Page 20 of Mercenary
But that’s not why I am trailing her and her friend.
My orders are to track them. Call in. Be in position to terminate.
The women are collateral damage. My boss’s real target is that traitor, Kylie Smith.
Madelyn’s sister.
I kick the dirt with my boot. Hayden assigned three amateurs to the simple task of sending a warning to Kylie. Hoping to scare her baby sister in order to flush her out of hiding? Or was him hiring these goons a more subtle message to the traitor: You won’t know who is coming for you until it’s too late? Whatever Hayden’s intent, what was meant to be a slight warning had been taken far further than required.
The fools got knife happy and had been about to get even happier, when I stepped in.
Motherfuckers.
And I wasn’t even supposed to be in Cabo.
If Hayden catches wind of the bullshit I’ve pulled, both last night and four months ago . . . such uncharacteristic breaches in my typical show-no-mercy way of going about business . . .
No one dares challenge Hayden. My boss leads with an iron fist despite the laid-back vibe he puts off. Haven’t we learned that lesson well? Cardinal rule number one that callous bastard has drilled into us is that unfavorable actions have consequences. Seasoned professionals like me, hardened with time and with an ever-growing kill count, have long accepted this.
It’s been my ruthlessly calculated delivery of these so-called consequences that Hayden depends on time and time again. I simply get the job done, that’s all. A one-man show. His stonehard, capable, go-to man.
Trust no one. You never know who will betray you.
Yet who does he call in to clean up the mess? For an assignment that should have been mine and mine alone in the first place?
So here I wait outside Diego’s home, calmly anticipating their departure while wondering if I’ll be commanded to do the unthinkable. Clean up a job gone array. Silence anyone who might give away my organization’s secrets.
If anyone has reason to be furious about what’s gone down, it’s my counterpart, Diego. I’d gotten his call late last night, along with a heated earful of how Hayden’s goons had carved up his goddamned sister.
I’ve never met her, the woman doing me the favor of keeping tabs on Madelyn. Until last night. A case of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And because of her weekly updates, my damned curiosity with Kylie’s sister placed me in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time.
But right now, I’m dealing in the immediate.
Diego knows the drill. It’s impossible to predict what that loose cannon might do if I’m ordered to act. Little will he know, it’s me outside and on his doorstep.
Last night, I’d received two phone calls. The first was Hayden, calling me in to clean up his mess. To find Kylie’s sister and report in. He’d gotten word from one of his goons how they’d taken things too far with the wrong girl. And, as all fucked up roads lead back to Hayden, there’s a risk that unwanted attention will be cast onto our organization if they talk. Secrecy is the name of the game in our world. Now I’m to locate the woman and her friend. Witnesses. A security threat.
Yet ironically, who do they go to for help? My counterpart, Diego—and the second person who’d called me. Who gave me an earful about his sister being cut up and between the curses, growled out their location.
I kept quiet during both conversations, too preoccupied cursing up a mental blue streak to say anything to either man.
And fuck knows I kept quiet about the three amateurs who caused this whole clusterfuck, whose bodies I buried beneath the warm Cabo beach. Those assholes have gone underground, all right.
Impossible to guess how Hayden’s going to react when he learns one of his most brutal men is in the middle of the muck. Or if he’s connected the dots back to me and my unhealthy—and fuck-all disconcerting—preoccupation.
With her.
Fuck. I gave Madelyn a chance, two chances in fact. They’ll be no more, not without consequences.
As I pull my hood up higher, blocking out the light rain that’s begun to fall, I wonder if I’ll have to kill Diego too. A stone-cold killer like me doesn’t have friends, not anymore. If I did, Diego would be one of them.
I don’t have time for weaknesses, a lesson driven home hard, like a nail through my thick skull, four months ago, with Jaxson’s death. Yeah, Kylie’d been the one to hammer that truth home.
Relationships in my line of business get your throat slit. Hayden knows it, I know it, but Diego . . . ?
He’d done what he could by sending his sister away. Moved her out of a town where drug cartels have thick hard-ons for violence. But she wanted to be near him so he allowed her to move to California, close enough yet out of harm’s way. The timing was perfect. We cleaned house in and around her new apartment near San Diego State. Anyone with any cartel connections was dealt with. And if Hayden had any notion we acted without his orders, he never let on. But securing a safe environment for Diego’s sister wasn’t done out of the goodness of my heart. What did I get out of this deal? Someone to watch over Madelyn. Keep an eye on her then report back to Diego…and me.
Me, because of my unhealthy obsession withher.
