Eric (In the Company of Snipers Book 15)

by Irish Winters

  “But Mr. Finnegan.” Grover kept trying. “Let’s be reasonable. We can work this out.” His head bobbed like it was already a done deal.

  “Let’s not.” Eric zeroed in on that other sneaky bastard, the one who thought he was clever. Guess again. “Get your ass out in the open where we can all see you, Carlson.”

  Damned if the billionaire playboy didn’t step out from behind the five-ton like he was told to. Dressed in a business suit as if he didn’t plan on getting dirty, Carlson fingered the cufflink on his left wrist as he sauntered into view.

  “What’s he doing here?” Murphy asked. “I thought he was waiting for a flight.”

  “He’s the money behind all this.” That much Eric knew for certain.

  “Ah, Mr. Reynolds,” he said, still without meeting Eric’s eyes. “What poor timing you have. You, too, Finnegan—or should I call you Hollister?” He lifted one shoulder. “Not that it matters, but if you’d stayed in your country and minded your business, none of this would be necessary.”

  “None of what?” Murphy asked.

  Carlson toyed with the cufflink, still not man enough to look his three adversaries in the eye. What an ass. He still thought he could walk in, snap his fingers, and the world would bow to kiss his feet. Not today. “Have you contacted your superior yet, that prick, Alex Stewart? His staff? Anyone in his office?” he asked. “Anyone on the entire Eastern seaboard for that matter?”

  Murphy growled, but didn’t answer.

  Carlson proceeded past Grover and his string of goons, still not willing to make eye contact. “Let me answer that for you,” he told his cufflink. “No. You haven’t been able to contact him, and you never will. Why? Because my chip, the one that every cell service in the world is currently required to incorporate into their products, is now in charge. It’s taken over the world, so to speak. It’s tracking every last deadbeat with a social network account or an email address. Your fragile little republic across the pond has gone back to the Dark Ages. You couldn’t call home if you tried.”

  Eric steeled his jaw. He’d never been as tech savvy as Shea, but this sounded about as bad as it could get.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Murphy snapped. “Stop bullshitting and spit it out.”

  “Patience, old man.” Carlson preened like the peacock he was. He flicked an invisible something off the lapel of his high-priced suit. Finally, his head came up and his eyes locked on Eric. “I should’ve killed you at Ashford. Where is she?”

  “Safe,” Eric bit out, shifting one boot forward in preparation for the pounding kickback his rifle would soon deliver. His rifle contained a built-in shock absorber in the butt-stock, but ballistics being what they were, his shoulder would still be damn sore at the end of this fight. “You honestly think I’d bring her here? How stupid are you?”

  Carlson’s eyes narrowed. His head bobbed once in one of those cocky guy-moves, the ones shitty winners traditionally gave sorry losers on the basketball court. The gloves off nod that says: I don’t have to play fair because I own the refs.

  Eric answered back with the laser dot of his Leupold scope dead center on Carlson’s forehead. I’m not playing.

  At least, he had the good sense to stop advancing. He might own the world, just not the zone between his brain and the business end of Eric’s rifle. Carlson still thought he had a dog in this fight, though. Brushing his high-end jacket out of the way, he rested both palms to his hips as he scanned Murphy’s house and garage. “We both know where she is. You should have taken her into that bunker of yours, old man.” He blew out a breath, shaking his head as if making a tough decision. “I’d rather not burn this quaint little cottage to the ground, but I will. I’m not leaving without her.”

  “Try it,” Eric hissed. “I may not be rich, but I can promise, you’ll die first.”

  “And then what?” Carlson barked, his dark brows arrowed. “You’ll go down in a hail of gunfire? Trust me, all of your men will die too, and in the end, one of my guys will still get her. Do you honestly think I’ve come this far without a back-up plan? Who’s stupid now, Reynolds?”

  Carlson cocked one elbow as he lifted his index finger to his chin. “Even if I were to, say, have a massive heart attack tomorrow while teeing off at Pebble Beach, she’d still be MY corporate asset.” Fisting that same hand, he thumped his chest like a Neanderthal, his gaze still on Eric. “Don’t you get it? Someone like your wife can only belong to a man like me, Reynolds. I’m the only one who can hone that remarkable talent of hers. Like it or not, she’s mine.”

  God, none of this made sense. It hadn’t from the start. “Why the hell do you want her?” Eric hated having to ask, but it gave him something to do before he turned Carlson’s head to mist.

  “Because I can break him, Eric, my one true love,” Shea’s sweet voice answered from over his right shoulder.

  The pitch of his rifle would’ve dropped if not for the genuine gleam on Carlson’s smirky face inside the crosshairs. The bastard eyeballed Shea like she was the most precious creature on the planet. Or his next greatest investment.

  “Get back,” Eric hissed at her, not daring to take his eyes off target. “Please, baby. Go back inside.”

  Of course, she didn’t listen. “I know now why you paid that guy to torture me and kill Phoenix and Gordie. It wasn’t for the invention. You didn’t want Gordie to work for you, did you, Mr. Carlson?”

  How could she be on her feet already, much less be so polite to this monster? Eric shifted his stance, ready to end Carlson if he took one step in her direction.

  “God, you are a true beauty,” the pompous man gushed.

  “Answer the question,” Shea returned. “Why did you have my friends killed?”

  He glowed. The bastard glowed as if Shea had made all of his wishes come true just by showing up. “That’s not precisely accurate, Mrs. Reynolds. May I call you Shea?”

  “Mrs. Reynolds to you,” she bit out.

  You tell him, baby.

  “Fine then. Mrs. Reynolds.” He offered a courtly head nod. “That day in the lab, I wanted Finn, but I fell for that disgusting disguise you’d created. Frankly, I couldn’t bring myself to hire anyone so repulsive looking as you were then.” He waved one hand to his nose. “You carried it off quite well, you know. I never suspected that a lady as elegant as you lay hidden beneath the folds of all that fat and poor hygiene. Well played.”

  “Then why kill my friends?”

  “Because of what that fool Mikkelson said.”

  “Explain,” Shea ordered.

  Carlson folded one arm over his chest, the other cocked with his fingertips skimming his chin. “He called you the genius behind them. Why would I want him when I could’ve had you, even as disgusting as you were then? His rejection that morning forced me to rethink my strategy. I couldn’t just turn and proposition someone like Finn, even as brilliant as he, ahem, you were. It was obvious you three were bound together by something more than science.”

  “So you thought if you killed my friends I’d be desperate enough to come crawling to you with their invention?” When her elbow brushed Eric’s forearm, he shifted to make room for her between himself and Murphy.

  Carlson cocked his head. His smirky mask drooped as if he’d suddenly realized something. “You bitch!” he hissed, his brows spiked like ugly rainbows. “You didn’t discover it, did you? You have nothing to do with dynamic energy displacement, do you?”

  She leaned into Eric as if for strength. The poor thing was shaking. “Wow. For a smart guy, it took you long enough to figure that out. No, I don’t have a clue how Gordie and Phoenix’s energy displacement thing works. They were the geese that laid your golden egg, Mr. Wizard. I just came up with the funding that allowed them to run with their dreams as far as they could. They were two of the most genuinely, loving people I’ve met in my life, but—you killed them.”

  Eric caught a quick glimpse of her in his peripheral. Forest green sweatshirt and pants. Trembling
. Sweating. Murphy’s open laptop shifted in her left palm, her right hand poised over the keypad. Her index finger hovered on the ENTER key like it was a trigger. One she couldn’t miss. What a sight.

  But Eric had to know. “You’d already bought Phoenix Berglund by then, hadn’t you? You paid him off. Why?”

  Professor Grover had the nerve to smile. “I made him a little deal, you see. He was supposed to hand over Finn, but then he backed out. Now I know why, don’t I? He never planned to go through with it, did he?”

  Eric could feel Shea tremble at this new betrayal. “You… you paid him to sell me out?”

  Grover’s shoulders lifted along with his bushy eyebrows as if he thought it were no big deal. “It’s called insider trading, my dear sweet girl. People get away with it all the time. It’s just good business.”

  “It’s called backstabbing and murder, you ass,” Murphy hissed.

  A dainty snort huffed through Shea’s nostrils. “And now, because of your greed, the world will never know about dynamic energy displacement.” She took a step forward, shaking, but with her head raised high. “The discovery of the ages is lost, Mr. Carlson, because you killed to get what would never be yours. And yes, I have Phoenix’s laptop, but you’ll never get that, either. It’s as lost to you now as your twenty-seven offshore bank accounts and every last penny in them. Your cozy home in Cap d’Ail, France. The mansion in Mallorca, Spain. That godawful thing you call a home in Dubai. Your billion-dollar Swiss chalet up high in the Alps.” Her voice ratcheted higher with every exclamation. “How much money did you have, Mr. Carlson?”

  Carlson’s eyes were nearly bugged out by the time Shea finished. He shuddered as much as she did. Half turning to Grover, he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “You told me Finn was the genius.”

  “But he is,” Grover mumbled. “He, ah, I mean, she’s the only reason I accepted the other two. They were a packaged deal, but she’s the one, damn it. I know she is. Can’t you see? She’s been pilfering millions out of some Saudi prince’s account for months, and now she’s bankrupting you.”

  Carlson bit out, “She isn’t that smart—”

  “How’d you know?” Shea interrupted. “Professor Grover, how’d you know about… that?” She bit her lip and Eric was glad she hadn’t divulged Bagani’s name. Grover had enough dirt on Shea. “Are you spying on me?”

  “I’ve got my ways,” Grover murmured, his eyes shifting to his feet then back to her.

  She stamped one foot in frustration. “You never had a stroke, did you? Everything you did was a lie, wasn’t it? I trusted you. Gordie trusted you. Are you even a real professor?”

  Eric winced. The regret in her voice was palpable.

  “Of course I’m a professor. I’m tenured. Not everything I said was untrue,” Grover answered in that singsong voice he had. He cocked his head, his fingers clasped over his belly. “You’ll always be my favorite lucky star.”

  “I’m not your anything!” Shea spat. “They’re dead, and you’re as guilty of murder as that creep who killed them!”

  “Shut up!” Carlson bellowed at his buddy in crime. “I don’t care about her pilfering some loser’s money! Where’s the damned dynamic energy displacement model you promised me?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Let me get this straight,” Eric interrupted only because he wanted to rub it in. “You wanted Shea because you thought she invented dynamic energy displacement? That was why you had your Abdul-Mutaal knock-off assassinate her friends? The ones who actually invented it? How stupid are you?”

  “Discovered it,” Grover corrected. “Phoenix and Gordie actually dis—”

  “Shut up!” Carlson roared, the lines of his face rigid with frustration.

  Murphy chuckled. “Well, I’ll be dogged. You two are a couple of flaming jack-holes. Don’t you check your sources, Carlson?”

  “I did,” he hissed, his pallor a little on the deathly side of pale.

  Shea’s fingernails still tapped at her keyboard, and the one thing that had been made irrefutably clear. She had not only the means and the motive—she now had all the power.

  Eric wrapped a steadying arm around her waist without taking eyes off his target. She needed to know she was not alone. He planted a quick whisper kiss to her cheek. “I’ve got your six, babe. Do what you have to do.”

  The poor thing shivered despite the hold she had over Carlson, but her voice rang out as clear as the 4pm closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange bell. “Your chip is a fraud.”

  Damned if Carlson didn’t get paler. All that rich-boy-on-the-block cockiness evaporated. He took a step back, shaking his head. Blinking.

  Shea kept going. “I cracked your code, Mr. Carlson. You buried a level-eight replicating worm in it, didn’t you? That’s why Murphy can’t reach Alex or… or anyone else in the United States. But I’ve got news for you. Right now, Interpol’s looking for you. They want to question you about the blackout that took out the eastern power grid in the United States, half of Canada, and Quebec today. They’ve tracked the blackout to your chip.”

  “How do you know that?” He challenged.

  Shea stuck her chin at him. “I just told you. I cracked your chip. Isn’t that what you always wanted? One Nation. One Network. One World? That’s what’s at the other end of this little plastic ENTER key. Your whole world,” she ground out.

  Carlson’s eyes hit the dirt. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and snapped, “Move out,” to Grover and his goons.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Shea took a full step forward, away from Eric and out of her comfort zone. “You don’t get to walk away from this, Mr. Carlson. Not today. You killed my friends. You and Grover paid that Abdul-Mutaal look-alike to drown me.” Her shoulders shook with fright while Eric’s heart swelled with pride. “I found everything I needed to know about you on the World Wide Web. I didn’t even need to hack your personal accounts for that.”

  Jordan exhaled a hearty, “Damn, she’s good,” from Eric’s right.

  Shea drilled Carlson. “Were you there when your hired-killer was drowning me? Were you there when Gordie begged for mercy while your assassin cut his fingers off?” Her voice wrapped to a high pitch. “Do you know Phoenix cried when your evil minion flogged him within an inch of his life? Ask me how I know this, Mr. Carlson! Ask me how I know that you murdered your first wife?!”

  Holy shit! didn’t begin to describe the jolt to Eric’s heart. His sweetheart had just taken a scary turn toward becoming one of those evil minions who thought they could take over the world. “Shea,” he whispered, needing to reel her in before this attack of hers blew up in her pretty face. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “I do,” she answered with a stomp of her bare foot. “I really do. I ran from my problems once, but I’m not running anymore. He killed her, Eric, and she was pregnant! He killed his unborn baby!”

  Man, this twisted nightmare just kept getting worse and worse. Shea still suffered from losing her own little girl. The murder of this unborn child was now the last straw that just might push her over the edge.

  Eric could tell Shea was crying by the wretched crack in her voice, and because he knew his woman, he stopped being her hero, and he let her take the lead. This was her show, her decision point to make. He wouldn’t betray her trust by offering one solitary excuse why Carlson should be allowed to live. Eric couldn’t honestly think of one, not after how Phoenix and Gordie had suffered. But everything—his heart, her life, and their future—was on the line. If this plan of hers backfired…?

  “I can’t lose you again, baby,” Eric murmured out of the corner of his mouth, praying Carlson couldn’t hear him, but that Shea would understand what he hadn’t said. Don’t get yourself killed trying to end Carlson. The man isn’t worth it.

  “Wh-what are you going to do?” Carlson asked, like he didn’t already know.

  She cleared her throat, her eyes on her target. “I’m transferring every last penny out of your ac
counts—all of your accounts—to people who really need it.”

  His hands come up. “No, stop—”

  “Too late!” she shrieked, the tip of her dainty index finger hovering at a ninety-degree angle over the ENTER key. “I hate everything you stand for. You’re nothing but another Hitler in disguise. A Pol Pot! You’re a disease, and you know what happens to diseases?”

  “No!” He took a step forward. “Wait. Jesus Christ, don’t do it! I’ll make you rich—”

  Eric stepped to Shea’s side, his finger snug in the curve of that trigger. “Don’t come any closer.”

  “I don’t want money!” she shrieked, her neck stretched forward as if she needed Carlson to know that a lowly woman had bested him. “You’ve got nothing I want because You. Are. Nothing!”

  Carlson’s shoulders stiffened. “At least think about it, Shea, I mean, Mrs. Reynolds. Come on, be reasonable,” he couched his words in despair even as his shoulders lifted like a little boy who was still working to get his way. “Think what you and I—”

  With a toss of her shorn locks, Shea took a deep breath, her spine straight, her beautiful neck erect, and her head held high. Yeah, this was so going to happen. Eric couldn’t have been prouder—or more worried.

  “Viruses,” she said quietly, the hate and anger suddenly under control. “Viruses that cause disease get eradicated, Mr. Carlson. Something bigger and better comes along, and Mother Nature wipes them out.”

  Sometimes, it was the little things that mattered the most. The dime-sized pad of Shea’s fingertip hitting the stamp-sized ENTER button on Murphy’s laptop. The fraction of a second for a tiny thing like her to bring a bigger-than-life monster to his knees. Or the wisp of a gasp from her small, compromised lungs when the deed was done. The twitch of despair that contorted Carlson’s brilliant, privileged mug. In the end, it all came down to—One. Little. Tap.

  “No, no, no!” Carlson lifted his clenched fists to his temples. “You didn’t!”

  But yes, yes, yes. Shea did. By the time Murphy’s laptop fell to the ground at her feet, the deed was done and Carlson was ruined. “There. Now you’re as dead as Gordie and Phoenix,” she told him, her chin still up. “How’s it feel, Mr. Carlson?”