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

He finally stopped that tortured sound and his hands shook. “I’m sorry. I just fucked up again. I can’t stop fucking up. Why can’t I stop?”


He was a little bit crazy with a side of fucking nuts. And that was a professional opinion. But Alex was alive. She hoped she hid her smile. If Alex was alive then he would come for her, and she had to be ready. She needed to do anything she could to make his job easier, and that included talking Jesse Murdoch out of whatever plans he was coming up with now.

“Are you upset that you missed Alex or that you hit Kristen?” She scooted around, trying to sit up. He’d adjusted her, and now her hands were zip tied in front of her body. He seemed to have gotten rid of the one on her legs. She could move them freely now.

He moved toward her and for a minute, she was sure he was going to hit her, but he merely shoved a hand under her elbow and helped her to sit. A striking man, Jesse had sandy hair and blue eyes that went dark when he was emotional. She’d noticed it before. When he’d talked to her in the hallway that first day, his eyes had been almost like sapphires, but the day of the luncheon, they’d gone dark when one of the men had made a remark that he wasn’t surprised to see Jesse at the club.

Because the man knew his past and thought he’d turned, she’d reasoned.

Jesse paced, still wearing a big hoodie even though the heat of the day was upon them. “I didn’t mean to hurt Kris.”

She hoped Kris was fine, but god, she was so glad it hadn’t been Alex. “But it’s fine to hurt Alex.”

“He’s a soldier. Soldiers get hit. It’s what happens.”

“This isn’t war.” She said the words, but then wondered if the war had ever ended for Jesse.

“You say that because you’re a civilian.” He took a long breath and seemed to attempt to gain some control. “I wonder if I killed her. I never killed a woman before. Not intentionally.”

Oh, he wore his guilt right there on his sleeve. She needed to bring it out even more. Though it pained her, she needed to manipulate him. Something was off, and she had to find out what it was. “Are you talking about the woman in your unit?”

His eyes flared. “How did you know about that?”

“It was all over the news, Jesse. It was hard to miss. There was a woman who was captured with you.”

“Alannah Tally.” He whispered the name like it was a blessing, or perhaps a curse that had been following him.

He’d been close to her. “Was she your girlfriend?”

He shook his head, rubbing the scruff of his beard, his eyes far off. He glanced down at his cell phone as if it might save him. Not once did he react as he should, Eve noted. He was in the position of power. He could tell her to shut up or walk away, but once he decided he didn’t have a handy excuse, he gave up. “I liked her a lot.”

It was so lucky she spoke male. “So you slept with her, but you weren’t in love with her.”

He was a big man, but she noticed that he hid much of his bulk in the slump of his shoulders. “Yeah, something like that. She was a nice lady. She wasn’t some slut.”

And he was still defending her, as though the very act of sleeping with him put her at risk. Deep insecurities. She needed to play on them and soothe them. He was obviously a man who needed a soft voice in his life. And he responded to women. “I would never use that word, Jesse. Women don’t often merely sleep with a man to scratch an itch. We tend to sleep with men we admire. She must have admired you.”

His breath hitched. He stood again, that anxious pacing beginning. Two steps one way and then another three the other. Over and over, as though the pattern was ingrained in his head.

He was walking the length of his cell. She would bet that he’d paced that small enclosure so often during his imprisonment that now it was ingrained in him, a habit he couldn’t break.

She could pull him back from Evans. She could bring him to their side.

“She didn’t admire me in the end. She hated me. Did you see the video?” He stopped and seemed to force himself to be still. He patted his jacket down and came up with a cigarette and lighter. “I fucking hate these things, but it was the only thing they let me do. Did you see the tape?”

She shivered a little as he lit up, and the smell of cigarettes filled the air. “The one where she died?”

He took a long drag. He was twenty-seven, but she would have sworn he was fifty in that moment. “Yeah.”

“Part of it.” It had been all over the news, but they had cut out just before the killing blows had been delivered. Major news networks carried the story, but declined to show the grislier parts of the video. Of course, nothing was ever really contained on the Internet. She knew Ian had watched the video after the Agency had asked him to consult.

Lexi Blake's books