Bad Attitude (B.A.D. Agency #1)(22)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

“Steele?” The man burst out laughing as he slapped one hand down on the counter. “You’re not the same Steele who lost his rifle during training, are you?” The older man looked over to the other guy with him and patted him on the chest. “Get this, Gil, the rifle was tied to him on a string, and still the poor sumbitch lost it.”

They both laughed.

Steele felt the heat crawl over his face at the reminder of one of his less than stellar moments in the military. “Yeah, that was me, and I didn’t lose it. An a**hole cut the string and stole it, then hid it.”

“Sure he did.”

Steele growled low in his throat as he turned to see Syd with an expression that said she was trying hard not to laugh too.

Personally, he didn’t find it funny, since that little prank had gotten him into all kinds of trouble. A sniper who couldn’t keep up with his rifle wasn’t exactly a bragging right in the Army.

The man sobered. “How do I know it was you?”

“Because only a complete idiot would admit it was him. Not to mention once I found out who did it, I locked his ass in the portable latrine and turned it over with him inside it. Jack took the blame for it, since he figured I was in enough trouble over the rifle incident.”

The man narrowed his gaze as if he were trying to decide if he was lying or not. After a brief debate, he reached for the phone and dialed a number.

“Hey, Jack,” he said after a brief pause. “I got a man here what claims he knows you. Says he’s your Army buddy Steele who had his rifle taken from him.”

The man spit out more tobacco juice as he listened. “Ah-huh. Ah-huh. Nah, I don’t think so. Hang on.” He held the phone out to Steele. “He wants to talk to you.”

Steele gratefully took the phone. “Hey, Jack, long time no hear, huh?”

“Boy, can’t you ever stay out of trouble?”

He smiled at the sound of the rough, deep voice of the man who’d been the closest thing to a father Steele had ever known. “Apparently not. You always said that if there was an easy way to do something, I’d go out of my way to complicate it.”

“True enough. Tell Bob to give you a piece of paper and write down where I am.”

Steele asked Bob for a pen and paper, then wrote down the directions to Jack’s place. As soon as he was finished, he handed the phone back to Bob and turned toward Syd. “I got it. Let’s ride.”

Bob hung up the phone.

“Thanks, Bob,” he said as he folded the paper in half. “I appreciate your help.”

Bob inclined his head as they left the store and headed back toward the BMW.

Syd gave him a snide look as they reached the car. “Did you really lose your gun with a string on it?”

He growled at the reminder of something he’d really rather forget had ever happened. “Not exactly. I was exhausted from training, so I closed my eyes for a combat nap. In retrospect, I knew I should have kept my hands on my weapon, but I was only going to close them for a sec, and the rifle was right beside me. Smithy snuck up on me and cut the cord as a joke, then hid it.”

“Smithy?”

“One of the a**holes in my unit. He couldn’t stand the fact that I outshot him, so he was always looking for ways to screw with me. He once stole the firing pin from me when I had my rifle disassembled too.”

“And yet you let him live?”

“Believe me, it wasn’t by choice.”

Syd got into the car and started it while Steele joined her. “How far away is Jack’s?”

“Not too far.”

As she dropped the car into gear, a weird shiver went down her spine. She looked around the lot and didn’t see anything that should have alerted her.

“Blue Nissan, eleven o’clock.”

She glanced over to the car Steele had identified. “What about it?”

“Look at the driver.”

She did. The driver was an older blond man who bore no resemblance to the man she’d seen earlier. “It’s not our guy.”

“No, but my money says it’s a spotter for him. Notice how intent he is on us.”

Steele did have a point. “Maybe he’s just a local wondering what we’re doing here.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No.” And she didn’t. Steele was right, he was too focused on them. Damn the government satellite system. It was too easy for those with the know-how to tap into the system and use it to find anyone whenever they wanted to. It was a good thing for them to use to find the bad guys, but a bad thing when it was used against them.

Her first inclination was to go confront the driver, but that would be pointless.

Instead, she pulled out her weapon and checked the clip in case the man decided to get frisky.

“Drive, Syd,” Steele said as he took her gun from her hand and placed it on the seat. “I doubt he’ll follow us. If he is who we think, then he probably put a tracer on the car while we were inside.”

Now that thought gave her an ulcer. “You know, I miss the Hollywood legend that assassins work alone. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were reality?”

“Yeah. But they seldom do, and the ones today are high-tech and online.”

Sighing in irritation, Syd pulled back onto the highway and headed off into what had to be the most remote area of Calverton. As Steele had pointed out, the other car didn’t follow them, which meant they were tagged now.

What a fabulous day.

But at least the assassin was giving them a little breather.

Or so she thought until they pulled up onto an unmarked dirt road. She’d just started down it when a large bomb went off to her left.

Eleven

Syd jerked the wheel to the right with a curse to avoid the spraying clods of dirt.

“Easy,” Steele said in an oddly calm voice, given what had just happened.

“We’re under fire!”

“No. Not really. That’s just Jack’s welcome mat.”

She pulled to a stop to gawk at him. Was he serious? “I beg your pardon?”

He nodded. “It’s true. It’s just his way of letting people know that they’re on his land now, and old rules don’t apply. Jack is a bit—”

“Psychotic?”

He laughed. “Eccentric. He has a few issues with authority and government, and, well, people in general.”

“Uh-huh. And that causes him to arbitrarily bomb cars for no reason?”

“No. That wasn’t a bomb. Believe me, if he’d wanted us harmed, we’d be dead by now. That was a motion-triggered explosive to let him know someone’s on his property. I’m sure he has us under surveillance even as we argue. So drive slowly for a few miles until you reach his 1957 red Chevy, which should be parked in the middle of the road.”

Was that supposed to make sense to her? “We’re not looking for his house?”

“Nope. You’re looking for his Chevy.”

Sure. Why not? That made about as much sense as everything else that had happened to them thus far. She headed down the unpaved road that was lined with tall wheat growing up on each side of it. A light breeze blew through it, making it wave at them as she tried to see something through it.

She couldn’t. The only thing that was clear was the road ahead.

“How well do you know this guy?”

He gave her a wry grin. “About as well as anyone does, which isn’t saying much. Jack is unique.”

Just what she wanted to hear. That ranked right up there with “he’s got a great personality, so go out on the date and have fun.” Only difference, this one was trained to kill and seemed to like to play with explosives instead of just being plain ugly.

Oh, joy…

Syd edged the car farther down the dusty unpaved drive. The wheat finally gave way to shrubs in bad need of water. The whole area was desolate and unkempt. Jack definitely wasn’t into landscaping or rural development. But then why bother, when he had it rigged to explode? Why waste such valuable time?

It was probably a good four and half miles before she saw the abandoned Chevy. Faded and rusted, it was a vintage icon that had been left untended far too long. Oddly enough, it sat out in the middle of the road with nothing around it.

“Stop here,” Steele said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. That’s what Jack said to do.”

Still unsure of what would happen next, she parked the car and turned it off. Steele got out first and moved slowly to stand at the front of the Chevy. He motioned for her to join him.

Half-expecting Rod Serling to greet her, she got out and walked over to Steele. As she scanned the area, she realized that there was an ancient, faded wooden cabin that was overgrown with vines.

Surely not even eccentric Jack would live in such a place. Would he?

“Hey, Gator Jack?” Steele called. “We’re here.”

She noticed that Steele was standing with his hands out, as if to convince this mysterious Jack that he was unarmed. Syd’s eyes widened as she heard an odd rumbling sound coming from the ground underneath her feet.

“What the—?” She jumped to the right as the ground started moving.

Three seconds later, the rumble stopped and a section of the grassy ground beside the Chevy went flying. Syd shielded her face as a large trapdoor was flung open and something that looked like a refugee from an old Mad Max movie came out. Dressed in a khaki jumpsuit, the man had on a pair of goggles that caused part of his thin gray hair to stand on end. A white scarf was wrapped around his face, and he was covered in dirt.

He glanced at her, then paused to stare at Steele. He pulled the goggles off to show a pair of bright blue eyes ringed by dirt before he tugged the scarf off his lower face to pool around his neck.

“Hey, slick!” he said with a laugh. “Long time no see.”

“Hi, Gator,” Steele said, extending his hand out to him. “I heard through the grapevine that you were living out here in the middle of backwoods Virginia. So when exactly did you turn into a mole?”

Laughing, Jack scratched his neck before he pulled a baseball cap out of his back pocket. It made a strange crinkling sound as he pulled it on over his head. “Oh, I don’t know, about five or six years ago when I was thinking that what with all the new gadgets them bastards had, they could probably see straight through my walls to see where I was. I just couldn’t stand the thoughts of it, know what I mean? It’s spooky to think that some pervert in Russia could pull up a satellite link to see me doing business on the toilet. I just couldn’t take it, so I figured I’d move underground to have my privacy and dignity.”

Syd couldn’t resist teasing him. “You know they have sonar now that can allow them to see what’s under the soil too.”

Jack snorted in disagreement. “Not my soil, they can’t. I made sure of it. I got me a number of them gadgets on eBay and dug myself down so far under the soil and reinforced the walls to the point they can’t see shit unless I let them, and I ain’t gonna let them.”

Steele grinned. “And that’s why we’re here. I’ve got a hired gun dead on my heels, and I need a place to confront him so that no one else has to pay for my sins. I’m tired of him shooting up hotels and giving
chase on a city street. It’s just a matter of time before some innocent person is in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Jack gave him an arch stare. “A hired gun? Boy, what’cha into now?”

“I wish I knew,” Steele said, glancing over at her. “I should have listened to you, Jack. The government got me by the short ones, and they won’t let me go.”

“See,” he said triumphantly. “And you thought I was crazy. Who’s the crazy one now, huh?”

“I know.”

Lifting his hand to the brim of his hat, Jack scoped out the landscape around them. “Well, if that’s the case, you two better come on down before they sneak up on us. Last thing we need is to be caught out in the open like geese with our peckers hanging out”—he paused as he noted her—“not that you have a pecker, ma’am. Just a figure of speech,” Jack said as he grinned at her. He paused to frown at her bare feet. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

Syd scowled at his odd question. Was he insinuating she was fat? “What would make you think that?”

He looked down at her bare feet. “Barefoot. Pregnant. Them things go hand in hand, ’cause them pregnant women have feet that can swell up to ten times their normal size. You’re not expecting, are you?”

“No!”

He appeared relieved. “Good, ’cause there’s enough radon down there to give a fetus three heads. I don’t want to be responsible for none of that. I only believe in corrupting the ones what come out of the womb and grow to at least five feet in height.”

Syd made a noise of disbelief. “You can keep out the NSA, but not radon? Just how sophisticated is
your operation?”

Jack blew his cheeks out. “Radon don’t bother me none, and I don’t bother it. Me and Cletus done grown immune, but this way I figure if anyone else tries to come after us, they can get infected and have their lungs removed.”

She frowned at the name. “Cletus?”

“My best friend.”

Good grief, there was another one of him? She wondered if Cletus was watching them from the shrubs.

Steele passed an amused look her way. “Pop the trunk and let me pull out our supplies.”

“What supplies?” Jack asked.

“Clothes, weapons.”

“You can always go nak*d, but weapons…those are important, aren’t they Mr. I-Can’t-Hang-Onto-My-Rifle?” Jack turned toward her with an evil grin. “Did he ever tell you that story of how he lost his rifle even though it was tied to him?”

Syd gave Steele an impish smile of her own. “Yes, he did. He also said you took the fall for him when he paid Smithy back.”