“There is only one who can really fuck everything up. Alexander McKay is going to wreck this operation. He’s a man who can hurt us all and he won’t hesitate to do it. He is very dangerous.”
“How is he involved?” He’d never heard the name Alex McKay before, but then he hadn’t exactly studied up. He was a soldier. He was a grunt.
“Do you need me to send you his dossier? Perhaps I should find a more amenable agent.”
He couldn’t lose this job. It was all he fucking had and besides, he wasn’t exactly intelligence here. He was just following orders. It was all he was really good at. “No, sir. Tell me what to do.”
“Kill him. Kill him and whoever came with him, but get rid of McKay first.”
His gut tightened at the thought of killing the woman. He’d killed men before. That didn’t bother him. If McKay was threatening his operation, he had to be eliminated, but the woman was different.
“That’s an order, Murdoch. Do you understand me?”
He forced himself to say the words he knew his boss wanted to hear. “Yes, sir. I’ll have it done as soon as possible.”
“You better because this meeting is going to take place in three day’s time. I can’t have McKay disrupting it. How much does he know?”
“I don’t think he knows about the meeting.” Jesse only knew because the boss had told him. At this point, he wasn’t even sure Chazz knew what was going to kick him squarely in the balls three days from now.
“Everything rides on this. Everything we’ve worked for.”
He knew what was riding on his shoulders. “I understand.”
A long sigh came over the line. “Good. You’re a good soldier, Murdoch. You’re a good man to have on the team.”
“I won’t let you down.” Jesse ended the call.
The world flowed around him, families with kids, couples holding hands, friends joking around, and Jesse realized just how alone he was. He shoved his cell in his pocket and began the walk back to the club parking lot. He needed to get his shit together because he wasn’t going to ever be a part of some happy fucking family.
He had his job, and he was damn lucky to have it. The boss didn’t have to trust him. Hell, no one else did. He had one shot at having any kind of a future, and he wasn’t going to let Alex McKay, world-class pervert, get in his way. He’d surely been right before. The tenderness he’d seen was an illusion. If the boss said he had to go, then he had to go.
And then Jesse would be in. Then he would really be on the team, a true soldier again.
He picked up the pace, his resolve hardened. He would put the woman down easy, but maybe he wouldn’t be so kind to the man.
He had a little aggression to work out after all.
Chapter Eleven
“So you’re saying you won’t be here any time soon, huh, boss?” Adam asked, his voice clear as day as Alex walked through the front door of the condo. The balcony doors were open and a peaceful breeze came off the Atlantic.
There was nothing peaceful about his best friend’s response. Ian’s voice cracked through the condo.
“You invited Taggart here?” Kristen whispered, holding back as though the devil himself was in the room.
Well, Ian had quite the reputation. He suspected there was a reason Kristen didn’t want Ian around. He would very likely take over. Of course as lovely and soft as Kristen was, Ian would also very likely try to get into her bed. He needed to get her to chill because he’d spent forty minutes listening to her bitch about Jake showing up. “I did not. And since he’s talking to Adam through a computer, it’s likely he’s not on his way.”
Ian practically snarled over the connection. “No. I will not be getting on a plane any time soon because some motherfucker managed to get my name on a no-fly list. I swear to god, when I find Nelson I am going to kill him real slow.”
Eve gasped a little beside him, rushing toward the dining room table where Adam had a monitor up.
Kristen simply frowned and carefully walked around the mass of tech gear Adam had accrued. She was deliberate about not walking in front of the camera attached to the computer. “Are you sure you weren’t going to bring him in, too? I might as well just walk away for all you respect me. I have plans, and you’re going to screw them up.”