Page 50 of Echo, the Sniper (Men of PSI #2)

Don’t Break

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T HE DEEP TIMbrE OF Echo’s voice was both familiar and utterly bizarre when in connection with Dane. It honestly made my mind reel.

“Go for Echo.”

“Echo. How... colorful.” Tension twisted my stomach into nauseated knots at the sound of Dane’s sneering voice.

Apparently he still had the ability to trigger everything horrible inside of me.

“Mr. Echols, this is Dane Grant. Your superior, James Fogelmann, gave me your number so we could discuss the particulars of my case.”

“ Obviously ,” came Echo’s dry response.

See? There it was. Confirmation that this was just a meeting about bodyguard duties.

Totally understandable.

There was a beat of silence, where I imagined both men—Dane, blinking in indignation that Echo wasn’t kowtowing to him, and Echo refusing to fill the awkward silence because he probably had more important things to do than stroke Dane’s ego. It was a wonder Dane didn’t fire him on the spot.

“Yes. Well.” Clearly Dane was looking for a way forward, and I couldn’t help but admire how Echo didn’t help him out. “Has your employer filled you in on the details of the mission he’s assigned to you?”

I thought I heard Echo’s short sigh. “Yes.”

“Don’t you military types usually say sir? As in, yes sir?”

I closed my eyes. Oh God, Dane was so utterly cringe.

“We do.”

Again, there was an awkward beat of silence. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“I’m waiting for you to call me ‘sir.’”

“That’s going to be a long wait for you, then,” Echo replied, and knowing him as well as I did, I could hear the laughter in his tone. “Let me know when you’re done waiting for something that’s never going to happen so we can get down to business.”

“You listen to me, you insignificant grunt,” Dane growled, making me gasp in second-hand mortification as his contempt for hardworking people who served their country spilled out.

“I’m paying your company top-dollar for this mission.

I will be given all the respect that deserves, or your employer will hear about how you were a fucking smartass to one of his very important clients. ”

Oh my God, Dane just went there. He actually pulled the I’m-gonna-tell card like the eternal brat he was. And here I’d thought I couldn’t get any more embarrassed for him.

Echo’s sigh spoke volumes. “Go right ahead. But just so you know, Cap Fogelmann is sitting right here in the conference room with me, and he doesn’t appreciate having his time wasted any more than I do.”

“You will not refer to members of my team as insignificant grunts ever again, Mr. Grant,” came an unfamiliar man’s voice.

Softer, smoother, and reminding me of a glacier—ice from top to bottom and capable of grinding a mountain into gravel.

“Please keep in mind that what you’re wanting to do—this mission, as you keep calling it—is completely unnecessary according to an initial report we received from the US Marshals Service.

At any time, Private Security International has the option of dropping your case, refunding your money, and walking away.

Half my team already wishes to do so, since they don’t like dealing with known criminals.

But since I’ve worked with Gary Schuller, your handler, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. Don’t abuse that.”

I frowned, trying to absorb all the information that came out of James “Cap” Fogelmann’s statement. What had he meant by unnecessary? Not to be too stuck on myself, but hiring a bodyguard to keep me safe from all of Dane’s enemies had proven to be pretty darn necessary, as far as I was concerned.

“Of course.” Dane sounded like he was trying to smile while chewing on a mouthful of glass. “But it must be said, your subordinate seems to have no idea how to handle well-paying clientele. At the bare minimum, he should show proper respect when speaking to them.”

“As one of the best snipers in the world with nineteen confirmed kills, Echo isn’t exactly a people-person, Mr. Grant.

No sniper is. Try not to lose sight of the fact that it’s his talent with a rifle you’re wanting to buy, not him.

If anything, you’re the one who needs to show him proper respect, and I strongly suggest you do it now before he decides to walk. ”

Wait.

What?

I froze so completely it hurt. I stopped breathing.

My blood turned to ice, filling my veins with pain and my lungs with icicles.

But it was still understandable, I told myself even as my heart began to throw itself at my sternum.

Dane had wanted to buy the services of the most lethal bodyguard that PSI had to protect me.

Surely that was what Echo’s boss meant—that Echo would kill to protect me.

Except that deep down, I’d always known Dane had never given a damn about keeping me safe.

Not to the point of hiring the deadliest man they had at PSI.

That didn’t make sense. From the moment Echo had told me Dane had made him my bodyguard, none of it had made any sense.

When had Dane ever cared about my safety?

And why had Dane needed to buy Echo’s talent with a rifle?

Deep within the ice that was taking over my insides, a terrible suspicion began to take root, whispering a nightmarish answer long before I was prepared to face it.

Dane had needed Echo’s sniper skills because he’d needed a crack shot to...to...

Help him fake his death.

No.

That couldn’t be true. Echo would have told me.

I had to be wrong. Had to be.

Sweat beaded along my upper lip while my stomach did a queasy roll.

Echo would have told me if he’d actually been the sniper to shoot Dane.

Once we’d given in to the crazy-hot attraction pulling us together, he would have told me everything.

That was how we were—all cards on the table, holding nothing back.

He knew I had serious trust issues, so he’d promised me he would always be upfront with me.

That we’d be upfront with each other. That was the word he’d used—upfront.

Our ground rules were built on that word, and I trusted him.

I trusted him.

Dane’s frustrated sigh brought me back to the present. “Fine. I apologize for my reaction to his unprofessional behavior and referring to him as what he seems to be, an insignificant grunt.”

“At this point, I think it’s time we walk the hell away from this guy,” Echo said, clearly talking to Fogelmann and not Dane.

“Despite what Schuller is asking us to do, the official US Marshals report says Grant can be disappeared into the WPP the old-fashioned way, yeah? We don’t owe this Gary Schuller anything. ”

“Wait, no! I do apologize, and I swear I mean it,” Dane almost shouted, sounding frantic. “This is how... how I need things to go down. I need your expertise, your prowess with a rifle, and I’m willing to pay whatever you want for it. I need you to make it look real. I need you to kill me.”

No.

God, no .

A whisper of a sound escaped me, a sound of sheer pain as the truth—a truth I hadn’t wanted to believe—revealed itself to me in all it hideous glory.

No.

Memories filled my head—Echo feigning ignorance when I told him about Dane’s disdain for members of the military.

How he’d walked around the convention center with me as if he’d never seen it before.

How he and Mary Jane—Good grief, Mary Jane had to be in on it, too—had seemed just as shocked as I was that Dane was alive.

NO.

But they’d known.

And they’d played me for a fool.

Why?

Because they thought I was stupid .

I shuddered, devastation and betrayal sucking every ounce of warmth from my body.

Before Echo had even met me, he had known Dane was still alive.

He’d known . That was why he’d never referred to Dane as my late husband, instead calling him my “ex.” In his own way, Echo had been telling me that I wasn’t actually a widow.

Worse yet, he’d done it all while looking me in the eye and pretending to respect me. He’d even done it while stroking my ego about how smart I was. All the while he was lying to my face, no doubt laughing because I was too stupid to catch on.

“God.” The humiliated whimper broke from me, and it sounded like what it was—a plea for help.

I really had been stupid—as stupid as Echo believed me to be—to get myself into this mess.

I’d believed some random gorgeous man had come out of nowhere to “help” me.

But life didn’t work that way, at least for me.

No, never for me. I never got any of the lucky breaks other people got.

I just got... breaks.

“Damn it.” I hit the phone against my brow in a fit of self-harm, but I couldn’t help it.

I’d been betrayed, but I’d let it happen.

Now that it was too late, I could see I should have paid attention to that little voice insisting Dane would have never hired a bodyguard to keep me safe, but I hadn’t. I hadn’t seen this coming at all.

That really did make me stupid.

Stupid, and in love with a man who was nothing more than a lie.

I almost hyperventilated as that thought slammed into me, and my skin iced over in horrifying fear.

Oh, God. I didn’t know Echo. I didn’t know who he really was, or what he wanted from me.

Yet here I was, isolated with him and his partner-in-crime Mary Jane, in the fucking Rocky Mountains, and no one else on the planet knew where I was.

What were they planning to do with me?

A deafening roar filled my ears. The blood drained to my feet along with my heart and stomach, and the edges of my vision darkened.

Then my stomach flew back up as if on a bungee cord, and I stumble-ran for the bathroom, slammed the door and hit my knees in front of the toilet with half a second to spare.

As I threw up the entire contents of my stomach, the only thing I could hear was Dane’s hideous voice on a loop— I need you to kill me.

I need you to kill me. I need you to kill me.

But... Wait.

Had Echo actually agreed to do it?