Page 47 of Echo, the Sniper (Men of PSI #2)

Understandable

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I T TOOK SEVERAL HOURS for Echo and Mary Jane to get all their security tech set up the way they wanted it. That gave me some much-needed time to absorb the biggest shock of my life.

No.

The biggest shock was when Dane had been brutally murdered right in front of me.

The second-biggest shock was finding out it had been nothing more than a bit of government-sponsored theatre.

Their motives hadn’t been personal, of course.

Logically I knew that. It had been a farce staged by the authorities to make Dane’s enemies believe he was dead.

My reaction had simply sold it. No wonder Dane had been so insistent I come with him for that last so-called business meeting.

Never mind that I was now psychologically traumatized by his “death.” He’d needed an appropriate response from me to make it seem that much more convincing.

The bastard .

After the Dane-is-alive bomb had been dropped, Echo and I retreated to the bedroom.

That was where he had to remind me to breathe, and I found I still couldn’t say much more than “I can’t believe this,” which Echo vehemently responded with countless variations of “he’s a piece of shit, forget about him. ”

While I agreed Dane was a piece of shit, I couldn’t afford to forget about Dane Grant.

In my mind, that was like trying to forget a snake was lost somewhere in your house.

Eventually you were going to cross paths with it, and as it bit you, you’d realize the last thing you should have done was forget its existence.

Facing that fact killed the last of my shock.

In its place rose a terrible, ugly fury, the likes of which I’d never known before.

None of this was fair, damn it. It was like he’d become one of those killers in slasher flicks; just when you thought he was gone forever, he popped up stronger than ever.

But this was no ridiculous piece of low-budget Hollywood fluff.

This was my life, and I wasn’t about to put up with his never-ending torment.

Dane had taken so much from me, but I’d had it with not fighting back.

He had no right to me anymore. He had no right to steal my peace.

Now and forever, I was done with Dane-fucking-Grant.

That deep-seated anger simmered for the remainder of the afternoon, but eventually even it got overtaken by hunger.

Since I couldn’t remember the last time I ate, I made my way back out into the main part of the cabin to get dinner started.

Echo had mentioned doing a perimeter check as the sky darkened ominously and snow began to fall in an unexpected squall, so the very least I could do was get a piping hot dinner ready once his work outside was done.

After pondering the contents of the cabin’s small fridge, I made an executive decision and pulled out all the ingredients for spaghetti with my special meat sauce, toasted slabs of garlic bread and a salad.

For just a moment I suffered a flutter of reflexive panic and looked frantically at my phone to see what time it was, before taking a deep breath and shoving the phone back into my pocket.

I refused to care what time it was, we’d eat whenever dinner was ready. 6:30PM be damned.

Setting pieces of garlic bread on an aluminum-lined tray that fit into the cabin’s snazzy little toaster oven, I set a pot of water to boil for the pasta, then focused on making a variation of my legendary spaghetti meat sauce.

A pound each of ground chuck and ground pork went into a skillet with some olive oil.

Then came the finely diced onions, half a bulb of garlic, oregano, basil and garlic powder, then finished it up with tomato paste, tomato puree, and a healthy dose of a moderately priced grocery store red wine.

I hadn’t been able to find my favorite brand of wine to cook with at the little mountain store we’d hit to stock up, but I reminded myself that Echo wouldn’t care about such things; he wouldn’t throw his plate against the wall before forcing me to eat food off the floor. That wasn’t Echo.

I just had to keep reminding my stupid anxiety of that.

“Mm, something smells amazing.” Clearly following her nose, Mary Jane, now dressed in a snowflake-themed blue sweater and jeans, slid onto a stool at the peninsula counter.

“Let’s see, I smell beef and pork, red wine, garlic, oregano, maybe some basil, and.

.. is that garlic powder as well? If so, you and I are going to be the best of friends.

You can’t have too much garlic in Italian cooking, as far as I’m concerned. ”

I gaped at her. Not only did she smell what color wine I used, but she could also tell the difference between fresh garlic and garlic powder by smell ? Holy crap. “That’s... weirdly on-target. You didn’t miss a thing.”

“Awesome, my mouth’s watering already. Anything I can do to help?”

I gestured toward the fridge. “There’s fresh salad makings in the crisper. Echo picked the dressing, so I guess we’ll be using that.”

“Twenty bucks says it’s ranch.” Coming around the counter, she made a beeline for the fridge. Then I heard her sigh. “Yep. Ranch. If we were at my place, I’d make you a balsamic vinaigrette that would make your taste buds cry.”

“You like to cook?”

“I like to eat . There’s a difference.” She gathered the salad makings, then went on a search mission for a bowl, knives and cutting board.

“I might be the pickiest eater you’ve ever met, because I’ll only eat good food.

Not processed. Not microwaved. Not frozen and reheated.

It drove my late husband crazy, how I would rather starve than eat anything from a fast-food joint when we were out on assignment. ”

That caught my attention as I stirred in the pasta. “You’re a widow?”

“Going on three years now.” Unearthing a carving knife and a plastic cutting board, she gave everything a quick rinse before going to work.

“But unlike what you had to endure in your marriage, I was lucky enough to be married to my best friend. Finn was a man who just... got me, you know? We laughed at the same stupid jokes, and got pissed off at the same absurd things. We were a matched set. When I lost him, I lost a part of myself, and there’s no coming back from that. Not really.”

Though Mary Jane’s tone was as brisk and efficient as she seemed to be, I heard the unending pain writhing just beneath that meticulously calm facade. “I am truly sorry, Mary Jane. I wish it had been your husband who came back from the dead, not mine.”

“First off, my sister, Dane Grant was never a husband. He was a tyrant and a monster, and what Echo said earlier is true—that asshole isn’t your husband anymore, so get that nightmare of a thought out of your head.

Also, if Finn suddenly popped back into my life after having left me in the worst kind of mourning hell for years , I promise you, woman to woman and sister to sister, I’d rip his dick off with my bare hands. ”

The way she viciously plowed through the salad veggies made me believe her like nothing else. “I suppose I feel the same way about Dane, but for very different reasons.”

“The way I understand it, you’d be totally within your rights to give that worthless piece of garbage nothing but your middle finger.”

In that moment I became convinced that everyone should have a Mary Jane in their life. “Don’t laugh, but I don’t think I’ve ever flipped anyone off in my life.”

“Oh my God, no .” In the process of cutting avocado halves into fancy fans too delicate to eat, she stared at me in genuine horror. “I didn’t know anyone like that existed on earth. How else do you express your contempt or rage or, I don’t know, literally anything else?”

A laugh burst out of me. “I was the perfect daughter of a politician who was always in the public eye. Right from the cradle I was taught to never make waves.”

“Oh honey, that has to change, because, wow. Waves are a blast .” Then her green eyes lit up. “In fact, that gives me an idea. We can always send a photo of you to the Marshal handling Dane’s case as proof of life, and you can flip him off that way. Trust me, he’ll get the message.”

“I don’t even understand why Dane’s so worried about my welfare,” I muttered, stirring the boiling spaghetti with aggression. “He hired Echo and Private Security International in the event of his supposed death in order to keep me safe. Why is he freaking out now?”

“I wouldn’t bother asking him—if you even choose to speak to him,” Mary Jane added, her knife a whirl. Holy crap, was she making rosettes out of the tomatoes? “Personally I wouldn’t even bother telling him to go to hell.”

“Oh, I’ll never speak to that monster again.” On that, I was very firm. “As far as I’m concerned he’s as dead as the marriage I was forced to endure with him. We never should’ve married to begin with. I actively hate him now, but the truth is I never loved him. I didn’t even know what love was.”

“Do you now? Sorry,” she added with a grimace and began cutting cucumbers on a paper-thin bias.

“I know we just met and I’m totally poking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but I’m doing it anyway because I care about Echo.

I’ve known him for years and I have never—repeat, never —seen him as frantically protective, if not downright possessive, of anyone before.

In fact,” she went on while I gobbled up that crumb of information like a starving woman, “he’s never even dated anyone on a hot-and-heavy, regular basis. ”

My heart back-flipped. “Maybe he’s just a private guy, so you wouldn’t know.”

“Oh, he’s private, all right,” she said with an eye-roll. “But trust me, I would still know if there had ever been someone special in his life since he moved to Chicago. There hasn’t been anyone. Until you.”

Forget about back flips. My heart had clearly turned into an Olympic-level gymnast at her words. “I find it hard to believe a man like Echo never dates.”