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But this one had taken a lot and then some.
Two weeks of tracking down a Delta Force vet who had some serious skills at evading. Still, it was done, and the two kids kidnapped by their mom’s dirtbag boyfriend, AKA the Delta Force vet, were safe and back home.
The mom, not so much.
And that’s why this had been the mission from the deepest level of hell.
The mom’s folks had shelled out a small fortune to hire Maverick Ops. Or rather to specifically hire him. Apparently, his rep had gotten around for doing such things. Things that local law enforcement had failed to do because of lack of manpower and resources. Maverick Ops wasn’t lacking in either of those categories, and the operatives, like him, usually got results.
This time, included.
He’d found those two kids in a seedy motel in Houston. Had subdued the dirtbag. Okay, he’d beat the living shit out of him when the idiot had resisted and after he’d tried to use one of the kids—a seven-year-old girl—as a human shield.
Jericho had gotten the girl safely out of harm’s way. Not easily. But he’d done it by beaning the guy in the head with a pointy rock fired from his slingshot.
Safer for the kid than Jericho firing a shot at a moving target.
Then, once the dickhead killer had staggered back with a bloody knot on his head and let go of her, Jericho had whisked her out of harm’s way. Step two, he’d commenced with the shit beating after the guy had come after him. Step three, Jericho had finished the shit beating. Final step, he’d had taken the girl and her nine-year-old brother home.
All the while knowing they were soon going to learn that the dirtbag had murdered their mom.
Yeah, it’d been a pisser.
Sometimes, a win didn’t feel like much of a win, even if the woman had already been dead before he’d ever been assigned to find the children.
Jericho parked in his garage, went inside his house, automatically giving the voice command to the security system. It was engrained in him. He was good at his job, which meant he was also good at making enemies.
Because a victory for him was a loss for somebody else.
Every now and then, those somebodies—kidnappers, killers, rapists, stalkers, and all-around general assholes—didn’t take losing that well, and some of them had no doubt put Jericho on their shit lists. So far, all were in jail or dead, but parole and jailbreaks happened. Hence, the security.
He made his way through the small mudroom that he used to store his mission equipment before going through the living room and into the kitchen. Also small. In fact, that described pretty much the entire house.
Not the grounds though.
He’d bought the place from a farmer who’d grown hay and specialty grasses, and he was surrounded by twenty acres of, well, nothing. No woods for someone to sneak up to the house. No outbuildings, trees or shrubs to duck behind. If someone came after him, they’d have to do it through a wide-open space while being spotlighted with motion detector security lights along the way.
Jericho cursed when he opened his fridge and saw it was empty. Actually, he’d known it would be empty but had cursed since he had forgotten to have it stocked before he left on assignment.
“Crap,” he muttered.
He briefly considered driving the ten miles to his friend’s place. Briefly, Rafe Cross, a fellow Maverick Ops operative, would have a good stash of food. But Jericho was too damn tired to get back in his Jeep, and he was way off the zone for any kind of food delivery that would come at this time of night. It was going on nine pm, not super late, but the two small towns nearest him practically rolled up the sidewalks at sunset. Nothing would be open.
Instead, Jericho had to settle for his usual staple when he forgot such things as refrigerated food. He opened a pack of strawberry Pop-Tarts that he took from the cupboard and bit into both pastries at once. He washed them down with a bottle of room temperature sports drink that tasted like sweat and an overload of sugar.
Definitely not the breakfast of champions.
With his stomach at least marginally filled, Jericho headed for the shower. Even with the exhaustion, he didn’t want to climb into bed with the smell of blood on him. Not his blood but rather the asswipe who’d kidnapped those kids and murdered their mom.
Jericho had had to hand over his clothes to the local cops who’d taken said asswipe into custody, but the blood had seeped through his shirt and jeans and was still making its stench known.
He went into the bathroom. Turned on the shower full blast. And cursed again when he heard a son of a bitching sound he didn’t want to hear.
The urgent beeping of his security system.
Groaning, he turned off the shower and pinned his attention to the monitor on the bathroom wall. It was one of the eight such monitors he had around the house. He ordered the screen on and looked for what had triggered one of the sensors. It wouldn’t be an animal. He’d adjusted the system to recognize nearly every kind of four-legged critter.
He soon saw a compact black car that had just turned onto his private road and was driving toward his house. Jericho watched, hoping it was someone lost. Someone who was merely looking for a spot to turn around and then head back the way they’d come.
