On Her Master's Secret Service (33 page)

Kristen stepped out of the hallway. She’d changed her clothes and was now wearing all black. “Of course. I’m not a tourist. It’s in the back of my Navigator. Dude was heavy.”

“I’ll handle it, Alex,” Sean said.

“And I’m on Evans.” Adam was back to focusing on his computer. “I’m running some programs to see if I can figure out what name he’s using. Kristen had found about four of them. Hopefully he’s using one of those. We’ll get him. You and Eve get some rest.”

“So he’s really coming here?” Alex asked, his hand tightening on hers.

Kristen nodded. “I told you I would give him to you on a silver platter.”

“All right.” He turned and started leading Eve back to the bedroom.

“Alex?” She’d expected him to go into full-on commando mode, but he was walking away.

He pulled her into his arms. “No, Eve. No more talk about this. We’ll figure it out in the morning. We’ll sit down and talk it out. All right? I won’t leave you out of the decision-making process, but you have to know I’ll let his ass go if it’s a choice between hauling him in or you getting hurt again.”

He would choose her. Tears threatened again and she laid her head against his chest. She would always choose him. “Yes, Master.”

“Kiss me.”

She tilted her head up. The Master wasn’t done with her yet.

In the low light just before dawn, Jesse checked the safety on his SIG. He’d decided to make it quick. Clean and easy. No fuss, no muss. The boss had called again, in an agitated state.

And Jesse hadn’t told him everything. He hadn’t told him what he’d witnessed.

Kristen. He’d watched as Kristen led that fucker Carl to one of the back rooms. He’d been surprised at just how much he’d hated that. It wasn’t that he liked Kris.
Fuck.
It was impossible not to like Kris. She was one of those
glowy
people, the kind who could get the shit knocked out of them and get back up and still have a smile to show the world.

His heart had taken a little dive when he’d seen her with Carl. Carl was an ass. He treated all women like they were nothing but holes to stick his dick in. What the hell did she see in him? And wasn’t she supposed to be all girl-on-girl action? Carl, with his copious body hair, was as far from feminine as it was possible to be.

He’d had to take a walk, grab a smoke. It felt like things were coming to a head. Chazz had informed him that the man who ran everything was coming in for a visit.

He’d overheard Chazz talking about the “farm” again. He mentioned it from time to time, but if Chazz was growing carrots and potatoes, Jesse wasn’t aware of it.

“You’ll get to meet the big boss,” he’d said.

Like I didn’t already know that, dumbass. You have no idea who I am.

Jesse had just lit up, trying to think his way out of what he had to do.

That was when he’d seen Carl the
Douchenozzle
taking a header out the window. He’d wondered why Carl was leaving via window when there was a perfectly good front door. He’d giggled a little and then realized the dude was dead. He didn’t move at all. Jesse knew what a dead body looked like. He knew it all too well.

Kris was awfully cool under pressure. He’d watched as she maneuvered Carl’s body into the back of her SUV, all the while keeping track of who was coming and going. She’d even moved off to talk to one of the cocktail waitresses, probably to ensure that she didn’t step into the scene of Kristen’s crime.

So why hadn’t he mentioned it to his boss?

For the same damn reason he was about to do what he was about to do.

Because he’d just found out that there were lines he couldn’t step over.

He stared out at the gorgeous condo where his prey was staying. Another lie he’d been told. According to the lovely Kristen, everyone should be at her rundown little house in St. Augustine proper. But he’d followed her out to Palm Coast, driving along a lonely highway with his lights off so she wouldn’t think she was being tailed. He’d followed her past the beach houses and Marine World. Well, he’d followed as far as he could. Once he’d crossed through the toll bridge, he’d come to a gate with a security guard.

He’d had to park his car and make his way around the security. It hadn’t been easy, but they hadn’t given him the call sign “Wraith” in his old unit for nothing. He hunkered down inside one of the gated lanais on the first floor. He wouldn’t have known what building she was in if he hadn’t been able to find her car.

He felt safe here. The windows were all dark and there were no little tables on this side, the inland side. As far as he could tell, the lanai went all the way around the back to the ocean side. These were seriously wealthy people.

What the fuck was she doing tending bar when she could afford this place?

About an hour after he’d found her, she’d left again with the big blond cook who looked like he could butcher more than a cow.

After they had driven away, Jesse had found Master A’s vehicle, broken in, placed his equipment inside and then walked back to his hidey-hole. Jesse waited patiently. He was sure he was in the right place, watching the right door.

Just him and his gun.

The sun had come up an hour or so ago, roughly twenty minutes after Kristen and the cook had completed whatever their errand had been. From where he was sitting, he had a view of the door Kristen and the cook had disappeared into earlier. He would have taken a closer look, tried to peek inside, but there was a security camera on the door. It was the only one. Once the target was a few feet past the entryway, Jesse could act without the problem of prying eyes.

He had two roads to go down. Three, really. If Master A came out first or with the cook, he would pop them both and be done. If his target came out with one of the women, he would have a choice to make, but if the sub came out alone, he had a plan.

It was all about waiting now.

Waiting and figuring out how to salvage his career.

Or just accepting that he was a fuck up now and he always had been.

What would his hero father think of him now? There was no way he would be proud, right? He would be like the rest. He would wonder why Jesse Murdoch’s head was on his body when the rest of his team had met such a grisly fate.

Jesse closed his eyes because sometimes he could stop the visions if he thought of something else. Anything but that dank Iraqi prison, smelling of death and blood and piss. Anything but the way poor
Alannah
had looked at him right before the sword had severed her head from her body.

He’d cared for her and she’d hated him in that moment. She’d hated the fact that she was dying and he wasn’t. She’d believed that he’d turned.

So did everyone else.

Losing this job would be the nail in his coffin, but by god, he would go out being true to himself.

The sun kept rising, but Jesse felt no warmth.

* * * *

“So what’s the problem?” Alex asked, looking down at the computer screen. It was a mass of 1s and
0s
and a bunch of shit that made no sense to him.

Adam yawned, stretching in the early morning light. Apparently he’d been up all night dealing with the horror of 1s and
0s
. “It’s weird. If this particular file had been classified, there would be something here I could find, but it’s just gone. Someone deleted this file.”

“Why the hell would they delete a file?” Alex couldn’t understand it. “Do you think Evans did it?”

It was the only thing that made sense. The feds needed every single bit of information they could get. It was precious and to be hoarded like gold. How had they not seen it? Had they let this case go cold? No. He wouldn’t believe it.

There was no way Warren allowed it to happen.

Adam shrugged. “I don’t know, but someone did and they did it from inside the Bureau. If someone had done it from the outside, there would be footprints. I can’t exactly figure out where the deletion comes from. This computer used to be registered to a Tommy Guinn, but now the system is deemed inactive.”

Tommy. God.
Tommy had died in the attack on Eve. “Can you tell what the date is?”

Adam pressed a few keys.

“March 15th. Does that date mean anything?” Adam asked.

It was ten days after he’d quit the Bureau. “Not really. I wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know. I need to call some of my contacts. I’ll figure it out.”

Adam stood. “Don’t. Don’t call them. Let’s take a look at this on our own.”

Alex sighed, closing his eyes. “You think this is an inside job.”

“And you’re too close to it.”

Adam was right. “Okay. Let’s go over all the reasons someone on the inside would delete that file. Get Sean out here. Eve is in the shower. She shouldn’t be too long. We have a couple of hours before we have to be at the club. I want to think this through. Text Ian.”

Ian was his damn sounding board. He needed Ian.
Damn it.
How the hell had Nelson picked the perfect time to separate him from Ian?

“Already did. He’s going to Skype in soon. I’ll put it through the big TV. He can yell at us in HD.” Adam seemed relieved to have something to do. He started gathering wires and cords.

Alex looked down at the files. Was Carmen Garcia a rabbit hole he shouldn’t go down? “What did you find out about her?”

Adam was attaching cords to the big TV in the living room. “Favorite daughter of a high-profile San Antonio family. Her father has been in the Texas state senate. Her brother played college ball for the Longhorns. She had damn near perfect
LSATs
. Picked Georgetown over Harvard. Not sure that was a great decision, but she wanted to be close to Washington according to the articles I read on her.”

Why was she important? In all the years he’d spent with the Bureau, he’d never had a problem with someone deleting files. No. This was deliberate. It might be a rabbit hole when it came to Evans, but something about it was making his every instinct light up.

Sean walked out, yawning but already dressed for the day. He had his knives rolled up and in his left hand. “Jersey Carl is swimming with the fishes and hopefully catching a nice current toward the North Atlantic. I have to head in early. I’m going to talk to some of the dishwashers and see if I can get anything out of them about the upcoming meet spot. Chazz talks a lot, and he doesn’t understand that most of these guys have picked up some English. He talks in front of them like they’re not there. Call me if you need anything.”

“Like breakfast?” Adam asked.

“Ain’t happening today.” Sean shut the door behind him.

Eve walked out of the back of the condo wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt that couldn’t hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her hair was up in a haphazard bun and she had little fuzzy pink flip-flops on her feet. She wore no makeup, and he’d never seen her more beautiful. Even after all the sex from the night before, his cock was at full attention the minute she entered a room. “Where did Sean go?”

“To get some information from his staff. He thinks they might know more than they’re saying. What’s your take on Carmen Garcia?” Alex asked, walking to the coffee maker to get it started.

“I don’t know. There are only so many reasons a girl with her money and ties to the community would go to a free clinic if she wasn’t volunteering. My bet is she didn’t want her people to know she needed the services of an ob-gyn. She was pregnant. Whether she was looking for confirmation of the pregnancy or she was seeking to terminate it, we may never know.”

“But why does it matter? Why delete her file?” He fumbled with the storage case at the bottom of the coffeemaker. It was completely empty. “Damn it, Adam.”

“Sorry. I was up all night. I needed fuel.” Adam was lost in a tangle of wires that ran from various computers.

Eve needed coffee. She was a little touchy until she’d had her morning
joe
. And now it was Alex’s formal job again to make sure she got it. “I’ll go buy some.”

A soft hand touched his back and then he felt her all along his spine, her face resting against his shoulder blade. “Don’t, babe. There’s a common area downstairs. Kristen showed it to me. There’s one of those single cup coffee makers. I’ll go and make a cup.”

“I can do it.” Taking care of her was his job, and now that she was allowing him to, he intended to take it damn seriously.

She giggled a little. “Alex, you don’t know how to work one. I could be standing up here slowly dying of caffeine deficiency for hours. Besides, I could use the little walk to wake myself up. Someone tired me out last night.”

He turned and had his lips on hers in a heartbeat. He tangled his hands in her hair, unloosing that bun, and gave her a proper good-morning kiss. “I’ll tire you out again tonight, angel.” He let his forehead rest against hers. “One way or another, this is all over in a couple of days.”

If Evans showed, Alex would try to take him down. If he didn’t, he was going to turn everything over to someone else because he didn’t want Eve in danger and Eve wouldn’t leave him, ergo he was off this case and soon.

Maybe it was time to let Ian just assassinate the fucker.

“I know.” She got on her tiptoes. “I’ll be back in a second. Why don’t you make me some toast?”

He could do that. It was about all he could do in the kitchen, but he could use a toaster. “Okay.”

She turned and started out of the condo. He heard the elevator ding as she went down.

He went to the fridge as his mind pondered the possibilities.

There had been an awful lot of chance that went Evans’s way. He’d eluded capture multiple times when Alex should have had the man. Once, twice, he could deal with that, but he’d had prime information on Evans’s movements right after the DC bombing. He’d found his hideout and Evans was gone, a cigarette still smoking in an ashtray as though he’d known exactly when to bail out.

And then there was the escape. He could still remember how he’d felt when Warren had called to tell him that Evans was on the loose.

Chazz had been in that jail. He’d been pulled out of the actual cell when the bedding was brought in, but he’d been housed with Evans for weeks. He very likely knew exactly how Evans had escaped.