His Last Breath

by S. M. Butler

  Five years ago, he had saved her from misery and death. She needed that Chris Hardy again. The one with clarity and a sense of duty. She wasn’t sure he existed anymore behind this hardened exterior of a stranger. The only way to get to him was through the stranger.

  “If you have a facility like this,” she gestured around them. “Then I have to assume you’d have the resources to know that answer.”

  Judging by the set jaw, he knew something, but he didn’t say anything. That was interesting. Not many knew about all the illegal activities Senator Lewis was into. She hadn’t known herself until she’d found the evidence in the safe.

  “Why come here?”

  “Here? Or to Jubilee?” She asked.

  “To Jubilee.”

  “That car that blew up… it wasn’t mine. Someone gave me the keys, along with a note that said ’Safety is in small numbers’ and a map pointing to Jubilee.”

  “And you just followed the map. Didn’t even think about that it could be a trap?”

  “Of course I thought it could be a trap. I didn’t have a choice. If I stayed in Galveston, my father would eventually have found me. I didn’t have any money, no car, and no ID. What do you think happens to people like that?” She swallowed hard, fighting back tears she didn’t want to drop.

  Chris shot to his feet, his hand slamming the chair away from him. It clattered across the tile floor and she flinched at the noise. He ran his fingers through his hair as he paced the length of the room. Something nagged at him, but she wasn’t sure what. But she could see his gears turning as he ran the entire situation in his head.

  “Why did you come here?” It was more a plea than a question. Pain laced every word. It wasn’t what she expected him to ask.

  “I took a gamble, a chance that the car was my way out. And it was. It led me here. To you.”

  “Princess, I’m not the kind of protection you need,” he said, almost laughing. Maybe it would have been a laugh if his voice hadn’t been so low and serious.

  “Maybe not. But I bet you might be able to help me get out of the country.”

  “Why the country?”

  “My father’s reach is long. He reports me kidnapped, and he’ll have the FBI and hired guns all over the States searching for me.” She sighed. “I have someone I can stay with, in France. If I can get there, I’ll be safe.”

  Chris laughed and shook his head. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

  “I know. I have to.”

  “You need protection. You’re descending into the belly of the beast, and you have no idea how dark it is there.”

  He sat down on the bed, so close she could have touched him, except suddenly, she had this irrational fear that if she did, she’d get burned. Her head throbbed as he leaned forward, balancing his head in his hands as his elbows rested on his knees.

  “You know I’d protect you if I could.”

  “Yeah, I know. I knew that the moment you stepped out of your truck.”

  He lifted his head, and his gaze met hers. There was something beautiful in that gaze but also laced with vulnerability. The world needed him, whether he knew it or not, but somewhere in his head, he’d lost that knowledge. “This is complicated.”

  “What isn’t?” He didn’t know the half of it. She wasn’t sure what had happened in his life to make him so jaded and hopeless. It wasn’t who he was meant to be.

  Slowly, she lifted her hand until she was so close she could touch his face. She stopped and lowered her hand, thinking better of it. Curiosity ebbed from her, dying to understand that unknown quality inside his expression. “Chris?”

  He blinked as if some kind of spell had been broken around them. He jerked away from her, off the bed. She gasped as he moved, and groaned as her reflex made her head throb.

  “Look, I gotta do a thing,” he said. “I’ll come back in a few. You need to rest.”

  She frowned and shook her head. “Chris, please. I don’t think—”

  He stood at the door now, his hand on the door handle. “Just do me a favor and stay here for a bit. Let yourself heal a little. It’s been a long day.”

  “Chris—”

  Like a shadow when the sun rose, he vanished. The only clue she had that he’d ever been there was the slam of the door as it shut behind him. Fury bubbled up in her. She grabbed the dressing on her head and pulled it off her, ignoring the pull of her hair from the adhesive. As soon as it was free, she tossed it to the floor.

  Chapter Nine

  Chris beelined it for the garage. He had to get as far from Abigail as possible at the moment. He’d wanted so badly to kiss her, to pin her to the mattress and coax beautiful whispers of ecstasy from her. Something about her drew him to her.

  But all he was doing was lying to her.

  He started working on Mr. Gardner’s old Chevy. He’d brought it in the other day because of a bad alternator and Axel had to order the part. Working on cars relaxed him, something he’d never done when he was with the SEALs. Actually, he’d never had interest in anything except the military when he was a kid. Everything in his life was connected to getting into the Navy and getting into the SEALs.

  The thing with the Reapers, which was different from the SEALs, was that there was a lot of downtime between missions. And he trained a lot, kept in shape, worked on the range downstairs. He even ran the virtual training simulators the Company had built. But still, it left a big hole in his life where he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  Much like now. Abigail was with them, where Nathan wanted her to be. And now, he didn’t know what to do and he desperately wanted to do something.

  When Chris first moved to Jubilee, he’d had much the same problem. He would run a mission and then he’d be wound up for days and didn’t know how to stop it. Axel Martinez, the mechanic Nathan had hired, had picked up on it rather quickly. He didn’t know about the Reapers. He just recognized Chris’s inability to slow it down and see the life around him.

  “You’re going to strip that.”

  Speak of the devil.

  Chris glared at Axel as he came into the garage and leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. “I told you don’t work on the cars when you’re mad. They sense it.”

  Axel Martinez was a former Marine. Chris wasn’t sure exactly what his story was. He’d been living in Jubilee for longer than any of them, and completely out of the loop on all things Company-related by Nathan’s order.

  Chris rolled his eyes and straightened up. “They sense it?”

  “Sure. They’re ladies, after all,” he said, running his hand along the side of the old Chevy Chris had been working on. “They know when they’re being treated right.”

  “Really? How long has it been since a woman gave you the time of day?”

  Axel laughed. “Don’t be mad because I’m right. Come on,” he gestured with a slight incline of his head toward their break room. “Let’s get some coffee and stop torturing the cars.”

  Chris growled under his breath, but he followed Axel into the small room. It was a pretty bare room, just a cheap round table that fit four chairs and not one of the four chairs matched either the table or the other chairs. It was like they’d been taken from their former lives and dumped into this small room to live out their lives.

  Was he really comparing a chair to his life? Maybe he was losing it more than he thought.

  Axel poured two cups and handed him one as they sat down at the table. “So, you’ve been out for about two years, right?”

  Out? Oh, he meant out of the military.

  “Yeah,” Chris said, looking down at the black liquid in his cup.

  “It’s been eight years since I got out of the Marines. And sometimes I still have trouble sitting still.”

  “I’m fine, Axel,” Chris said. “Really.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Axel said with a brief lift of his shoulder. “Listen, in the military, everything is decided for you. They tell you where to go, what shots to get, what tests
to run, and how to stand and act.”

  Shit, that sounded a lot like his life now.

  “Then you’re out, all of a sudden. You need to remember what it’s like to apply for jobs, when your next booster is due, and no one is holding your hand in case you fall.” He sighed. “When the military is all you know, civilian life is a shock.”

  Didn’t he know it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t exactly civilian life for him.

  “Is that what you think this is?” Chris asked.

  “Maybe,” he shrugged. “Eight years ago, the military released me from active duty. The only thing they’d ever taught me was how to fix an engine. I got the offer here, and haven’t looked back since. I didn’t think I’d like a small town, but it grows on you.” He smiled but it faded as he spoke the next words. “Listen, Sheriff Hannigan came by. Wanted to know if you knew anything about an exploding car outside of town about two miles?”

  “Nope,” Chris lied. “I was out at the Parker ranch for a few hours putting on her new tires though. Maybe I missed it.”

  “Kind of hard to miss a flaming car,” Axel replied. His gaze swept over Chris, silently accusing. “Jubilee has a lot of good people. You and your friends… I’m not dumb. Y’all are doing something here, and it makes the town curious. I don’t care personally. Y’all do what you do. But I’m out of that life. But small towns don’t have a lot of entertainment, so that’s where the rumors get started. And there’s a lot going around about you and the crew here. I like these people, and I’m not going to lie to them for you.”

  “No one’s asked you to lie about anything,” Chris said, swallowing the knot of nerves forming in his throat.

  “No, that’s true.” He sighed, and caught Chris’s eyes, holding them steady with his. “Listen…That life… The one you think you have control over… it sucks the soul right out of you. I see it all over you, inside you, and it will kill you.”

  “Axel—”

  “Don’t insult me by lying to me. In fact, do me a favor. Don’t say anything at all. I don’t want to know.”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.” Both men’s attention shot to the doorway where Bea stood. A white sundress with lavender flowers hugged her thin figure, but it couldn’t hide the way her muscles corded around her arms and legs, or the way her gaze scanned the room before she entered.

  “Not at all, sugar.” Axel smiled, big and arrogantly, and patted his lap. “Come sit.”

  Bea rolled her eyes. “Not after Mrs. Parker parked there.”

  Axel’s eyes bulged. “What?”

  “Axel, you didn’t!” Chris’s mouth dropped.

  Axel’s mouth pressed together in an angry line, but bright pink colored his cheeks. “Shut up.”

  “How drunk were you?” Chris asked, laughing.

  “I wasn’t. And it was years ago.” Axel shot Bea a dirty look, but she ignored him.

  Chris chuckled as Bea smiled her sly little knowing grin that left Axel completely flabbergasted. She dropped a file in front of Axel. “Need your signature on these.”

  Axel begrudgingly signed them and held them up to her. She gripped them, but he didn’t let go immediately. His anger vanished, replaced by firm determination as he froze her in place with his eyes. “One day, you’re going to go to dinner with me.”

  She leaned in, giving him a nice view of her cleavage and whispered. “That’s not today, cowboy.” She yanked on the file, breaking loose of his hold and left the room.

  Axel shook his head. “Damn. I think she could kill me with her pinky toe and I’d die a happy man.”

  Chris frowned and stood up. “I’m gonna go for a walk. Clear my head. So I don’t torture any more lady cars.”

  Axel’s attention was still on the windows of the break room, where he could see Bea walking around the back office, but he did nod as Chris escaped the room.

  As he headed toward the lair entrance, his earpiece chirped. “Yeah?”

  “Hardy, we need you in the briefing room. We’ve got a lead on the bomb.”

  ~*~*~

  Chris stared at the makeup of the C4 used in the car bomb. He’d seen the analysis before. He just hadn’t expected the way his gut plummeted down to his feet when he’d seen it.

  “Giroux,” Chris whispered. The word came out like an epithet. Why did it not surprise him that where death was concerned, a Giroux would be lurking close by?

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Well, it’s from Jean Giroux’s stash. Whether it was him or not, that’s inconclusive.”

  “How could it not be?” Chris asked.

  “If it looks like a bomb, and acts like a bomb, it’s a fucking bomb,” Jordan agreed.

  “Yes, but this isn’t his style. And there’s a number of reasons why he wouldn’t target Abigail Lewis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her father’s office recently put out a press release stating that Abigail Lewis was attending a university overseas. It lines up with her supposed escape.”

  “Supposed?” Chris leaned his palms against the table as he stared at the screen. “You don’t believe her.”

  “Her public behavior changed about a year ago. She went from America’s Princess to a recluse almost immediately. She doesn’t travel without her father. She isn’t seen in public without him. She doesn’t participate in her old charities. Everything she does now caters only to her father’s image.”

  Chris straightened and crossed his arms. “Okay. So what changed?”

  “Not sure. I’m still digging, but there’s just too much that doesn’t line up. And I think whatever life-altering thing happened, it happened about a year ago.” Jack pulled up a series of locations on the map. “Daniel Lewis has been on the campaign trail for the last six months. In the last twenty-four hours that Abigail has been here, the last two locations where he was scheduled to speak have been bombed by the same C4 as what destroyed the car here. The media thinks it’s random.”

  Chris frowned, but Jordan asked the question first. “You think she’s been bombing her own father?”

  “No. I think someone else is, trying to protect her.”

  “So why try to kill her here?”

  “I don’t think it was meant to kill her. It was meant to keep her here.”

  Chris lifted his head to look at the older man. Jack Allen wasn’t his pick for the team. He’d betrayed his country, sided with a monster, and tortured one of his own to get information for a criminal. But Nathan had insisted on him, saying he was valuable to have on the team. So he got a second chance at life and the fucker was here, and there was not one thing Chris could do about it. The thing was… six months later, he found himself trusting the bastard. Maybe it was how much he’d changed. He certainly wasn’t the same dough-eyed kid that had joined the military. Shit. He wasn’t even sure who he was anymore.

  “So someone wants to keep her here besides us?” Scott asked.

  Jack shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “What if it’s not her he’s targeting?” Chris asked.

  They all looked at him.

  He shrugged. “If Giroux found out I was here, it’s sort of likely that he might come for me, if anything to get at my sister.” Which was another checkbox in the column for him to do as Nathan wanted him to do. If he was dead to the world, then Giroux couldn’t use him to get at Addison.

  “Possible,” Jack replied. “This car bomb doesn’t line up with the other bombings. It’s literally not connected to Daniel Lewis at all. And there’s no way that they could have known she was the one in the car. It’s a Company car.”

  “We need to question the girl,” Jack said. “There’s something she’s not telling us, and we need to know.”

  “You want to interrogate a senator’s daughter?”

  “We aren’t bound by countries, Hardy. She’s just another asset we need to exploit.”

  “You’re not touching her.” The idea of Allen even in the same room with Abigail set his blood to a low simmer.

 
; Jack smiled, but it was full of malevolence. “You gonna stop me, pretty boy?”

  Chris squared his shoulders, facing Jack. Half a room separated them, but Chris was willing to close the distance. “Yes.”

  Jack rose to his full height, promises of violence in his sable eyes. Tension coiled around the two of them. Jordan and Scott watched them both carefully, but Chris’s attention was on Jack alone.

  “Stand down.” Nathan’s voice rang out.

  It was like cold water pouring over both of them as their boss entered the room. Jack’s face was homicidal, but he slowly obeyed, relaxing his shoulders. But they did not break eye contact until Nathan spoke again. “Sit down. Both of you. Now.”

  They finally both sunk into seats as Nathan walked around to the computer. He tapped the controls and all three big screens came to life with pictures and text.

  “Obviously, we all have our own impressions of Miss Lewis and her intentions here. But we do not act on impressions. We act on facts. Sierra has been doing a little research for us since Miss Lewis showed up.”

  Chris watched silently as Nathan pulled up a picture of Senator Lewis.

  “What we’ve found is quite interesting. We know Daniel Lewis. We know we’ve been tracking his dealings with foreign agents. Particularly arms agents like Alex Giroux.”

  Chris’s eyes widened as he saw a picture of the man. Jean and Alex shared some similarities as brothers, though fifteen years separated them. Alex was out there somewhere, but he no longer had the pull of the family. His sister had been instrumental when he was with the SEALs to take him down.

  “So, if he’s dealing with Alex why is Jean targeting him?”

  “Alex is nothing anymore. He’s living off the last few millions he had stashed before his father died. Jean is the problem. He came out of his father’s death with half the business and all of his contacts.”

  Jordan looked up at the picture, frowning. “So Lewis is really trying to kill his daughter? Like she said?”

  “We know he’s been spending the last five years forging a relationship with Jean Giroux, and my sources tell me, she’s the key, though my sources did not know why.” Nathan’s face soured for a moment. It was probably killing him that he couldn’t get that information out of whoever he had tortured.