Seth (In the Company of Snipers Book 17)

by Irish Winters

  She could’ve lain there all day studying Seth. The sharp angle of his jaw when he spoke. The way he licked his lower lip. The rapt attention he paid his boss. The way he canted his head when he listened, as if he strived to understand what the others said instead of just waiting for them to finish so he could talk. The straight line of his spine and the width of those tanned, hard as rock shoulders. Very simply, Seth had Cord and Alex beat by miles and miles.

  But best of all? The twinkle in those sexy brown eyes, when he sent a wink her way if the other guys weren’t looking. Man, they needed to pack it up and leave, so she could get her hands on him again.

  She found it interesting that all three men were still geared up and armed, though, even in this gun free hospital zone. Alex sported a double holster underneath his jacket, the slight bulges beneath his arms an easy tell for a woman with a former Marine brother.

  Both Cord and Seth wore their pistols on their hips, though Seth also carried another one tucked in the back waistband of his jeans as well. She had no doubt all three also carried knives. These guys knew the way of the real world, and they weren’t afraid to face it alone and whip its ass. They must have some special kind of permit or license that allowed them to carry, but what did Dev know? Only that she was surrounded by a company of snipers and had never felt safer.

  Alex’s head came up, his blues eyes like shards of ice stabbing Cord. “I’m tired of waiting. I need an answer.”

  Cord leaned into the chair, his arms folded across his chest. “Don’t have one. I’m still waiting to hear from one of my guys.”

  “Not good enough, Shepherd.” Man, Alex was like an attack-trained pit bull. He’d gone straight for Cord’s jugular. “There are plenty of other men out there who are doing the same—”

  “Yes,” Cord bit out, the tendon in his muscular neck twitching like it did when he found himself backed into a corner. “I’ll take the job, in fact…”

  Dev had seen that pissed off glare before, when she’d gotten the best of her big brother. He didn’t like to be wrong, but he especially didn’t like answering to others.

  “In fact, I’m damned thankful you have that kind of faith in me, sir,” he finished.

  A shadow that Dev could only describe as a thundercloud before one helluva storm shifted over Alex’s countenance. “Now that you’re going to work for me, Junior Agent Shepherd…” he growled, “stop with the sir bullshit. I work for a living.”

  Dev knew precisely what that meant. Alex Stewart had never been an officer and he was proud of it. Apparently Cord knew as well. It was comical how he blinked at Alex and said, “Yes, sssssss… I mean—”

  “Boss,” Seth supplied, nodding pointedly at Cord. “I’m sure you mean, ‘yes, Boss,’ don’t you?”

  Dev nearly laughed. She’d never seen Cord backpedal so fast, nor look as dumbfounded as he did then.

  “Boss,” he finally mumbled like he was trying the word on for size. “Yes, Boss.”

  Alex slapped both palms to his knees. “Good. I’ll be by first thing in the morning with the paperwork and your initial check. Where will you be?”

  “Home,” Dev spoke up. “He’ll be home with me and Scottie, won’t you?” she asked her amazingly versatile brother. He’d gone from man in charge to an employee in the blink of an eye.

  “You know it,” he replied, his brows clenched over his extra dark, extra serious eyes. That had to have been a hard adjustment acknowledging that he just might need another man’s help.

  Seth cocked his head, measuring her with a heated glance. ‘And you are so going home with me,’ she sent to him in her mind, wishing there were such a thing as telepathy. But oh, the naughty conversation they’d be having if it were.

  When Alex lifted to his feet, Seth and Cord rose alongside him like two bouncers the guy absolutely didn’t need. Seth and Cord must have sensed it, too. Neither had argued with him, though when they’d offered input, he’d listened intently, those icy blue lasers focused on them as if he respected their opinions. Usually Cord just barked orders at his men, and they bucked up and obeyed. But Alex was a different kind of predator. He seemed able to lead his men where they wanted to go. Like Seth had done with Cord.

  “Anyone up for breakfast?” Alex asked, looking at her.

  Ha! Like she was going anywhere.

  “Molly’s Marina and Pub serves breakfast until closing,” Dev said, holding back her disappointment. Seth would be leaving to eat with his boss. Not what she wanted.

  “What can I bring back for you?” he asked as one hand latched onto her wrist.

  ‘Just you,’ she would’ve said, but she settled for, “Molly makes the best blueberry pancakes. A to-go cup of her caramel coffee would be nice, too. Three sugars. Extra cream. Don’t forget the blueberry syrup and butter.”

  Leaning into her cheek, he whispered, “Just you wait.”

  Delicious shivers raced up her spine. “I’ve already been waiting,” she murmured, sure all eyes were on them. “But go. I understand. I’ll be here when you return.”

  Ever so gently, he cupped her poor battered jaw and placed one melt-in-your-mouth, but too chaste kiss on her lips.

  “Hurry,” she told him, then added, “I’m hungry,” for his boss’s and Cord’s benefit.

  “Damn, Devereaux, don’t go telling the world.”

  “For breakfast,” she clarified, the heat from her sexually charged comment creeping up her neck like a small blaze, but yes. She was hungry for every inch of Seth, and he knew it.

  Alex cleared his throat like the gentleman he was.

  Cord faced the door like he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  But Seth pressed one last kiss to her mouth, sliding his tongue over the seam of her lips like a promise, when he whispered, “Be right back.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  The rich, balmy scent that was Florida met Seth full in the face. Alex was proud of him. Seth could tell. And didn’t that make the wreck of the man he used to be, seem like some other guy, as George Lucas would say, ‘in a galaxy far, far away’?

  The need to get this middle of the night breakfast over and done with shivered up his spine like the can’t-wait excitement of a little boy on Christmas morning. Seth had a lovely present to unwrap. It took all his restraint to tear himself away from Devereaux for the sake of his boss. It just didn’t seem right, picking Alex over her.

  What a night. Seth took a deep breath of satisfaction for a job well done as he stepped out of the hospital’s main entry doors. Life couldn’t get any more sublime. The moon shining down on him was now waning in the southern sky. He had his very capable boss at his side, and Devereaux was safe and sound in the hospital.

  Better yet, Roland Montego, his dominatrix wife, Giselle, and his dirtbag buddy, Bagani, were dead. Sylvester Valentine and Joachim, whom Seth now knew had worked for Sly at one of his bars, were laid out on stainless steel trays at the morgue, staring at nothing but the righteous comeuppance they’d deserved. May every last one of them linger in hell until the end of time.

  The who and the why of the man who’d offed Bagani still toyed at the back of Seth’s mind. He glanced at the proud man walking beside him. No way had Alex taken Bagani out. Had to have been Eric.

  It wasn’t until Seth crossed the street with Alex on one side and Cord on his other, that the hairs on the back of his neck lifted. His gut clenched with an attack of heartburn that he knew better than to ignore. He had that feeling again. Someone was watching.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he scanned the lobby and information desk just beyond the entry doors for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing stood out. Not the pleasant gray-haired woman chatting on the phone behind the information counter. Not the police officer walking swiftly down the hall toward the emergency room. Not the older couple he’d passed on the bench outside the hospital doors.

  Still…

  “Hey, guys,” he told Alex and Cord.

 
Alex cocked his head as if he’d suddenly picked up the same warning rippling through the universe that Seth had. “You need to stay here,” he said, not asked.

  Seth nodded, acid climbing up his throat. “Something’s not right,” he told his boss, who was backtracking with him and Cord to the hospital. “I’m going up to Devereaux’s room.”

  Alex pulled a pistol from under his left arm. “Cord!” he hissed, not knowing Cord was already on his six.

  “Yes, sir?” Cord breathed. “I’m here.”

  “Cord, take the stairs,” Seth ordered. “Boss—”

  “I’m with you. Go!”

  They stormed the open elevator while Cord charged the stairwell. “He’s here,” Seth breathed, his heart pounding like a mother.

  “Who?” Alex asked, his eyes on the slow-as-shit floor indicator. Devereaux’s room was on the fifth floor, but damn. Nobody knew where she was. How had—whoever—Seth honestly had no idea who was left that might want to hurt Devereaux—how had that person located her so quickly? And why? She was a victim in this mess, not one of the power brokers. She was a single mom, for hell’s sake.

  “I don’t know who’s here or if I’m just overreacting,” Seth admitted. He couldn’t define the sensation that something wicked had zeroed down on Devereaux. “Could be one of Montego’s men come for revenge. Or one of his women. Devereaux said Giselle Montego bragged he had more than one wife and they were into game playing, BDSM, and shit.”

  “Could be paranoia,” Alex growled.

  “Could be,” Seth murmured as the elevator finally chimed at the fifth floor. God knew he’d dealt with plenty of paranoia during his PTSD days. Damn, was that all this was, a flashback?

  “One way to find out,” he said as he stepped through the elevator doors and ran for Devereaux’s room.

  Just as Cord cleared the stairs to his right, one damned big behemoth of a man stepped out from a patient room at the other end of the hall. Dressed entirely in black leather, the sniper rifle in this guy’s hand displayed an impressive scope on its top rail. Could’ve been the same one that ended Bagani. The business end of that deadly rifle had just snapped on Seth. He felt the prick of its laser strike his retina before it danced over the end of his nose.

  Returning the courtesy, Seth’s pistol sprang automatically on target. His stride lengthened as his laser settled between two black as sin eyes. He’d meet this arrogant asshole head-on with every beat of his heart. No one was getting at Devereaux.

  “She’s had enough!” he hissed, very aware of Alex at his side and Cord at his six. “I don’t care who the hell you are. Back off!”

  No answer came back at him, not even a grunt. Just one evil glare from the black-haired stranger closing in on Seth and his team like he owned the place.

  Seth would’ve fired, but Devereaux’s door burst open. Another man, this one dressed in the black uniform of one of Key West’s finest—that police officer Seth had seen downstairs—dragged her struggling into the hall. The bastard had his hand over her mouth, a pistol in her ribs, and death in his eyes.

  Shit. Farraq Khadeem. Unknowingly, he’d put himself and her between the armed man in black and Seth’s team.

  “Drop your weapon!” Alex ordered, his pistol on Khadeem or the assassin at his back, Seth didn’t know which.

  Khadeem’s face twisted into an evil sneer. He had the balls to bellow, “One move and she dies! I’ll take her the same way you took my precious daughter from me!”

  “Your precious daughter? You mean the pretty, blonde woman you traded to a known pedophile and rapist, your fuckin’ buddy Bagani?” Seth spat as he assumed firing stance, his pistol raised and his eyes on target. He didn’t have to look to know Alex and Cord had both done the same, that all three were hellbent on ending this asshole here and now.

  “Seth,” Devereaux whimpered, her eyes bright with fear and her fingers wrapped around the hard hand clutching her throat.

  Seth acknowledged her with one short nod. “Stay cool, baby. This’ll be over soon and then—”

  “This will never be over!” Khadeem spat. “This is just the beginning of Jihad! The holiest of holy wars!”

  “Says the bastard who sold his precious daughter,” Seth volleyed back. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled and his gut kept telling him to beware, but with two killers in the crosshairs, he hadn’t the time to decode that internal warning.

  “How’d you get in here?” Cord asked from Seth’s far left.

  Khadeem’s bright eyes shifted. “You American’s are so naïve. So trusting. All I had to do was make a few calls. Ask the right questions. It seems everyone in your country wants to help a poor, distraught father.”

  “You’re not... my father,” Devereaux wheezed, her blues eyes brimmed with fear and tears.

  Enough! Who to kill first, the lethal monster of a man approaching from behind Khadeem, or the most disgusting excuse for a father on the planet? It seemed a no-brainer, until Seth factored in the very real possibility of Khadeem falling at Seth or Alex’s hand, clearing the way for the killer in the hall to shoot through Devereaux to get at Seth and his team.

  “I’m on the rifleman,” Alex murmured out of the side of his mouth. “Don’t worry about me. End Khadeem.”

  Seth grunted his agreement, never more sure of his God-given skill than at that moment. He stepped up. He bucked up. And for Devereaux, he’d die. But his index finger had no more than flexed against the trigger when she elbowed Khadeem in the gut, twisted in his arms, and screamed, “Let me go, you creep!”

  After that, the world rolled in slow motion.

  Khadeem’s mouth dropped open, grimacing in pain. His eyes popped.

  Devereaux had hold of his hand, twisting his fingers backward with a vengeance while she screamed, “Asshole! You’re behind all of this! You bastard!”

  Snarling, he cocked his arm back to pistol-whip her, but just as his fist began its downward swing, he looked over her head and past Seth. He froze, his arm in midair as if he’d seen a ghost. Then…

  BLAM!

  What the holy hell? Some bastard behind Seth had just fired too close and too damned personal. The blast from the unexpected discharge deafened him. He glanced over his shoulder at—Eric?

  “What are you doing here?” Seth asked, though he could barely hear his own voice.

  When Eric didn’t answer, Seth zeroed back on Khadeem. By then Devereaux had ducked for cover and run for Seth, while the wicked man stood in the hall, dazed and swaying. The tiniest trickle of red dripped from beneath the brim of his stolen police cap into his left eye. His body leaned sideways. Just as Khadeem would’ve pitched to the floor, the unknown assassin behind him caught his neck in an arm lock, and growled at Eric, “This son-of-a-bitch was supposed to be mine, Reynolds.”

  To which Eric, now standing alongside Seth, smoothly replied, “And Bagani was supposed to have been mine, Sinclair. Now we’re even. Get the hell out of here.”

  They know each other?

  Tugging Devereaux with him, Seth backed against the nearest wall, caught up in the most bizarre tennis match he’d ever witnessed. Apparently, Alex wasn’t shocked to see Eric or this Sinclair fellow. Walking straight up to the monster of a man, he extended a hand and said, “Wish you’d declare your presence once in a while, Pagan. Anyone of us could’ve shot you. How would I explain that to McQueen or Chance?”

  Who the hell’s McQueen? And who’s Chance?

  “That’ll be the day,” Pagan grunted as he jerked the pistol out of Khadeem’s limp fingers, while he let the dead man’s body slump to the floor. The guy wore nitrile gloves, black like the rest of his gear. Khadeem’s pistol went on the floor beside the dead man, along with a single brass casing that Seth knew—he just knew—was the missing evidence from Bagani’s murder. “Sorry I can’t stay and chat, Mr. Stewart. I’ve got other places to be. Other lives to save.”

  “Wait,” Seth breathed while Devereaux pressed herself
under his chin, her poor heart beating like frantic hummingbirds against his chest. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Nothing,” both Eric and Pagan growled at the same time, both still staring at each other like gunslingers at the OK Corral.

  “Who are you?” Seth asked the man in black.

  “No one,” he shot back, his upper lip lifted as if he didn’t have time for stupid questions.

  Seth knew better than to argue, but he turned to Eric and asked, “You’ve been hunting Khadeem all along, haven’t you? You knew he’d be here. That’s why you stayed in Florida after Cassidy left.”

  Eric’s dark gaze flittered to Alex, then settled on Seth. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

  Which meant there was more to this night that Seth might never know.

  “And you,” Seth directed at Pagan. “You killed Prince Bagani. That was you yesterday, the man who fired that long shot.” The sniper who saved countless future lives.

  “Goodbye and good riddance,” Pagan muttered as he turned and walked back the way he’d come.

  Seth wasn’t sure if he’d meant that dig for Khadeem or The TEAM. The big guy disappeared into the same patient room he’d come out of. Again, what the hell? Did Sinclair plan to rappel down the side of the hospital and simply walk away? Did he have wings or was someone out there waiting to fly him away? What was he, just another legend in this dark world of covert ops?

  Guess so.

  Cord ran after the big guy, but returned shaking his head, both shoulders lifting in disbelief. “He’s gone. Not a sign of him. Holy fuck.”

  Seth found that impossible to believe, but he had other things to worry about. Alex was already on his phone, calling 9-1-1 for an assist with an armed intruder that had been shot inside the hospital. “Yes, I’ll hold,” he growled as he rolled his eyes.

  Standing there with Devereaux wrapped up in his arms, Seth took careful notice of the peculiar interaction between Alex and Eric. Neither seemed surprised to see the other. Neither took notice of the missing—whatever—that Pagan was, either. But wasn’t it interesting that Eric was also wearing nitrile gloves, that he’d casually sauntered up to where Khadeem lay, and just as casually, removed the casing that linked Pagan Sinclair to Bagani’s murder?