On Her Master's Secret Service (Masters and Mercenaries #4)(99)

Sean moved with the grace of a natural predator. One minute he appeared to be all kinds of tied up, and the next he was on his feet, a knife in his hand. He tossed it through the air and reached back, grabbing two more off the counter. Before anyone could move, Sean had placed knives in three of their captors, two to the chest and a third seemed to have severed the bouncer’s jugular. He went down clutching at the thing, pulling it out, sending blood across the floor.

Alex shoved his elbow into the man on his right’s xiphoid process and just kept going, focusing the force of the punch through the man’s chest with the intent of sending the delicate bone at the end of the sternum directly into his opponent’s heart.

The man who had been holding him dropped to the floor.

Alex turned to Chazz, who had backed up to the row of ovens. He held up his gun, but he couldn’t mask the way his hand shook.

“Back up or I end this now,” Chazz said. “I got more guys coming.”

“He doesn’t,” Sean said. “He sent everyone away after he got that phone call. That was when his little goon squad hit.”

Alex casually reached down and pulled his semiautomatic from his boot. Chazz kept staring between the two of them as if trying to decide which viper to shoot first. “And you decided to play with them?”

Sean shrugged, flipping over a large knife. He held it in his hand, tossing it casually and catching it again. “I thought I should play along. Is Kris really dead?”

“I don’t know. I had to flee the scene. Adam was with her.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Chazz said. “I didn’t order a hit on anyone. Fuck, I don’t make the rules here. I just keep my head down and do my time.”

“Like you did in prison. Is that where Evans recruited you? He must have told you about me and yet you don’t seem to remember my name.”

“It’s McKay. What does that have to do with anything?” Chazz asked.

“Alexander McKay. I was the SAC in charge of his case. I arrested him.”

“Shit. He did your wife.”

Alex fired, putting a bullet through Chazz’s hand. Suddenly having a hole in his palm made it difficult for him to hold onto his weapon. It dropped to the floor as Chazz screamed and held his hand against his chest.

“You will speak of my wife with respect,” Alex explained. “And you’re going to help me find her.”

Sean held up his really large knife. “Do you know what this is?”

Chazz had tears running down his face. “It’s a knife.”

Sean shook his head. “Oh no. This is a work of art. This is a seven-inch ceramic sushi knife. I’ve been playing around with it. The ceramic is just a step below diamonds on the hardness scale. This knife was made to debone a fish and make delicate, beautiful cuts. It’s a little like me. It’s very precise, but it can do some serious damage. Would you like me to filet you, Chazz?”

Chazz had gone sheet white. “I don’t know nothing. Mike was supposed to come in a couple of days and spend some time at the farm, but then this morning he calls me and says I f*cked up. He says that I let you in and I shouldn’t have, and the only way to make up for it is to keep you here for him if you came in. He said he had someone smarter than me handling it, but this was the backup plan. I guess he thought you would come here if whoever was supposed to kill you failed. I’m supposed to put you all in lockdown.”

Farm? He hadn’t heard anything about a damn farm, but he had other questions for now. “Who exactly?”

Chazz’s voice shook. He kept staring at the bodies around him. “You and the chef here and your women. I didn’t know he was talking about your wife. I should have because he got that tone in his voice when he said ‘women.’ He always told me he shouldn’t have let her go, but he made a deal, you see.”

Oh now they were getting somewhere. “He made a deal?”

“Yeah. I don’t know with who. I think it was the same guy who got him out of prison. That’s all I f*cking know. He won’t tell me where to pick him up. He just shows up on the doorstep with his bodyguards. I don’t know where he stays neither.”

The doors behind them knocked open and Jake strode in pushing the sixth man in front of him. “You lost one. And Adam called. Serena had a sudden pain and needed to lie down. The cops told him he could come in later and make his statement. He pulled from CCTVs all over the coast. He got a shot of someone driving your rental. It was ditched before he crossed the toll road, so he had to have had another vehicle waiting. Does the name Murdoch mean anything to you? And should I cap this guy or put him on ice?”

He would kill the little f*cker. “Shove him in the freezer. We don’t need more bodies to hide. Chazz, you are going to tell me absolutely everything you know about Jesse Murdoch, starting with where he lives.”

He forced the panic down, forced himself to be strong.

Eve needed him.





Jesse bit back a cry. His lungs f*cking ached. Goddamn bulletproof vest wasn’t bulletproof enough. He’d put it on this morning because he had a protocol when it came to an operation.

And it was damn good, too, since he’d been shot by his own f*cking boss.

He’d passed out from the shot. At point-blank range, the bullet might not have reached his heart, but it had damn straight knocked the wind out of him.