Close Cover (Masters and Mercenaries #16)(2)

Oh, he was going to miss that jerk. He found himself smiling because apparently the team’s happiness and joy was cause for Big Tag’s fit. “You want to know the true story, Tag? At least my story. Like I said, you’ll have to ask the others.”

“At least let me understand one of you.”

He leaned forward. “I’m going to warn you, it’s got some parts you might not like. There’s kissing in this story. And I do a small amount of groveling.”

“You can skip those parts. Get to the bloody parts. Did anyone get eaten by a gator? That happened to Alex once. Not him, but to some bad people chasing him. I always miss the gator attacks.” He frowned. “And I don’t like any of this. I hate hiring people. It means I have to talk to them and I fucking hate talking to new people. Everything is changing and I don’t like that either. I want to know who to blame. How the hell did this nightmare start?”

Remy sat back, ready to begin his tale. “Well, boss, like almost all really good stories, it started with a woman…”





Chapter One


Dallas, TX

One month earlier



Remy Guidry sat back in the comfortable chair he’d claimed only moments ago in the main conference room of McKay-Taggart. He wasn’t sure why they were having this very normal weekly briefing in the main office instead of their man cave, but when the big guy called, he moved his team into place—whether that meant moving them into sniper positions or hauling them up a floor and making sure they weren’t in work-out clothes.

His team. It was weird to think of them that way and to think about a potential future where they weren’t around. He would miss them. He hadn’t expected that when he’d taken the job a few years ago. He’d merely planned to use this time to his betterment. McKay-Taggart paid well and he didn’t spend much. He’d figured a few years of putting his body on the line and he could buy his cousin’s bar back in Papillon. It was a piece-of-shit nothing hole-in-the-wall, but once it had been Remy’s whole damn world, that bar. He’d grown up watching his pop-pop mix drinks and sell bait out the back. He would sit on that dock and watch the boats go by and wonder when it would be him on that boat, heading out.

Now all he wanted to do was go home.

Except he’d been surprised to find a group of friends here. He hadn’t meant to make them. They’d been like barnacles, slow growing and when not cut off, somehow becoming a part of him.

“Any idea why we’re here?” Declan asked, sitting his massive frame in one of the chairs. “New assignments?”

Declan was one of those barnacles. Remy was pretty sure the ex-Air Force pararescue hadn’t meant to find a bunch of brothers either. Of all Remy’s men, Dec was the most secretive, the one he worried about. There was something…almost unworldly about the man. Like the stories his mom-mom would tell about the old ones still walking the earth. He came from a pretty crazy bunch of people, but Declan sometimes made him wonder if his mom-mom hadn’t been right. “Big Tag sent me a nice note stating the whole group needed to be here at ten and ready for a meeting.”

Riley Blade and Shane Landon strode in, both looking tan and fit from their time in LA. Dec had been on assignment with them, but somehow he’d managed to come back without a tan. Apparently when he hadn’t been watching over superstar Joshua Hunt and getting his ass shot at, he’d stayed in his room, avoiding the beauty of Malibu.

“Nice note? Then it wasn’t Tag, this is a trap, and we’re all about to be brutally murdered,” Riley said.

“What did it actually say?” Shane asked with a sort of detached curiosity.

“It said get the full douche down to the real world because I can’t take clients into that sweat-soaked man cave you call an office. And dress like men.” That was the boss.

Wade strode in, his boots ringing along the hardwood floors. “How exactly do we not dress like men, and I take offense to the group of us being described as a douche. What the hell does he mean by that?”

“It’s like a gaggle of geese,” Shane offered. “Or a pack of wolves.”

“Or a murder of crows,” Declan continued, his eyes dark. “Which is what I think about doing to Tag every time he calls us the full douche. I’m not a douche. Blade’s a douche, but I’m not.”

Riley sent Dec his happy middle finger. “Fuck you and your sad-sack jeans. Did anyone tell you the nineties are over?”

Sometimes they were a bit like bickering siblings, their camaraderie manifesting itself in manly insults and the rare but always fun blowup that resulted in wagering, someone getting his ass kicked, and then beers all around. Big Tag was an asshole, but he understood his employees. When he’d given the bodyguards their own office, he’d installed both a gym and a fridge that he’d filled with beer.

It wasn’t the worst way to live, though sometimes it felt like he’d never actually left the military.

A vision of himself behind the bar, mixing drinks and shooting the shit the way his pop-pop used to came over him. It was a dream he’d started having years before when he’d spent his days killing and surviving. In his dreams he would see that bar and know it was his place in the world. Lately, the dream had changed slightly, merging with one he’d had since he was a teen first interested in the ladies. He was still behind the bar, but the door to the patio would open, the late evening sun illuminating the woman walking through it.