The Sniper

“I don’t know who the man was,” he admitted. “Just that you were his target.”

“How did you know I was his target?” Jaci asked, her eyes wide. “Why would I be anyone’s target?”

Because of me, he thought bitterly. But how much should he tell her? She might be safer if she knew little. “I intercepted the kill order,” he said, deciding to go with honesty. She stared hard, her eyes widening even more as she shook her head as if in denial. “Jaci, there are things you don’t know about me...”

“I think that was made abundantly clear several months ago,” she murmured, glancing away. Her quiet comment struck him in the heart and he actually winced. Yeah, he deserved that one. She returned her gaze to him, her eyes dry and hard. “Go on.”

Nathan met her gaze without flinching, yet inside he was grimacing, wishing this conversation never had to happen. “I’m not an FBI agent,” he said. “I never was—it was my cover story.”

“Cover story?” she repeated slowly, her tone betraying her disbelief. “What do you mean cover story?”

“I work for an underground government agency that specializes in neutralizing terrorist targets.”

She digested this information with less shock than he’d envisioned and he was actually impressed when she didn’t immediately fall apart. “When you say neutralize—”

“I’m an assassin,” he cut in sharply, leaving no room for misunderstandings. Might as well just put it out there. Her life was in danger—she’d earned the truth, at the very least. “I’m trained to kill people, Jaci. It’s what I’m good at and what I enjoy.”

She sucked in a tiny inhale at his admission. Maybe he ought to clarify... “Listen, it’s not that I enjoy killing people. But the assignments I get aren’t good people like you and people you know. They’re bad people—people who wouldn’t think twice about mowing down a schoolyard of kids or torturing old folks—so when I take one out, I feel a certain satisfaction that I’ve done a job that needed doing.” He sounded pathetic. Why was he explaining his job to a civilian who would never understand? Jaci was a bleeding-heart type. She believed in innocent until proven guilty, whereas he believed in shooting first and asking questions later. They were polar opposites on the most extreme scale. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he said. “But I do expect you to trust me to do what I need to, to keep you alive.”

“Trust?” she said, laughing as if amused, though in truth the sound put a sick roll in his stomach. He heard her incredulity at his use of the word and he realized he should’ve phrased it differently. She’d never trust him, ever again. Jaci could’ve thrown that in his face but she didn’t. Instead she said, “I think I’ve reconsidered your offer of coffee. Would you mind?”

“Sure,” he said gruffly and went to fill her a fresh mug. He remembered that she liked it sweet with milk and sugar and without wasting time in pretending that he didn’t, he simply fixed it and handed the mug to her. She accepted with a murmured thanks but otherwise remained silent as she sipped her coffee, her eyes closed as if needing a moment to collect herself. He didn’t blame her; it was a lot to accept in a short time frame.

“What about Sonia?” she asked. “I need to call the police and give a statement or something, don’t I?”

“I can’t trust the police with your location. There are leaks everywhere. I already made an anonymous call. Your friend was picked up.”

At the mention of Sonia her eyes filled but she looked away, not wanting him to see her cry. He appreciated that she was trying to stay strong but her pain caused a shaft of agony through his chest that only served to remind him that he was far from over her. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said, feeling useless in the face of her closed-in grief. Jaci accepted his condolences with a short nod and then returned to her coffee. “And I’m sorry I had to drug you,” he added. “Do you need some aspirin?”

She cast him a cool look, yet nodded. He searched a few cabinets before he found what he was looking for and then shook two tablets into her hand. Her palm curled around the medicine but she didn’t toss them back right away. Instead she looked his way and he was pinned by the same eyes that haunted his dreams and made him wish he’d been a better man.

“I suppose I should thank you,” she began, swallowing as though the words were stuck in her throat. “For saving my life. But as much as I’m grateful...I have to wonder why you care at all. It’s not as if we parted on good terms. I don’t understand how I haven’t spoken two words to you in months yet you happen to show up at some bar that I’m at to save my life and then bring me here—wherever here is—to do what? Hide out? Until when? What now? We can’t stay here forever. I have a life...and it no longer includes you. That’s the way you wanted it, remember? I just don’t understand, Nathan.”

Valid questions. She was a smart woman. But to answer truthfully? That he always knew where she was since the day he’d pretended to kick her to the curb; that he’d never forgotten a moment of their time together and the memories were both painful and treasured? That he’d wished a million times over that they’d met in a different life so that maybe they’d have had a chance? Hell, no. He couldn’t say any of those things.

She peered at him closely, needing answers. “Nathan?”

And he couldn’t give them without making the conscious choice to be straight with her about every facet of their former life together. She would just have to be content with the information he was willing to share. Besides, keeping her alive was his objective—not baring his soul and begging for her forgiveness.

Chapter 3

“Nathan?” The strain in her voice was evident as she stared at him, almost begging him for answers, but she could tell by the tight press of his lips that she’d have better luck prying open the vault doors at Fort Knox. “Fine. Keep your secrets. But if you can’t give me a straight answer as to why I would be safer here with you than with the police, then I’m going to walk out that door and keep going until I find a road. I refuse to sit here like a little mouse under your thumb just because you say so. It’s been a while since we’ve spent any time together so let me remind you—I don’t blindly follow orders just because someone tells me to. Either start talking, or I start walking. Plain and simple.”

“Jaci, don’t be stupid. I do remember a few details about our time together and one of those details is that you suck at direction. You have no idea where you are and you’ll likely end up in a ravine before you find a road. Do yourself a favor and just stay put.”

“No.” She glared when he did a short double take at her blunt refusal. He bracketed his lean hips with his hands and returned her glare. Other people might’ve cowered in the face of that commanding stare but Jaci was neither cowed nor intimidated by Nathan Isaacs. “You can glower at me all day. It won’t change a damn thing. I deserve answers and if you’re not going to give them to me, then I’d rather take my chances out there than here with a man who thinks it’s okay to treat me like a child.”

“I’m trying to save your life,” he said, his voice low and tense. “Don’t let our past cloud your judgment. I’m the one person who can keep you safe.”

“Why?” she shot back, not willing to back down. “I’m sure the police are trained to protect people. Why does it have to be you, Nathan?”

A wealth of unsaid conversations, of angst and regret, pain and shame shimmered in his dark eyes, momentarily taking her breath away at the stark exposure. But within a heartbeat he shuttered his gaze with a barked answer. “Because that’s just the way it is, Jaci. Deal with it. You’re not leaving. End of story. And if you try, I will hog-tie you to the bed. Don’t push it.”

It was a warning and a threat so why did a spark of awareness just sizzle down every nerve ending, causing memories of their sweat-slicked bodies sliding against one another to tumble free from the locked box in her head? She swallowed and forcibly shoved those thoughts far from her mind. If she needed a memory of Nathan, she’d just dig out the one where he told her that the idea of having sex with her for the rest of his life was more than he could stomach.

A spasm of pain rippled through her body, giving her an agonizing jolt back to reality. He could not ride in like the hero just because it suited his warped sense of chivalry when he’d been the biggest bastard on the planet two short months ago. Her hands clenched into fists with pent-up rage at the man who’d broken her heart so grievously, and at that moment she didn’t care if he was the only body standing between her and a Mexican drug cartel; she didn’t want his help or his brand of chivalry. Nathan could choke on his offer of aid and protection, Jaci thought, staring a cold hole through Nathan’s back when he turned away from her.

“Screw you, Nathan,” she murmured. “I never asked you to save me. If you want to play the hero, play it with someone else. I’m out of here.”

She bolted for the door. And she would’ve made it, too, if Nathan hadn’t been bigger, stronger and faster than the feelings of regret and shame that followed on the heels of a drunken binge.

“Damn it, Jaci,” he growled, jerking her over his shoulder and slapping her hard on the rear end when she shrieked and began kicking his front and pummeling his back. “I warned you. You’re not leaving unless I say so.”

“Put me down, you bastard!” Jaci screamed. “I’d rather die than remain stuck in this house with you! I hate you! Do you hear me? I hate you!”

“Yeah, yeah, well, too bad,” he shot back. “And if you don’t stop wiggling around I swear I’m going to hog-tie you naked!”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Try me.”

She landed a good kick against the hard planes of his stomach and he grunted but otherwise kept his forward pace to the bedroom where he tossed her none too gently onto the bed. She bounced with a shriek and tried to scramble away but Nathan grasped both ankles and yanked her toward him. She kicked and hissed with rage even as tears stung her eyes but she didn’t let up. She hoped he got a faceful of flying feet for his trouble.

“Damn it, Jaci!” he roared when she refused to stop. He lunged and straddled her, shocking her with the sudden weight of his body across hers. He captured her flailing arms at the wrists and wrenched them over her head, stretching her so that she couldn’t move. Her breath came hard and fast as a long curl of her hair landed across her face, obscuring her vision in her left eye. She angrily blew the hair from her eye and ignored the uncomfortable awareness kindling to life in her body. She would not allow even a spark of attraction to flare, no matter that he remained a stable fixture in her most erotic dreams. It was much too easy to remember how it felt to lie beneath his solid strength, clinging to him as if her life depended on it. She bit down on her tongue and tasted blood. Remember the pain of his rejection, she told herself with blunt force. Remember how you cried for weeks.

“Are you finished?” he asked in a hard voice. “You need to get a grip. Do you hear me? This is serious. Get that through your damn head. Do you want to die? Is that what this is about? You’ve just stopped caring about whatever happens to you? That you couldn’t really care less if you live or die? Is that why you’ve been hanging out at sleazy bars and drinking yourself into a stupor every chance you get? What the hell is wrong with you, Jaci?”

She stared up at him, unable to believe what she’d just heard. Had he forgotten how he’d left her? Had he spaced on how he’d ripped her life apart and walked away without caring about the damage? A separate train of thought followed the first as she rapidly blinked away the tears and stared at him with open suspicion. “How do you know I’ve been going to sleazy bars?” He seemed to realize he’d revealed too much information and faltered for a split second, long enough for Jaci to put two and two together. “Have you been...watching me? Like some creeper stalker?”

His gaze darkened as he scowled. “I’m not a stalker.”

“That’s what stalkers do, they watch people without the other person’s knowledge. Why would you do that?”

He buttoned his lip, clearly unwilling to reveal his reasons, but she didn’t care anymore. She couldn’t possibly make heads or tails of anything Nathan did or why, nor was she going to start trying. Those days were long gone. “Whatever.” She glanced away. “Get the hell off me. My legs are going numb, and if I recall, you were tired of spending any length of time on top of my body, anyway.”

Nathan hesitated, his scowl remaining, but he finally climbed off her and she rolled away from him. This time she didn’t try to run, but simply stared, waiting for answers.

“I never said I was tired of being on top of you,” he said, his mouth compressing to a tight, almost bitter line.

“You said the idea of monogamy with me was more than you could handle. You also said you were bored,” Jaci said, trying not to wince at the pain the memory of that day still caused. Holy hell, it felt as if two months had only been two days ago. How pathetic. She’d enabled him to turn her into a weak, pathetic female and she hated him for it. But damn, it still hurt. Did she care? She shouldn’t but she did. A part of her needed to know that there was a sliver of humanity inside him that was remorseful for breaking her heart the way that he had. “What’s really going on?” she asked. “There’s no need to hide the truth from me. We’re not a couple. Just tell me so I know what I’m dealing with. Don’t you see how it’s not fair to drag me from my life without warning and keep me here against my will without at least clueing me in to what’s going on?”

“I already told you—”

“You told me the bare minimum, which wasn’t an answer at all. Who is after me and why?”

“I’d have to tell you more than you’d want to know. It’s better this way,” he said, adding quietly. “Trust me.”

Had he no idea how impossible his request was? How incapable she was of blithely following him simply because he crooked his finger and patted her on the head with a promise that if she did as she was told like a good girl, everything would be fine? He obviously didn’t remember a thing about her personality because never in a million years would she ever be so docile. “The thing about trust is, you have to be willing to be vulnerable with the other person,” she said. “And I would never allow myself to be vulnerable with you again.”

“You would be willing to jeopardize your life just because you’re still pissed off about our breakup? I thought you were smarter than that.”

“I thought I was smarter about a lot of things. You, Nathan, proved to me that I’m as stupid as they come.”

* * *

Nathan heard the ragged pain under her subdued tone and he looked away, unable to hold her stare. If there’d been any other way to keep her safe, he would’ve done it. Walking away from Jaci had been like tearing off a limb and leaving it behind. And he’d been a bear to be around since then. His personality had never been what one would describe as cuddly, but Jaci had managed to bring out the softer side in him—one he hadn’t even known existed—and it’d been that soft, mushy side that had made him realize that if anything ever happened to her because of him, he’d follow her to the grave.

He’d learned long ago that life was filled with pain, but Jaci had been a bright shiny star in a dark universe. How could he possibly allow his feelings for her to put her in jeopardy? The night he’d surprised a man lying in wait in her apartment, Nathan had realized she was no longer safe with him around. The fact that the guy had managed to catch Nathan with a quick uppercut and escape before Nathan could put a bullet through his brain had only served to make Nathan even more on edge. “Are you hungry?” he asked gruffly. “I have food.”

“No.”

He accepted her answer, even if he knew she was lying through her teeth. Jaci had always loved food. Nathan had relished her softly rounded curves and the way she didn’t pretend to pick at a garden salad, protesting how full she was after nibbling a piece of lettuce. No, Jaci had ordered steak and potatoes and then had often eyed the dessert menu. She was the kind of woman who set his blood on fire. “You should eat,” he said.

“I said I wasn’t hungry. I want to go home.”

“It’s not safe.”

“What about my roommate? He’s going to notice if I suddenly go missing.”

Nathan scowled at the mention of the man she lived with. He didn’t know if there was anything romantic going on but he had his suspicions. What normal red-blooded male could withstand living with a woman like Jaci without making a move of some sort? Unless the man was gay... But Nathan didn’t pin much hope on that score, so that made James Public Enemy Number One in Nathan’s opinion. “I have a burner phone you can use to let him know you’re okay. Tell him you’re visiting friends or something but don’t let him know where you are.” He paused a minute, then couldn’t help himself as he asked, “So what’s the deal with you two...? Dating?”

“Are you deaf? I said he was my roommate, not my boyfriend, not that it’s any of your business. James is a good friend. I needed a place to stay when my ex-boyfriend duped me into thinking we were getting a place together and I let my apartment go. Forgive me for not wanting to sleep in my car.”

“And he was your only choice? You didn’t have a girlfriend you could stay with?”

“Unbelievable! You have some nerve. I’m not even going to dignify that question with a response because you have no right to judge how I solved the problem you created. Okay? So butt out.”

Nathan backed down, hating that he’d let himself slip like that. On the surface she was right. He shouldn’t butt his nose into her personal business, but they weren’t your average exes and she’d just have to get used to the idea. “Your safety isn’t something I’m going to mess around with. I am going to need to run a background check on this roommate. What’s his name?”

“He would never hurt me. We’ve been friends for years.”

“What’s his name?” he repeated, not backing down.

“His name is James Cotton.”

Nathan committed the name to memory. He’d have a full background check done on the man. If he had so much as an outstanding library book, Nathan would find out. “I’ll let you know when you can contact him. Until then, don’t bother trying. There’s no phone line installed here.”

She looked ready to say something childish and petulant—Jaci had always been terrible at hiding her thoughts and feelings—but she buttoned her lips and turned on her heel to return to the bedroom, where she promptly slammed the door.

The message was pretty clear. He wasn’t welcome in her space, whether he was saving her damn hide or not.

The knowledge pinched more than a little but he shrugged it off. He wasn’t here to start playing house; he was saving her life.

So why was he still staring at that closed door like a starving man stared at a Thanksgiving feast?

Because inside he felt ravenous and out of control, he answered himself as he squeezed his eyes shut.

Shut it down, Isaacs. Stay cool. Now was not the time to start baring his soul and babbling apologies.

Besides...there wasn’t anything he could say that would forgive what he’d done.

That’d been the plan.

Chapter 4

“I’ll meet you there,” Nathan confirmed, ending the call just as Jaci exited the bedroom. He knew she’d heard him so he started talking first. “I want you to stay here while I meet up with a contact who might be able to help me figure out who’s after you. Promise me you’ll stay put.”

“And why should I do that?”

“Because I’ve already explained that you’re safer here than out in the open.”

“No, you haven’t explained anything. You’ve told me what to do and just expected me to obey. That’s not the same thing.”

Damn redheaded stubborn streak, he wanted to mutter, but instead sent her a hard look, ignoring how his stomach clenched at the sight of her vibrant beauty staring back at him. It didn’t seem to matter that she exuded cold distance rather than sweet love like she used to—his heart still quickened dangerously. Emotion got people killed. Stow that sentimental crap, Isaacs.

“Jaci, just stay put,” he said again, grabbing his gun and tucking it into the back of his waistband beneath his leather jacket. “I won’t be gone long. There’s plenty of food in the pantry and fridge. The television doesn’t work but there should be some books and magazines lying around that might keep you occupied but don’t go outside.”

Jaci’s mutinous expression didn’t bode well. The minute he was a mile down the road she was going to bolt, he’d bet his soul on that. He couldn’t take the chance. Although it was a risk taking her out into the open, it was a bigger risk to leave her alone and vulnerable. She was operating on pissed-off female ire and brokenhearted steam—she couldn’t think clearly to save her life.

“Fine. Get your stuff—you’re coming with me. But—” he fixed her with a hard stare hoping she caught his drift “—if you so much as take one single step away from my side or do one single thing that puts your life in more danger, I swear to God, I will make you regret it. Don’t push me on this. Am I clear?” This was no idle threat. He’d do whatever it took to keep her safe, even if it meant humiliating her. “Am I clear?” he asked, his tone sharp. At her slow nod and quick disappearance into the bedroom he knew he’d gotten his point across. If there was one thing Jaci needed to remember about him it was that he never took unnecessary chances, particularly with the lives of the ones he loved the most.

Jaci reappeared fully dressed and quickly came down the stairs. “Where we going?” she asked. “Or am I not supposed to know?”

“I’ve got a friend on the inside of the organization I work for. We’re going to meet him and see if we can figure out what the hell’s going on.”

Jaci nodded, surprising him with her easy acceptance. Either she was privately formulating an escape plan or she was actually starting to trust him. Ha. Yeah, nothing was that easy. Chances were she was simply pretending to acquiesce when in truth she was going to sprint like a rabbit in a clearing the minute she was able.

Jaci climbed into the big four-wheel-drive truck required to reach this secluded location deep in the mountains and while she may not have said anything, he could see the appreciation for the vehicle in her eyes. “What happened to the Mustang?” she asked, buckling up. “I thought that car was your baby.”

“It is. And that’s why it’s still parked safely in a garage. There’s no way the Mustang would’ve made it up the roads in this area.” He cast her a sideways glance. “Besides, I thought you liked big trucks.”

“I used to like a lot of things.”

He didn’t buy her cool answer but didn’t see the value in pushing. “It gets the job done,” he said, putting the truck into gear and rumbling down the pocked and rutted service road. “Have you noticed anything unusual happening lately?”

“Such as?”

“Have you felt as if someone was watching you, or maybe sensed that you were being followed?” he asked.

“No, of course not.” Jaci gasped as the truck hit a particularly deep rut and sent her bouncing in her seat. She quickly grasped the handle above the door and held on for dear life. “If I’d noticed any of those things I would’ve called the police. I’m not stupid. My life has been normal. I go to work, go to the gym, go to the grocery store and do all of those normal things that normal people do. I don’t know what the hell is going on and why I’m in the middle of it. Of course, you seem to have some inkling as to why this is going on but you won’t tell me so I am left to wonder why my life is imploding for no particular reason.”

“If I knew why this was happening, I’d already have taken care of the situation,” he corrected her tersely, irritated by her comment. As if he were withholding information simply to mess with her. “C’mon, Jase...you’re smarter than that.”