott Muldoon, he’d keep him alive, though that man probably wished he was dead. Nathan Hawk wasn’t the guy to piss off.
“Tell me, Nathan…” She grunted as she repelled down the side of the building. “Is there a reason why I do thes
e little… outings without telling the rest of the team?” She was running a delicate line questioning Nathan and his methods. She didn’t usually, but she was feeling a little out of sorts since Scott Muldoon betrayed them last year. Things had changed. Following orders blindly was one of those things.
Her boss was secretive, no question about that. He kept a tight lid on every mission, only feeding her team the pertinent information they needed to do their job. They were all dogs on a very tight leash. Of course, Genevieve had done the same thing, hadn’t she?
“There is a reason for everything I do, Miss Li.” His voice was low, cutting through the wind whipping around her body as she slid herself down the rope. “Some things I prefer to keep close to the vest.”
Especially these days, she supposed. Muldoon’s betrayal cut every one of her team deep. They’d all only been together for a few months as a team at the time, but when you lived, ate, and trained together and were at the mercy of the same leash holder, a certain closeness… no, a certain camaraderie developed between each other. Thinking of Muldoon made her blood boil and it would until she could put a bullet between his eyes.
That exactly was why she kept herself separate from the rest of them. Friendships made one weak. They were a tie, an anchor, that would weigh a person down, provide an enemy with an unnecessary entrance into the proverbial bunker. Camaraderie and friendships just got people killed. Besides, she had no interest in being the tomboy among the frat boys.
She jumped the last two feet down and shook the rope to get it to release from where she’d attached it at the roof. It fell to her feet like a dead snake. She grabbed the heavy rope, coiling it up, and then tucked it into the bag she’d stash for the Ghosts.
The Reapers, the team she'd joined last year, were a covert intelligence strike force, without country loyalties or government hand-tying. They did the really shitty work no one else could do to right the wrongs in the world because they didn’t have to worry about diplomacy or stupid political games between countries. They fought warlords, terrorists, and recently, corrupt politicians.