Page 6 of Echo, the Sniper (Men of PSI #2)

“Our profiler suggested it was the way to go.” At this point, dumping shit on Luke’s doorstep seemed harmless enough. Besides, it was the truth. Sort of.

Her brows drew together. “Why?”

“You’ve been through a lot of shit recently.

Anyone would be fragile after being under all the pressure your ex has brought down on you, but someone from your sheltered background—the daughter of a state senator?

” I shook my head. “Having a bodyguard you didn’t know or hire suddenly roll up on you to tell you that your ex believed you’d be in some form of life-threatening danger was a stress you shouldn’t have to deal with unless it was absolutely necessary.

That fire tonight made it absolutely necessary. ”

“Sheltered, huh?” Something I couldn’t identify moved through her eyes before she inhaled sharply.

“Well, Ethan Esteban Echols, over the past six months I’ve come to learn something, and it’s that Dane’s dirty money is capable of buying nothing except misery.

Since his money bought you, I want nothing to do with that. ”

Shit, shit, shit ... “Look—”

“That’s why I would like to hire you.”

I blinked. Damn. Talk about a curveball. “You what?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but... I can’t tolerate the thought of that man still trying to manipulate every last detail of my life, even from beyond the grave.”

I frowned. “He manipulated you?”

“He manipulated everyone . Lying, flattering, gaslighting, deflecting, projecting, reverse psychology... you name it, Dane did it. There was a point in my life where I would have just shut my mouth and accepted whatever Dane did or said. But when your entire life burns down, a funny thing happens—I’m done with being quiet.

I’m not accepting anything anymore. I may be fragile, as you say, but I haven’t shattered, and I have freaking had it.

I’m not allowing my life to just happen around me anymore.

From this point on, I need to steer how things go, so I want to hire you. How much?”

I gaped at her. Who the hell was this pocket-sized tornado, and where had she come from? “How much?”

“Yes. Per day.”

I knew exactly what she had in her accounts. She couldn’t afford me. “I’m already paid for.”

“By dirty money. Are you a man who would be happy with that?”

She had no clue where my fee was coming from, so I clamped my mouth shut and simply stared at her.

She nodded as if I’d said something. “Exactly. So let me hire you. I have some money stashed away in a bank account my mother set up for me before she died, and I can sell the jewelry she left me. That’s where my money would be coming from, so you wouldn’t have to worry about the money being dirty. Let me hire you.”

“It’s like you think I can give a refund to a dead man.” When she simply stood there, her chin jutting stubbornly—something I’d never seen from her before—I found myself sighing. “All the Starbucks I can drink.”

It was her turn to blink. “Pardon me?”

“I’m a coffee addict,” I muttered, irritated that she picked now, of all times, to stop being the compliant little wifey she was supposed to be.

Maybe there was more to Rory Grant than I thought.

“Keeping me in mocha heaven takes a helluva lot of bank on a daily basis, so that’s my fee. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it. I need to head back to the house to see if my wallet or phone is salvageable. Then we need to stop by my bank. Even if I have no ID, I remember all the account and routing numbers needed, so hopefully they’ll work with me there.”

“I always thought I had a decent memory when it came to numbers,” I said after I had her tucked into the Range Rover I’d rented and we were headed back to Cherrywood Creek. “But I’ve never seen anyone rattle off numbers the way you do. Do you have a photographic memory?”

She shook her head. “It’s just something I’ve always been able to do.

Apparently most people see a line of individual numbers, but I don’t.

My brain groups them all together in a more memorable number.

For instance, three-thousand, eighteen is a lot easier to remember than trying to remember that there’s a three and a zero, a one and an eight. Does that make sense?”

“It does. I just don’t think my brain can rewire itself to look at a string of numbers and do that. My brain was designed for different things.”

“Like what?”

Now there was a dangerous question if there ever was one. “Just different things.”

“Things like... being a sniper?”

I almost crashed the damn car. “What?”

“That’s what it said on your PSI profile—sniper and long-range threat assessment. Was it wrong? Or did they exaggerate your CV? Maybe you’re just awesome at Call of Duty or Doom and they’re counting that as being an expert.”

Well, well, listen to that sass coming out of the suburbanite’s mouth.

I found myself grinning even as my blood heated and hummed.

“I prefer Legend of Zelda -type games. Quests, monsters and puzzle-solving is my personal video game preference, though I don’t play very often.

Sniper and long-range threat assessment is something I learned to do in the army and I don’t love to do it in my downtime.

I also like to read science fiction, and pretending I know what I’m doing when I open up the hood of a car.

Oh, and I’m decent in the kitchen, too, though my cuisine leans toward what my tía and abuela taught me while growing up in East LA, El Sereno neighborhood.

If you like Mexican food for breakfast, we can be friends. ”

“My favorite cuisine is Mexican food,” she said on a voluptuous sigh that made me think she was imagining digging into something warm and spicy.

Silently I tightened my grip on the steering wheel while a familiar heaviness pooled in my dick.

“Sad to say, I haven’t had it in at least a couple years, and I certainly never made any because Dane.

.. well. If we ever find ourselves in a kitchen, feel free to teach me anything and everything you know. I’m an excellent student.”

She wanted me to teach her. My skin suddenly seemed too tight as I tried not to imagine all the things I could teach her, none of which had to do with cooking.

“I would have to be the judge of that. I’m a very demanding teacher.

I’m also big on practicing, because I’m old school—practice makes perfect. ”

“I... believe in that, too.” Her gaze bounced to me before she bit her lower lip and looked away, as if she wasn’t sure if her response was acceptable and expected to be yelled at. Yelling at her was the last thing on my mind, so I needed to get a grip on that notion, fast.

“Do you realize we just had our first official get-to-know-you conversation?” As I spoke, I slowed down for a turn into her exclusive neighborhood.

“That’s something we need to do—try to get to know each other better.

Knowing who you are isn’t necessary to be an effective bodyguard, but it’ll make my job a million times easier. ”

“In what way?”

“There’s got to be a certain amount of trust between a bodyguard and their protectee.

For instance, if I tell you to stay hidden somewhere, I need to trust you’re going to do exactly that.

The one thing I can’t afford is being distracted with thoughts of ‘ Geez, I hope my protectee isn’t going to be too stupid to live for these next few minutes . ’”

She snorted. “Harsh.”

“But accurate. Also, as my protectee, you need to believe in my professional experience when I instruct you on how best to stay alive, which means to do exactly as I say. But right now, I’m a stranger to you.

You’d probably last five minutes if I told you to stay hidden in a place for an hour or more, because you don’t know me.

You don’t know how dedicated I am to keeping you alive and unhurt. ”

“That... actually makes a lot of sense.” She nodded, clearly mulling over my words. “And I can see me blithely screwing things up without meaning to. Dane had a big pet peeve about that when it came to me. I screw things up on the daily.”

Dane was becoming a real damn problem, to my way of thinking.

“Nobody’s perfect, least of all me, so I won’t land on you like a ton of bricks if you happen to go left when I say to go right.

Building trust between the two of us is just going to make the whole process easier, so I hope you’re open to lots of communication.

It’ll help me understand you better and anticipate how you’ll react in various situations. You hungry?”

She rested her unbandaged hand on her stomach. “I... don’t know.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“When I had a kitchen to make a meal in.”

Yep. The sass was definitely alive and well in Rory Grant. Good . “You need food to function, and since I’m not sure you’re going to have any kind of appetite after we see your house, we should hit someplace for breakfast now. What do you feel like? Waffles? Eggs and bacon?”

She was looking down the road toward whatever was left of her house. “You know what? Let’s try the Mexican restaurant a couple blocks from here. Casa Taqueria. They should be open.”

“Casa Taqueria it is.”

Within a couple of minutes of following her directions, we grabbed a booth near the back of the crowded diner-style restaurant.

Eyeing the construction workers, manual laborers and what looked to be denizens of either retail or office life lining up for to-go orders, I sifted through the faces around us, looking for signs of trouble.

When guarding a body, I’d learned to do my damnedest to expect the unexpected, and that meant going into hyper-awareness mode when it came to my surroundings.

If anyone showed even a hint of interest in Rory, I had to be the first to see it.