Hunter (In the Company of Snipers Book 14) Read online

  “Nah. I can wait,” Ky replied. “We weren’t expecting the game to commence the second we touched down. That was a long flight from D.C. I’m beat.”

  “You, my dear, are one helluva shot.” Eric poured on the charm to the only woman on deck.

  Sure enough, Meredith batted those extra-long, extra thick eyelashes and offered her best come-on-down-y’all smile. At least she still played by the same rules.

  Hunter knew them too well. Move in. Lean in close. Close your eyes. Think you’re important to her. Be a fool. Believe she cares. Get burned. Never go back.

  When Eric moved an inch closer to Meredith, he sucked in another pull of nicotine. Go for it, Reynolds. Make an ass of yourself. Just don’t come crying to me when she hands you your balls.

  What Hunter hadn’t figured out yet was where her hubby, Fast Eddy Welch, the high school jock who’d once upon a time rolled her socks down? Or up? Hunter didn’t really care. Still, why was she flirting with Eric if she had a husband back home to keep her cheating ass warm at night?

  Hunter inhaled deeply, drawing the pleasant sting of smoke into his lungs before he let it out and blew it away. Still the same old Meredith—full of beauty, allure, and deception.

  “How much does one suit cost?” Seth asked from his side of the table.

  “You tell me,” Lyle Salaz, another MI technician, spoke up. “How much should it cost to protect American military assets in the field?”

  “You mean men,” Hunter’s big mouth declared before his brain had the chance to shut down the illusion he’d meant to share his opinion. He flicked the ash off the end of his cancer stick.

  Lyle was the atypical scientist and the first one Hunter had ‘killed’ in the paintball battle, the one who’d yelled, ‘Son-of-a-bitch! I’m hit! They got me!’ like a little girl. A middle-aged man, complete with a paunch that hung over his belt, receding hairline, and black-rimmed glasses, he spoke with a touch of conceit whenever he addressed The TEAM. The man thought he was better than them. Smarter. It showed. Hunter didn’t regret shooting him in the face.

  Lyle shrugged indifferently. “Assets. Men. They’re all the same.”

  Not in my book they’re not. Hunter clenched the fist not holding his smoke, but kept his big mouth closed like he should have done in the first place. He hadn’t meant to interact with anyone from the MI team. He left the charm and politics to Eric, The TEAM’s lead agent on this operation. Schmoozing never was Hunter’s strong suit. He preferred passive resistance or direct conflict, hit ’em hard or walk away. Anything in the gray area between was a waste of time.

  He had to give Jed credit though. Billionaire or not, he was the common soldier’s best friend. While other companies scrambled all over each other to create technology that would conceal military equipment, Jed had focused on protection for American boots on the ground. For the men and women who stood in the line of fire.

  The grunt was often treated like a throwaway item by some generals and presidents, but not Jed. Word was that his son had been injured in Iraq. Jed had literally put his money where his mouth was. Hunter respected Jed and there weren’t many men who’d earned that honor.

  Fresh out of the MI test lab, ACS1 had been designed primarily to camouflage American soldiers. But MI wasn’t resting on its laurels with just one system. The ACS2 was also in development to camouflage vehicles—Humvees, missile haulers, trucks, and tanks. But a full-up TUSK, as in a Tank Urban Survival Kit-equipped M1A1 Abrams tank? That pushed the realm of possibility into the realm of just plain ludicrous in Hunter’s book. He’d have to see an ACS2 at work to believe it could conceal heavy equipment.

  Plain and simple—all that high-tech camouflage didn’t mean squat until MI could also conceal the cloud of dust a tank raised when it fast-tracked to the frontline over desert and dirt. What about the noise and the thunderous reverberations that sixty-three short tons created on good old Mother Earth? How did MI expect to conceal that? Invisibility wasn’t the whole answer.

  Still, lighter tanks were being developed. Hunter had heard of plans for a smaller and more agile ground-combat vehicle. It could happen, but the paintball game they’d just played proved his point, not MI’s. Yes, Ky, Seth, and Eric all got ‘killed.’ The highly skilled snipers were nearly taken out of the game within short order. But Hunter had also proved that even the best line of high-tech defense could be breached by good old-fashioned know-how. By gut feeling.

  He stretched the kinks out of his back, tired of listening to all the BS. Pinching his cigarette butt between two fingers, he killed his smoke and tucked the butt into his shirt pocket. It was past time to leave.

  He had a pillow in the guise of a backpack and a bedroll calling his name. Thank goodness, he and his buddies had set up their camp a good distance from the MI folks. He didn’t need to hear any more come-ons and flirting.

  It never changed. All six guys now circled Meredith like tomcats on the prowl, trying to prove they were clever. She must be in her element, the center of the universe again.

  Stepping out of the tent and into the jungle, he shrugged the tedium of human companionship off his shoulders and halted long enough to light another cigarette. The jungle air was fresh and sweet, full of night noises that might make a regular person’s skin crawl. Not his. Even that gurgling growl and grunt that sounded a lot like a large carnivore protecting its prey seemed less menacing than the babble in the tent behind him.

  Hunter blew out a satisfying puff, instantly at ease in the world he knew best. Something screamed with an eerie human-like tone of terror nearby. A shrill whistle lifted his gaze to the shadowy canopy overhead. Then silence. Whichever predator was out and about tonight, it must have hit its mark. Well, good.

  That was the real world for you, a world he understood. A dog-eat-dog world where you either killed or were killed. Where you fought to live another day. Got up in the morning and did it all over again. Yeah. He’d rather spend a night alone in the jungle than another minute in the company of a bunch of fools vying for the attention of Meredith Flynn.

  Walking into the vines and tangled brush, he left yesterday behind. Ky, Seth, and Eric could find their own way home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The friendly get-together ran out of air when Hunter up and left without a word. Meredith tried not to notice, but how could she not? He’d stayed near the tent opening like a grumpy shadow with somewhere else to be. Yet his presence had commanded without any effort on his part. Even the air in the tent seemed to follow his lead and go out the door with him when he left. Something about him seemed to anchor the rest of his team, too, as if he were their power source and compass all rolled into one. Ky called it quits. Seth stood to follow. Eric stopped chatting.

  And yet Hunter wasn’t the designated leader. That position went to Eric Reynolds, The TEAM’s agent-in-charge, and the only one Hunter seemed to respect. Sometimes. It was surely not respect glowering on his face tonight. No. It was more like what he’d given her out there in the jungle when she’d recognized him. That look.

  After Ky and Seth had headed to their camp, Meredith begged off the strategy meeting Teague wanted to hold and went to the shower. Being trapped in an ActiveCamouflage System for any amount of time in jungle heat was miserable. She needed to mention that performance shortfall to Jed. The suits needed internal cooling.

  The two youngest on The TEAM, Ky and Seth, made her smile. Both were more timid than Hunter. Eric, on the other hand, had no problem flirting. He was a charmer, a real dark, tall, and handsome type. Only Hunter had played the disinterested alpha, the warrior with no need of anything or anyone.

  The flaw to the war games was that Agent Reynolds was also the MI mole. He was there to train the MI agents how to detect a trained sniper, how to track a lethal shot to its source and thus take out highly trained enemy combatants, which in this case, were his own men.

  No one was supposed to know this little radioactive nugget of inside information but her boss, Teague. Meredith on
ly knew because she’d overheard Teague on the phone in the MI research facility lab when he’d thought he was alone. That would teach her for working late hours without permission.

  The moral implications of the deceit felt like an ethical breach between Eric and his men, and yet she understood the reason behind it. The lion didn’t need to know whether the wounded gazelle was armed and fully capable of escape—or assault. So, she kept the information to herself. After all, Hunter Christian was that lion. Why would he need an advantage?

  Gathering her cosmetic bag where she also kept her concealed handgun, a change of clothes, an LED flashlight, and her extra-large can of bug spray from the MI tent, she headed for the shower. Positioned across the clearing from their four-man tent, it gave her the only opportunity for privacy from her all-male team. Which was good. She didn’t need more problems.

  “Hey, Meredith,” Eric called when she rounded the tent. He looked pleased with the four ACS1 suits on their hangers draped casually over his shoulder and the ruggedized rolling crate that contained the rest of the ACS gear in his other hand. His team was bound to win in the games tomorrow, but she looked forward to the challenge. It gave her another chance to shoot Hunter, and baby, she meant for him to go down first. Just the thought added a zip to her step. We’ll see who’s Sally.

  “Hey, Eric. You’re leaving early? I thought you and Teague would talk strategy all night.”

  He shook his head. Eric stood a good foot taller than her, with dark hair a woman might want to rake her fingers through just to see how soft it was. Mussed and sexy-looking from the battle, the guy was as hot as any guy from Thunder Down Under. Well-muscled from his shoulders to his thighs, all he needed was to strip his shirt off and don a black bow tie. How come none of her teammates radiated the testosterone levels these guys from The TEAM did?

  “I just collected our gear for the morning. By the way, you did real good today. Have you had weapons training in a past life I should know about?” He lifted his left brow in a deliciously evil spike that sent a quiver of pure lust up her thighs. Whoever his wife was, she had no business letting him out of her sight. Eye candy nothing. He was—hot.

  “Concealed-carry,” she admitted. “There was a time I needed it, so I took a self-defense class and bought a gun. I learned about gun safety and how to shoot.”

  His brows lifted and that was another thing. Eric had the loveliest eyebrows. They almost looked as if he’d plucked them. His coffee brown eyes sparked with male interest in the dim light of propane lanterns. If she was looking for action, he might be worth considering. She’d always found dark eyed men hard to resist. Hence her fatal attraction to Hunter. He had the same color eyes, only his were iced coffee to Eric’s hot fudge.

  “An ex-boyfriend?” Was Eric trolling for an easy hook-up or genuinely concerned? Men were hard to decipher, each a different puzzle and most not worth the time or effort it took to unravel them.

  “Ex-husband,” she confessed.

  “Ah. Nasty divorce then?” Real sympathy radiated off of him, setting her mind to rest.

  She let her grimace answer for her. There was no need to go down memory lane again.

  “Me too,” Eric admitted, the sparkle in his eyes dimmed. “Any kids?”

  “Just one. Courtney. He’s three.”

  “And I’ll bet he’s the apple of your eye.”

  “How about you?” She dodged the subject of Courtney. The day she struck up another relationship was a long way off. When and if it happened, the man would have to walk on water and worship at her feet before she’d take that kind of chance again. He’d have to love children, and he’d better be damned devoted to her, too. Until then, talking about Courtney with potential suitors was off-limits.

  “No,” Eric said, a little too quickly. He ran a hand behind his neck as if he’d suddenly developed a pain. “You ever heard the country western song about unanswered prayers? It was written for me.”

  “Divorce?” she asked.

  “Kind of.” He looked away, but not before Meredith caught the sadness shifting across his face.

  “Divorce is hard,” she said, needing to instill comfort where it might be needed. She’d been down that road, and divorce was a hard one to walk alone. “Yours sounds like it might have been as bad as mine.”

  Eric turned with a smile she could easily see through. The tease in his eyes was gone. “But life goes on, and like I said, unanswered prayers and all that.”

  She cut the doomed conversation short. Talking about exes never ended well. “I’d better hurry. It will be too late to take a shower if I wait much longer.”

  “I’d be happy to stand guard if you’d like,” he offered, a glimmer back in his eye.

  She almost accepted that gallant offer, but no. A handsome man outside of her shower in the middle of nowhere was the first step down a slippery slope, and the last thing she needed. “Thanks, Eric, but I’m the girl who shot you earlier, remember? I’m pretty sure I can take care of myself.”

  “You’re armed?”

  She patted her cosmetic bag in reply. “Always, and not just with lipstick.”

  He bowed his head in mock defeat. “I stand corrected. Maybe I should be the one asking you to escort me back to my camp.”

  She let him down easy. “Have a good night, Agent Reynolds. See you bright and early. Be ready to lose.”

  “You too.” With two fingers to his forehead in a half-salute, he turned smartly, the crate bumping along behind him. “Good night, Meredith,” he called over his shoulder as he disappeared into the shadows. “Be sure to use extra bug spray. Sleep tight.”

  Night was coming on fast. Despite the weapon in her bag, she wanted to be inside the tent before it got any darker. She hurried.

  Once the shower door was locked tightly behind her, Meredith set her items on the collapsible bench, the flashlight on its side and facing the rear wall for ambient light. She didn’t intend to cast any feminine shadows.

  With a quick shake, she unrolled a pair of light cotton running pants and a matching long-sleeved T-shirt in lieu of her usual sleepwear. There were insects and mosquitoes aplenty in the jungle. The more skin she covered, the less chance of contracting malaria or garnering any more advances from well-meaning guys. Eight-legged or two-legged, bugs were bugs.

  She hung her clean clothes on one of the two hooks next to the shower door and made sure her industrial-strength, extra-large can of insect repellant with plenty of Deet was handy, right alongside the flashlight. The minute she toweled off, she’d smell like a bug bomb again, but, oh well. She’d be stinky, but safe.

  Quickly, she undressed and rolled her dirty clothing into a bundle. Turning the water valve on, she stepped into the lukewarm spray of a portable shower’s spigot. Nothing felt better than washing away the sweat and grime of a hard day’s shoot-out in the jungle.

  She smiled at the notion. There she was, on the adventure of a lifetime, in the Amazon no less. How fabulous! It wasn’t often a common assistant travelled, much less all the way to the Amazon. She should have been pleased, and she was. Jed was generous with his employees. She didn’t know what he saw in her since she’d only worked for him less than a year, but she was thankful for the recognition and this opportunity.

  The trip had turned out to be more than she’d expected, and who would’ve thought a paintball war could be so much fun? Mental note to self: See if there are any gaming facilities near home in Northern Virginia. Courtney would love playing cops and robbers with a real paintball gun.

  A smile broke out across her face just thinking of that cute little guy. How his father could’ve walked away from the most darling boy on the planet never ceased to amaze her. Yes, a major job opportunity was a big deal. She got that, but to walk away from your wife and infant son, to berate them because they were holding you back? No way. It had never been about the job. Eddy was just the jerk her mother always said he was.

  Meredith planned. The extra paycheck from this fantastic trip might al
low her to move into an upscale condo. She hoped. Courtney deserved so much more than their tidy, but tiny townhouse in Falls Church. Virginia. Poor kid. He might be fatherless but he was not out for the count, and neither was she. No two ways about it. This was her second chance at a good life, and she intended to make the best of it.

  Shampooing her head brought instant relief. There was something about the fragrance of lavender shampoo that soothed like nothing else. She rolled her neck. The crème rinse worked the same as the shampoo, relaxing the tangles of her thick blonde curls while it filled the small enclosure with fragrance from home.

  Heaven. This was nothing short of pure heaven.

  The water ran cool for a second, then turned hot as if someone had kinked the hose. Darn. She hurried to finish rinsing, determined not to be the butt of any misguided guy humor on this trip. Could someone be out there? Had The TEAM agents come back to play a little game of their own? A midnight sortie? A panty raid? Men! Give ’em an inch and they’d take a mile every time. All sorts of terribly juvenile options zoomed through her mind. Knowing those guys, it could be—

  BLAM!

  Meredith ducked to her knees on the slatted wood floor, her heart pounding. Not funny, guys. That sounded like a gunshot. Was it? Frightening the only woman on the team wasn’t how to treat a fellow employee. Yes, she was all about being a good sport, but—

  Blam. Blam. BLAM! Three more shots, and she was mad if those guys thought they could scare her into running out of the shower like some brainless college co-ed. They had another thing coming.

  Hurriedly, she turned the water off and brushed a towel over her body just enough to be able to pull her bra on. She scrambled into a pair of matching boy shorts as fast as her trembling fingers would allow. These guys had their nerve. Whichever team they were on, they were not going to intimidate her, but they would get an earful.