Page 65 of Seeking Vengeance
She believed him even though he routinely insisted he’d had his heart surgically removed years ago, and it felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She stared at him for a few long moments, wondering if anyone really knew the man before her.
“You know, you look an awful lot like Tommy Gunn with the whole stache-slash-beard thing going on.”
Taser chuckled at the adult film star reference. He was quite attractive when he smiled like that. And when he wasn’t trying to kill her.
“Where do you think I got the idea? He’s one of my idols. My rod’s bigger though.” He winked.
Nicki sighed, her expression martyred, and wondered why she even bothered sometimes.
* * *
“You know,I still can’t believe you’re reinstating me, giving me another assignment.” Nicki tossed the apple core toward the woods for some creature’s later delight and licked the last of the peanut butter off the spoon.
They sat on the swing together, rocking lightly. Nicki’s foot was tucked at an angle beneath her; Taser was lounging back, regarding her with those golden eyes, reminding her of a huge cat sizing up his prey.
She still housed some doubt as to whether or not Taser was being honest with her. Maybe this was all part of the plan, a ruse to get her feeling comfortable and unthreatened, to relax her guard. Even though she had already decided she wouldn’t fight her elimination, her instincts would probably kick in anyway. She was more than capable of inflicting some serious damage, and maybe Taser didn’t want to take the chance of losing anyone else. There weren’t that many of them to begin with.
“Oh, it’s not that easy, sweetheart. This is not just any assignment. There are consequences for what you did, you know.”
Nicki narrowed her eyes. Maybe Taser’s plan all along had been to put her in an unwinnable situation. She’d go down in the line of duty. It made sense. Even if she couldn’t make it back alive, she’d take some bad guys with her, and Taser wouldn’t have her blood on his hands. Sure, everyone knew the rules, but there might be a few agents genuinely upset if Taser did her in. If someone else did it, it was a win-win. For everyone, except her, that was.
“Just what are we talking about here?”
“I’ll let your partner fill you in on the details.”
Nicki frowned.Partner?Ah shit.
Taser wasn’t going to make Fisher or Brookes take her out, was he? A form of penance for not checking her before things got out of hand?
They looked out for one another. Took care of one another. Their teams were so close that it didn’t matter who actually messed up. They shouldered the responsibility together. Sharing the blame was the only way they managed to remain upright sometimes.
But surely, this didn’t count. Fisher and Brookes couldn’t possibly be held accountable for anything that had occurred in Pine Ridge; they weren’t even there until they showed up at Sean’s place. Technically, she’d been on leave.
“Fisher didn’t know. Neither did Brookes,” she blurted out. “They had nothing to do with what went down up north.”
Those golden eyes burned right through her. Taser was the only one she knew—besides a certain hard-assed Irishman—who could truly outstare her.
“They should have been watching you more closely. If they had, we might have minimized the collateral damage.”
Collateral damage—aka Sean Callaghan and the Ghost Team. Icy-blue eyes and the expression Sean had worn that last time she saw him rose, unbidden, in her mind’s eye.
Had Sean been searching for her? Had he enlisted the aid of his brothers? Fisher had already told her they’d been attempting to do a background check on her.
Maybe Sean was really pissed about the whole stinger thing. He was definitely not the sort of man someone got the better of, not without retribution anyway.
One look at Taser confirmed her theories. The Ghost Team was giving him a hard time. The idea almost made her smile. So few were capable of getting close enough to plant a thorn in Taser’s thick hide. The very thought that Sean might be looking for her—that he cared enough to do so—sent a thrill down her spine even if he probably did want to kill her.
She quashed the thought immediately, returning to the defense of her teammates.
“It’s irrelevant,” Taser said, halting Nicki’s argument before she could get going properly. “Fisher and Brookes are currently deployed elsewhere. You’ve got a new partner. One who I know will be able to keep you in line.”
The back of Nicki’s neck prickled, a natural response to the suggestion that anyone was capable of such a thing. Nicki answered to no one. Well, except Taser. But that was by her own choice. The man had literally saved her, both her life and her sanity. Maybe even her soul, but she didn’t like to think too much about that. She wasn’t entirely sure she had one—or if she did, how much of it was intact.
“Who?”
His mouth twitched. “You’ll see soon enough.”
“Prick.”
