Chapter Forty-One

The rich, balmy scent that was Florida met Seth full in the face. Alex was proud of him. Seth could tell. And didn’t that make the wreck of the man he used to be, seem like some other guy, as George Lucas would say, ‘in a galaxy far, far away’?

The need to get this middle of the night breakfast over and done with shivered up his spine like the can’t-wait excitement of a little boy on Christmas morning. Seth had a lovely present to unwrap. It took all his restraint to tear himself away from Devereaux for the sake of his boss. It just didn’t seem right, picking Alex over her.

What a night. Seth took a deep breath of satisfaction for a job well done as he stepped out of the hospital’s main entry doors. Life couldn’t get any more sublime. The moon shining down on him was now waning in the southern sky. He had his very capable boss at his side, and Devereaux was safe and sound in the hospital.

Better yet, Roland Montego, his dominatrix wife, Giselle, and his dirtbag buddy, Bagani, were dead. Sylvester Valentine and Joachim, whom Seth now knew had worked for Sly at one of his bars, were laid out on stainless steel trays at the morgue, staring at nothing but the righteous comeuppance they’d deserved. May every last one of them linger in hell until the end of time.

The who and the why of the man who’d offed Bagani still toyed at the back of Seth’s mind. He glanced at the proud man walking beside him. No way had Alex taken Bagani out. Had to have been Eric.

It wasn’t until Seth crossed the street with Alex on one side and Cord on his other, that the hairs on the back of his neck lifted. His gut clenched with an attack of heartburn that he knew better than to ignore. He had that feeling again. Someone was watching.

Glancing over his shoulder, he scanned the lobby and information desk just beyond the entry doors for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing stood out. Not the pleasant gray-haired woman chatting on the phone behind the information counter. Not the police officer walking swiftly down the hall toward the emergency room. Not the older couple he’d passed on the bench outside the hospital doors.

Still…

“Hey, guys,” he told Alex and Cord.

Alex cocked his head as if he’d suddenly picked up the same warning rippling through the universe that Seth had. “You need to stay here,” he said, not asked.

Seth nodded, acid climbing up his throat. “Something’s not right,” he told his boss, who was backtracking with him and Cord to the hospital. “I’m going up to Devereaux’s room.”

Alex pulled a pistol from under his left arm. “Cord!” he hissed, not knowing Cord was already on his six.

“Yes, sir?” Cord breathed. “I’m here.”

“Cord, take the stairs,” Seth ordered. “Boss—”

“I’m with you. Go!”

They stormed the open elevator while Cord charged the stairwell. “He’s here,” Seth breathed, his heart pounding like a mother.

“Who?” Alex asked, his eyes on the slow-as-shit floor indicator. Devereaux’s room was on the fifth floor, but damn. Nobody knew where she was. How had—whoever—Seth honestly had no idea who was left that might want to hurt Devereaux—how had that person located her so quickly? And why? She was a victim in this mess, not one of the power brokers. She was a single mom, for hell’s sake.

“I don’t know who’s here or if I’m just overreacting,” Seth admitted. He couldn’t define the sensation that something wicked had zeroed down on Devereaux. “Could be one of Montego’s men come for revenge. Or one of his women. Devereaux said Giselle Montego bragged he had more than one wife and they were into game playing, BDSM, and shit.”

“Could be paranoia,” Alex growled.

“Could be,” Seth murmured as the elevator finally chimed at the fifth floor. God knew he’d dealt with plenty of paranoia during his PTSD days. Damn, was that all this was, a flashback?

“One way to find out,” he said as he stepped through the elevator doors and ran for Devereaux’s room.

Just as Cord cleared the stairs to his right, one damned big behemoth of a man stepped out from a patient room at the other end of the hall. Dressed entirely in black leather, the sniper rifle in this guy’s hand displayed an impressive scope on its top rail. Could’ve been the same one that ended Bagani. The business end of that deadly rifle had just snapped on Seth. He felt the prick of its laser strike his retina before it danced over the end of his nose.

Returning the courtesy, Seth’s pistol sprang automatically on target. His stride lengthened as his laser settled between two black as sin eyes. He’d meet this arrogant asshole head-on with every beat of his heart. No one was getting at Devereaux.

“She’s had enough!” he hissed, very aware of Alex at his side and Cord at his six. “I don’t care who the hell you are. Back off!”

No answer came back at him, not even a grunt. Just one evil glare from the black-haired stranger closing in on Seth and his team like he owned the place.

Seth would’ve fired, but Devereaux’s door burst open. Another man, this one dressed in the black uniform of one of Key West’s finest—that police officer Seth had seen downstairs—dragged her struggling into the hall. The bastard had his hand over her mouth, a pistol in her ribs, and death in his eyes.

Shit. Farraq Khadeem. Unknowingly, he’d put himself and her between the armed man in black and Seth’s team.

“Drop your weapon!” Alex ordered, his pistol on Khadeem or the assassin at his back, Seth didn’t know which.

Khadeem’s face twisted into an evil sneer. He had the balls to bellow, “One move and she dies! I’ll take her the same way you took my precious daughter from me!”

“Your precious daughter? You mean the pretty, blonde woman you traded to a known pedophile and rapist, your fuckin’ buddy Bagani?” Seth spat as he assumed firing stance, his pistol raised and his eyes on target. He didn’t have to look to know Alex and Cord had both done the same, that all three were hellbent on ending this asshole here and now.

“Seth,” Devereaux whimpered, her eyes bright with fear and her fingers wrapped around the hard hand clutching her throat.

Seth acknowledged her with one short nod. “Stay cool, baby. This’ll be over soon and then—”

“This will never be over!” Khadeem spat. “This is just the beginning of Jihad! The holiest of holy wars!”

“Says the bastard who sold his precious daughter,” Seth volleyed back. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled and his gut kept telling him to beware, but with two killers in the crosshairs, he hadn’t the time to decode that internal warning.

“How’d you get in here?” Cord asked from Seth’s far left.

Khadeem’s bright eyes shifted. “You American’s are so naïve. So trusting. All I had to do was make a few calls. Ask the right questions. It seems everyone in your country wants to help a poor, distraught father.”

“You’re not... my father,” Devereaux wheezed, her blues eyes brimmed with fear and tears.

Enough! Who to kill first, the lethal monster of a man approaching from behind Khadeem, or the most disgusting excuse for a father on the planet? It seemed a no-brainer, until Seth factored in the very real possibility of Khadeem falling at Seth or Alex’s hand, clearing the way for the killer in the hall to shoot through Devereaux to get at Seth and his team.

“I’m on the rifleman,” Alex murmured out of the side of his mouth. “Don’t worry about me. End Khadeem.”

Seth grunted his agreement, never more sure of his God-given skill than at that moment. He stepped up. He bucked up. And for Devereaux, he’d die. But his index finger had no more than flexed against the trigger when she elbowed Khadeem in the gut, twisted in his arms, and screamed, “Let me go, you creep!”

After that, the world rolled in slow motion.

Khadeem’s mouth dropped open, grimacing in pain. His eyes popped.

Devereaux had hold of his hand, twisting his fingers backward with a vengeance while she screamed, “Asshole! You’re behind all of this! You bastard!”

Snarling, he cocked his arm back to pistol-whip her, but just as his fist began its downward swing, he looked over her head and past Seth. He froze, his arm in midair as if he’d seen a ghost. Then…

BLAM!

What the holy hell? Some bastard behind Seth had just fired too close and too damned personal. The blast from the unexpected discharge deafened him. He glanced over his shoulder at—Eric?

“What are you doing here?” Seth asked, though he could barely hear his own voice.

When Eric didn’t answer, Seth zeroed back on Khadeem. By then Devereaux had ducked for cover and run for Seth, while the wicked man stood in the hall, dazed and swaying. The tiniest trickle of red dripped from beneath the brim of his stolen police cap into his left eye. His body leaned sideways. Just as Khadeem would’ve pitched to the floor, the unknown assassin behind him caught his neck in an arm lock, and growled at Eric, “This son-of-a-bitch was supposed to be mine, Reynolds.”

To which Eric, now standing alongside Seth, smoothly replied, “And Bagani was supposed to have been mine, Sinclair. Now we’re even. Get the hell out of here.”

They know each other?

Tugging Devereaux with him, Seth backed against the nearest wall, caught up in the most bizarre tennis match he’d ever witnessed. Apparently, Alex wasn’t shocked to see Eric or this Sinclair fellow. Walking straight up to the monster of a man, he extended a hand and said, “Wish you’d declare your presence once in a while, Pagan. Anyone of us could’ve shot you. How would I explain that to McQueen or Chance?”

Who the hell’s McQueen? And who’s Chance?

“That’ll be the day,” Pagan grunted as he jerked the pistol out of Khadeem’s limp fingers, while he let the dead man’s body slump to the floor. The guy wore nitrile gloves, black like the rest of his gear. Khadeem’s pistol went on the floor beside the dead man, along with a single brass casing that Seth knew—he just knew—was the missing evidence from Bagani’s murder. “Sorry I can’t stay and chat, Mr. Stewart. I’ve got other places to be. Other lives to save.”

“Wait,” Seth breathed while Devereaux pressed herself under his chin, her poor heart beating like frantic hummingbirds against his chest. “What the hell just happened?”

“Nothing,” both Eric and Pagan growled at the same time, both still staring at each other like gunslingers at the OK Corral.

“Who are you?” Seth asked the man in black.

“No one,” he shot back, his upper lip lifted as if he didn’t have time for stupid questions.

Seth knew better than to argue, but he turned to Eric and asked, “You’ve been hunting Khadeem all along, haven’t you? You knew he’d be here. That’s why you stayed in Florida after Cassidy left.”

Eric’s dark gaze flittered to Alex, then settled on Seth. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

Which meant there was more to this night that Seth might never know.

“And you,” Seth directed at Pagan. “You killed Prince Bagani. That was you yesterday, the man who fired that long shot.” The sniper who saved countless future lives.

“Goodbye and good riddance,” Pagan muttered as he turned and walked back the way he’d come.

Seth wasn’t sure if he’d meant that dig for Khadeem or The TEAM. The big guy disappeared into the same patient room he’d come out of. Again, what the hell? Did Sinclair plan to rappel down the side of the hospital and simply walk away? Did he have wings or was someone out there waiting to fly him away? What was he, just another legend in this dark world of covert ops?

Guess so.

Cord ran after the big guy, but returned shaking his head, both shoulders lifting in disbelief. “He’s gone. Not a sign of him. Holy fuck.”

Seth found that impossible to believe, but he had other things to worry about. Alex was already on his phone, calling 9-1-1 for an assist with an armed intruder that had been shot inside the hospital. “Yes, I’ll hold,” he growled as he rolled his eyes.

Standing there with Devereaux wrapped up in his arms, Seth took careful notice of the peculiar interaction between Alex and Eric. Neither seemed surprised to see the other. Neither took notice of the missing—whatever—that Pagan was, either. But wasn’t it interesting that Eric was also wearing nitrile gloves, that he’d casually sauntered up to where Khadeem lay, and just as casually, removed the casing that linked Pagan Sinclair to Bagani’s murder?

“Who was that guy?” Devereaux asked.

“He’s fiction,” Seth breathed. “Forget you saw him, and when the police ask what happened—”

“Just tell them that guy…” She jerked her chin at Eric, still standing over Khadeem’s dead body, “saved my life, right?”

“It’s the truth,” Seth told her, and it was. But now he knew precisely who’d killed Bagani. Pagan Sinclair—whoever he was—and that both Alex and Eric were covering for him.