Page 51 of Echo, the Sniper (Men of PSI #2)

Maybe he hadn’t, I thought as wild hope rocketed through me. Maybe this was all just a big misunderstanding...

No.

Wishful thinking was stupid.

I was done with being stupid.

Shaking, my body covered in clammy-cold sweat, I sagged back on my calves before reaching out to flush.

It took every ounce of energy I had to drag myself to my feet so I could rinse my mouth out and try to collect whatever shreds of sanity I had left.

I had to think , but I couldn’t get past the stunned disbelief that Echo would ever be a willing participant in the most traumatizing experience of my life.

.. and then not tell me about it. It just wasn’t. .. wasn’t...

Understandable.

Still trembling, I locked the bathroom door as if that would somehow keep me safe from the people I thought I knew but clearly didn’t.

Then I scooped up the phone I’d dropped by the toilet, lowered the seat and sat down to stare at the phone’s screen.

Several seconds crawled by as my stomach knotted until I was sure I’d throw up again, and I almost wished I’d never opened that damned audio file in the first place.

But that was weak, and I’d promised myself I would never be weak again.

But, oh God, I didn’t want to hear the rest of the recording. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t, I didn’t...

Tension swelled until I half-believed it would shatter my bones.

No matter how painful reality was, I couldn’t hide from it.

I’d hidden from reality when Dane had started showing abusive behavior and I’d told myself that it was just his way, or that it wasn’t that bad.

I’d learned the hard way that avoidance behavior wasn’t a coping mechanism. It was a slow and terrible death.

I had to do this. I had to know.

With a sense of doom, I watched my thumb shake as it moved over the Play icon.

“—need you to kill me.”

There was a significant silence before Echo spoke. “I’m onboard as long as you don’t ever contact me again.”

I hunched over my lap as my last feeble hope died.

I’m onboard.

“Now is your one and only chance to tell me exactly what you need from me,” Echo went on, and for some reason his voice now seemed almost unrecognizable.

A stranger’s voice. Maybe because the man on the recording was a stranger to me.

“After today you’ll continue dealing with Cap Fogelmann through your US Marshal handler. ”

“I just need my, er, killing to be very public, very believable. The more blood and drama, the better.”

I whimpered while bile rose in my throat, but I didn’t know I was crying until tears splattered on my phone screen.

“We can have someone onsite to help with the blood packs—they’ll look like they’re trying to staunch the blood flow, but they’ll actually be pushing it out of the packs in the body armor we’ll give you to wear under your clothes,” Fogelmann said.

Warrington Coates, I thought numbly, seeing how all the pieces fit together, now that it was too late.

He was former military, like Cap Fogelmann.

.. and Echo, who had stood there while I interrogated Coates like a fool.

“They can pose as a business associate of yours as they walk you to your designated spot—a spot that Echo will choose for optimum success.”

And there it was, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut as waves of betrayal battered me so hard it was all I could do not to sob out loud. Confirmation that Echo had been toying with me from the very beginning. He’d known all along that everything was fake. A joke .

God, how he must have been laughing at me.

Humiliation burned like acid all the way to my soul.

But even worse than that was the pain of a heart not just cracking, but shattering .

“I’ll need a large, empty area,” Echo said coolly, and I made myself listen to every word with an almost savage intensity so I could brand his betrayal into my brain that much deeper.

Maybe then I could burn out every other emotion I felt for him.

“It can’t be crowded, because I refuse to shoot even a dummy round into a crowd.

Also, there needs to be multiple lines of sight for me to choose from, because I’ve done this sort of thing before—faking someone’s death—and I know exactly what will work.

You need to scout out possible venues and turn them in to PSI within forty-eight hours so I’ll have time to physically go over each venue and decide which one would be best suited for your so-called death. ”

God. Just... God.

“Of course,” came Dane’s obsequious tone, clearly pleased he was getting what he’d paid for. “I think Denver’s Convention Center would be perfect—”

I shut the recording off, then turned my phone completely off, as if that would somehow distance me from the truth. And the truth was that Echo and Dane had worked together. Conspired to bring about Dane’s “death.” Then, with Dane out of the way, Echo had wormed his way into my life.

Why?

Had Dane hired him to become my bodyguard, or was that a lie as well?

Frantically I opened my phone once more to search through Dane’s files, my pulse thundering in my ears.

I searched through both the digital and audio files and found nothing else linked to PSI.

The first file was barely two minutes long, and after giving it a quick listen I learned it was only an initial call to find out who was in charge and if PSI worked with agencies like the US Marshals.

Nothing about bodyguarding.

Nothing that would explain why Echo had inserted himself into my life.

Why was Echo in my life now? Why?

The money.

My stomach churned so much I nearly doubled over, sweat prickling down my spine.

I gripped the edge of the sink and stared at my reflection.

Huge, horrified eyes rimmed with tears. Pasty-white complexion.

Bloodless lips. I looked hunted. Shattered.

Betrayed. Echo would take one look at me and know the jig was up. And then...

What?

What would he do? Kill me? Or persuade me I was imagining things? That I was being dramatic? Or maybe just stupid?

And then he’d kill me as soon as I dropped my guard?

You’re spiraling, I scolded myself fiercely and tried to breathe the rising panic away. Panic was a luxury I didn’t have time for. I had to think, not feel.

Think, think, think.

There was no reason for Echo to kill me.

Then I grimaced, because my soul felt like it twisted inside-out at the mere thought.

But I had no choice; his betrayal made it necessary for me to consider every possible angle.

For all I knew, he and his buddies at PSI have been behind all the crap I’d been going through since Dane’s “death” just so I would need a bodyguard.

How better to gain my confidence than to present himself as someone who’d do anything to protect me?

Once he had my trust, no doubt he would have then gotten around to wheedling the offshore account info out of me, maybe even have me transfer it to another account entirely so that he could “protect” it as diligently as he protected me.

And then he would kill me.

“No.” I closed my eyes again as something vital withered away inside.

My heart. My soul. Something precious that I needed to keep on living, but was now gone.

I didn’t want to live with the knowledge that Echo had only come into my life just so he could betray me.

I didn’t want to believe the man I’d given my heart to—the man I trusted —was cruelly playing me for a big cash payout.

And I seriously didn’t want to think that at the end of his little game, I’d become the twentieth hashmark tattooed on his arm.

No, no, no, no...

This couldn’t be happening, some part of me insisted—the shattered, brokenhearted part. This couldn’t be real. Yes, his entire presence in my life was a lie, but I knew he had to feel something for me. I’d seen it in his eyes, felt it in his touch.

He had to feel something .

But something wasn’t enough.

He’d lied from the moment he’d opened his mouth that night my house burned down.

That was bad enough, targeting me when my life was at its lowest, but then he’d made things physical between us, while simultaneously making it seem he was reluctant to do it with all that bodyguard crush nonsense he’d spouted.

At the time, I’d felt honored he’d overcome his professional concerns to become my personal porn tour guide, but now all I could see was how he'd played me.

He'd wanted me to know he was bending the rules for me. He’d wanted me to know I was special to him.

Which was why I thought he had to feel something for me, I realized on a killing tide of despair.

But everything had been a lie. I wasn’t special to him, and what we’d shared wasn’t special, either.

Sure, he’d shown me what a real orgasm was, but that didn’t mean that he loved me.

It just meant he was good in bed. A talent he’d used to get past my defenses until all I saw were floating hearts and happily-ever-afters.

My na?veté was so humiliating all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and die.

“Hey, baby girl.” The knock on the bathroom door made me jump so hard I nearly screamed, and I had to clap a hand over my mouth to keep it from escaping. “You’ve been in there a while. You okay?”

Oh. God.

“Um.” I stared at the door while my heart tried to tunnel out of my chest. That was when it hit me— fear .

This was fear , and I was feeling it because of Echo .

Never in a million years had I believed that would ever happen, but he’d lied to me.

From day one, he’d pretended to be someone he wasn’t in order to insert himself into my life.

Like a fool, I’d let him.