Page 56 of Echo, the Sniper (Men of PSI #2)

No Apologies

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A FTER THREE DAYS OF interviews that were actually interrogations by an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies, I was so ready to put this nightmare behind me.

I wasn’t even sure why anyone needed to talk to me.

Smart professional that she was, Mary Jane had attached a body cam to herself before heading out after me, and recorded everything that had happened in the woods.

Come to find out, she and Echo had watched me “go off-roading,” as she put it, via the security cams they’d set up around the property.

The moment I ran, they’d known their mission had gone sideways.

Around the time Echo had passed out, Mary Jane had half-limped, half-hopped to where I was frantically opening Echo’s jacket and applying pressure to the bullet wound I’d found in his upper right chest. She’d called for all sorts of backup the moment she had heard masculine voices out there in the woods with me, so in an impressively short amount of time every type of emergency vehicle descended on our location.

In the short span of time it took for them to arrive, Mary Jane tried hobbling off the pain coming from being hit in her hip, which meant she left a bloody trail wherever she went.

As she did so, she’d wasted no time in chewing me out.

Apparently, my attempt at escaping her and Echo had put all three of our lives in danger.

Her pissy stance lessened only slightly when I replayed the audio file for her, but she still maintained that I should have just asked them about it.

I took grim satisfaction in her silence after asking her what she would have done in my place, stuck in the middle of nowhere with no access to a vehicle, in the company of armed people who’d been lying from the start about who they were and why they were in my life.

Around that time, Echo had come to long enough to tell Mary Jane to back the hell off and go wait for the emergency vehicles at the tree line so she could lead them to us.

I’d then expected Echo to plead his case, but all he’d done was press a cold hand over mine on his chest, his breathing terrible as he said, “I’d rather die.

.. than hurt you, Rory. That’s... not a lie.

Loving you... not a lie. None of it was. ”

There was so much that was wrong with what he said, because he’d very clearly lied to me from the first moment we met.

But only an ass would argue with a man who’d taken a bullet for her, so I’d said nothing as police cars, ambulances and a freaking Flight for Life helicopter showed up.

Echo got flown out along with Mary Jane, while I was taken via ambulance back down to Denver to be treated for a case of shock and frostbite.

My takeaway from all this?

I needed to stop having catastrophic emergencies in below-freezing weather.

Eventually, as the sun rose on a new day and the hospital was readying to release me, I had broken down and asked about Echo.

All they had been able to tell me was that he was still in surgery.

That was all. No updates on his condition or anything like that.

I wasn’t family, so I wasn’t privy to any details about his condition.

What I was privy to was an unexpected meeting in the ER lobby with none other than James “Cap” Fogelmann, the founder of Private Security International and, come to find out, Mary Jane’s father.

He was a trim, well-built man with a high-and-tight fade cut of his salt-and-pepper hair and horn-rimmed glasses that screamed military, I fully expected him to lay into me like Mary Jane had.

I braced for it, all but certain he’d been in on everything, first with Echo and Dane’s supposed “assassination,” and then with how Echo had inserted himself into my life.

Now was Fogelmann’s chance to do damage control, maybe even put all the blame for what had happened on me the way Mary Jane had.

Just try it, pal.

Nothing could have surprised me more when he’d asked in a gentle voice if I was all right, if I needed anything, and was there anyone he could call for me.

That last one slammed my defenses even further up, because truth be told, I had no one.

I was alone in the world, and therefore vulnerable.

There was no one who cared about me, no one who’d notice if I vanished off the face of the earth.

For all I knew, that was what this Fogelmann dude wanted to check—to see if he could easily dispose of me—so I simply looked at him and said nothing.

He was there for Mary Jane and Echo, as well as protecting his creation, PSI.

He wasn’t on my side. I had no one on my side. No one but me.

That would have to be enough.

When I didn’t answer, he’d tried speaking with me a few minutes more. I gave only the barest minimum of responses, all the while waiting for him to pounce. To show his true colors. To prove that he was just like everyone else in the world—a user in a universe filled with vicious users.

The only thing this shifty Fogelmann guy did was offer to call a lawyer for me to help me navigate the inevitable interviews with law enforcement, before handing me a business card, in case I needed anything.

Staring at him like he might be an ax murderer—because I honestly didn’t know who the hell I could trust—I simply nodded my thanks and walked away.

I didn’t need anyone.

I was safer by myself.

That was how I rolled for three days, waiting on pins and needles for someone to take another pot shot at me thanks to Dane’s now-infamous offshore account.

The interviews were interminable, but when one of the cops happened to mention Mary Jane’s body cam footage, I knew there was nothing more they truly needed from me.

I relaxed enough to believe they weren’t going to blame me for the bodies of Gary Schuller and Dane Grant—something I’d had nightmares about for the past couple of nights—and decided it was time to address the elephant in the room.

I plucked up the courage to look into the bank account that Dane, Gary, Edward and Josiah had been so desperate to get their hands on, and finally discovered the truth.

Wow.

That was a lot of freaking money.

Not the three billion I’d randomly tossed out to cause chaos, but not the measly quarter of a billion dollars that Dane had claimed, either.

It was easily three times that much, and after a four-hour consultation with an estate attorney—who was now on personal retainer—I rested easy that every penny of it was mine, and no one had any legal right to take it from me.

It was like winning the lottery after climbing over bodies through the depths of hell to get it. I knew I should have been happy, but all I felt was numb.

I wasn’t going to lie, though. The money did help, at least when it came to accommodations.

I’d been told by the DA’s office to not leave town until their initial investigation was complete, but I no longer had a place to live.

After transferring what I thought was a shocking amount of money into my bank account, I chose a hotel suite in downtown Denver with a glorious, floor-to-ceiling view of the snow-draped Rockies and every amenity you could shake a stick at.

That first night, I’d slept the clock around, getting up only to order room service and to call the hospital to check in on Echo’s condition.

Other than learning that he’d been moved from the ICU to a floor called Telemetry/Rehab, I knew nothing.

Countless times I thought of calling his personal phone, just to see if he was conscious enough to pick up.

But every time I made myself stop, ruthlessly reminding myself that all he would do was tell me more lies.

That didn’t stop me from wanting to at least sneak into the hospital to put eyes on him and convince myself he was still alive.

Logically I knew it was good he’d been moved out of ICU to a floor with the word “rehab” in it, but I still worried.

No matter what his motives were, Echo had been shot because of me, and there had been so much blood. ..

Just like when Dane had been shot, the ragey part of my brain supplied whenever I weakened. The shot that hadn’t been real. The theater that Dane, Echo and PSI had concocted to play out in front of me so I would be appropriately scarred for life.

Ugh.

It was no wonder my head was in such a messed-up place. The whole situation was messed up.

On the fourth morning, I awoke to a message on my phone informing me that the DA’s office had concluded its initial investigation and I was now free to go.

With the morning sun streaming gently through the windows to pour across the king-sized bed’s white down comforter, I stared at that message.

I could go now... but where? Where was I supposed to go?

There was nothing for me in Denver anymore except bad memories and pain everywhere I looked.

There was also no longer any reason to go to Chicago now that I knew the truth.

I was homeless, alone in the world, with no plans for the future and no one to share that future with.

That was something I couldn’t tackle on an empty stomach, so I forced myself to get up, shower, and get dressed in some of the snazzy new clothes I had picked up in the hotel’s boutique downstairs.

Today I chose navy velvet leggings, a belted cashmere sweater with flowy bell sleeves and suede ankle boots.

I Dutch-braided my hair and put on some make-up, hoping it would make me feel more human, then headed downstairs to the main restaurant.

I would eat, drink some eye-opening coffee, and decide what to do with the rest of my life.

A life without Echo.

A life without anyone.