Sharpshooter (15 page)

He wasn’t real eager to start sharing that, so he said, “What have you found out here?”

“Here?” Her lips tightened. “Here I’ve found out that it looks like someone used your old access code to gain entrance into the system.”

“Mine?”

“Yes. Your personnel file was accessed, too, but only for a few seconds, not nearly as long as my file and the Guerrero file were.”

His muscles locked. “Someone’s setting me up.”

She nodded. “That would be my thought.” She pushed out of the chair and closed the distance between them. “Now tell me what
you
found at my house.” Pain flickered in her eyes. “Was anything left?”

“No, Syd, I’m sorry.”

Her chin lifted, the way it always did when she was trying to pull her strength together. “That place...it was my retreat while I was in D.C. My
home
has always been in Baton Rouge. I’ll get over this,” she said with a firm nod. “I will.”

He believed her, but there was still more to tell. “I tracked through the woods, looking for a sign of the arsonist.”

“And?”

“I might have a lead.”

She sighed. “Don’t play this game. Tell me what you’ve got or I’ll just go straight to Logan.”

“I think it could be Slade.” Harsh words. Words that he hadn’t wanted to say, but she needed to be aware of the danger that could be right beside them both.

Her eyes widened. Not doubling in size as Hal’s had, but still showing her surprise. “What?”

This was where he got to tell her that a few pieces of straw were making him suspect his brother. Flimsy evidence that hadn’t exactly convinced Logan. “He was trained to leave no trail, just like I was. He’s good, but...”

“Not as good as you,” she finished quietly.

“He could never just sit still. He always had to do something to keep his hands occupied. He’d take pine straw, twist it, braid it.” Gunner almost thought of the twisted straw as his brother’s signature. Whenever they’d been kids, and he’d found the straw in the woods, he’d known that Slade had been there. “I found some of that braided straw in the woods near your house.”

“But he had a guard on him. You told me—”

“Logan’s checking with the guard to make sure that Slade didn’t slip away.” Once Logan had questioned the guard, then they’d have a better idea of where they stood. Right now Gunner just had a dark suspicion boiling in his gut.

“You really think Slade would try to kill me?”

Slade
had
attacked her once. The sight of the bruising on her jaw had enraged him. If Slade thought that Gunner was taking Sydney away from him, well, Gunner wasn’t sure just how his brother would react.

The man he’d been years before...
no,
that guy wouldn’t do something like this. But the guy who’d came out of the jungle, addicted to
muerte,
he just might.

“What about the man who took the shot at me? Do you think he’s somehow linked to Slade? To the hacking?”

“I don’t know.” All he had were his instincts, screaming at him. “There isn’t enough evidence yet to know what’s happening.” And the fact that she was turning up evidence to implicate him? That was even worse for the situation. “I just want you on guard. I don’t want you ever alone with him.”

She stared up at him. “My personnel file...whoever accessed it knows about the pregnancy.”

The pregnancy could have been enough to push Slade over the edge. Gunner could see Slade hacking in to Sydney’s file, wanting to learn everything about her, but there was no reason for Slade to hack in to the Guerrero file,
if
he even knew how to hack. “When was that access code of mine used last?”

“It’s one that went obsolete—or should have gone obsolete—over two years ago.”

When Slade had still been around.

The phone on Gunner’s hip vibrated, right at the same time that Sydney’s vibrated, too. Gunner pulled out his phone and read the text. “Tina?” he asked Sydney, sure she’d just gotten the same message from the doctor.

Sydney gave a nod, then quickly signed off on the computer, securing the machine.

Tina’s text had said that she had blood test results that she needed to share with them, ASAP. She wanted them in the med room.

He knew that she’d been assisting with the autopsy on the man he’d shot at the James Fire Building. Tina didn’t normally handle autopsies, but Mercer had ordered her in on this one because he wanted one of his close staff members with eyes in that morgue. And when Mercer gave an order, few folks ever refused.

Sydney was silent as they entered the elevator. Gunner felt too conscious of her every move. He wanted to talk to her about last night, but since he’d just dropped the bombshell of his suspicions on her, he wasn’t quite sure how to lead into that.

He wasn’t the guy with the smooth lines and easy conversation. He never had been. He actually found it hard to talk to people outside of his team. The rest of the world just didn’t seem to understand him.

Especially women.

When he’d been a teen, there had been one girl he liked, a little blonde with green eyes. But when she’d talked to him, he’d pretty much wound up replying in monosyllables, and she’d started to date his brother instead.

What had her name been? He wasn’t sure.

The elevator dinged. The doors slid open. Sydney walked out, and Gunner realized he hadn’t said a word to her that whole time. Smooth. Gritting his teeth, he followed her into the med room.

Tina was waiting there with Mercer. Mercer had his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back against a filing cabinet.

“Dr. Jamison has found some interesting results for us,” Mercer murmured. Gunner noticed that the man’s assessing stare drifted to him, then returned to Tina.

“It’s the blood work.” Tina pushed a report toward him and Sydney. “I found
muerte
in the man’s system.”

Muerte.
“The same drug my brother was on?” His gaze snapped to Mercer. “I thought you said the drug hadn’t made it to the U.S.”

“That’s what the DEA told me. Looks like they could be wrong about that.”

Sydney whistled as she studied the reports. “These are some extremely high levels. We’re lucky he didn’t shoot up the whole block.”

“The whole block wasn’t his target,” Mercer said quietly. “You were.”

Sydney’s fingers tightened around the report. “Do we know who he is?”

Tina nodded. “I got a hit on his fingerprints. Ken Bridges. He’s ex-army, dishonorably discharged for conduct unbecoming.” She cleared her throat. “He, um, almost beat a man to death while he was on a recon mission. The man was a civilian, completely unrelated to the mission.”

“What had Ken been doing since the army?” Gunner asked.

“Looks like whatever he could get paid to do.”

A gun for hire. Figured.

“The DEA’s getting pulled in on this one,” Mercer said. “They’re going to investigate Ken, break apart his life and follow the trail they find back to the
muerte.
”

The
muerte
trail already led to Slade. So he had to ask, “Are you questioning my brother?”

“Any intel that Slade can provide to us about the men who held him and addicted him will be used by the DEA.”

Gunner gave a hard shake of his head. “That’s not what I’m asking.” He’d been blunt with Sydney and with Logan. He’d be no less with Mercer. “Are you going to interrogate him? To see if he’s linked to this guy?”

Mercer’s head tilted as he studied Gunner. “Your brother has been either under guard or in a rehab facility for the majority of his time in the U.S. How is he supposed to have hooked up with a hired gun?”

“This guy’s ex-army, right? Maybe he hooked up with him
in
rehab. Maybe there was someone there who gave him Bridges’s number. If Bridges was addicted, then he’d probably know guys in that same rehab unit.” It made sense. Mercer had to see that.

“If there’s a link between them,” Sydney said, “we can find it.”

He had no doubt.

Tina was staring at them all with wide eyes.

“You think your brother is doing this? You really think he could be the one targeting Sydney?” Mercer asked as he uncrossed his arms.

“I don’t want to suspect him.”

“Why not?” Mercer asked softly. “He sure suspects you.”

That was the last thing Gunner had expected to hear. He snapped to attention. “Sir?”

But Mercer was pointing toward the door. “Let’s finish the rest of this conversation upstairs, Gunner. Dr. Jamison, good work. Sydney—”

“I want to be a part of that upstairs conversation,” she said, voice tensing with a demand.

The ghost of a smile curved Mercer’s thin lips. In his mid-fifties, Mercer still had the tough edge of a man half his age. “Since it’s your life, I rather suspected you’d request just that.”

Then Mercer walked toward the door.

Gunner glanced at Sydney, wondering what the hell she had to be thinking about this turn of events. His brother thought he was the killer?

And I think it’s him.

But the real question was...who did Sydney trust? Which brother did she think was there to protect her, and which was there to kill her?

Chapter Nine

They didn’t go to Mercer’s office. They went into an interrogation room, and that fact put Sydney on edge.

She glanced toward the two-way mirror. Was someone watching them? What in the world was going on?

As far as she was concerned, there was no way that Gunner was a suspect, and Mercer had better stop treating him that way.

“Gunner, you understand that I have to explore every avenue in this case.” No emotion broke through Mercer’s words. “You’ve been a fine agent here, and I have nothing but respect for the work that you’ve done.”

Sydney couldn’t stand it. “So why are we in
interrogation?
”

Mercer glanced over at her. He and Gunner were both seated. She was pacing like mad. “Because procedure has to be followed, and I don’t want this situation coming back to bite me later,” Mercer told her quietly.

She stopped pacing.

“So let’s get through this as quickly as we can.” Mercer looked back at Gunner. “Do you know a woman named Sarah Bell?”

Sydney frowned. The name meant nothing to her.

“Sarah.” Gunner seemed to be testing the name. Then he nodded. “I knew her, a long time ago.”

The door opened then, and Mercer’s assistant, Judith, hurried into the room. She handed Mercer a file. “Thank you,” he told her, inclining his head.

As Judith left, Sydney was pretty sure the other woman flashed her a look of pity. Of pity? What was up with that?

“How long ago?” Mercer asked.

“I was eighteen. She was...I think sixteen at the time? Sarah Bell...she was killed in a fire.”

“Yes, she was.”

Mercer opened the file and pushed some grainy black-and-white photographs toward Gunner. “I pulled the arson reports on her fire. The M.O. that the arsonist used, it’s the same as the one that was used at Sydney’s place.”

Sydney grabbed the nearest chair and sat down—hard. Then she strained to see those photographs. The charred remains of the house had her swallowing a few times. Then she saw the newspaper reports that had been printed off and included in that manila file.

Family Perishes in Blaze.

“Sarah Bell and her parents all died in the fire,” Mercer said. “Unfortunately, the arsonist was never apprehended.”

Gunner leaned forward. “You think I had something to do with this?”

“Your grandfather passed away a week before that fire. His passing...when he was the only one to ever provide stability to your life...it had to leave you feeling lost.”

“I wasn’t lost.” Flat. “I had my brother to take care of. He needed me.”

“He needed you, but you
wanted
Sarah Bell?”

Now another picture was pushed forward. This one appeared to have been taken from a yearbook. A young girl with curly blond hair and sparkling green eyes. In the picture, she smiled, flashing dimples.

“I never dated Sarah Bell.”

“Are you sure about that?” Mercer pressed. “Because your brother said you were sweet on her back then.”

Gunner started to respond, then stopped.

The tension in the room ratcheted up.
He had cared for Sarah.

“She was a nice girl,” he said. “She never seemed to care that my clothes were old or that I had to work two jobs around my school schedule. Sarah...she was good to everyone.”

“I heard she wasn’t so good to you.”

“That’s what Slade said?” Gunner asked. Sydney saw a muscle flex along his jaw.

A nod from Mercer. “He said she rejected you, and you didn’t handle that rejection so well.”

Gunner laughed then, but the sound made goose bumps rise on Sydney’s arms. “Slade was the one who dated her, not me.”

“How’d that make you feel?” Mercer’s gaze bored into him. “Angry? Enraged? A girl who should be with you...but she wound up with your brother.”

Gunner shook his head.

But Mercer wasn’t done. “Then it happened again, didn’t it? Another girl you wanted...” He cast a fast glance toward Sydney. “But she wound up with your brother.”

Enough.

Sydney jumped to her feet. The chair slammed back behind her, and it hit the floor. “Stop accusing him, okay? Gunner didn’t do this!”

“But his access code was used.” Mercer’s voice was still without emotion. “Hal told me what he discovered today.”

“He discovered a setup,
that’s
what he discovered,” Sydney snapped. “You can’t actually believe that Gunner could be responsible for this—”

“I have to explore all possibilities,” Mercer said again. “Every avenue.”

Sydney huffed out an angry breath. “Why would he access the Guerrero file? He has no reason to do that.”

“
He’s
not the one talking right now,” Mercer pointed out.

For an instant, Sydney was tempted to go across that table, boss or no boss. He wasn’t just going to sit there and accuse Gunner. Not while she—

Gunner’s fingers wrapped around her wrist. “Easy.”

He must have realized just how close she was to lunging. But the last thing Sydney was feeling was
easy
at that moment.

“Pull up your security cameras,” Gunner told Mercer. She wondered how he could sound so calm. “You’ll see I wasn’t even at the facility during the time of the breach.”

“Funny thing about that...the cameras weren’t working then.” Mercer’s lips thinned. “This facility is supposedly one of the most secure locations in the world, and our damn security cameras blacked out. You know what that tells me? It says we were hit by a professional, one with covert skills that would let him get in and out of a building without being noticed.” His fingers drummed on the table. “It also tells me that we’re definitely looking at an inside job. Someone knew all of our weaknesses. Someone studied them. And that person or persons exploited them.”

Sydney frowned. Hal hadn’t mentioned that the security cameras stopped working during the breach. He was the one who should’ve had an uplink to those videos. If they went off-line, he should have been alerted immediately. “Did you question Hal?”

Mercer nodded. “Who do you think I talked to first? The man was shaking so hard he could barely answer any of my questions.”

And he’d been so nervous when Gunner came into the room. She’d just written off that nervousness because Gunner truly did make most people tense up, but what if it had been more?

Hal was the one who’d found the evidence linking Gunner to the hacking.

Hal was the one who
should
have been alerted to the camera failure.

“If anyone knew how to get past the security system,” she whispered, “it would be Hal.”

Mercer shook his head. “His key card wasn’t used for entry that night. Hal wasn’t here—”

Sydney laughed, but the sound held no humor. She was still standing and definitely didn’t feel like sitting. “Hal knows the system in this building from the inside out. If he wanted to slip in, he could.”

Was she throwing Hal under the bus? At this point, Sydney wasn’t sure. She just knew...Gunner hadn’t done this. “I want to look at Hal’s computer.”

Or rather the roomful of computers that he actually had.

“Sydney...” Mercer began.

“I want to check his data. He said the authorization code linked back to Gunner. Well, that code should have been deleted years ago. By Hal. I want to see his computers. I want to find out just what searches he used to find that intel.” Her heart was beating too fast, but Gunner didn’t seem to be defending himself.
Why not?
So someone had to prove his innocence.

She wasn’t wrong about Gunner. She wouldn’t be wrong. There was no way that he’d tried to kill her.

No way.

Mercer was studying her with his hard gaze. Sydney held her breath, waiting, then... His head inclined toward her. “Go search the computers.”

Yes.
She nearly ran for the door. This was what she needed. What she had to do. Gunner was clear. Or he would be, once she was done.

Because she wouldn’t lose faith in the one man who’d pulled her from the darkness. He’d helped her before. She’d help him now.

* * *

S
ILENCE
FILLED
THE
room after the door shut behind Sydney.

Gunner knew his body was too tense, but he wasn’t exactly in the mood to relax.

“She has a lot of faith in you,” Mercer finally said, voice considering.

Yes, she did. Enough faith to humble him.

“You didn’t seem to have as much faith in her.”

Gunner’s eyes narrowed.

“I mean, you were so sure that she’d go back to Slade, right? You were the one who backed away.”

“Listening to gossip, are you?”

“I listen to everything. In this business, you have to.” Mercer sighed. “I don’t like this.”

“You think I do?”

“I think you’re barely holding on to your control. You’re so worried about Sydney that you can’t even think straight.” Mercer stabbed a finger toward him. “Get your head in the game, Gunner. Stop letting your emotions rule you.”

He’d never let emotions rule him. Not until—

Sydney.

“If the evidence against you keeps piling up, I’ll have to act.”

Those words sounded like a warning.

“My gut tells me you’re clear. I
know
you, and I don’t want to be wrong about you.”

“You aren’t.” Neither was Sydney.

“Then find my perp. Bring me evidence that I can use to nail him to the wall.”

Gunner unclenched his jaw. “I want Cale Lane reassigned. Get him to start guarding Slade.”

He trusted Cale. No way would Slade slip by him.

“Already done,” Mercer murmured. Then he rose. The legs of his chair slid back with a screech. “Protect her.”

With his life.

“Sydney reminds me...” Mercer began, but then his words trailed away. Sadness flickered in his eyes, and the lines on his face deepened. The man looked as though he was skirting sixty, but Gunner had no idea at all what Mercer’s personal life was like. Did he have a wife? A family?

Mercer cleared his throat. “She reminds me of a woman I knew a long time ago. I lost her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ll be sorrier if you lose her, trust me.” Then he headed from the door. “There are some things that even soldiers can’t recover from.”

If he lost Sydney, the baby...no, he’d never recover.

Good thing he wasn’t planning on losing them.

* * *

S
YDNEY
SWIPED
HER
key card over the access panel, and when the lights flashed green, she pushed her way inside Hal’s inner sanctum. The Hub, as he called it.

Hal wasn’t there. Good. He should have gone home an hour ago. Time for her to get working and see exactly what was happening with his system.

She eased into his chair, started typing and immediately, the screen froze on her.

Hal had installed extra protection on his machine.

Good for him. Except...she’d been there when he’d installed that protection. He hadn’t even bothered to glance over his shoulder to see if she was watching while he typed in his code.

She’d been watching.

And she
never
forgot a code.

Her fingers tapped quickly over the keyboard. She knew how to get around this system. Hal never gave her enough credit.

Then she was pulling up the searches he’d used in the mainframe, and yes, sure enough, the access code had linked to Gunner. Damn it.

But she kept searching. Looking for the security video feed from the night of the breach—a feed that should have been there.

Her eyes narrowed on the screen as she read the system file for the time of 0300 on the date of the breach. There were no reported errors with the monitoring system. No reported errors at all because...

Her fingers typed faster.

Because Hal had shut off the system thirty minutes before. She could see the override, right there on the screen. He
was
in on—

“I figured you would be the one to come and look at the security logs.” The door behind her closed with a soft
click.

Sydney tensed. She’d been so intent on the monitor that she hadn’t even realized that Hal had come into the room.

But as she looked up into the monitor, she could see his reflection. He was walking toward her, and he had a weapon in his hand.

A gun.

He wouldn’t have gotten past the security check-in downstairs with that weapon. But they had a weapons room on the second floor. As if it would have been hard for Hal to help himself to some equipment. After all, he controlled the access to most of the rooms in that building.

She inhaled a steadying breath. She didn’t have a gun, but that didn’t mean she was defenseless. She was the one trained for combat. Not Hal and his nervous hands. He might think that he had the advantage, but he’d soon realize the error of his ways.

“You were supposed to die, though,” Hal said. “So it wasn’t going to matter. The shooter was going to take you out. You’d be dead, so you wouldn’t come in here and find out about me.”

“Why?” She turned and looked at him. A deliberate move on her part. For someone like Hal, someone not used to doling out death, looking into the face of his victim would be hard.

Staring into her eyes, then killing her...even harder.

Her fingers curled around the pen she’d taken from his desk.

“I didn’t want to,” Hal whispered, and sure enough, his hands were shaking. “I didn’t have a choice. He was going to hurt my family.” His eyes teared. “They’re all I have...he
knew
things about them. Too much. I had to do it.”

“You had to turn off the cameras?” She wanted to keep him talking. Needed to.

Hal nodded.

“And you gave him the access code?”

“Y-yes.”

The shaking of that gun was making her nervous. Her body was tense, ready to attack, and she planned to lunge at him soon, but she had to time her move just right. The last thing she wanted was a bullet hitting her or the baby.

The baby.

“Do you know I’m pregnant?” she whispered. “Please, Hal, don’t hurt the baby.” She meant that plea. The baby—the one she hadn’t even felt moving inside her yet—mattered more than anything to her.