Ignoring the knots twisting his already twitchy back and neck muscles, Beau straightened, then cocked his head. He’d detected two distinct female voices outside. What the hell? Was that Kelsey? Alex’s sweet wife? Say it’s not so. Couldn’t be. What’s she doing here? A smaller, higher pitched voice murmured. Is that Lexie Rose? Jesus, no!
Panicked beyond belief, he nearly bellowed at them to run, but thought better of it and closed his big mouth instead. There was no sense alerting his killer that he’d come to.
Gotta move. Gotta run. Gotta get them the Hell away from here!
Shaken more than ever now, he jerked at the cuffs on his ankles. The good news, he was still wearing the jeans and TEAM polo he’d worn last night. Waking up nude and bleeding would’ve been so much worse. The bad news? The imminent danger to Kelsey and Alex’s only child rattled Beau so much that he couldn’t concentrate. His fingertips slipped over the cuffs, rattling the chains against the wooden tabletop. He couldn’t get a grip. Like a fool, he hunched over his knees and jerked at the chains. Nothing budged.
Not smart, wise guy. Settle down. Keep your head. You’ve done this before. You can do it again. It took seconds to remember that cooler heads prevailed, that clear thinking was the best tool in a guy’s arsenal. Not guns. Just brains.
So use ’em!
He settled down. Manipulating the connection where the locking mechanism joined the cuff on his right ankle... exerting the right amount of pressure... at just the right angle... he bit his lower lip and concentrated like a son-of-a-bitch. Then chewed the inside of his cheek, still focused as Hell. Then hissed a vehement curse against the people who designed these damned cuffs! What motherfucker had improved them?
Son-of-a-bitch, this won’t give. But just when he thought he was screwed… Pop! The cuff on his left ankle sprang open, and freedom was just a pounding heartbeat away.
“Run, Kelsey,” he muttered, truly frightened and fumbling the last restraint between his slick fingers. “Grab that baby girl of yours and run as fast as you can. Get away from here. This place is a deathtrap.”
By then, the last cuff was slick with blood. His fingers slipped instead of gripped, and time was running out. Whoever’d done this to him was one twisted son-of-a-bitch, and they’d be back. He had to be gone by then. Had to!
Fighting his rising panic, he tackled the final cuff with all he had. He was so close! He only needed another minute. He could escape this cuff, too. He could!
Until the door burst open and morning sunlight spilled into the room, blinding him. Scaring him. “Where do you think you’re going, Benjamin Beau Jennings?” the Hispanic bimbo standing in the doorway shrieked.
“To hell!” he roared back at her, his heart pumping like artillery in his chest. “With you!”
Jesus Christ, get me outta here!
Chapter Three
While waiting in Detective Oberg’s cramped, city-budget-sized office, Alex’s phone vibrated from deep inside his suit jacket. Damn, what now? Kelsey? That was odd. She rarely called during office hours. She knew how busy he was.
“Hello, sweetheart. What can I do for you?” he asked, his eyes skating over the forensic report Detective Oberg had just handed him. The print was a positive match. That single digit was definitely Beau’s baby finger, left hand. Severed and crushed above the second joint. Wherever he was, Beau was in danger of bleeding to death if Alex didn’t get to him soon.
“I know you’re busy, but I just had the oddest talk with our new neighbor.”
“Ah-huh,” he replied, pissed that Cat Montego had targeted his TEAM. My team! How does she know Beau? Barely moved from the Army base at Fort Hood, he's only worked a few months for me. Has she been stalking us? Me?
“Anyway, our new neighbor was up really early planting roses. I saw the light in Congressman Ringer’s yard when I was up with Lexie in the loft, rocking and reading to her…”
Kelsey called the third story alcove he’d built just for her a loft. Alex called it a sniper hide. Tomatoes. Tah-matoes.
“As you can see, this is definitely your man,” Detective Oberg pointed out. Dressed in a rumpled black suit, his tie missing, Oberg’s strained voice betrayed his worry that Alexandria might have a serial murderer on the loose. “If he was alive when he lost that finger, he’s in damned bad shape now. Could be dead.”
“Could be.” Alex nodded even as Kelsey asked, “Are you too busy to talk now, honey? I can call back later, but I think I’ll call Howie now just in case.”
Howie Prince, Chief of the sheriff’s department that patrolled Alex’s gated community.
“Hold on,” Alex bit out at Oberg. “This is my wife and…” He offered his index finger to get the detective to hush. “What’d you say? We have a new neighbor? Since when? Why do you need to call Howie?”
Oberg rolled his eyes, not that Alex cared. Kelsey always came first, even now with one man missing. She just needed to make it quick.
“Yes, Athena. Her name’s Athena. I’m sorry I didn’t get her last name, but I believe she’s from South America. She’s... I don’t want to jump to the wrong conclusion about someone I just met, but she’s, for lack of a better word, off-putting. Does that make sense? I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something not right about her.”
Alex caught the odd tremor in his wife’s tone, but Kelsey saying that she couldn’t put her ‘finger on it,’ while he was staring at the first two joints of Beau’s disembodied baby finger, lent a peculiar vibe to the conversation. “Hold on a sec,” he said as he activated the security app on his cell that provided a twenty-four-seven birds-eye view of his home via his CCTV security system. Sliding his fingertip from pane to pane, everything looked normal. Residential traffic was light at the moment. The morning sun obstructed one view, but the others relayed nothing out of the ordinary.
Switching back to his wife, he asked, “Are you sure it was Ringer’s?”
Alex had recently moved his small family west from quaint Alexandria, Virginia, to a gated-community just east of the Shenandoah Valley. Kelsey deserved the lavish stone and mortar home he’d built for her. Actually, she deserved more, but she’d stopped his grandiose plans and settled for the three thousand square-foot home they currently lived in, instead of the rustic mansion he’d planned. Which was part of her charm. Kelsey knew how to get along with less. Like him, except when it came to her. If he lived to be a hundred, Alex knew he’d never deserve her.
“Yes, Ringer’s, two doors down from us. You know the one with the xeriscape in their front yard that everyone hates? The one with that poor, dead saguaro cactus in the yard?”
Ah, yes. That eyesore. “Hold on again,” Alex said as he fingered the app to locate the camera lens pointing westward. Again, no problems were visible at the five-acre estate of Congressman Bruce Ringer, the latest congressional casualty whose constituents hadn’t liked his politics enough to reelect him. Damned shame that. Ringer was one of the few men on the Hill that Alex respected, which had probably jinxed him. But Virginia was no place to dabble in arid landscapes. Too much humidity killed the effect. Might’ve killed Ringer’s chance for reelection, too.
“Listen, Stewart, if you’ve got better things to do…” Oberg grumbled sarcastically.
Alex glared at him while Kelsey went on. “She said Lexie would attract the cutest little worms. Isn’t that creepy?”
The hairs lifted up the back of Alex’s neck. “When did Ringers move?”
“That’s the thing, Alex. I don’t think they did. The last time I talked with Eloise, she said they were taking a break from the stress of working in the District. They planned a cruise to Australia and New Zealand. That was all.”
“Make sure the alarms are on and engaged, that all are working properly,” Alex told his wife, trying not to scare her. But with Beau missing and Montego’s baby sister on the loose... It couldn’t be her in Ringer’s house, could it?
“The system’s always on when yo
u’re gone. You know that.”
Oberg cleared his throat, no doubt bored with this mundane, domestic conversation, but who the hell cared? Not Alex. His gut wasn’t roiling with acid for nothing, and something in his neighborhood off-putting enough to catch his very intelligent wife’s suspicions deserved his attention.
“And another thing,” Kelsey said, her voice hesitant. Lower. As if afraid he’d think she sounded foolish. “I got the oddest sensation when she shook my hand. It’s like she didn’t want to let me go, and the way she looked at me—"
CRASH!
“Oh, my God! Alex!”
“Kelsey? Kelsey!”
The phone went dead.
Chapter Four
“Shhhhh,” Beau hissed, his index finger to his lips to keep Kelsey Stewart from screaming. She’d dropped her phone when he’d barged through her side door into her mudroom. The poor thing looked like a trapped doe, her brown eyes wide and bright with terror, her feet positioned to run, and her mouth opened wide in shock and fear.
“Sorry, ma’am. It’s just me, Beau Jennings. You remember me, don’t you?” He pressed his back to her doorframe, so damned weak from blood loss and the adrenaline kicking his ass that he wanted to drop where he stood. “Sorry I scared you, but I’m... I’m…” About to fall down.
She was on him in an instant, her fingertips so damned gentle on his elbow, tugging him toward her kitchen table. “Of course I remember you, Beau. Come sit. You’re hurt. What happened?”
“No,” he ground out as he resisted her gentle change of direction and slanted the blinds at the kitchen window to see precisely where Lexie was. His missing finger could wait. He’d been followed, or soon would be. He was sure. That bitch was still out there. “Can’t rest. Not yet. Where are the dogs? Where’s Lexie?” Jesus, please let them be inside. Let her be safe.
“She’s outside playing with them, Beau. You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
“Where is she, on the swing set?” he asked, moving to another window and glad he hadn’t frightened Lexie like he’d scared her mother. Kids deserved to grow up safe and happy, certainly not scared of him.
Alex owned two of the fiercest canines on the East Coast, but Beau wouldn’t take chances. He’d jumped two fences and run barefoot through the next yard to get to Stewart’s. No wonder he hadn’t seen the dogs. They were out back.
Kelsey nodded. Her gaze drifting to the bloody stump and the red stream dripping down his pant leg. “You’re why Whisper and Smoke barked a couple minutes ago. Wait here. I’ll go get her and—”
“No!” snapped out of him. Jesus, no, don’t go out there. “Gun. I lost mine.” Said no Ranger worth his salt—ever! “You got an extra pistol around here that I can—?”
“Here. Use mine.” Reaching behind her back, Kelsey withdrew a tiny black pistol from her waistband.
Thank fuck! Greedily, Beau accepted the firearm, trying not to get any of his blood on her clean fingers. Trembling like a sissy, he checked the chamber. Nine mil, good enough. Not his first choice, and not what he’d been carrying last night before everything went south, but sufficient. A nine mil had decent knock down power. It’d send the witch who’d cut his finger off, back to Hell where she belonged.
“Hate to tell you this but your neighbor’s psycho,” he muttered as he scanned the yard and located Lexie. Thank you, Jesus, the little tyke was out there on the concrete patio. Laughing. She had her butt planted on a pink three-wheeler with a smiling blue Smurf face between bright yellow plastic handlebars.
That sight alone made Beau’s knees even weaker. Kelsey and Lexie were safe. Beyond her, one of Alex’s former EOD dogs, a massive black German Shepherd, stood with his head cocked, watching her, but with his nose high, scenting the air. Yeah, Whisper was no dummy. He knew something foul had gone down in his neighborhood.
With one floppy ear, he gave the impression of being a big, happy pup. The gentle way he played with Lexie reinforced that lie. Not so. There was nothing sweet, silent, or forgiving when Whisper flipped into attack mode. Jesus bless the idiot who so much as looked sideways at that little girl without Whisper’s blessing. They’d lose more than a digit.
Smoke, the silver Malinois and Whisper’s kennelmate, trotted the six-foot high fence, his tail waving like a flag and his nose in the air as well. Damned straight. Both dogs knew he’d breached their perimeter. Nine to one, they would’ve ripped him to shreds if he’d landed inside that fenced yard with them, bleeding like he was.
Beau’s heart slowed its frantic beat, but he’d heard that insane woman’s shriek when he bolted out her side door, hell bent on escape. The lunatic had put her faith in a wooden hollow-core door. Not smart. Bitch should’ve invested in steel. That’s what kept folks safe. Steel. Not wood. Definitely not store-bought locks.
But vaulting the two fences between her house of terror and Kelsey’s, had taken more energy than Beau had to give. He sagged against Kelsey’s wall, fading fast. Jesus H. Christ, the floors and walls were breathing as hard as he was. “I need Lexie in here now,” he wheezed, worried he might not survive confronting the two meaner than shit K9s, but… Here goes. “Hold the door while I run out and grab her and—”
“No, Beau. Stay. Watch.” Opening the slider that led to the patio, Kelsey called, “Whisper. Bring Lexie. House. Now.”
Well, I’ll be damned. The command had no more than rolled off her tongue than Whisper clamped onto Lexie’s forearm and tugged her gently up from the trike. She squealed and slapped at his furry muzzle. Of all things, Smoke followed on Whisper’s six like an Army Ranger, nudging his butt as if signaling him to move. It was obvious these dogs and Lexie had played this game before.
“I truly love your old man for teaching these boys to guard your little girl,” Beau breathed. He hadn’t dared put Kelsey in danger by ordering her to retrieve Lexie, and the dogs would’ve attacked him, but this? Bless Alex for being an overprotective, controlling ass.
“I love him, too,” Kelsey replied as the dogs marched her babbling daughter through the backyard door and into the mudroom. Beau secured the door behind them.
Rather than startling Lexie by grabbing hold of her the instant she stepped inside like other women might’ve done, Kelsey directed Whisper and Smoke in the calmest voice. “Dollhouse, Whisper. Play with Lexie. You too, Smoke. Good boys.”
“Hi, Mama. Bye, Mama,” Lexie chortled as Whisper walked her into the living room with his tail wagging and Smoke still on his rear. The charming trio disappeared around the corner and beyond a burnished leather recliner, most likely Alex’s.
“Is this house secure?” Beau asked, needing to be sure before he secured his weapon and fell on his face.
“Do you mean from Athena, the lady two doors west of here? Is that where you’ve been? In her house?”
“That’s her name?” He cast a sideways glance at Kelsey as he reopened the exterior mudroom door and faced the direction he’d run from. “That’s who did this to me. Now tell me, do you know for sure she can’t hear us?” Because she’s sure as hell scared the shit out of me when she called me by my name.
Kelsey nodded. “Alex installed counter-surveillance measures on this entire property. Audio jammers. Bug detectors. Bulletproof windows. She did that to you? She cut your finger off?”
He nodded, grimacing as reality struck. Kelsey’s smaller weapon was a warm friendly in his palm, and until now, his pain came second to ensuring her safety. But shit Marie, the son-of-a-bitch throbbed like a mother. And the walls in Kelsey’s tidy home really were breathing, weren’t they? Beau slid to his butt to make the world hold still.
Kelsey knelt with him. “This home is more secure than you know, Beau. Now tell me what’s going on while I get you up off the floor and onto a kitchen chair. You need a doctor, hon.”
His head lolled to one shoulder. Damn thing was as heavy as concrete, but…hon? Did she just call me hon?
It’d been a long time since anyone had t
aken that tone or used that word on him. He was more like Alex, a wolf on the prowl. A cur. A man with so many ghosts on his six, it was a miracle he was able to get out of bed each morning. Only the wolf inside Alex had stopped gnawing his leg. He was calmer than Beau, as if he’d settled down. Had to be because of this tiny woman, the one with fire in her eyes, who looked like she expected Beau to hop off the floor and run to the chair at her kitchen table, just because she’d said so.
Beau wanted to do what Kelsey requested. Really, he did. Kindness was a rare thing in his life, but it took all he had left just to lift his sorry ass off the floor without moaning like a girl. If not for Kelsey’s hand at his elbow, he would’ve preferred staying where he’d landed. Fewer things were moving that way.
But she said sit, so he dropped onto the first chair in his path.
“Lean back,” she said, her gentle hand on his shoulder, pushing him into the comfortable leather seat. Man, Alex knew how to shop. The chair was softer than Beau’s mattress at his bachelor pad. But somewhere between Kelsey tying a better tourniquet around the remaining joint on his throbbing little finger, the phone ringing off the wall, and the noisy buzz in his head, Beau pitched forward and…
He fell.
Chapter Five
“Yes, it’s Beau,” Kelsey whispered. It’d been a long time since she’d sounded this timid.
“But you’re not hurt? Are you sure?” Alex demanded to know now that she’d finally answered the damned phone. “Lexie’s okay?” Living near the Shenandoahs was great when he wanted distance between the demands of the District and his family. But it made for a worrisome helicopter ride when he couldn’t get home quickly when he needed to.
“No, honey, we’re both fine, but Beau’s in rough shape. I thought I could help stop the bleeding, but all I’m doing is hurting him. I managed to get what’s left of his finger bandaged, but he passed out. Right now, he’s on his back on our kitchen floor. I spread some towels under his head, but he needs a doctor. I could call McKenna. She’s just minutes away, but now that I know I’ve got a psycho in the neighborhood, I can’t risk anyone else getting hurt. What do you think?”
Beau (In the Company of Snipers Book 18) Page 3
