by Linda Howard
Okay. Now she knew where they were. She didn’t know what was going on, or what she should do, but at least she had located them.
A single shot from inside shattered her nerves. It was a silenced shot, which didn’t mean the little “pew pew” sound Hollywood evidently thought a silenced shot sounded like, but in the real world meant it wasn’t as loud as normal but it was still recognizable for what it was, at maybe a quarter of the sound.
Levi!
That was the only thought she had, just his name, but terror and dread laced through her because she knew what one shot could do. She heard shouting, and without thinking she twisted the doorknob of the kitchen door and it opened.
Shock that it had opened combined with urgency, and she slipped through the small opening, her sneakered feet silent on the cracked linoleum floor. She didn’t remember pulling her weapon but it was in her hand, the solid weight of it reassuring.
She heard two voices, Mac’s angry and snarling, a woman’s sharp voice trying to ride over his, but she didn’t hear Levi. As she crept forward she caught a smell, one she’d smelled before, that of blood and death, the stench of bowels and bladder that had let go.
Levi.
She felt as if her own blood had drained from her body, as if her soul shriveled to dust. Without Levi, there was nothing. If that was him whose death she smelled, then she had nothing, and whoever was on the other side of that doorway was going to die. Not hearing anyone else, she focused on the voices she could hear, and they were coming from the left of the doorway.
She moved. She didn’t know if she was quiet or not, didn’t care. She rolled around the doorway, weapon outstretched and ready, her finger on the trigger. A silver-haired woman turned a startled face toward her and flinched, but retained her grip on the weapon she had pointed at MacNamara, who was tied to a kitchen chair that had been placed in front of her.
Shocked recognition rocketed through her. She knew that woman. She was famous, particularly in D.C., a powerful congresswoman who had been on several powerful committees, but who had resigned from them after her husband’s death a couple of years ago. Kingsley. Joan Kingsley. What the hell!
Then out of the corner of her eye she saw more people, and she darted a quick look to the side. Levi. Levi! He was alive, on his knees with his hands locked behind his head, but someone she didn’t know stood off to the side, a big, cold-eyed man, standing far enough away that Levi couldn’t lunge and reach him, and his Glock was trained on Levi.
On the floor against the right wall, a slightly portly man lay sprawled in the inhuman, ungainly sprawl of the dead, his face turned away, blood slowly pooling around his head. She didn’t know who he was, and didn’t care. He wasn’t Levi.
Instinctively Jina knew Joan Kingsley was the linchpin of this situation, whatever was happening, and she kept her weapon aimed right between the congresswoman’s eyes. “Put it down,” she said evenly. “You and the big guy.”
“I don’t think so,” Joan Kingsley said. The startled expression was gone from her face, and in its place was a chilled detachment, an emptiness.
“Shoot the bitch!” MacNamara snarled, rocking violently in the chair as if trying to turn it over.
He would, too, but his rabid personality could well trigger a round-robin of shots that would result in Levi’s death, and Jina thought she’d shoot MacNamara herself before she let that happen.
“Shut up!” she bellowed, taking her gaze off Kingsley for a split second, just long enough to shoot him a lethal glance.
Adrenaline was burning through her veins but she felt chilled herself, lightning impressions and assessments flitting through her brain. They were in a nightmare situation, one with no good solution. MacNamara was bound to a chair, unable to move, with Kingsley’s pistol aimed almost point blank at his head. Levi was on his knees, also under threat, and the cold-eyed man’s weapon was rock steady.
Jina was frozen, locked in the standoff. She was one person, and had no Ninja training. She loved Levi. She didn’t love MacNamara, didn’t even like him. If she saved anyone it would be Levi, but she wasn’t sure she could do that. Her marksmanship was average, there was no way she could pull the trigger, control the recoil, and aim again at Joan Kingsley in time to save MacNamara’s life. But if she shot at Kingsley, then Levi—
She couldn’t even think the thought.
“There’s no solution,” Joan Kingsley said, her gaze cold and distant. She had the look of a woman who had taken the last step and had nowhere else to go. She had reached some inner wall, and there was no negotiation in her, no give, no indecision. “You can’t win. There are two of us, and one of you.”
“I can take one of you,” Jina said, not giving an inch.
Joan gave a little shrug. “You might. You might not. Either way, you lose. On the other hand, if you put your gun down, you have a chance at life. MacNamara doesn’t, regardless. He’s mine. But you—you and Butcher, there—you don’t have to be involved.”
What a load of horseshit, Jina thought with utter clarity. There was no way the bitch would willingly let any of them live.
Options: If she shot the man guarding Levi, the reflex could well jerk his finger, which was definitely on the trigger, and kill Levi. Same with MacNamara, if she shot Joan Kingsley. Even if she killed one, the other would kill her.
Maybe.
Jina reached deep. She’d been through team training, she’d been taught to look at each situation logically. Levi wasn’t bound. MacNamara was. If she shot the man and Levi was wounded or killed, MacNamara was still tied to the chair, still helpless, and he’d be dead too. If she shot Joan Kingsley, though, there would be a split second lag time before the man behind Levi could act, and in that length of time Levi himself would be moving. MacNamara might well be dead, though, because Kingsley was holding the pistol butted against his skull. On the other hand, he might not. Kingsley’s hand might or might not spasm. No way to know.
It was a chance. A slim one, but the only one.
She couldn’t help it. She looked at Levi, agony in her eyes, just a quick glance but enough for her to read him, to see the fierce readiness, the thought he was all but compelling her to see.
Fire!
She risked his life.
She pulled the trigger.
Levi hurled himself back and to the side, the move catching the other guy by surprise because neither direction was exactly what he’d anticipated.
Joan Kingsley stumbled back a step, then went down on her knees. A look of massive shock spread over her face. Jina wasn’t accurate enough to try for a head shot so she’d gone for the torso, but it was a hard hit, right through the sternum and heart. Kingsley was dead there on her knees, and the knowledge was in her eyes.
Her mouth twisted, and very deliberately she lifted the pistol she still held, aimed it at the back of MacNamara’s head, and took the shot. Jina shot again, and again hit her target, but she was too late.
The shot jerked the other man’s attention toward Kingsley, a mistake she saw him realize right away, but it was too late. Levi was on him, death on the attack, one steely arm lacing around the man’s shoulders while the other gripped his chin. Panic flared in his eyes, one brief second, then Levi jerked the guy’s chin and it was over. A pop, and it was over, a life extinguished with one movement.
Levi let the body drop, gave Jina a sharp assessing look, then strode to MacNamara where he lay in the overturned chair. Jina let her arm drop to her side and stood frozen. She didn’t need to check. She’d seen the shot, knew it was over.
She felt numb. She leaned against the door jamb, then slowly sank to the floor. Four people were dead; she didn’t know who the other men were, but Joan Kingsley was a member of the House of Representatives, and Axel MacNamara had run the GO-Teams with ruthless efficiency and savage loyalty. There wouldn’t be ripples of effect from this; there would be tsunamis. Congress would go on, but the GO-Teams—Joan Kingsley might have killed them, too, when she’d killed Axel M
acNamara.
Jina covered her eyes with her hand. She’d risked Levi’s life. She’d analyzed the situation, and done what she had to do, what her intellect and training told her to do. Levi wasn’t dead, but it was because of his training. She wasn’t dead, either; the Syrian desert hadn’t beaten her . . . because of her training.
She’d risked his life. She’d assessed the situation, and made the call.
Exactly as he had done.
She heard him approaching, then both hands closed around her and jerked her up. His expression was hard, still set in battle mode, but his assessing gaze raked down her to satisfy himself she was okay. He put both hands on her face and tilted it up, studied her, then he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“I risked you,” she said, her tone raw.
“It was your only call,” he replied, and gently tugged her in close to rest against him.
It was different.
With MacNamara dead, the hierarchy at the GO-Teams was in flux, but on a different level things continued as usual. Maybe the teams would be disbanded. The decision would be made by some unknown higher up, maybe even in the Oval Office, but they had no way of knowing. Until the orders came down otherwise, training continued, and missions continued.
Crutch and Voodoo returned to duty, but neither of them could rejoin the teams; their injuries had left them with impairments that, while they could lead normal lives, precluded them from the strenuous and specialized training and missions being on the GO-Teams required. Ace Butcher’s team would rebuild, but with other recruits. They stayed close, though, because career-ending injuries weren’t friendship ending. The bonds forged on the teams weren’t so easily broken.
The miserably hot summer faded, and the cool pleasantness of fall began edging toward winter, the days getting shorter, the mornings colder. Jina concentrated on the drone program, and some days she managed to forget those awful few minutes, and what it felt like to pull a trigger and end another human being’s life. Joan Kingsley’s dying muscle spasm hadn’t ended MacNamara’s life, she had very deliberately shot him during her own last seconds of life, but Jina knew part of that was on her. If she’d taken the head shot—but she hadn’t. She’d been afraid of missing. She’d made the decision to go for the torso, and though it had been a killing shot, it hadn’t been one that caused immediate death. Because of that, Axel MacNamara was dead. Four people had died in that awful little house, and some nights she woke up to stare blindly into the darkness, wishing those memories would fade but knowing they wouldn’t, because they were now branded on her psyche just like the run through the Syrian night.
Levi, being a man, didn’t try to talk to her about her feelings, but he’d been through combat and firefights, he’d made pretty much the same call regarding her life that she’d made about his, so he knew, and accepted. Whatever he read on her face, occasionally he’d simply lift her onto his lap and hold her, offering her the solidity of his presence.
If he was at home instead of on a mission, he was mostly with her at her condo, though occasionally he’d spend a night at his place. More and more, though, having two places was seeming like a waste of money. Jina hadn’t said anything about that to him, yet; they’d been together a few months, not long enough for her to completely get accustomed to the idea. Too much had happened, too fast, and for her own sake she needed to slow down and let things settle down. She’d killed a woman. Life couldn’t pick up the way it had been before that.
The team was the team. They all got together to socialize the way they always had. Crutch and Voodoo almost always came, though Voodoo—of all people!—had somehow attracted a serious girlfriend and sometimes they had other plans. Two replacement team members, nicknamed Irish and Palooka, had joined the team. Jina liked them well enough, but she hadn’t gone through events with them the way she had with the original group of guys; as far as they were concerned, she was Ace’s girlfriend and a drone operator trainer. Her replacement with the drone was a lanky, laid-back guy named Kelvin Grant, but they called him Ichabod, and he was cool with that. Their group had grown, but nothing remained the same.
They were all at Snake’s house; the two-year-old hellion was now a three-year-old hellion, and he showed no signs of slowing down, so if the whole group was together it was deemed safer to keep him at home. Ailani mentioned what she was cooking for Thanksgiving, and Jina froze.
“Thanksgiving?” she croaked.
Jelly hooted. “Yeah, you know, that day with all the turkey? Comes around once a year, always in November? We got together a while back and decided to call it Thanksgiving.”
She threw a pickle at him, then guiltily looked around for the little hellion, because if he saw anyone throwing food he’d be doing it for the foreseeable future. He was running through the house with the rest of the kids, though, so she was safe. Jelly scooped up the pickle and ate it.
“I forgot about it,” she moaned, and rubbed her forehead. “How on earth . . . never mind. I’ll call Mom and make arrangements.” Then she stopped and her eyes got big, and she turned toward Levi. “I . . . oh, wow. Uh-oh.”
“Forgot to tell her about me, didn’t you?” he asked, smirking.
“No! She knows I’m dating you.”
“If by ‘dating’ you mean ‘living together,’ yeah.” But he didn’t look upset, just amused.
“You could have been dating me,” Jelly pointed out for about the millionth time.
“No, I couldn’t.”
“You shouldn’t hold that tattoo thing against me—hey!” Suddenly riveted, because evidently he hadn’t thought of it before, Jelly turned to Levi. “She still won’t tell us what that tattoo is. You’ve seen it, right? I mean, you have to have seen it, unless she was lying about getting one.”
Levi took a bite of his burger, chewed. “I’ve seen it,” he finally said.
All the original team members looked intensely interested, the newer members less so but still intrigued. Terisa and Ailani both looked at Jina, who smirked at the guys, leaned over, and whispered the answer to the women. They both laughed and did a pinkie swear not to tell.
“That’s just wrong,” Trapper complained, glaring at the women. “You were our teammate, Babe, not theirs. You should tell us. Ace! Spill the beans.”
Levi slowly shook his head. “Sorry, guys. The secret is hers to tell. I guess the only way you’ll ever find out will be if her wedding gown is cut low enough in the back for you to see it.”
The room went totally silent. The only noise was the shrieks of the kids, running somewhere in the house.
Jina thought her mouth might be open. She pushed on her chin, just in case, but nope, chin didn’t budge so mouth wasn’t open. Her lips felt numb. Her whole body felt numb. He couldn’t have said that . . . could he? And what did he mean? Was it just a throwaway comment about a wedding gown because he figured someday she’d get married, or . . . no, guys didn’t make throwaway comments about wedding gowns. That wasn’t in their DNA. Their throwaway comments were about munitions, or morons jumping out of planes, or . . . or—
“Wedding gown?” she asked weakly.
“Unless you want to elope, in which case I guess they’ll never find out.” He winked at her.
“I vote for the wedding gown,” Crutch said.
“Hush!” Ailani said. “You don’t get a vote!”
Jina couldn’t say anything else. Levi stood up and held out his hand to her, and numbly she let him lead her outside. The night air was chilly, so chilly it felt good when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “That wasn’t a proposal,” he said against her hair.
She found her voice, relief and disappointment warring inside her. “It wasn’t?” She loved him, she thought. She hadn’t let herself think about marriage or commitment or anything like that, but she loved him. Bad things happened. Neither of them had died. Life went on. It was time. “Then you’d better get right on that.”
“Got the ring in my pocket,” he said, and lifted her o
ff her feet while he hugged her tight.
Her wedding gown wasn’t low enough in back for the guys to see her little grenade tattoo. Let them wonder for the rest of their lives. The grenade was only for Levi.
Troublemaker
Love Linda Howard? Don’t miss TROUBLEMAKER
A thrilling, fast-paced novel of romantic suspense from sensational New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Linda Howard.
For Morgan Yancy, an operative and team leader in a paramilitary group, nothing comes before his job. But when he’s ambushed and almost killed, his supervisor is determined to find out who’s after the members of his elite squad—and why. Due to worries that this unknown enemy will strike again, Morgan is sent to a remote location and told to lay low and stay vigilant. But between a tempting housemate he’s determined to protect and a deadly threat waiting in the shadows, keeping under the radar is proving to be his most dangerous mission yet.
The part-time police chief of a small West Virginian mountain town, Isabeau “Bo” Maran finally has her life figured out. She’s got friends, a dog, and a little money in the bank. Then Morgan Yancy shows up on her doorstep. Bo doesn’t need a mysterious man in her life—especially a troublemaker as enticing and secretive as Morgan.
The harder they fight the intense heat between them, the closer Morgan and Bo become, even though she knows he’s hiding from something. But discovering the truth could cost Bo more than she’s willing to give. And when Morgan’s cover is blown, it might just cost her life.
Available now!
About the Author
LINDA HOWARD is the award-winning author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including Troublemaker, Up Close and Dangerous, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Cover of Night, Killing Time, To Die For, Kiss Me While I Sleep, Cry No More, and Dying to Please. She lives in Alabama with her husband and two golden retrievers.
