Bad Attitude (B.A.D. Agency #1)(3)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Here at Club Leavenworth, daily humiliation was just par for the course. And if he was really lucky, they might even wake him up in the middle of the night and let him scrub toilets with his toothbrush again.

Oh, goody.

Grinding his teeth, he forced himself not to react as Hank grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the visitation room that was reserved for conferring with attorneys. It was one he hadn’t seen any more of since his attorney had told him that the last appeal they could make had been turned down flat. Now the attorney, who had cost him every dime he’d had, wouldn’t even return his calls. Yeah…his life was just a bowl full of laughs.

Needless to say, he wasn’t particularly thrilled by being here again as those repressed emotions went through him, stoking his anger.

Once they reached the correct room—which, as fate would have it, happened to be the one where he’d lost his last hope—the guard opened the door, then shoved him into it.

Steele stumbled a step before he caught his balance and went ramrod stiff. His nostrils flared as he kept his anger leashed and his gaze carefully on the floor. He wanted desperately to glare at Hank, but he knew better than to even try it. Instead, he felt a muscle working in his jaw as he righted himself to look at the people who were there to speak with him.

Like the rest of the prison, the room was drab, but even if the walls had been painted hot pink with nak*d hookers on them, the intense people waiting on him would have stood out.

They were government-trained. He could smell it. It bled from every pore of their bodies, even though they were dressed as civilians, and the man had hair longer than the woman sitting beside him. Steele’s gaze went to the man’s right arm, where a tattoo was peeking out from underneath his long, dark blue sleeve. He had on black pleated pants and a red-striped tie, but not even that could cover the fact that the man wasn’t as refined as he wanted to appear.

There was something about him that was raw and deadly—the kind of guy you’d have to fight in a bar because his woman dared to look at you.

And God help you if you were dumb enough to speak to her.

The woman beside him was a strange dichotomy. She was a tiny, petite Asian woman—Vietnamese-American, if he didn’t miss his guess. Dressed in a white blouse and short black skirt, she appeared sedate and calm. Yet his instincts told him it was only a facade. Her movements were too precise. Too studied. He sensed that she was as acutely aware of him as he was of her. Her short black hair was a perfect frame for her attractive face as she watched him from behind a pair of soulless black eyes.

But it was the woman standing in the corner with her arms crossed over her chest who held his attention most. Her expression totally blank, she was dressed in a pair of jeans with a loose red top and a dark brown leather blazer. She wasn’t very tall, only about five-four or so. She wasn’t petite or heavy, but rather built solidly.

An image of an Amazon warrior popped into his mind. Yeah, he could see her like that. Sword in one hand, whip in the other as she stood toe to toe with an enemy.

Or better yet, nak*d over the guy she’d tied to her bed.

That thought almost made him smile. Only the pain of his sudden erection kept him from it. It’d been way too long since he’d last spoken to a woman. Never mind being close enough to one that she could
actually tie him up to something.

What he wouldn’t give to have five minutes alone with her…

Steele forced himself not to betray those thoughts, but it was hard.

Her long black hair was pulled back into a braid that fell to the middle of her back. No doubt it would be soft to touch. Like silk against his face as he nuzzled her neck…

It was enough to make him want to whimper.

She wore a pair of round tortoiseshell-framed glasses that didn’t even come close to hiding her green eyes, which had a feline slant to them. Something hot and wicked went through him as he watched her.

Every part of him seemed strangely attuned to her presence. Yeah, he’d been in prison way too long. She wasn’t his type by a long shot. She looked more likely to kick a man’s ass than to ride it.

And still he had to force himself not to stare at her, and he wasn’t even sure why. Her lips and eyes were a bit too large, her stance a little too masculine.

Even so, there was something about her that was absolutely compelling.

The guard led him toward a chair across the table from them.

“Uncuff his hands,” the unknown man said in a bored tone.

“That’s against protocol.”

“Un. Cuff. His. Hands,” he repeated, stressing the syllables of each word without looking at the guard.

Hank glared at the man an instant before he roughly complied. Steele forced himself not to grimace as Hank wrenched his hand so hard, he half expected it to break.

“Fine, if he attacks you—”

“He’ll be dead before he hits the floor,” the seated woman said in a distracted tone as she rummaged through her large black leather briefcase. “And I’m sure he knows it.”

Steele rubbed his wrists as he hooked a heel against the chair leg to pull it out. He sat down and eyed the seated pair sullenly.

The guard took a stance inside the door.

“Wait outside,” the man said.

“That’s—”

“Wait. Out. Side,” he stressed again.

Oh, yeah, there would be hell for him to pay later after these three were gone and Hank could prove himself superior. Steele couldn’t wait.

The guard cast a feral sneer at them before he complied.

“Thanks,” Steele said sarcastically as his anger swelled again. “Can’t wait for the walk back. You guys specialize in something other than acid enemas?”

The Vietnamese woman’s eyes gleamed at that as she set her briefcase on the floor. “Ooo, he’s snotty. I like him already.”

The man, like the woman who still continued to stand off to the side, was completely stone-faced. Steele had to admire that. It took a lot of practice to show absolutely no emotion. He knew that well enough, since he practiced it religiously.

When the man spoke, his tone was as cold as his body language. “We’re here with a special offer for you, Mr. Steele. A once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity.”

Steele snorted. “Oh, wait, I’ve seen this movie. I do a job for you, and you let me go. So who am I? I can’t be Eddie Murphy, wrong ethnicity. I’m not bald, so I can’t be Vin Diesel. So where does that leave me?”

The woman gave him an evil smile. “Think Snake Plissken. You know…Escape from New York?You do this job, and if you don’t f**k it up, we let you live.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that movie. At the end they try to kill him anyway.”

The man still didn’t crack any sort of emotion. “Good, then you’re already acquainted with our methods. Saves me a lot of training time and you a lot of surprises.”

Steele shook his head. They were full of more shit than a cow pasture. “Look, don’t jerk me off. I don’t have time for this—”

“Don’t you?” the woman asked. “Seems to me time is the only thing you have a lot of.”

He glared at her. “Ha. Ha. Why don’t you go find some other slob for this suicide adventure? I know the Army isn’t going to just let me go.”

“And neither are we,” the man said. “We never let our people just go.”

Why didn’t that surprise him? Probably because they all wore the demeanor of…well, for lack of a better term, Satan. “What are you? Wolfram and Hart?”

The Vietnamese-American woman laughed as she caught his reference to theAngel television show. “Oh, no, sweetie, they just take your soul for service. We intend to take even more than that.”

Now that was comforting.

The man rubbed his right eye. “Here’s the deal we’re offering. You work our project to our complete satisfaction, and instead of spending the next twenty-five years peeling potatoes and doing embroidery for the Army, you work for us. In effect, we own you, night and day.”

Now that just sounded dandy…not. He wasn’t about to trade one crap-ass situation for another one.

“Slavery is against the Constitution.”

“Tell it to the warden,” the Vietnamese-American woman said.

Steele watched as she opened a manila folder and flipped through its contents.

He didn’t believe them for a minute about any of this, but his curiosity had got the better of him. He tilted his head back to try and see what she was looking at, but he couldn’t tell.

Instinctively though, he already knew this scenario.

“So, who do you want me to kill?”

The man was the one who answered. “No one said—”

“Cut the bullshit,” Steele snapped, interrupting him. He wanted the truth, and he wanted it in plain English. “I’m not stupid. I only have one skill in life. I’m a sniper. For you to be here, it means you have someone you want dead, pretty damn badly, and you can’t find anyone else dumb enough to do it.”

“Not true.” The standing woman spoke finally, in a voice that reminded him of Lauren Bacall. It was deep and lightly laced with a New England accent of some sort. “There are plenty of men dumb enough for it. Just none that are as talented as you are, Mr. Steele.”

He laughed bitterly at that. “I hate it whenever someone calls me Mr. Steele. It reminds me of my third-grade teacher, who’d gone to parochial schools as a kid. She’d use that right before she whacked my knuckles with a ruler or embarrassed me in front of the other students.”

She narrowed those green eyes on him as if she was torn between being ticked and amused. “Be that as it may, we do need you in particular to complete this assignment.”

He snorted at that. Assignment. What a great euphemism for what they wanted. “What is it with you government a**holes that you just can’t say anything in plain English? You always have to beat around the bush and use euphemisms or f**ked-up acronyms for everything.”

“Fine.” The green-eyed woman moved forward to glare at him. She stood just a few inches from the table. Close enough that he could tell she was wearing expensive perfume that seemed at odds with her tough stance. “We needyou to kill an assassin before he executes his target. Either you eat the bear, or the bear eats you, Mr. Steele. Or, to humor you, in plain English—you find and kill the assassin, or we kill you. End of story.”

Steele scoffed. “If you’re so gung-ho to kill someone, why don’t you kill the assassin yourself?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “I would if I knew who he was. But unfortunately, I don’t. Nor do I have the skills you possess.”

The other woman shut the folder and placed it on the table. “We know all about your training in the Shadow Corps, Mr. Steele. We even have one of your old comrades on our payroll, but he unfortunately cracked himself into a tree while extreme skiing and put a severe crimp in our plans. Since he’s out of commission for a while, he recommended you as a replacement. It appears he was unaware of your current housing status.”

The man slid the folder toward him. “If you agree to work for us, we are in position to fully expunge your record. You will be given an honorable discharge from the Army, and this little jail stint will be erased from all but your nightmares.”

Now that was something he’d kill for…

Maybe.

Steele opened the folder that held the discharge papers, already signed, as well as an order from the Pentagon and the governor releasing him from custody.

He was impressed. And when he looked at the paper underneath that outlined his new pay and benefits, he was even more impressed.

But there were still a lot of unanswered questions. “Who are you people?”

The man sat back. “You don’t need to know that right now. After you accept our offer, then we’ll talk more about the details.”

It sounded good. Too good, in fact, and he wasn’t doe-eyed enough to think for one minute that they were being benevolent toward him. Nothing in life came without a price that was usually too steep to comprehend until it was too late. “There’s one detail I want answered now.”

“And that is?”

“After I do this job, what happens to me?”

The man’s blue eyes pierced him. “You will continue working for us. We in effect are your parole officers.”

“Only we carry guns,” the green-eyed woman said.“Big guns. And we have no inhibitions against using them. You screw us, you betray us and we kill you. Clear-cut. Bye-bye, Mr. Steele. Is that plain enough for you?”

He shook his head at her coldness. “I’ll bet you sleep well at night.”

“You have no idea.”

Steele flipped through the pages in the folder as he thought about what they were offering him. How could he say no?

How could he say yes?

Most importantly, what the hell was he getting himself into? He suddenly felt like Joe Hardy standing in front of Mr. Apple-gate. Vaguely he wondered if the sassy woman who was still standing was named Lola.

But then, the devil was always portrayed as an old man, and the one in front of him…

Well, then again, there was something almost evil about him.

“So how long do I have to make my decision?”

The Vietnamese-American woman shrugged. “The judge said twenty-five years without the possibility of parole. That’ll make you what, fifty-four years old when you get out? Really sucks, doesn’t it? No hot women in short skirts to chase after because you’re an old geezer with no prospects. Best years of your life gone while you fight off men who think you have a cute little ass they’d love to jump on—”

Steele screwed his face up in disgust. “Is she like this at home?”

Still the man showed no emotion. “Trust me, she’s being nice to you. She’s usually much worse.” He looked at the woman by his side. “You feeling okay, Tiger?”