Seduced by the Sniper

Grim faces swung toward him.

“You get a vehicle?” Andre asked.

When Scott shook his head, Andre ran for the other side of the building for a different vantage point. Scott started to follow when a sedan swung into the lot, sirens screaming.

Glaring at the newcomer—the CNU negotiator had finally arrived—Scott sliced a hand in front of his neck and the siren went silent.

Martin Jennings, who’d been a negotiator for the Bureau for nearly two decades, hopped out of his car. “Where’s Russell?”

Scott froze in the process of chasing after Andre, but it didn’t matter, because his partner was already coming back their way.

“What have you got?” Froggy asked.

“Black Taurus. I got a plate,” Andre said. “We’ll need to call the locals and have roadblocks set up. He’s gone.”

“Russell?” Scott asked, his attention fully, anxiously on Martin.

“Chelsie Russell,” Martin said. “Brand-new negotiator. I called her to have her meet me here and she was already nearby. She should have beaten me.”

Scott glanced at the non-Bureau cars in the lot. Ten cars. And the shooter had been parked over by the bleachers, not here. Was the tenth car Chelsie’s? He scanned them, and realized the one way at the back was a small, nondescript white compact. Just like the one Chelsie had driven last night.

Sucking in a hard breath, Scott spun for the front lot again. Behind him, he heard Martin calling for ambulances and Froggy calling the locals to get roadblocks set up. He sensed without glancing back that Andre was following him, that his partner knew something was up.

But all he could think of was Chelsie. He’d seen nine bodies. Was there a tenth?

* * *

CHELSIE RUSSELL HUNCHED outside the front door of the community center, shielded on either side by the brick walls of the building that jutted forward, forming a protective U around her. The bullhorn she’d been shouting into less than ten minutes ago hung limply at her side. Above her, the sky was a brilliant, mocking blue.

She was too terrified to move.

A minute ago, the shooter had taken another shot, although at what she had no idea. All his targets were dead. All except her.

He’d been shooting from somewhere off to her right. Was he maneuvering around now, trying to get a bead on her?

She stared at the army officers who’d ducked down behind the community-center sign, thinking they were safe. He’d picked them off, then shot the three who’d run toward her, ignoring her gestures for them to stay where they were. Nausea rolled through her and she forced herself to look away from the men, their arms splayed wide as if they were still entreating her to help.

They’d been alive a minute ago. Alive and afraid, like her. When she’d crept out the door, she’d seen a sudden burst of hope in their eyes. They’d started to run even though she’d frantically gestured for them to stay put. So she’d put that bullhorn to her lips and done exactly what the FBI had trained her to do.

Connect with the perpetrator. Identify what he wanted. Then convince him through communication tactics that he could achieve it another way.

But he’d ignored every attempt she’d made to talk him down. Resisted every single tactic she’d been taught by the Crisis Negotiation Unit.

She’d gotten here in time. She should have been able to save five of them. But she hadn’t made a bit of difference.

Why hadn’t she stayed in Scott Delacorte’s bed? Instead of dressing silently and tiptoeing through his house out to her car, she could have rolled over and run her hands over his spectacular body until he’d woken up. Until he’d pressed his lips to hers and made her forget everything but the feel of him on top of her.

Instead, she’d slipped out the door, embarrassed and uncertain after waking up next to a man she barely knew. Before she’d turned off his street, she’d gotten the call from Martin, sending her here. She’d felt a surge of nerves mingled with anticipation and a stupid, baseless confidence that she could change the outcome the shooter had planned today.

Right now, more help was on the way, possibly even Scott himself, but she was the only one left to save. Would they arrive before the shooter found her?

Chelsie eased back toward the door of the community center, erasing her view of the dead soldiers, of the blood painting the concrete red. Ears ringing from the gunshots, she clutched her Glock so tightly her hand ached. She didn’t have the range of a rifle, and whoever had been shooting had been deadly accurate.

She opened the door, staying low, and slipped back inside the community center, her heart beating a too-rapid tempo. A haze fell over her thoughts and she couldn’t shake it. Six years in the FBI and she’d never seen anything like this.

Six years in the FBI and she’d never failed like this. She’d joined on a fluke, an attempt to find a place she finally fit. And she thought she had. She’d started in the Los Angeles Field Office, thrown into counterterror as a rookie, and discovered she had a knack for understanding people, agents and criminals alike. That knack had helped her to shed the Barbie-doll nickname she’d been given her first day, and to fit in with the mostly male agents. And it had ultimately led her to negotiation.

Becoming a negotiator had made her feel as though everything in her life had finally snapped into place, as though she’d found where she belonged, the place she could make a real difference.

Resolution through dialogue—it was CNU’s motto. In the intense, unforgiving two-week training, she’d excelled. In real life, apparently, she didn’t.

Martin Jennings had told her to wait for him before she engaged the shooter. He had more than twenty years’ experience talking down dangerous subjects; she had training exercises in a classroom. She’d inched as close to the scene as she dared without putting herself in the line of fire, fully intending to wait. But two people had been shot as she stepped out the door, and she’d known she couldn’t sit on the sidelines a second longer.

She’d done her best, and she knew it. But her best hadn’t been close to good enough.

Worry about it later, Chelsie told herself, her eyes darting left and right. She stuck close to the wall as she walked through the empty, silent community center. Then the sound of a siren reached her ears. She let out a relieved breath, but it caught less than a minute later as a shadow passed by the glass door on the side of the building. A tall shadow, carrying a rifle.

Flattening herself against the wall, Chelsie set the bullhorn carefully on the floor so she could grip her Glock with both hands. She inched closer, stepping soundlessly in her practical flats. Her senses seemed to shrink, until all she saw was the glass door to the side of the building, until all she heard was her own even, deep breathing. If there was no talking him down, she wasn’t letting the shooter get away, wasn’t giving him the chance to go after anyone else. Not today or ever again.

Slowly, slowly, she turned the handle and opened the door, inch by inch. She sensed before she saw that he’d heard her, so she ripped the door open the rest of the way. Her Glock came up fast and steady, taking aim at center mass. “FBI! Don’t move!”

She instantly processed the Kevlar vest, the extra weapon strapped to the leg, the Remington rifle in his hands, then recognized more before he finished spinning toward her. The dark blond hair. The tall, lanky body. The long, slim fingers gripping the stock of the rifle.

“Scott,” she blurted. The fun-loving, quick-to-smile agent she’d been unable to resist last night seemed like someone else entirely in his tactical gear, his expression fierce and determined.

“Chelsie.” Relief bloomed in his chocolate-brown eyes, so strong it made her own eyes water.

Another HRT sniper materialized from around the corner, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Scott. Heat rushed up her face, but it wasn’t from the embarrassment of being caught in the same clothes he’d peeled off her last night, or from seeing him so soon after sneaking out in the darkness. Seeing Scott couldn’t distract her from the weariness and splintering anger she suddenly felt.

Nine people had died today. And it didn’t matter what the FBI thought of her actions. Her career as a negotiator had ended before it had even begun.

Chapter Two (#ulink_6c8b87a1-4f7b-5afd-9490-33e4ab04215d)

June, present day

“You missed a spot,” Chelsie told Maggie Delacorte as they walked out of the Washington Field Office.

Scott’s younger sister looked nothing like him. A few inches shorter than Chelsie, with dark brown hair cut into a stylish, practical bob, and light blue eyes, Maggie shared only one thing with her brother: the intensity in their gaze. Or two, counting their willingness to put their lives on the line in FBI tactical positions.

Maggie shrugged, swiping a hand over her face that completely missed the smear of camouflage paint left along her hairline. “Doesn’t matter. I have a date with my TV and a bowl of popcorn tonight.”

That was Chelsie’s evening plan, too. She smiled at her friend, who’d been with the Washington Field Office’s SWAT team for the past four years. SWAT was an ancillary position, meaning Maggie did that in her spare time. She spent her days as a regular Special Agent working civil rights cases like hate crimes and human trafficking. She was in the thick of it all the time, while Chelsie had come back to the WFO a year ago and not only dropped hostage negotiation but switched to the safest job she could find. White-collar crime, where lives were rarely on the line. Where she wouldn’t have to stand by and watch while nine people were shot and killed.

Chelsie shuddered and Maggie eyed her questioningly.

As the days had turned into months, she’d slowly stopped having nightmares about her only case as a negotiator. The FBI had found her not to have any fault in the incident. They’d cleared her within a week and expected her to continue as a negotiator. But Chelsie had wanted out. It was her job to change the outcome of cases like that. If she couldn’t do it, she had no business being a negotiator.

Maggie knew about that day—it had been big news at the time. But Chelsie had never discussed it with her, especially not what had happened the night before with Maggie’s older brother. The only one-night stand she’d had in her entire life.