Bad Attitude (B.A.D. Agency #1)(6)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

“Yeah,” Tee said, “Haven’t you ever seen the movies? D.C. and New York always get toasted. Once the bureaucrats go, Joe will be president.”

Joe snorted. “I’d rather see Petey as president. Let them shoot the dog.”

She dropped her jaw as if the mere thought offended her. “Hey! Insult my dog, and Iwill kill you.”

Steele shook his head. “She’s a lovely little thing, isn’t she?”

“You’ve no idea.” Joe pushed the box that Kristen had given him across the desk.

Steele opened it up. His jaw went slack at the contents. There was literally a badge for every known federal agency in there and they weren’t even all American. CIA, ATF, DEA, FBI, NSA, even Interpol and Europol. Freakily enough, they all had his picture on them and looked completely legit. “Humor me
for a second. Who exactly do I work for?”

“You work for me,” Joe said, his eyes deadly earnest. “We are BAD—the Bureau of American Defense. But no one outside of this organization, other than the president—who will never admit we exist—has ever heard of us, and we intend to keep it that way. We are multijurisdictional, and we work with a variety of international governments who think we belong to other agencies, hence the badges. If you need one to gain admittance into an area, use it. You’ll be given a series of phone numbers that will appear legit when called, and will verify you work with whatever agency you claim.”

Before he could ask anything more, Tee spoke up. “Your partner is Sydney Westbrook. She’ll show you the ropes and fill you in on any details.”

Steele curled his lip at the upper-crust name. Sydney. Westbrook. Yeah. That was someone he wanted to train him in this. He could just imagine the tall, blond WASP goddess who would be more concerned with her manicure than their assignment.

“I don’t work with rich socialities.”

“Sydney knows her job,” Tee assured him. “She’s fully committed.”

Steele tried not to roll his eyes. “Where’s she from? Connecticut?”

“Boston. She’s a Harvard graduate.”

This time he couldn’t stop himself. He rolled his eyes. “Let me guess, daddy’s a banker?”

“Stockbroker, actually.”

Steele turned at the deep, incredibly sexy voice of the woman who’d come in with them. This mission was really beginning to suck.

Tee inclined her head to Sydney. “She’s your spotter.”

Ah, hell nah.

Every piece of him screamed out at those words. Steele rose to his feet. “I don’t work with a spotter, especially not a woman.”

Sydney gave him a droll stare. “All snipers work with a spotter, and the fact that I’m a woman has nothing to do with anything.”

“No, we don’t, andI absolutely will not.” He turned to face Joe. “And you can stick my ass back in Leavenworth before I work with her now.”

Joe’s face hardened. “You will do as you’re told.”

“Fuck you.”

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Sydney asked, her face aghast.

He turned on her with a snarl. “No. She disowned me.”

Syd felt the pain that he was doing his best to hide. She wanted to ask if he was serious, but the look on his face and his irate demeanor told her that he wasn’t joking in the least. “Why did you shoot at your CO?”

His dark eyes singed her with fire. “He. Pissed. Me. Off.”

“I can relate,” Syd said calmly. “Joe pisses me off constantly, but I’ve never taken a shot at him.”

“I have,” Tee muttered.

Syd frowned at Tee, who had her attention on Petey. She looked back at Steele, who was still tense and angry. “Look, we are on the brink of a potential international disaster that could hit us any day now. Remember how the first world war started?”

“Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were shot and killed while visiting in Sarajevo.”

Thank God the man had a brain and knew his history. “That’s right. And in a few days a foreign dignitary from a former Soviet bloc country will be here for an important meeting in D.C. with the president. Just like Franz and Sophie, he’s been marked for assassination by a group of rebels. Our job is to save his life. If we fail, not only America, but his and other countries are completely screwed. We can’t let him die on American soil. Understand? We need you to nail his assassin before the assassin nails him.”

“Why don’t you just tell him to stay home?”

It was Joe who answered. “A, you don’t just tell another president he’s not welcome here. It looks bad in the press. B, whether he dies here or at home, we’re screwed politically. The best place to protect him is here, where we can nail his executioner before the hit takes place.”

“You make that sound so easy,” Steele said sarcastically. “And just when and where is this going to take place?”

Syd cringed at his question. “We don’t know exactly. Basically, we have two ways to go about this. In the first, I’ll go over his published itinerary with you, and your job is to pick out the most likely position for the hit. We’ll set up an observation point and take out the assassin whenever he moves in on the president.”

His eyes narrowed. “President of what?”

“Uhbukistan.”

He shook his head. “The Kabukis are coming for us? Yeah, that’s a big threat.”

Syd ground her teeth at his flippant attitude as anger whipped through her. “Not Kabukis. The Uhbukistanis, and they’re not to be taken lightly, Mr. Steele. They were part of the former Soviet Union and are strategically placed just north of Georgia and between the Caspian and Black Seas. Their lands are rich in oil reserves and are highly coveted in the region. As a border country, the USSR stockpiled them with nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and after the collapse, no one has reclaimed those weapons. President Kaskamanov is an ally to us, and he wants to disarm his country and join the European Community. His son, on the other hand, isn’t our friend. He’s a mercenary bastard who wants to sell the weapons to the highest bidder.”

“Let me guess. America ain’t it.”

She nodded. “So his son thinks that if his father dies here, he can blame us, take control of the country, and then deal with whomever pays him the most. And I don’t think I have to tell you what will happen if those weapons fall into the wrong hands. There’s no telling how many people could die.”

Steele folded his arms over his chest and gave her a bored stare. “Look, I don’t care what the Ooga-Boogas do. It sounds like they need a family counselor, not a sniper.”

She was going to kill him. Why was he being so stubborn?

Didn’t he care?

“They’re not Ooga-Boogas, they’re Uhbukistanis.”

Still he gave her that cold, dispassionate stare. “Whatever. My personal belief is that we should leave Ooga-Booga Land to the Oompa-Loompas. Let them fight it out with the Snozzwangers, Wangdoodles, and the mean Vermicious Knids. I’d rather go peel carrots with a spoon.”

He started past her.

Syd grabbed his arm to stop him. “What kind of soldier are you that you’re going to just sit in a cell while the world is thrown into chaos? Do you not understand what could happen if those weapons fall into the wrong hands? How could you be so selfish?”

“Selfish?” he asked angrily. His eyes darkened even more.“I’m selfish? Look, Agent Westbrook, your daddy’s a Boston stockbroker. I’m a death broker. I’m sure you don’t lecture Daddy on finance, so don’t even try to lecture me on assassination politics. I know all about them. Some bureaucratic ass-wipe sitting in a pristine office that’s totally isolated from the rest of the world decides the son of King Oompa-Loompa is a threat. He then hands down orders to people like me to go off King Oompa-Loompa’s son. Like an idiot, I do what he says without question. I hunt my target down, using information that is mostly bullshit and unreliable, gathered by someone like you who assured me it was correct at the time. But hey, it changes minute by minute, and God forbid we pass that along to you.”

He backed her up against the wall as his eyes continued to singe her. She wasn’t afraid of him, but his anger was so fierce it was tangible, and she was all too aware that he could hurt her before she could draw her weapon.

“So me and my spotter lie in the grass, sand, or snow for days on end, cramped and hungry, never able to move more than a millimeter an hour until I have that one perfect shot I’ve been waiting for for days. I take it, and then we lay there like pieces of dirt until we can inch our way back to safety, where hopefully the helicopter team will remember that they were supposed to retrieve us.”

She swallowed at what he described.

“Have you any idea of the nerves it takes to do what I do? To lie there on the ground while other armed men search for you? Have them step on you and not be able to even breathe or wince because if you do, it’s not only your life, but the life of your spotter?”

Her heart clenched at that, and when he spoke the next words, she actually gasped.

“Do you know what it’s like to have the brains of your best friend sprayed into your face and not be able to render aid to him because you know he’s dead and if you do, you’ll be killed too?” His low, deep voice was trembling now. “I have been into the bowels of hell and back,Miz Westbrook. I have stared down the devil and made him sweat. So don’t tell me I don’t take this seriously. Believe me, there is nothing in life I know better than what I was trained to do.”

Syd nodded at his words as she finally understood him completely. “Your spotter was killed.”

A tic worked in his jaw as ultimate pain flared deep in those chocolate eyes. “He wasn’t just my spotter, Agent. He was my best friend. I swore to his wife that I’d bring him home in one piece. AndI let him die.”

“He knew the risks.”

He sneered at her. “Save it. I’ve heard the spiel from the army psychologists and everyone else. Had I listened to myself and not taken up position where they told me to because they knew best, Brian would be alive now. I’m not going into another setup planned by a federally trained spook to get someone else killed. Ever. I’m through with this.”

Syd felt for the man. She couldn’t imagine the horror of lying next to a friend who’d been killed in front of her. It was a wonder he was still sane.

But it didn’t change anything. They needed him.

“How did you escape?” she asked him.

His gaze turned cloudy, as if the scene were replaying through his mind. “I fought my way out in a manner that would have made Rambo proud. And when I got home without his body because I couldn’t pull him out without getting myself killed, I got slapped in my face by everyone around me. So don’t talk to me about death, little girl. I wrote the book on it.”

“And that’s why we need you,” she said quietly, wanting to reach out and touch him, but knowing he was in no mood to be coddled. There were no words or actions that could erase the hell he’d been
through.

He shook his head. “There are other snipers out there. Granted, not as good as I am, but they’re good enough to get you killed.”

“No,” she said earnestly. “Not with your training. You were taught to shoot by the single most successful sniper in military history. I’m assuming your father taught you everything he knows.”

That went over him like toxic waste. His entire body tensed, and she swore she could almost taste his anger. “Then hire my father. I’m out of this, and I’m out of here.”

As he started for the door, Joe spoke up. “Where are you going, Steele?”

Steele froze as that single, innocuous question went through him like a knife. For the second time since he’d walked into this office, he felt savaged by his emotions.

He had no car. No money. No home. No family. No friends.

Nothing.

He hadn’t owned anything in more than two years.

And he’d never in his life felt so helpless. So worthless. He turned around to face Joe, who watched him carefully. Something in the man’s eyes said Joe fully understood what he felt right now, though to be honest, he had no idea how he possibly could.

Steele swallowed the pain that had gathered in his throat, choking him. The first thing his father had taught him as a boy was never to betray his emotions. It was that cold, dead person he showed to Joe and the women now. “I refuse to lie down beside another spotter and see her die while there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’m through with this.”

Joe nodded. “Understood. But you know, we’ve been looking for a backup sniper for the last three years, and you’re the only one we’ve ever brought here to Nashville to interview. You’re the only one to ever see this office, or Petey.”

Joe’s humor was lost on him at the moment. “Why me?”

Those blue eyes were as cold as Steele’s nerves. “Because you know what tragedy can happen when you don’t exercise free thought. We don’t want anyone here who’s by the book. Anyone who has to be told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. We need agents who can think on their own and execute their missions without someone micromanaging them.”

Steele folded his arms over his chest. “There are plenty of snipers who can do that.”

“And we need someone who won’t be missed,” Tee said coldly. “Someone without any family or friend entanglements. In the four years since this agency was founded, you are only the second sniper we’ve found who met all of our needs.”

That just made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. They wanted him because, unlike Brian, if someone blew his brains out no one would shed a single tear.