THE WATCHERS: 6 Military Romance Bundle Page 15

  The piece of shit out back on the lawn got his brain scrambled by a bullet that should be hers but isn’t, and I can’t help but think that if he hadn’t been here, she’d be dead right now.

  She finally starts coming around and I’m on her like a disease when she blinks up at me and her face crumples.

  “He’s not dead. Hush. He’s gonna be fine,” I croon.

  Crossing my fingers here, because I doubt she’ll think her baby having one less leg is “fine,” but at least the little shoe chewer is still breathing. I’m counting us lucky and just leaving it at that for now.

  “I am so glad you’re here because…because those assholes dirtied the house, Storm! I’ll have to clean again, and you know how much I hate that!” she yells, slapping my head when I start laughing. “Is Chaser really okay?”

  “Okayish? Look, he’s alive and at the vet as we speak, and no, you will not go out there until I say you can, woman. Your foot looks like a grapefruit and you need a shower.”

  Her giggle when she catches a whiff of herself is music to my damn ears, and I thank God and whomever was out there that my woman is safe and in my arms.

  “By the way. I hope one of you punched the guy I got with the key…because I am pretty sure I’m pregnant and he tried to kill me.”

  Hell of a time to smile and start laughing, but I find myself doing just that as I kiss the hellion scowling at me. The boys, who I didn’t even hear come in, all start laughing and clapping and I feel Lenny giggle before she pulls back and looks at me.

  “Marry me, Storm?”

  “You betcha ass, sugar.”

  My heart is so full as I hold her and rock her to sleep that I don’t care that my house is a mess or that I have no answers. All I cherish most in the world is right here in my arms.

  ***

  Lenny

  Okay. So, a little update three weeks after I went all kickass ninja assassin on those goons—that’s my story and I am so holding to it.

  My dog is currently wheeling himself around on three legs and this nifty little contraption Storm made for him, which so got Storm laid for his thoughtfulness. I am pregnant, like I even doubted it for a minute, what with Storm’s nuclear sperm being all potent and virile.

  I am now married. Never let it be said that my Storm lets the grass grow under his feet when he gets what he wants. The man is like a freaking tidal wave; he just sweeps in and takes what he wants and that is that.

  I so love that about him, except those days when I’m barfing my guts up and he threatens to tie me to the bed, although that brings back memories that I am so down with reliving. Over and over.

  The men who came after me again? Hired by that numbnut man who was boffing Kerns and defrauding the county of millions. Kerns finally woke her lazy ass up and started singing like an opera diva at an audition, and I am so glad to say that I no longer have to worry.

  Storm has turned into an ass, of course, ever since his security was breached, dinging his manly pride. I now have to deactivate three alarms when he goes away for work. Which luckily only happened once and required him to manually override the system when I screwed it up, and he wasn’t here to fix it.

  What? I will never remember all that crap, I told him, he’ll just have to learn. Oh, and the search and find mission? Storm promised to throttle back a little in his search, since the guy did him another solid.

  Now it’s just me, him, one nugget, and a three-legged dog as we lunge around Jericho’s pool—one redneck blow-up job—and eat barbecue as we all laugh together and rib Lex for his made-up sexual exploits.

  Storm finally told me all about Rachel, that lying skank ho, and I just shrugged because I am grateful to her for being that gross. If not, I would be dead, and I would never have met Storm, which to me is worse than death now that he’s whipped out the “real sex” as he calls it.

  I beg for mercy more often than not these days, and even commiserate with my poor snatch when he gets that look in his eye.

  Oh, I also have daily chats with my secret guardian angel that no one knows about or ever will because, like I keep saying, what Storm doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

  That’s my newest philosophy, after he tried to tag my wedding ring with a device that has audio features. Freaking stalker husband.

  All in all, things are just great. All I have to do now is find a way to tell him that I may or may not have ruined an autographed baseball when I scrubbed a little too enthusiastically on one of my rare cleaning days.

  Heh. What he doesn’t know….

  Boy. Am I glad I looked into that storm and grabbed hold like a cow in the midst of a cyclone.

  “So, Lenny. You going to give me the blonde’s number?” Jericho laughs from the grill, his eyes twinkling back at me.

  “I hate to break your heart or impugn Jill’s honor in any way, dude, but she is so gone for some ass in town that she doesn’t mind his crotch rot and keeps taking antibiotics by the caseload. Move on, my man; your dick will thank me later,” I mutter, wincing when Storm chokes on his beer and gives me a look.

  What? I love the woman, but she is her own worst enemy. Now back to me. I like talking about me. It’s fun, and I am a queen, after all.

  Have I mentioned that Fineass Bates got two of his nurses pregnant and got fired by Jakes? Well, he did. They’re both suing him for child support as soon as they pop those suckers. And Nurse Three, the one who got engaged to the hottie, promises to send me photos. We have a poll going that those babies will come out with “how you doin?’’ on their lips and grabby hands with an affinity for nurses.

  Meh. Back to me. Dammit, about that ball …

  ***

  Nick

  God, the woman is a menace. There she sits, preening and laughing her goofy ass off, pretending she hasn’t ruined an irreplaceable collector’s item that took me two years to track down.

  I adore her though, every single weird little quirk she has. She goes “number oo”—as she calls it—only when she thinks I’m not around. God help me, she has to, because her diet is still all kinds of fucked up and wrong, and she never washes her toothpaste gunk out of the basin.

  She laughs at the oddest things and talks to herself and the dog as if expecting an honest answer.

  Her legs are my duty, one I take seriously, especially when I’ve been gone a week or two and come home to Jane of the Jungle. And she snores. A lot.

  I love it all, because she laughs when I scratch my nuts and whips out flea powder, her idea of a joke that cracks me up every time. Mostly I love that she is all mine and that with her I might be in the midst of a storm but what a ride it’s turning out to be.

  “Sugar, about that baseball…”

  Her squeal and the way she avoids my eyes as she jumps up and pretends to be helping Jericho with the food is hilarious and I’m pissing myself by the time she slinks my way, lip between her teeth, and grins.

  “Trade?”

  “I’m listening.”

  What she whispers in my ear is priceless, and I kiss her with a growl as I imagine the down and dirty ways I can get my vengeance. Damn, the woman has a filthy mind. Just the way I like it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Watcher

  They’re all so happy that, for a minute, I feel nothing but bitterness and rage at what they have when I have nothing. I would give anything to be able to come out into the light and have these carefree days with laughter and friends and the love I see shining out of Nicholas Storm’s eyes for the little oddball he managed to bag.

  I adore Lenny Storm. God knows it isn’t that difficult, considering she is the clumsiest, most hapless woman on the planet, and yet she’s just perfect in every way.

  I’d give anything to have that, to go home to her sense of humor and the warmth that shines through every time she looks at her man. Part of me hates them all for having this when, like I said, I have nothing, just endless days and nights watching, always watching, to ensure that my mission is fulfilled. Four years
I’ve been at this now, four years of pain and loneliness and anger as they all live on and leave behind a life I could never seem to shake.

  I made the choice though; it’s all on me, so I can’t honestly resent anyone for what I have to keep doing. I want it though. I want them all to know my pain, the suffering, the never having anyone as my nights bleed into each other.

  The truth is that I would do it all over again if I had to, even knowing what would be. Even knowing that I would lose the one person I loved because I chose duty over love.

  She’ll never forgive me. I can’t blame her either, because she offered me something fragile and beautiful and I rejected it for what I now am. A monster who lives in the shadows and has no right to ever look at her again.

  So I watch them instead and try, in my own way, to do the right thing while chasing shadows no one even knows exists. Lenny wasn’t my mission, and I can safely say that, if my superiors ever discover that the slugs that took those idiots out came from me, I’d be better off dead.

  I wanted to save her though, and in a way, to save Storm because any fool with eyes could see the man was taken from the get-go.

  My phone rings silently, and I activate the Bluetooth with a grimace, grinding my teeth when that voice comes over the line.

  “You find him yet?”

  No, and not for lack of trying, either. I would give another limb to find my ghost and have this all done with, maybe disappear somewhere where I can sit on the beach and drink beer, watch the sunsets, and dream of a life I threw away so easily that my gut churns.

  “No. Not a glimpse. He’ll be watching them though, so we know that I’m on the right track.”

  The line is silent for long minutes, and I already know what he’s going to say before he says it, preparing myself for the shit storm I need to avoid and have been avoiding for four years since this all started.

  “They need to come in on this. You know it, and I know it. It’s been four years. You need to stop fucking around on this and do something before he slips away completely. Again.”

  He always reminds me that I lost the target in one moment of sentimentality that I want to regret but can’t. I don’t, and never will, look back at that day as a regret because it was the best thing I ever did.

  “The answer is no. They’re too soft to get this done and we all know it. Storm is married and expecting a baby; Jericho is running some bum-fuck bar; and the others all just swan around taking candy jobs and living the high life of civilians. They won’t hack this.”

  “This you talking, or the past?”

  I am my past. I wish this fuck would understand that and move the hell on. Every minute I lied, killed, hurt, or so much as manipulated someone, is ingrained in me in ways I will never escape.

  I am every bitter lie and every harsh regret that has ever made me, and nothing will change that. I’m no guardian angel, as Lenny believes, though I thank God every single day for her and the calls she lets me make in secret. She keeps me sane and holds the darkness at bay the way someone else once did.

  I won’t give that up and, to keep it, I will have to ensure that the five men in my sights are kept as far from this as possible, while still using them to reel in my target.

  “I told you to stop trying to fuck with my head. It won’t work. This is the way I do things, and you agreed to it before we made our devil’s bargain. You want to change it up, I walk and you will never hear from me again, asshole.”

  “Christ. You get worse every fucking day. Just keep your mission in mind and get this done. I have brass shitting down my throat on this.”

  “Then tell those pencil-pushing fucks to do it and let me go.”

  “Never. You agreed to this; you belong to us. Accept it and move on already. Get the job done, for God’s sake.”

  The line goes dead, and I thank God for it because what I have to say to that asshole is not something I can say right now. It’ll keep though, and I will take extreme pleasure in saying it to his face as I scramble his eggs with a bullet.

  I just need time. More time to get it all together in a way that keeps the Watchers out of the line of fire.

  The name makes me laugh because they have no idea what it means to be a true watcher and, God willing, they never will.

  With that in mind, I shuffle down behind the rock I’m using as cover and pull out my phone, pulling up the live footage from a house a million miles away.

  I shouldn’t be watching her, not anymore, not after what I did to her. But as she comes into view, her honey-gold hair pulled up in a messy bun, and falls onto her bed with a sigh, I feel my dead heart give a crack.

  She’s mine. At least she used to be long ago, when I was worth a damn. I still dream of her when I can sleep and pretend for brief moments that once upon a time I could have chosen her and lived the life I always wanted.

  I see kids, a home, barbecues like the one I was just watching. I see her blue eyes shining at me with love as she strokes my face and tells me she loves me.

  It ends there because she never will, not again. I’m a monster now, as scarred inside as I am on the outside. She will probably never recognize me, even if I pass her on the street the way I did weeks ago when I jogged passed Jericho and Blaze while they played basketball outside his bar.

  What she will see is a stranger and yet, somewhere inside me, I still cling to the hope that she will see me, the man she once loved and wanted, and look past what I now am.

  Dreams. Useless, fucking hopeless lies, I tell myself when the loneliness becomes too much. I can’t think that way. I have to stop before I ruin it all, because I can only ever be one thing.

  I am the Watcher.

  BRINGING DOWN JERICHO

  Chapter One

  Cleo

  Why, oh God why, did I agree to this? I think as I shuffle—more like stumble—my way into the pit of a bar on the outskirts of town. I’m all vamped out and looking like a two-dollar trick ready make some pocket change as I look down at myself and take in the leopard-print skirt that should be from the kiddies’ section it’s so short, the boob-spilling red tank, and the killer heels that are literally killing my size-seven, cavewoman feet.

  I look like a hooker; it’s just a plain truth. I feel like a cheap one at that, as I nervously swallow and look around the bar, taking in the smoky interior and butt cracks displayed on the stools on this Wednesday night.

  The place is usually packed. I heard this straight from Ginger, and it’s the reason I am currently praying for a freak sinkhole to open up beneath me. Being Wednesday though, I know that most folks in this sleepy burg are all in front of their TV or packing preacher Clyde’s pews for the midweek “Save Your Souls from Satan” session.

  The only reason I’m here at all, and not next to my father at that farce, is because I went and did something really, monumentally, utterly stupid. I decided to unwind and get drunk with Ginger. To understand our dynamic, you have to know a little about Ginger: She has carrot-colored hair and sports an attitude and hairdo à la Scary Spice, and she’s been my savior—and my downfall—since I had two missing teeth and the sweet disposition of the nerd I am.

  She’s saved me from bullies who stole my lunch money, and she saved me from myself the year I had a huge crush on jock Kevin Meyers, and he told the team he was gonna nail little Cleo till she screamed.

  She’s been my one and only in this town where people either brown nose me to get to Daddy or make fun of me because I’m the little mouse who never does anything but squeak and scurry round.

  Tonight, she’s my downfall, but I’m thinking that since she’s been so good the last few weeks, I was due a humiliation or two. Tonight’s folly is the result of Dutch courage on my part and a pact made in blood—literally. I cut my hand on a chipped shot glass and shook—on blood—that I would get vamped up, walk into a bar, and proposition one man to punch my card and rock my world.

  Being a twenty-five-year-old virgin is not cool, according to Ginger. And so, I now fi
nd myself feeling naked, scared as hell, and praying that I find one man hotter than the crack brigade with their false teeth or, alternately, I will have to settle and just close my eyes and bear it.

  I’m a coward, but even I know that I should be praying to find one semi-attractive man in here since this is a moment I will remember all my life. I only have one time, and I would prefer it not to be while I’m struggling not to gag. Or cry. Or gag and cry.

  Chances are I will cry anyway because I am the original pipsqueak that Ginger has been trying to train for close to twenty years now. I don’t curse, raise my voice, or in any way make a spectacle. I never have, not after the year I turned four and Mama and Daddy sat me down and explained what a true lady is and what they expected of me.

  After that, it was one deportment class after another. I know how to serve tea like a royal, sit up straight enough that I look like I couldn’t slump if I were dead, and I’m just the sweetest little loser that ever was born, I think morosely as my skin starts itching with the need to run.

  But I can’t. It’s this, or I have to go in front of the Committee of the Women for Change at tomorrow morning’s breakfast meeting and tell them all that I like…I like doing men doggie style and dominating sex like the true belle I am.

  Just the thought has me searching my arms for hives or hellfire, as I think about that darn wine dinner I had with Ginger and the very unladylike road that led me on. Wine became shots, and soon enough I was cussing like a sailor and saying the most outlandish things.

  God help me, I put myself in this position, and while there is always the option of bailing out now and running home to hide, I know that if I do not do this, Ginger will show up at that meeting tomorrow and force me to do something that makes me burn with shame.

  I can’t…you have to, Cleopatra Ducaine. Since when have you ever broken a promise? Mama would roll in her grave, and so would poor Lydia.