Page 70 of Deadly Deception
“I think you can do any damn thing you set your mind to.” Jackson turned in to the driveway and parked in the garage. As he turned off the truck, he said, “Not that you need my help, but if there’s anything I can do, say the word.”
Essie couldn’t hold back the smile. Didn’t want to. His confidence in her abilities made one hell of an aphrodisiac. She got out of the truck and met him at the door leading into the house. “Would it be sappy if I told you I love you?”
As he looked down at her, his face lit up like Christmas morning. “I suppose, but do it anyway.”
Reaching out, she gripped his roughened hand, and when her gaze met his, it felt as if all the air had left the garage. “I love you, Russell Jackson.”
“I love you too.” He pulled her against him, lowered his head, and kissed the living daylights out of her. When he finally came up for air, he practically beamed. “Let’s get married again. The whole nine yards this time—church, family, friends—”
“No church.”
“Okay, no church, but I want you in a dress.”
Essie arched one eyebrow. “Is this a negotiation?”
“Isn’t everything?”
She pursed her lips to hold back a grin. Sick as it sounded, she was kind of enjoying this. “I’m not wearing white.”
“I can live with that.” Humor curved the corners of his mouth. “What color dress are we talking?”
Good question. She paused to think it over. “I suppose black is out of the question.”
“That would be correct.”
“In that case, fire-engine red.”
Jackson made a choked noise. “Momma ain’t gonna like that.”
“Good thing Momma’s not wearing the dress.”
He laughed. “God, I love you so damn much.”
He kissed her again, long and slow with lots of tongue, not stopping until she thought she’d dissolve into a puddle on the garage floor.
“Let’s go inside,” she murmured against his mouth.
“Good idea.” He opened the door, and when she walked inside, he gave her ass a playful swat. “We’ll hammer out the rest of the details later. Right now I want you naked.”
Epilogue
There were times inlife when good people did terrible things for good reasons. Navarre had come to terms with that unpleasant reality a long time ago, after he’d killed his first enemy combatant in a country half the world away.
Pulse steady, senses sharp, he peered through the scope of his rifle to observe his intended target. Most people had this mental image of snipers working from rooftops. But, in reality, the best position was inside a room with an open window. It concealed your location, made the muzzle flash difficult to spot, and masked the report of the supersonic round.
Down below and three houses over, Konstantin Petrov lounged by the pool in nothing but a neon-yellow Speedo that no man should ever wear voluntarily. A contingent of bodyguards stood nearby, obscuring the view, while he continued to talk on the phone as if he hadn’t a care in the world. His bikini-clad mistress—he had three of them—sipped a drink on the lounge chair beside him, a bored expression on her face.
Navarre had been watching for the better part of three days, waiting for the opportunity to do what needed to be done.
It wasn’t a task he took lightly, but as a pragmatic matter of necessity. There’d be hell to pay if the asshole ever found out that Nina Flint was still alive. And he would find out; it was only a matter of time. When he did, he’d rain down fire on poor Nina, and probably the rest of the Flint family just to make a point.
Navarre refused to let that happen, just as he refused to feel a shred of remorse for what he was about to do. The Flints were good, decent people; they’d treated him and Jackson like they were members of the family. Hell, they were more like family to Navarre than his actual flesh and blood. Not that that was a high bar to clear, considering his family fell somewhere between Addams and Manson on the fucked-up family spectrum.
As it always did before he fired his weapon, time seemed to slow around him. His breathing grew shallow, his periphery narrowed, until the only thing in his focus was the middle-aged man in the crosshairs.
At last, Konstantin Petrov stood, stretched, and gave Navarre the unobstructed line of fire he’d been waiting for.
On the exhale, he pressed the trigger.
The suppressor reduced the boom to a crack. His shoulder absorbed the recoil. The bullet hit home, Konstantin’s body crumpled to the ground, and all hell broke loose in the compound.
Joints achy from being in the same position for so long, Navarre pulled back from the window, closed it, and made quick work of disassembling his rifle. Once the pieces were packed into his overnight bag, he slipped out of the room. It would take a few days to drive back to Orlando, and he wanted to get on the road as soon as possible.
At the last red light before I-40, he switched on his burner phone and called the only number in the list of contacts.
“It’s done.”