Page 25 of Wicked Obsession

They’d gone the private seller route for a number of reasons, including the fact that cash would be expected, not looked at suspiciously, andin California, the license plates stayed with the vehicle. Stony had done the talking, spinning some convincing stories for the owners. Ryder had done the vehicle inspections, and he was grateful his dad had insisted on giving him and his brothers an extensive education on auto mechanics. He’d used that knowledge today. It had taken four vehicles to find the pair that he thought would get them the five hundred odd miles they needed to travel.

They had ten days to register the cars, but that wouldn’t be an issue. This whole thing would be over long before that. Ryder clenched his hands around the steering wheel and then relaxed them. “You’re a damn good liar,” he commented, looking in the rearview mirror at Stony. His buddy was jotting something on a notepad, and Ryder noticed Langley had finally dozed off, her head on the back of the seat. It had taken a hell of a long time for exhaustion to win out over adrenaline and he’d been worried about her.

“Damn good actor,” Stony corrected quietly.

Ryder turned his focus back to his surroundings. They were more than 400 miles out of San Diego and in the middle of fucking nowhere. There were mountains in the distance on either side of the freeway, but the rest of the landscape was arid, and the only vegetation appeared to be sagebrush. He didn’t know if they were technicallyin the desert or not, but it sure looked like one to him. There was only one other vehicle visible—the car with Griff and Mako trailing behind them. He liked that they had the road to themselves, but the drive was growing tedious and they wouldn’t stop again until they reached the house.

Stony had driven most of the way—they’d switched when they’d gotten fuel—and he sat in the backseat with Langley where Ryder had been previously. Now that he’d finally been allowed behind the wheel, he wanted to be a passenger, but it wasn’t fair to his buddy for Ryder not to take a turn.

“The shooter must have followed the cop,” Ryder said, returning to the thing that bothered him most—how the sniper had found them in San Diego. “He probably didn’t bother to check if anyone was tailing him.”

“It’s the most likely scenario,” Stony answered. “The odds against having the GPS on her phone pinged in the short period of time between Rio’s arrival and when we put it in the privacy case are staggering.”

And they’d sent Mako out to find a twenty-four-hour shipping location to get her phone away from them. It must have been halfway to her condo in Florida when the shot had come this morning. “There’s no way anyone could have puta tracker on the Explorer. The only time the four of us left the SUV unattended was when we went in to rescue Langley.”

“The odds are against that, too,” Stony said, sounding distracted.

And this morning, in case they’d had a tail, they’d ridden around town for a while before buying the cars. No point letting the shooter know what they were driving. They’d returned the Explorer to a remote location for the rental car company and then headed east to make doubly certain they weren’t being followed. About seventy-five miles out, in another place in the middle of nowhere, they’d made the turn north.

“She was damn fucking lucky today,” Ryder said quietly. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about this morning for more than a few minutes at a time. “If she hadn’t tripped…” His heart raced, just remembering how close he’d come to losing her forever.

“It’s a good thing you weren’t carrying her.”

Ryder swallowed hard. He almost had. He’d been impatient with how slowly she’d been moving and concerned about how much pain she’d been in. The only thing that had stopped him was that he knew Langley didn’t like any kind of public display that would call attention to her. He hadn’t wanted to face the icy politeness shewould have directed his way if he’d embarrassed her in front of his teammates.

They hit a rough stretch of road that jostled them around and Ryder firmed his grip on the steering wheel to keep the car between the lines. When they reached smooth pavement again, his curiosity got the better of him and he asked, “What are you writing?”

“I’ve been making sketches and doing some calculations, trying to figure out that shot this morning,” Stony said.

“You reach any conclusions?”

“Yeah, and you’re not going to like it.”

Ryder’s shoulders tensed. “There hasn’t been one fucking thing I’ve liked since we arrived in California. Hit me with it.”

There was a pause, then Stony said, “If the shooter was positioned where I think he was, we’re looking at a distance of almost 1800 meters. That means heavy duty training, I’d guess in the military.”

Before he could speak, Ryder had to unclench his jaw. “Are you sure?” he asked and looked in the rearview mirror. Langley’s head was resting on Rowland’s shoulder, and his arm was around her. Ryder’s muscles went rigid again.

“I’m as sure as I can be without physically measuring the distance, and like I said,ifI’m rightabout his position. It’s not like we stopped to look for the shell casing.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ryder muttered. He took it as a given that Stony was correct about where their assassin had been shooting from. Or at least close enough. “This means whoever made the threat hired it out.”

“It looks that way, and if they could afford to hire a sniper of that caliber, I’d bet they paid enough to get a full team.” Stony sounded unperturbed, and Ryder wished he could be that calm.

“Fuck.” This made protecting Langley much more difficult.

“We could call Andy Harper when we get to Tahoe. He’d know the names of snipers who were good enough to take a shot like that—hell, he could have trained them—and since he’s working for Bent Tree now, he might know who was willing to sell their services to the highest bidder.”

“Maybe tomorrow morning,” Ryder allowed, but he didn’t want to call Harp if there was another choice. It had been disillusioning to have his mentor quit the team last year and go to work for Bent Tree. Theoretically, they were a security company, but that outfit was a bunch of mercenaries as far as Ryder was concerned. “The man doesn’t have to be US military, though. Soldiers for hire could be from any country.”

“There aren’t that many snipers worldwidewho would try from that distance and Harp might have heard of them anyway. It’s a small club.”

Ryder briefly took a hand from the wheel to run it across the back of his neck. “You’re assuming he’s not over in the Middle East, earning big bucks from the US government for security.” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“Yeah, I know,” Stony said, tone every bit as dry as Ryder’s had been. “It was only an idea.” He changed the subject. “You talked to the ambassador. Was he confident that no one could trace this safe house to his family? It does belong to a friend of his.”

Ryder glanced in the rearview mirror and scowled. If anything, Langley was closer to Stony than she’d been the last time he’d checked.

---