Soldier For Hire. Kimberly Meter Van
“You know how this is going to end, Xander.”
Xander Scott melted against the wall, clinging to the shadows as his former Red Wolf team leader, Scarlett Rhodes, tried to convince him to come out peacefully, knowing full well that wasn’t going to happen.
Naw, everything had already gone sidewise; Scarlett knew he wasn’t going to go meekly to his own destruction but, hey, he gave her props for tenacity. The woman wasn’t known for her soft and fuzzy side—hell, that was one of the things Xander liked about her—but right about now, he wished Scarlett was a little less rigid so she’d listen to what he was trying to tell her instead of hauling his ass in over some bullshit frame job.
“I didn’t do it, Rhodes,” he said, quickly assessing his position within the abandoned building, stalling for time. Scarlett had found him faster than he’d anticipated, zeroing in on his location like a bloodhound, but he knew her tactics, which was his only saving grace, otherwise she would’ve had him trussed up like a Christmas turkey ready for the table.
Well, that and the fact that while Scarlett played by the rules, Xander didn’t.
“Looking pretty guilty from my end. Innocent people don’t run,” she replied, the sound of her changing position pricking Xander’s ears. “But turn yourself in and we’ll talk about it.”
Xander chuckled grimly. Yeah, we’ll talk about it. Sure. “Think about it, Rhodes. It doesn’t make sense. I’m being framed and you know it.”
“Turn yourself in.”
“Screw you, Rhodes,” he muttered, his gaze catching on the dirty window. They were on the third floor. A jump from that height would break bones at the very least. He was partial to his limbs remaining intact. Besides, Scarlett would have all exit points covered. She’d have a guy stationed in the stairwell, at the fire escape and all back doors. Scarlett was nothing if not efficient. “Why would I have any reason to hurt innocent people? Granted, politicians are scum but I had no beef with McQuarry. You’re barking up the wrong damn tree.”
“Cut the crap, Xander. You’re wasting time. You know you’re surrounded. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. If you’re innocent, you’ve got nothing to worry about. But right now, you’re just making things worse by running.”
Xander blew out a short breath, still trying to figure out how he’d gotten to this moment.
One minute he was going day to day—maybe a little rough around the edges, maybe playing fast and loose with a few rules but for the most part, things had been good.
Manageable.
Sure, sometimes he still woke up, drenched in cold sweat, heart hammering like a meth head after a fresh rail, hands curled in fists ready to swing to the death, but who didn’t, right?
Okay, so maybe not everyone had a psych eval that read like a cautionary tale but then not everyone had seen or done the things he had in the service of the good ol’ US of A.
Did he set the pipe bomb that killed Senator Ken McQuarry three months ago at a political rally in Tulsa? Hell, no.
At least, he didn’t think so.
Yeah, and that was the problem. He couldn’t actually remember that day so well.
Sweat popped along his hairline. “You know whoever’s framing me for this has done their homework. They knew I had a background in the bomb squad. I was cherry-picked. A little too convenient, though, don’t you think? I had no motive, Rhodes.”
He was trying to appeal to that stubborn logic locked inside Rhodes’s skull, but the redhead was like a dog with a bone—single-minded and hungry for the marrow behind the crunch. “You know me, Rhodes,” he said in one last attempt to get her to see she was