Bad Attitude (B.A.D. Agency #1)(7)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Boy, he had the life, huh?

“Tell you what,” Joe said, his features softening a degree. “Why don’t you take a few hours and rest. Get used to being free for a while. Get a good night’s sleep where you don’t have to worry about being vulnerable. If you still feel like this tomorrow, we’ll put you right back where you were. No harm, no foul. Deal?”

Steele wasn’t sure about that. He had a feeling the harm had already been done. “I have no place to stay.”

Joe pushed an intercom button on his desk. “Kristen, have Carlos come in.”

A few seconds later, the office door opened to show him a tall Hispanic male. “Yo, bossman? You rang?”

Joe indicated Steele with a tilt of his head. “Carlos, meet Steele.”

Carlos held his hand out to him.“Hola.”

Steele hesitated before he shook it. “Hi.”

“Steele is a special recruit who doesn’t have any place to stay. He needs some downtime, so I was wondering if he could bunk with you for the night.”

“Sure,jefe.”

“Gracias.”

“De nada.”Carlos opened the door again. “You ready to leave now, or do you need a few more minutes?”

Steele looked at Joe.

“We’re done…for now.”

He glanced at Sydney, who was watching him with an angry tic in her jaw. Part of him hated that he’d ruined her plans. But she’d find another fool to do her bidding. All he wanted was to be left alone.

She met his gaze with heat burning deep in those green eyes. There was a time when the accusation there would have spurned him to take this mission just to prove her wrong. But he’d done a lot of growing up over the last two years. Dares didn’t motivate him anymore.

Nothing did.

“Hasta la vista,”he said to her as he started for the door.

Her response in Spanish caught him completely off guard. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”

Shaking his head at her, he followed Carlos out of the office.

Syd didn’t move until she was alone with Tee and Joe. “So you’re just going to let him leave?”

Joe sat back in his chair to watch her with that blank expression he was famous for. “We can’t make him shoot someone, Syd. That’s against the Constitution.”

Frustration consumed her. She’d come so close to having what she needed. “So what am I supposed to do now? We have less than three weeks to put this together.”

Joe glanced at Tee, who was feeding Petey a dog biscuit, before he answered. “Have faith.”

“No offense, my faith died ten years ago.”

Joe looked back at her. “I know, but sometimes you have to believe in other people, Syd. Many times they’ll surprise you.”

Yeah, right. “I’m all right with that so long as the surprise is a good one. In my experience, though, it usually isn’t.”

And something inside told her that Steele wasn’t the kind of guy to just blithely change his mind. He was gone, and now she had nowhere else to turn.

She hated feeling like this. She could see the future ahead of them, and it terrified her.

Five

Steele followed Carlos out of the office, past Kristen, who was on the phone, speaking flawless German to someone. She paused to wave at them. There was something strangely surreal about all this. Like he’d walked into a movie or a dream, and that at any moment he’d find himself snatched back to his jail cell. It just didn’t seem like it was possible that he was here, away from prison, surrounded by such an odd cast of people.

Without a word, Carlos headed to the elevator and pressed the down button. Immediately after the light came on, Carlos moved to the side of the doors with his back against the wall as if he half expected the doors to open and someone to jump out and shoot him. He even put his hand under his jacket, no doubt over his weapon.

“Been an agent long?” he asked Carlos.

Carlos let out an evil laugh. “You could say that.”

Maybe, but there was something about the man that denied it. He reminded Steele more of the criminals he’d been locked up with. The way he moved, like a hungry predator who knew it had to kill or be killed. It wasn’t the arrogance that most Feds had. It was something else. Something almost diabolical. “You don’t strike me as a typical Fed.”

The doors opened. Carlos lifted his head away from the wall to scan the inside before he moved away
from the wall. “I’m not a typical Fed.” He literally crept into the elevator and scanned all the way up to the ceiling before he relaxed.

“I really don’t want to be this paranoid,” Steele muttered as he entered the elevator.

Carlos laughed. “My paranoia has nothing to do with my current job. It’s a holdover from my past, and those who would like to ensure I have no future.” Carlos pressed the button for the lobby.

“And what was your past employment?”

Carlos smirked at him. “I don’t know you well enough to answer that…yet.”

Steele couldn’t fault him there. His past wasn’t something he liked to talk about either. And they were strangers, so it made sense that Carlos was defensive.

“So do you speak Spanish?” Carlos asked.

Actually he did, but Steele had learned the value of discretion early on. “Only what I’ve learned inTerminator movies,Sesame Street, and from Speedy Gonzales.”

Carlos shook his head. “It’s all right. I understand. I personally learned to speak English from Hanna-Barbera cartoons.”

Steele gave him a droll stare.

“It’s true.” He made the sign of the cross over his heart. “For years though, I kept trying to find ‘ruh-roh’ ”—he imitated Scooby-Doo’s voice—“in dictionaries. It wasn’t until my little brother went to college in Miami that he finally told me it wasn’t a real word. Talk about feeling stupid. Thanks, Scooby. But what the hell, my brother got a good laugh out of it.”

Steele forced himself not to laugh. He doubted if the man would appreciate it.

The doors opened to the lobby.

“Hola,Tracy,” Carlos said to a petite blond knockout who was waiting to enter the elevator they were leaving.

She gave them both a spectacular smile. “Hi, Carlos. How’s it going?”

“It’ll go better the day you leave your boyfriend and give me a date.” He winked at her.

She all but beamed at him. “The day I leave him, you’re the first one I’ll call,” she said with a laugh as she entered the car.

Carlos covered his heart with his hand as if he were in pain. “Ah, you break my heart, little dove.” He blew her a kiss as the doors closed.

Once they were alone, Carlos growled deep in his throat as he led the way across the lobby, toward the doors that opened onto the street. “You should see her boyfriend. He’s a total ass. Completely undeserving of something that fine and tasty.”

It’d been over two years since Steele had seen anything in the flesh as good-looking as Tracy was. But what struck him the most was that he wasn’t nearly as attracted to her as he’d been to Syd.

I’ve been in jail way too long.

And if he had to go back tomorrow, he’d like nothing better than finding some action tonight. Twenty-three more years was a long time to go without a woman, and that’s what he was looking at if Joe sent him back to Kansas.

The mere thought of it made his c*ck jerk.

They left the building and headed toward the garage across the street. His gut tightened as he realized how close he was to losing his freedom again. He glanced around at the people on the shaded street. Two women were heading into a restaurant as they chatted about work. A family that was obviously touring the stores and town crossed the street. The dad looked flustered as the two kids fought and the mother snapped at them.

A guy was on the corner, yelling at someone on the cell phone….

None of them had any idea how lucky they were to be living out their lives in such a normal way. There wasn’t anyone telling them what time to get up, what time to go to sleep. They didn’t have to make roll call. They weren’t referred to by their inmate number.

They were just people who had no idea how quickly their entire existence could change.

One stupid move…

On the morning he’d been arrested, the day had started out like any other. He’d gotten up without enough sleep, had shaved, dressed, and gone to work, expecting it to be just another day.

And in one split second, because of one stupid decision, he’d thrown it all away.

Don’t be stupid again…

He could return to this world with nothing more than a few words of commitment. Tomorrow he could stay here, or he could be headed back to hell.

It was all up to him.

“Damn you, Joe,” he muttered as they crossed the street. That bastard had known exactly what he was doing when he’d sent him out here to mix with regular people.

“They’re coming into D.C. this week, Joe.”

Joe looked up from his file on a European case he was working on to see Syd standing in the doorway of his office. “You sure?”

She nodded. “I just got the confirmation from Retter, and they’ve made six phone calls to APS this week alone to confirm their ‘protection.’ ”

Asset Protection System, or APS, was the front for a known company of freelance mercenaries and contract killers. BAD had been trying to monitor it for a long time, but it was next to impossible. They could trace incoming calls only, and even those were infrequent.

Joe could hear the panic in her voice. But unlike Syd, he knew Steele wasn’t about to leave them. Jail wasn’t a picnic, and as distasteful as Steele found this work, it beat the hell out of prison detail.

“Don’t worry, we haven’t lost him yet.”

She pulled her glasses off as she fretted. “Yeah, but what if we do?”

“Trust me, Syd. The best people to fight for freedom are the ones who’ve lost their own. They understand the importance of it a lot more than those who’ve never been without.”

Syd wished she could believe that. But at the moment everything seemed so hopeless. “Maybe I should
head out to D.C. and start looking for a way—”

“Give me twenty-four hours, Syd. That’s all we need.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. “But it could be twenty-four hours wasted that I could spend trying to find a way into APS.”

Joe got up from his desk. He picked something up and moved to stand in front of her. “You ever been to the Ryman?”

She scowled at his question. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“It’s a special show tonight. They’re actually broadcasting the Grand Ole Opry live from the stage like they used to in the good old days.”

Okay…she was worried about national defense, and Joe was off on a nostalgia high. The only problem was, she really needed him to put down the crack pipe and join the rest of them in reality.

He handed her a ticket. “You should go.”

She stared at the ticket in her hand as if it were an alien object. “You’ve completely lost your mind, haven’t you?”

He gave her a good-natured grin. “Be there, Syd. It’s an order.”

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I really hate country music.”

His face turned deadly serious. “You know, there’s a lot of things in life that I hate that I have to tolerate. Traffic. Lines. Tee’s driving. Disco Muzak. But you get used to it.” He paused to give her that
“don’t argue” stare. “Be there, Syd. It’ll be good for you.”

He walked past her, out of the office.

Syd sighed heavily as she stared at the ticket. “Someone shoot me, please.”

“Any particular place you prefer?”

She turned to see Tee entering the office. “The head. Right between my eyes.”

Tee frowned. “Okay. What has you so upset?”

She held up the ticket.

Tee laughed before she shook her head. “That man and his Opry. He’s downright scary with it.”

“Do I really have to go?”

“It’s not so bad.”

She was surprised by Tee’s defense. She knew for a fact Tee’s favorite bands were the Black-eyed Peas and Godsmack. “You’ve been?”

Tee shrugged as she moved to her desk and opened a drawer. “Joe likes it.” Petey looked up from his bed, then settled back down to sleep. Ignoring her prized dog, Tee pulled out a small lime green iPod. “And this helps immensely.”

Syd looked at it as if it were the Holy Grail. “Can Iplease borrow it?”

Tee tossed it to her.

She grabbed it and held it like a lifeline, which is exactly what it would be. “Thanks, Tee.”

“No problem. Just promise me you won’t shoot Joe.”

“I’ll try, but I can’t promise the impossible.” Syd left the office and headed back to her desk. But as she sat down, it wasn’t her case that was on her mind.

It was Steele.

Over and over, she saw the pain in his eyes. Heard the pain in his voice. She was lucky. She still had her family. Granted, they hadno idea what she did for a living. They only knew she was a federal employee. If she ever told them the truth, they would be worried constantly.

Joe didn’t take many agents who had such attachments. Tee had told her that all of Joe’s family had died before he turned twenty. Having experienced such loss firsthand, he didn’t want to create a bureau of widows and orphans.

He also believed that having a family made an agent weak, vulnerable. It gave your enemies a target.

Syd wasn’t so sure about that. Her mother could wield a mean garden hoe when she wanted to. There were enough snakes who’d given up their ghost because they dared venture into her yard to prove it. And her dad…get him talking on stocks and bonds, and he could bore anyone to death—even the meanest terrorist out there.