“Bitch is aiming at me?”
Our team falls apart because Soph aims at Jess, Kane aims at Soph, and now Jay aims at Kane.
“Come at me, motherfucker. I’ll pop you between the eyes and finish this.”
While my supposed teammates quibble over stupidity, my second target uses their distraction to dart across the open field, grab his injured soldier, and drag him behind a massive stack of hay bales. I follow his two-hundred-and-ten-pound frame through my scope, stroke a finger over the side of my weapon, and wait for him to screw up a second time.
“I got this one. In three.” I’m not sure what it says about my brain or the way I’m wired, but it’s like I get a preview into the future when I hold a weapon. Just a two-second peek into my target’s decisions. “He’s gonna step out in two.” I slide my finger over the trigger. “One.” I fire and watch as red explodes against his back when he steps out and tries to run. “Target down.”
“Nailed it–” Jay’s celebration stops when our third target loses his mind and steps out like a dumb shit. Jay pauses his sentence, aims, then fires his shot with precision so his target drops and red spills from his helmet. “Fuckin’ nailed it. Did you see that, Kane?”
“Saw it. Good shot. Last one.”
“Dibs.” Eric sits on the opposite side of the clearing from me. He lays on his stomach on the hill, his sniper rifle trained on the bales of hay that Alex Turner – chief of police – hides behind. His soldiers are down, his army is defeated. He’s the last man standing, and he will not survive tonight. “I wanna lay out the chief.”
“No, I wanna do it.” I crawl three feet to my left and reset with a better angle. “I’ve been waiting for this day.”
“He’s mine,” Kane drawls. “He wants to test me, he thinks he gets an opinion on whether Jessie and I marry… he’s mine. That’s a direct order.”
Jay growls through my earpiece, because he wanted it bad. He’s still finding parking violations on his windshield every time he walks away from his car, even if he’s not actually breaking any laws.
Alex Turner doesn’t get a sore wrist from whacking off, but from writing bullshit citations just because he can.
“You got Oz,” Kane murmurs. “You took that motherfucker down, so stop bitching.”
“But I wanted the chief,” he whines. “He thinks he gets to look at me like I’m a criminal every time we’re in the same room.”
“Jay, youarea criminal,” Soph snaps. “You both are. You’re bad news, and I wouldn’t let you marry my sister either, if I had the choice.”
“Hedoesn’t get a choice. Wedding is in two weeks, and I’ll be fucked if he stops this.”
“Bogey! Bogey at six o’clock.”
“What the fuck…?” Kane murmurs, and then, “What the fuck!”
He jumps to his feet when, nine months pregnant with twins and waddling, Jess sneaks between a set of hay bales in sweatpants and her man’s shirt covering her massively stretched belly. Her hair is tied in a high knot, her breath comes in white puffs from the cold air this late at night. Alex doesn’t know she’s coming, but she’s not being particularly quiet either. He’s so focused on the guns up high, he doesn’t notice his own sister sneaking up on his six while he crouches behind cover.
“Jessica!” Kane drops his weapon and tears the goggles from his eyes. “Jessica Lenaghan! Don’t you do it.”
“Way to blow her cover, Bishop.” I roll my eyes and watch this midday drama unfold with the stupidest grin on my face.
I’m a hardened ranger, a career military man who left after too many years of doing too much that made it hard for me to sleep, but since my brothers brought these girls into the fold, I find myself smiling more and more. I would lead any one of them to my bed if the opportunity was there, because my brothers don’t settle for ordinary. They bagged extraordinary – brainsandbeauty – which turns me the fuck on.
But I don’t say any of that out loud. There are lines a brother doesn’t cross, and imagining little Jessie in my bed would end with Kane Bishop’s nine-millimeter pressed to my temple while I say my goodbyes.
And I’d have no one to blame but myself.
So instead, I treat her like a sister – a sister I enjoy seeing in Daisy Dukes – and thank the universe that nobody can read my thoughts like I can read my targets’.
“You hear me, Jessie?” I ask her.
“I hear you.” She has an earpiece just like the rest of us, and despite the fact she’s top-heavy and bound to topple over at any moment, she continues to slide through the darkness toward Alex. “Guide me.”
“Turn to the left now.”
“Don’t guide her!” Kane shouts. “Jessica. Get back under cover. What if you take a rogue shot? These things hurt!”
“So don’t shoot at me, dumbass. Where to, Spence?”