“I do hereby solemnly swear that I’ll never screw up again as long as I shall live. So help me god.”
“So help us all,” Frank boomed out with the solemnity of a Southern preacher with absolutely no faith in his flock. He turned to his wife. “Beat, send down a fresh pair of targets. Send them all the way down.”
Beatrice Anne Belfour was the head of the First Lady’s detail and Frank’s wife. She was also rumored to be even more lethal than her husband. Roy was just glad he’d never had a chance to find out.
The other woman he hadn’t seen before, but there weren’t too many top shooters named Kee. This had to be Kee Stevenson, one of the top snipers in the country. He’d heard she was working with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team on loan from the Army’s 160th Night Stalkers helicopter regiment. He’d hoped to shoot against her someday in a competition, but he’d never expected to meet her in the presence of his boss.
“Beaumont,” Frank Adams voice snapped him back to attention.
“Sir.”
Adams set down his massive Sig Sauer P226. Then pointed for him to reload both Sienna’s lean Glock 43 and his personal 21. Then he waved to Roy’s ankle.
Roy lifted his pant leg and pulled out the Walther PPK he kept there and set it last in the row. It was a weapon of last resort, rarely used beyond twenty-five feet. But Roy knew it intimately and could use it very effectively; it had been the concealed carry piece his dad had given him for his sixteenth birthday—James Bond’s gun, though in a smaller .22 caliber—and he’d worn it ever since.
Adams snorted derisively but made him lay it down alongside the others. He probably wore a howitzer alongside one of his massive legs.
“Shoot the two targets heart left, head right, heart right, head left. Eight rounds from your and my gun. Four each from the 43 and that wimp-ass excuse you call a backup piece.”
Roy wanted to protest.
Wanted to just walk away.
He’d brought Sienna here for a little shooting and mostly some flirting, never suspecting how good she already was. And how quickly she learned. She remembered the body-feel of each positional correction perfectly.
And the feel of her body.
It had almost killed him to take his hands off the soft curve of her hips once he’d touched them. The warmth of her shoulders, the lean strength in her arms, and with his hands full of her hair it had required more self-control than he knew he had to merely adjust her head then back away.
And now Adams was being a total bastard—just as he’d been all week correcting every little thing Roy did—and was trying to make him into some kind of a goddamn fool in front of her.
Well, it wasn’t going to happen.
Roy braced himself.
He’d never tried such a challenge. .45, .357, 9mm, and .22. Four very different weapons from three different manufacturers. And it would be easier to shoot until empty, but Adams wasn’t even going to give him that. He rocked up on the balls of his feet and then resettled his heels solidly.
He could feel the background fading. Adams glowering behind him. Beat Belfour’s impenetrably dark eyes observing every detail and Kee Stevenson’s almond eyes so narrow he couldn’t tell what she was watching. Off to his right, Sienna Arnson, the general’s daughter.
To his left.
Four weapons.
Two targets.
They were all that matter—
“Double time it!” Adams’ harsh bark didn’t penetrate Roy’s focus beyond the content of the added challenge. “Fire NOW!”
At his shout, instinct took over. Roy grabbed the first piece. Adjusted for the Sig’s weight and hard kick, then unleashed it downrange. Chest, cross to head, down to chest, cross back to first head. Repeat. Drop the weapon. Next. Repeat. Next.
With his final weapon, the lightweight Walther PPK, he intentionally fired a fifth round.
He didn’t watch the approaching targets as he cleared all four weapons.
Beat didn’t pull them down, she just let them hang there. He forced himself to look up. The holes were slightly different sizes in the paper. The heavy rounds of Adams’ Sig rose slightly from one to the next—it was hard to recover the feel when firing so quickly—the last barely touching the top of the black. The heavier .45s from his own weapon held steady. The other groupings were more consistent as well.
Nothing was wholly off the black.
Except that final one that had gone precisely where he’d sent it.
He gathered up his weapons and headed back toward the armorer to turn in the borrowed Glock 43 and the unspent rounds. He signed for number of rounds fired and reloaded his own weapons.
The last round, the fifth from his .22, was dead center of the target’s forehead. Exactly where he’d placed his third shot when shooting for Sienna. Right where he’d like to put a round in Frank Adams for making him do that in front of her.
He was a half block down the street outside the Secret Service building with no idea of how he got there or where he was heading, when a hand took his.
It jolted him back to reality. He’d know her hand anywhere—since the very moment he’d first touched it while assessing what weapon would be best for her grip.
“I’m…” Roy didn’t know what to say.
…sorry my boss enjoys jerking my chain?
…sorry it was such a crappy first date?
Sorry for…he didn’t know what.
“Roy. Just stop a moment. Easy. Just stop.”
He stopped, but didn’t know what to do next.
# # #
No matter what those two amazing women did, Sienna had never seen anything like what Roy had just done. And by the long silence with which the other three had looked at the two targets after Roy had finished shooting, she’d guess they hadn’t either.
She guided him over to a concrete bench along the sidewalk and made him sit down. Sienna let him just sit for a moment. The afternoon sun on his face. The lazy Saturday afternoon traffic rolling by. They were a couple blocks back from the tourist mania, so the sidewalk was relatively quiet. A couple of pigeons came over to see if there were any breadcrumbs for the begging, but soon waddled off in search of more promising subjects.
“What was that?” She asked only when she felt him come back enough that he might answer.
He scrubbed at his face with his free hand, she hadn’t let go of the other yet. Still he held his silence.
“Roy?”
“Adams hates me. Wanted to humiliate me in front of you. I’d say he did a pretty thorough job of it.”
Sienna’s specialty was assessing situations as they developed. And her gift? She was far more consistently right than those around her. She tried to keep it based on an immense body of research, but occasionally, she just knew. Her consistency had eventually earned her the respect of four of the six US Commands’ generals. The other two had been hard cases like the Secretary of Defense so she’d learned what she could from them (some of it how not to command) and moved on.
The problem was Roy had the situation completely backwards, but there was no way to tell him that. Say it head on and he’d just deny it. Call her a fool.
It had been a test. Performance under pressure. Three top shooters observing Roy, and Adams must know it was her and Roy’s first “date”—for she couldn’t deny that’s what it had become. She didn’t have any misconceptions about privacy inside the security bubble that was the White House—there wasn’t any. There was discretion, but there was no privacy.
Adams had seen an opportunity and grabbed it—to test Roy.
Knowing that discussing it head on wasn’t going to get her anywhere, she came at him sideways.
“What do you know about the two women?”
Roy eyed her strangely for a long moment, but soon began giving her chapter and verse. He was careful to let her know wh
at was fact and what was rumor. It was crazy how the pieces fit together in unexpected ways.
Kee had served under the Two Majors, as they were now called inside military circles. Majors Mark Henderson and Emily Beale had formed the most responsive and mission successful helicopter company ever within the already impressive 160th Night Stalkers. Roy didn’t know about them, but Sienna had met Beale during the major’s last days at USCENTCOM and never been so impressed by anyone, man or woman. Her replacement, Warrant Officer Lola LaRue Maloney was almost as amazing in her own way and the 4th Battalion D Company was still one of the go-to teams in President Matthews’ black ops arsenal.
Beat Belfour, even though she was in the same service as Roy, he knew even less about.
“Woman is just so damned serious. Makes her scary as hell because you never know what she’s thinking. She makes Frank Adams look like a teddy bear.”
“A teddy bear who you metaphorically shot in the head.” Now she could approach the sore spot.
“Yeah,” Roy bowed his head down to stare at the sidewalk. “Only shot I’ve taken in anger since putting a BB into my big sister’s backside when she was ten and teasing the crap out of me. Adams will never forgive me that last shot any more than my sister did. You don’t suppose he won’t notice?”
She couldn’t help herself. It just caught her funny side. This big strong man, a one-man complete personal defense team, worried about shooting a paper target in anger, and doing it perfectly.
“I think,” she managed between giggles, “he might…have noticed.”
“I suppose,” he finally smiled for the first time since they’d sat down, “that it was better than if I’d shot the target in the balls.”
“Imagine the look on his face if you had.”
And soon they were both laughing.
It was a good moment. Sienna’s good moments were always on the professional side, but this was a good moment on the personal side—such a rarity that she wanted to wrap it up and cherish it carefully. The warmth of his smile. The laughter in his eyes—
Then he kissed her.
Everything else fell away in that moment: her need to console him, the nagging background worry of the unfinished work on her desk, how inappropriate it was for the newly-minted National Security Advisor to be kissing a near stranger on the D.C. streets. All gone.
Roy’s kiss didn’t allow thoughts of anything else to intrude. It was about a confused man and a woman who was wondering if she’d ever met such an honorable person before. It was about a woman who had only ever seen herself “as the job” and a man who somehow looked past that.
When she finally broke off the kiss, it was for none of those reasons, but rather because she felt so…full. Like she wanted to dance and laugh and sing and weep all at once and if the kiss lasted one second longer she might try to do all four simultaneously and simply collapse from the internal chaos of it.
Roy didn’t pull away or apologize or do any of those typically male things. Instead he looked at her steadily and brushed a callused thumb along her cheek.
“Clear in your sights, Mr. Sniper Man?” Because his eyes somehow really saw her in a way she’d never known was possible.
“Clearest ever, Ms. Sienna Aphrodite. Say, maybe that explains it. Did you put one of those goddess-type spells on me?”
“No. Explains what?”
“Why I suddenly specialize in being an idiot in front of Frank Adams, of course.”
She almost bought into it. Was almost angry that he was back to worrying about Frank instead of focusing on the best kiss ever created.
But then she saw that hint of a tease in his eyes.
“Frank Adams, huh? Okay. You want to think about him, go ahead. But I have news for you, Mr. Sniper Man.”
“This should be good,” he sat back and crossed his arms. Gods but he was so gloriously male and she couldn’t resist poking at him.
“You don’t get another kiss until you can come back and tell me something personal about Frank Adams and Beatrice Belfour.” Besides, she absolutely needed a little mental distance here to understand what had just happened. Because the female in her, who she knew so little about, was ready to jump him here and now on the city street and the woman who she was needed to slow the other one down.
He just gaped at her.
“And it had better be something nice.”
Chapter 3
Sienna, Roy was sorry to discover, was a woman of her word. He managed to talk her into going out for pizza on Sunday night—very relieved that she was a woman happier to dine on a sniper’s budget than a senator’s. But he wasn’t allowed even a good night kiss before she slipped away in a taxi.
His plans to pump Adams for some detail, any detail, were foiled when Kee Stevenson was waiting for him in the Secret Service ready room Monday morning.
“You’re with me,” clearly this was going to be her idea of a hardship assignment. She looked as happy as a losing candidate giving a concession speech.
“No, I have roof duty.”
Kee handed him a sheet of paper. “Do what she says. Don’t screw up. Adams.”
He handed it back and wondered if he should go wash his hands, just as he would after handling some dangerous viper. Kee didn’t give him a chance.
“Bring your two favorite rifles. Let’s go.”
He grabbed the case for his JAR—after all, the Just Another Rifle was the bread and butter of a Secret Service counter sniper—and after a moment’s thought selected the HK PSG1A1—a rifle he’d always liked. Kee eyed him as if now Roy Beaumont was the dangerous viper. Or perhaps as if for the first time, he was actually of interest. Unlike Sienna, Kee Stevenson was wholly inscrutable and he’d bet neither of his guesses was accurate.
They went.
He considered pumping Kee for information about Frank and Beat, but her silence was just as daunting as Beatrice Belfour’s and he reconsidered his plan. He couldn’t even find a gap in her silence to ask where they were going; he was just a piece of meat along for the ride.
They headed south out of the city in a standard black SUV. He wondered if it wouldn’t be safer to move the President around in an unmarked five-year old Chevy rather than the massively escorted motorcade made up of distinctively black-and-tinted armored vehicles, but no one was asking him.
Instead, all he could do was look out the window and watch D.C. roll by. They headed south. If Kee Stevenson was working the Hostage Rescue Team, maybe they were headed to Quantico. Was he being transferred there?
That gave him a jolt. He wouldn’t put it past Adams to shuffle him out of the White House for even speaking with the NSA. Normally it wouldn’t bother him. Especially after only two dates and one kiss. Such a change of logistics wouldn’t rate more than a phone call or maybe a text: “See you, honey. It was good to be with you, but just transferred out of state on no notice. Thanks. Bye.” In other words good, but not that good. Actually, with a lot of his past relationships he’d have welcomed the excuse. But for some reason, being jerked away from Sienna Arnson did not sit at all comfortably with him.
He nudged and prodded at that puzzle as Kee drove south out of D.C. Abe kept his eye on the city from his high stone perch, not caring crap about Roy. And if there was any Jeffersonian wisdom waiting for him, it wasn’t coming from the domed monument. Despite driving through the land of such greats, he ended up no wiser.
Sienna had gotten under his skin. And not just the way she looked or had abandoned herself to one of the gentlest and sweetest kisses he’d ever had. It had always seemed to him that he and women knew what they wanted from each other and just took it—hard heat fired by lust and not much else. Sienna, the woman behind her NSA shield, was soft and gentle at heart and had somehow burned herself into his system.
When he thought of her, it wasn’t the kiss. It wasn’t just the kiss. He remembered her laughin
g with merry abandon over pizza at his account of his Friday night lack of exploits with Fernando and Hank. Her insightful questions into his childhood had explained his path to being a sniper in ways he’d never thought about. And he could still feel her soft hand clasped against his own rough palm as she led him to sit on that concrete bench.
The problem came when he asked her about herself. If you needed an example of a conscious career path driven by sharp intellect, you got Sienna Arnson of Washington, D.C. It was as if the woman didn’t exist separate from her career.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Roy knew he wasn’t a driven man. If you needed an example of someone who just happened to be able to handle the heavy math of advanced ballistics and was tough enough to survive every form of training they could throw at him, you got Roy Beaumont of northern Vermont. He figured his best attribute was being too thickheaded to know when to quit.
“Huh, what?”
Stevenson had made an unexpected turn. Quantico was still a dozen miles away when she pulled up to a security booth alongside a big hangar. A hangar surrounded by helicopters not airplanes.
“You got a one-track mind, Beaumont. Give me your ID.”
“I’m a sniper. We’re supposed to have one-track minds.” He handed over his badge.
“Uh-huh. And that’s why you’re wearing a stupid-ass dreamy expression rather than even saying ‘Good Morning’?” She rolled down her window and handed both of their badges to the gate guard. The Marine Corps gate guard.
“Always dreamed of being a sniper.”
“You keep thinking that and I might as well turn this car around and dump you back in Adams’ lap. Don’t think either of you would enjoy that much.”
“What do you mean?”
She took back the IDs and handed his over as they rolled through the gate. “I mean, if your goal is to be a sniper, you’re already there. What’s next?”
“Huh.” He’d never thought about it, but now that she’d mentioned it, he had kind of been in cruise mode for the last year. He’d made White House sniper. Didn’t get much better than that.
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