Sharpshooter (Shadow Agents #3)(41)
Author: Cynthia Eden

“Do you know what happens to people found guilty of treason? Do you have any idea just how long you’ll be in jail?” Not to mention the slew of other charges that would be coming against him.

He shook his head again harder this time. “I can’t…can’t go to jail.”

Maybe you should have thought about that before you sold out the EOD and me.

“Give me a name. If you cooperate, then—”

“I can’t!” And his left hand came up. His fingers were wrapped around a box cutter. He had been a busy man. “Muerte, I—”

A shot rang out.

Sydney was staring right into Hal’s gaze, and she saw his eyes widen in shock. Then his body was crumpling as he fell to the floor. She rushed toward him. No, no, no! He couldn’t die. He knew the identity of the man who’d infiltrated the EOD.

She put her hands on either side of his head, tried to make him look at her. “Hal?”

His eyes were wide open with shock and pain.

She moved closer, forcing him to see her. “Hal, give me a name.”

“S-sorry…”

“Don’t be sorry.” There wasn’t time for sorry. “Help me, Hal. Make this right. Give me a name.”

But Hal wasn’t going to give her anything. As she stared at him, all of the life vanished from his eyes.

“Hal?”

He was gone.

“Sydney?”

She looked up. Slade stood just a few feet away, a gun in his hand. Hal’s gun. The gun she’d kicked across the room so Hal couldn’t use it again.

“I—I saw him coming at you, I thought he had a knife….”

The box cutter could have done as much damage as a knife, but she would have been able to knock it out of Hal’s hand. She knew plenty of techniques to disarm him.

“I couldn’t let him hurt you,” Slade whispered. His eyes—filled with horror—were on Hal’s still body. “I just reacted. I just…shot.”

Footsteps pounded in the hallway. She could hear them through the open door. Then Gunner was there, bursting into the room. “Sydney!”

He saw Slade with the gun. He lunged for his brother.

“Gunner!” Sydney called out.

Slade didn’t fight him. Gunner yanked the gun away from Slade and shoved the smaller man up against the nearest wall. Then Gunner turned that gun on his brother. “What the hell are you doing?”

Sydney rose. “Saving me.”

Mercer was there, too, breath heaving from his lungs. She saw Cale and a few other agents.

All too late to change what had happened.

She straightened her shoulders. “Hal attacked me. Slade came in and…he thought he was saving me.”

Gunner glanced back at her. His eyes widened as his gaze swept over her. He put the gun down on a table, and then he was across the room in an instant, his hands running over her arms. “Is the blood yours?” There was a tight, desperate quality in his words that she’d never heard before.

Sydney shook her head. “All Hal’s.”

Gunner’s hand was resting over her stomach now.

“I’m okay.” They both were. She looked to the right. Mercer had crouched next to Hal, but the others were watching her and Gunner. Silent, tense.

Gunner locked his jaw, gave a grim nod and slowly dropped his hand.

She heard a ragged gasp and her gaze met Slade’s. He’d seen Gunner’s hand on her stomach. Seen the fear and worry on Gunner’s face.

He knows.

Slade’s head tilted down. His hands clenched into fists.

Tears stung her eyes. Things should never have been this twisted.

“Why the hell did Hal go after you?” Cale asked.

“Because I knew what he’d done. I found it…” She pointed toward the computer. “Hal’s the one who turned off the security feed. Probably so we wouldn’t realize that he was the one here that night, doing the hacking. He used Gunner’s old code. Hal set him up.”

Mercer’s fingers were on Hal’s neck, looking for a pulse. He wasn’t going to find one.

He must have realized that same fact because Mercer swore and glanced up at her. “Did he tell you why?”

Mercer wasn’t the kind of man to take kindly to betrayals. But then, who was? Only with Mercer, she knew the retribution for betraying him usually involved death or imprisonment.

“He said…he said he didn’t have a choice. That his family was threatened.” But if she looked into his bank accounts, would she discover that he’d been paid off? Not just threats, but an enticing wad of cash to help him escape from the EOD and start fresh somewhere else?

There was always a price that had to be paid for a betrayal.

“Muerte,” she whispered.

Cale’s gaze cut to Slade. Slade shook his head.

“That was the last thing Hal said to me.”

“Maybe he was afraid of death,” one of the other agents muttered.

No, she didn’t think he’d been talking about death so much as the drug. With the drug showing up in the shooter’s blood, with that being the last word that Hal had spoken, the dots were connecting in a very deadly way.

“It’s in the U.S.” Mercer stood. He had blood on his fancy suit. “The bastards have it here, and the DEA doesn’t even realize it.” He waved his hands. “I want this room clear. Don’t touch anything, hear me? I’m getting a crime scene analysis team sent in from the FBI. They owe me, and the feds are about to start paying up.”

Sydney eased toward Slade. He looked up at her, his face pale.

“I heard the gunshot,” he whispered. “I was in the hallway. I didn’t…I didn’t even know you were the one in here. The door was ajar…I just slipped in.”

And he’d seen her and Hal in a standoff.

“When I saw the weapon in his hand…” Slade swallowed. “I just fired. I killed him.”

Gunner was at her back. Silent.

Slade’s gaze dropped to her stomach. He swallowed. “There… Is there something you want to tell me?”

No, she couldn’t tell him. Not now. Not in front of all the others. But Slade had just killed to protect her, so she had to say something. “Thank you,” she whispered, and wrapped her arms around him, giving him a hug.

His hands closed around her. She felt the light touch of his lips on her head. “I’d never let anything happen to you.”

She pulled back, stared into his eyes.

“Never.”

She took a step away from him.