On Her Master's Secret Service (Masters and Mercenaries #4)(107)

Eve would be gone. Utterly untraceable.

Revenge would have to wait. “Getting Eve out is all that matters.”

Sean took a place beside him. “So if you get a shot at Evans, you’re not going to take it?”

Not if he had a second’s concern. It twisted him up. The need to avenge her was right there, a fire in his belly, but he had to put her first this time. “I can’t.”

A savage grin crossed Sean’s face. “I think you should let me do it. It’s been a long time since I got to kill someone.”

“You killed a couple of people not an hour ago.”

Sean shrugged. “Fine, it’s been a long time since I killed someone who mattered.”

“Are we killing the fed, too?” Jake asked. “Adam said that sedan was rented by Warren Petty.”

So this was the place. “As much as I hate to say it, we probably need the fed alive.”

To question. For a really long time. He couldn’t even bring himself to call Warren by his name. He was the fed, the man who had sentenced his wife to hell on earth.

“We need to get closer.” Sean studied the scene.

“We need to make sure they don’t take off. Murdoch, can I trust you with what will very likely end up being a suicide mission?”

Murdoch still looked a little pale, but he stepped up. Alex’s first instinct was to shoot the big guy between the eyes, but then he’d actually looked at those eyes. Regret. Hollowness. Alex had seen that look in the mirror every day for five years. Maybe Sean was right and the kid really had been following orders, trying to redeem himself.

Why the hell else would Warren have left him for dead? He’d seen the wound on Murdoch’s chest. That had been a kill shot, one he’d watched Warren take several times before over the course of his career.

“Yeah. Anything you need.” Murdoch had turned into a needy puppy. But he was a needy puppy who seemed to be very comfortable with firearms.

“I need you to make sure that plane can’t lift off.” He couldn’t risk Eve being taken out of the country.

Murdoch nodded. “Do you want me to kill the pilot or blow up the plane? I can do either. I brought some C4.”

Of course he had. Sean and Jake’s new puppy was a little deranged. “Don’t blow up anything unless my wife is safe. Then go f*cking crazy, man. But I need Evans alive.”

He couldn’t believe he was saying it, but Evans was the only one who could verify what Alex thought he knew—that Petty was dirty and his brother was potentially very dirty. Alex didn’t buy that Petty was the one who had the affair with Carmen. Oh, but he knew Eddie. Eddie had always loved younger women, and Petty had spent most of his life covering for his brother.

This time he’d gone too far. Alex couldn’t allow Eddie to run for the presidency. He had to take him down. For Eve. Because she would want him to do the right thing, and the right thing was to protect their country from a man who would abuse its highest power.

But damn he wanted to kill the f*cker.

“Can I kill my boss?” Murdoch asked.

Again, he heard Eve’s gentle voice. She would ask him to do his job, to be the law and not vengeance. Even when vengeance would feel so f*cking good. But Eve was all that mattered now. “Not if we can take him alive. I think he’ll look damn good in prison orange.”

And he would likely make some new friends. Very intimate friends. Yes, prison might be better than killing Petty.

Where was his wife? God, he wasn’t going to be able to breathe until he saw that she was alive.

“I can avoid the cameras.” Murdoch said. He pointed to them. They seemed stationary. “I can hit the wheels as they roll out. They can’t take off if I take out a couple of wheels.”

“Do it. Jake, go with him.” No one got a jump on Jake. And Jake could keep track of the puppy. “Use him as a human shield if you need to. And Murdoch, Warren Petty is not your boss anymore.” He used the words the kid would understand. “I’m your commanding officer, and there will be f*ck-all hell to pay if you fail in this operation.”

“Yes, sir.” Murdoch’s hand started up as though the salute was ingrained in his very being. He managed to stop, but only just.

He and Jake started off across the field, moving with ease and avoiding the cameras.

“She’s in there.” Sean stood next to him. “She’s alive. I know it. We need to get close enough to figure out how many men he has with him.”

He needed to walk into that hangar and shoot up every single man who came between him and his wife. He brought the binoculars back up to his eyes, searching all around. There was the airplane hangar. It looked like it would hold one, maybe two planes. “Has Adam figured anything out about this place?”

Sean looked at his phone. Alex had asked Adam to text Sean with any information he could come up with. “It’s a reptile farm. It looks like one of Evans’s contacts bought it a couple of years back. They sell alligator skins to make shoes and bags. Along with all the creepy crawlies, they’ve got the airstrip and nine hundred acres of citrus and berry farm. Shit. According to Adam, Bartwell isn’t selling fruit anymore, but they have bought a metric shit ton of fertilizer.”

And fertilizer meant something to a man like Evans. It meant bombs and death and destruction. At least they knew what he’d been up to.