In the Line of Fire

by Joss Wood

  Sitting in the back seat next to a sleepy Sam, Jett lifted his eyes to the rearview mirror to connect with Kelby. “Problem?” Kelby quietly asked.

  “Dunno,” Jett answered, needing to take a minute. “Just super reluctant to open the door.”

  Their eyes met again and Kelby shrugged. “Your call, dude. If you aren’t happy we’ll keep driving but we either need to get out or move. We’re sitting ducks.”

  Sam, who’d been dozing, her head on Jett’s shoulder, yawned. “Yay, we’re home. I’m exhausted.”

  Sam reached for the door handle and Jett caught her hand. “Hold on, princess.” Jett looked at Kelby again. “Double escort?”

  Kelby didn’t waste time, he yanked the keys from the ignition and was at the passenger door, opening it just enough so his body shielded Sam as she exited the vehicle. Jett climbed out and stood behind Sam, keeping his hand anchored to her back.

  “Make this fast, Red,” Jett ordered.

  Sam frowned at him. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  “Just walk, Samantha.” Jett heard his hard, don’t-argue-with-me voice and saw Sam’s annoyed, and hurt, expression.

  He’d apologize later, when she was inside and safe.

  “Move, dammit,” Jett hissed and felt relieved when Sam finally started moving her feet.

  Kelby moved to Sam’s left side, his left hand holding his Glock against his thigh. Jett tapped his Glock against his own leg, his weapon feeling like an old friend.

  Jett and Kelby exchanged a long look over Sam’s head and, as they walked up the steps to her door, her wedged between them. Jett pushed his chest into Sam’s back as his fingers punched in the access code to her house. The door opened, and he stepped inside, his weapon raised. He glanced at the keypad by the door. The alarm hadn’t been breached but that meant nothing. If he could bypass the alarms others could too.

  Jett heard the front door close and knew that Kelby was pushing Sam into the hall corner and standing in front of her while Jett cleared the house. Jett spun into the kitchen, saw it was empty and moved back into the hall to ease open the door to the downstairs bathroom. Jett nodded at Kelby to guard the stairs as he placed his hand on the door handle to open the door to the lounge.

  Call him crazy, but he felt the need to be as close to the floor as possible. Jett sank to his haunches and gestured for Sam to drop to the floor and when she crouched on the floor he duck walked into the room, his gun steady. The curtains were open, Jett noticed, the icy wind slapping his face. Jett’s eyes peered into the shadows and the hair on his neck rose. There was no one in the room that presented a danger to him but that didn’t mean he was alone.

  Keeping to the side of the window, he approached cautiously, every instinct screaming that there was a dark, malevolent presence on the other side of the sill. He edged the drape away with the barrel of his gun and cautiously looked out. The car sat where they left it, double parked.

  “Jett?”

  Jett turned his head to look at Kelby and that action saved his life. He heard the smack of a bullet hitting the wooden sill where his head had been a moment before and a chunk of wood skimmed his head. He threw himself backward, using the wall beneath the sill as cover as a barrage of bullets shattered the pane and embedded in the opposite wall. Semi-automatic, high caliber, probably hollow tips.

  He couldn’t stay here. Jett launched himself sideways and leopard crawled across the floor, keeping the furniture beneath him and the open window.

  Sam.

  Jett, his heart racing, and his mind running a mile a minute, reached the doorway and felt Kelby’s hand grab the lapel of his coat and he rolled into the hallway. Kelby kicked the door closed and they moved to the corner, as far away from the door as possible. Jett saw the half open door to the powder room and grabbed Sam’s wrists. He unceremoniously yanked her sideways, pushing her into the small space and shielding her with his big body, his pistol pointed at the front door.

  The heavy, hard silence was only broken by Sam’s loud breathing behind them. Jett looked across to Kelby, his WTF obvious on his face. “This makes no sense,” he whispered.

  “And why wait to fire when we were already in the house? Why not nail us as we walked up the path?” Kelby responded, the expression on his face rock hard. “And why fire from the side of the house? Why not hit the front door, where he would’ve had a better chance of taking us all out?”

  Jett had been in some weird situations before but this one was high up on his what-the-fuck list.

  “He’s toying with you,” Sam said, from behind him.

  Jett wanted to look at her but, despite the fact he thought the gunman was gone; he needed to keep his eye on the door. “What are you talking about, Sam?” Jett barked the words, wishing he could turn around and pull her into his arms and just, dammit, hold her. Breathe her in.

  “It’s The Recruiter, he’s playing games. It’s his thing... he likes to toy with his prey before taking them down. He did it with Seth in Cape Town, the mannequin in the pool? Taking and returning that kid? He likes to play games,” Sam explained. “This was his warning shot, his way of telling you that he wants to play a bit more, he wants to ramp up the fear.”

  “If I hadn’t turned to look at Kelby in that second, I would’ve died, Sam!” Jett retorted. “He wasn’t playing games!”

  “But it’s not about you, Jett, it’s about Stone, and me,” Sam replied. “Your death would’ve ramped up our tension and fear and he’d consider the evening a success.”

  “Happy to spoil his plans,” Jett muttered, thinking she made perfect sense.

  And the fact she was thinking clearly, minutes after a barrage of bullets hit her house, caused his admiration for her to rise. Samantha Stone had more balls than he gave her credit for.

  Jett looked at his watch, two minutes had passed since the last round of fire and he looked at Kelby. “I hit the panic app on my cell, did you?”

  “Yeah,” Kelby replied.

  “Since they had two emergency signals within seconds of each other, Cracker is going to send everyone he possibly can. Fire and police will be here in minutes. I vote we stay put until they arrive.” Jett reached behind him, found Sam’s foot and patted it.

  He risked a quick look at her.

  Their eyes met and all the color drained from her face. “Oh, God, you’re hurt!”

  Blood rolled down his forehead and Jett swiped it away. “I’m fine.”

  Jett turned away from her and looked at the bright red blood on his hand.

  “You are like the fucking cat with eighteen lives, dude,” Kelby said, his voice holding a trace of amusement.

  “Tell me about it,” Jett muttered.

  It had been another close call to add to his tally. He was a lucky son of a bitch. He wiped his hand down the side of his thighs and cocked his head when he heard the first notes of a siren.

  “Are they coming for us?” Sam asked.

  “Yep,” Jett replied. “Sam, the cavalry is going to kick that door down and there are going to be a crap load of guns pointed at us. Just stay behind me, keep quiet and we’ll sort it out, okay?”

  The siren grew louder and louder and Jett had to strain to hear Sam’s reply. “I’m too sober and far too tired for this crap.”

  He was smiling when the door flew open and six semi-automatic rifles were pointed at his heart, this time, thank God, by the good guys.

  Chapter Six

  Sam sat halfway up her steps and, through the open door to her kitchen, watched an EMT fussing over Jett. He’d removed his coat and tuxedo jacket and the collar of his white dress shirt was stained with blood, thanks to the many cuts on his head courtesy of the flying glass. One cut required stitches and the EMT deftly flirted with Jett in between jamming a needle into his head.

  Sam pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her coat around her. Feeling exhausted, she closed her eyes. God, what an evening.

  Sam wished she could go upstairs, take a red hot shower, pu
ll on her favorite pair of pajamas, and climb into bed but her entire house had been declared a crime scene and she’d been instructed to sit on the stairs and stay out of the way. There were a lot of people to stay out of the way of...

  SWAT had been the first to arrive along with EMTs. Crime scene techs arrived next, along with a slew of patrol officers. Three detectives and their sergeant walked through the door and started barking orders, all of them telling her to sit still, that they’d get to her soon.

  For the first time since hearing about The Recruiter, she felt firmly in the crosshairs of a killer and it wasn’t half as cool as those kickass heroines in action movies made it out to be. When the people around her came fractionally close to dying, it wasn’t cool at all.

  A few seconds made the difference between life and death and if Jett hadn’t turned to respond to Kelby—hell, if Kelby hadn’t been here—Jett would’ve been on his way to the afterlife right now. Sam looked at him, hard-ass and impatient, and started to shake. She barely knew the man and the thought of him dying was causing her to have a mini-panic attack. She liked him, was stupidly attracted to him but the notion that he could be dead shook her to the core. What if she fell in love with him—there was a small chance of her doing that—and he died? If she felt like this now, she would be a basket case if she did start something up with him and he died.

  Every lucky cat ran out of lives eventually.

  She couldn’t do it, she wouldn’t do it. Putting herself in such a position would be utterly stupid and she was not a stupid woman. No, she’d keep her distance from Jett Smith-Jones; it was the only way to protect herself from the bullet-train of pain that would smash her if she slipped into love with him.

  Right. No falling in love with Jett. Hear that, heart?

  Sam watched as Jett rose from his chair, handing the EMT a small smile as he left the kitchen. Standing in the doorway, he looked around and saw her sitting on the steps. Walking across the hallway, he rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves and started to walk up the staircase and dropped to sit on the step beside her. His shoulder pressing into hers, his thigh alongside hers, pushed warmth into her frozen flesh.

  “How are you holding up?” Jett asked her, resting his forearms on his thighs and turning his head to look at her.

  “Okay,” Sam answered him. What else was there to say? Whining about the evening’s events wouldn’t help.

  “Cops taken your statement yet?”

  “Briefly. They want to take me down to the station to make an official one. God, all I want to do is take a shower and climb into bed.”

  Jett gripped her thigh with his big hand. “Just sit tight, help is on the way.”

  Sam tipped her head at the activity in her lounge. “I thought that help was already here.”

  “Different kind of help,” Jett said.

  He’d no sooner finished his sentence when the front door banged open and a tall, fierce-looking man stepped into the hallway. He was flanked by a couple of dark-suited agents who walked straight past him and into the lounge. Sam heard a flurry of protests and thirty seconds later the detectives and crime scene techs walked out of the lounge, muttering obscenities.

  Sam frowned, turning to Jett. “Who are these people?”

  Jett nodded to the man standing in the hall below them. “That’s SAC—Special Agent in Charge—Reynolds, officially he’s with the FBI but he’s way more powerful than a normal SAC.”

  “Do I want to know more than that?” Sam asked.

  “Probably not. He’s conducting the official investigation into The Recruiter so he’ll take over here. The NYPD will let him because the orders will have come down the line.”

  Sam’s head felt like it was about to split open and roll down the stairs. “Does he have the power to get me into a shower and into a warm bed?”

  “He does.” Jett wrapped his arm around her shoulder and placed his lips against her temple. “Stone and Seth have arrived and if Reynolds didn’t have that power, they sure as hell do. Let’s go, sweetheart.”

  Jett kept his arms around her as she walked down the stairs and sighed when Reynolds stepped in front of them to block their escape to the door. Sam heard Jett’s low growl and was glad it wasn’t directed at her.

  “Get the hell out of my way.”

  Reynolds just folded his arms across his chest and stood his ground. “I need to debrief both of you.”

  Jett’s fingers dug into her shoulder and Sam tried not to wince. Jett succinctly and quickly, described the events of the evening. Reynolds kept his cold eyes on Jett for a full minute before transferring all that ice to Sam.

  “Do you have anything to add, Miss Stone?”

  Sam, holding Jett’s hand, shook her head. “Sorry. I was either wedged between Jett and Kelby or had my arms over my head or was in the powder room.”

  Sam saw the frustration on Reynolds’s face as he briefly thanked her. After Reynolds shook Jett’s hand and told him that he’d be in touch, Jett dragged her past Reynolds to the doorway. Suddenly nervous about what lay beyond that door—another gunman, someone with a rocket-propelled missile—she balked.

  Jett squeezed her hand and sent her a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay, honey. SWAT, my guys, and Reynolds’s agents have swept the area. Nobody is waiting to take a shot at us.”

  Sam pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, wishing she felt reassured. Jett squeezed her hand again and she reluctantly lifted her eyes. “Seth and Stone are standing outside and my guys wouldn’t let them hang around if it wasn’t safe. But I can rustle up a vest if you’d feel more comfortable wearing one.”

  Sam pushed the hard knot of terror down her throat. She trusted Jett. If he thought it was safe, then she was safe. Rolling her shoulders back, she took a deep breath and walked out of her front door. Jett’s “brave girl” dissolving a little of the ice around her heart.

  Seth and Stone turned at their approach and Sam stepped into Stone’s open arms, rubbing her cheek against his caramel colored cashmere coat. “You okay, Red?”

  “Yeah. Cold and tired.”

  Stone nodded. “I’ve got a car and a couple of agents outside. They’ll get you to someplace safe where you can clean up and bed down.”

  “She’s going with me,” Jett said, his voice hard.

  He grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled her to his side.

  Stone shook his head. “No, she gets a dozen agents and she’s going to a safe house.”

  Sam disentangled herself from the iron grip and held up her hands. On the surface, a safe house sounded reasonable. She had, after all, just had her house peppered with automatic fire. And the idea of having four or five trained agents whose sole job was to keep her safe was tempting.

  But her instinct, the wise voice deep inside her, insisted she was safest with Jett.

  Sam looked at Jett and took in his inscrutable face, his relaxed posture. His hands were in the pockets of his pants and if it weren’t for the blood on his clothes, she wouldn’t be able to tell that he’d nearly lost his head. He just stared at her, impassively, waiting for her to make up her mind.

  “I’m staying with Jett.”

  Sam saw the relief that flashed in his eyes, felt his gaze warm. Her trust in him pleased him.

  “You sure?” Jett asked, cutting off Stone’s hot response.

  Sam nodded, her eyes not leaving his.

  “Okay.” Jett pinched the bridge of his nose for ten seconds before nailing her brother with a hard look that immediately killed Stone’s diatribe. “Stone, just stop reacting for ten seconds and listen to me.”

  Stone ran a hand over his face, his eyes miserable. Her brother hated this. He hated handing over her safety to someone else, feeling like he wasn’t helping, like his world was falling apart.

  “So, what happened here? What was the objective?” Seth asked, his hard eyes on Jett’s face.

  “He was either the most incompetent assassin in the world or, as Sam pointed out, he was under orders to fuck with us. I vote
for the second option.”

  Seth frowned at Jett’s answer and gestured for him to explain. Jett, for the umpteenth time that night, recounted the evening’s events.

  “You have your best agent guarding your weakest link,” Jett replied. “Incapacitate him and your chances to get said weakest link go up. And what better way to mess with your head than to take your sister? Who wants to fuck with your head, Stone?”

  Stone winced. “The Recruiter.”

  “Bingo. While you’re mulling that over, maybe you two can start thinking of who in Pytheon has access to sensitive information, who has access to the deeper levels of my records?”

  “Why?” Seth asked, not bothering to hide his fear. Sam’s stomach fell.

  Jett pulled out his phone, hit a couple of buttons and held up his phone so that Seth and Stone could see his screen. Sam ducked under Stone’s arm and examined the photograph. She, Kelby and Jett were walking up to her front door, Kelby and Jett looking tense and she just looked tired.

  The message below the photograph read, “Next time I won’t miss.”

  “Roughly ten people have my cell number and now it’s in the hands of The Recruiter,” Jett said, his tone flat. “Coincidence? I think not.”

  “Are you suggesting that Pytheon has a mole?” Seth’s muted roar singed the air between them.

  “I’m not suggesting it. I’m flat out telling you that you do. And I suggest you find out who the hell it is and quickly. In the meantime, Sam and I?” Jett took her hand and pulled her to his side. “We’re going dark.”

  Jett, his arm around Sam’s waist, sent her an anxious look as they left the elevator on the third floor of a nondescript apartment building in Tribeca. He’d steered her around the corner to the door at the end of the hallway and punched in the access code to open the door.

  “Is this your place?” Sam asked, her voice thready with exhaustion.

  “Belongs to a friend.”

  Jett flicked on the light in the hallway and pulled Sam into the arty, overly colorful space. Jett took a deep breath as he closed the door behind him, his nose detecting only faint traces of jasmine, incense and pot. Gemma was definitely not in residence and hadn’t been for a while...