Rodney: Marshall’s Shadow – Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance, Kathi Barton [dar e dil novel online reading .txt] 📗

like them to come in and fuck up my day when I had such plans for the evening. Getting laid is far more fun without having someone firing over your head in a sleezy hotel room. Don’t you think?” He just grunted at her. When she smiled, he wanted to laugh with her, but one of the Feds moved. “They’re just going to walk right up to us and give all our hard work a day off too. Mother fuckers. Why is it that one hand, them, never knows what the other hand, us, is doing? Oh well. I’m going to bounce before they get here.”

Sure enough, the man came and sat down in the chair his sister had only just vacated. Not removing his hand from the gun he had in his hand now, James looked around the room and then into the eyes of the man he was going to have to kill if he had fucked this up for him. Asking him in Russian what he wanted, the man didn’t even know the local language.

“I asked you what the fuck you’re wanting by coming in here. You should be sitting behind a desk and pushing shit around that you think you might be doing correctly. What do you want?”

“I have a message from my boss that I’m to tell you.” He didn’t bother with asking the man who his boss was or even what the message might have been about. Wanting him gone, he looked slightly over the man’s shoulder and into the eyes of his sister. The gun she put in the back of the Fed’s head looked like she was trying her best to make it stay there forever.

“You’re in my seat, moron.” She spoke French to him. Even he could see he didn’t have a clue on how to answer her. Then she tried any number of other languages she knew, which in his estimation was about all of them. “Who the fuck would send you into a war zone without you knowing a single language other than English? I am taking a fucking big chance here in thinking you might well know that one, but who the hell knows? What is it you want, jerk off? You have less than five minutes to tell me.”

He didn’t even get that long. Someone darkened the door to the shabby little shithole they were in and tried to kill everyone in there. James grabbed the woman he’d been there for when she’d been shot and let his sister fend for herself. He knew as well as Paige did that she had a better chance of getting out alive than anyone else. James was running down the row of houses behind the restaurant when he heard from her next.

“Is she dead? Should be, I’m thinking, for all the shit she’s caused here.” He leaned against the tree with the girl still on his shoulder and laid her on the ground. Checking her pulse, he told Paige she was alive. “Good. The Feds are all dead. Not only dead, but they were stupid enough to have worn their badges around their necks so anyone could see what a prize they got by killing them. I’m going to call their CO. Their commanding officer, or whoever the fuck is their boss, should have known better than to send idiots like this here. What did he want?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. Where are you?” She told him. “How the fuck did you get up there? I’m assuming you know people that know people.”

He laughed when she did, but he knew that to be true. Had it not been for Paige, he would have died a long time ago. As it was now, even getting injured was only a quick shift away from not being an issue again.

Paige had joined the service two weeks before he had. They had both gone through boot camp at the same time, but he hadn’t seen her after the first couple of months there. James had thought she’d flunked out. But it had been her excelling in so much of the shit they had been teaching them that had gotten her looked at for more serious work than just a man with a gun.

I need for you to do something for me. He told her anything. You still have a couple of contacts back home? I mean, someone you can trust more than you do me?

I don’t trust you at all, so that’ll be easy. When she didn’t laugh, he asked her what was going on. I read the Fed’s mind. You check in with your contact and let me know what they tell you.

Should I be worried? She told him she was calling the CO of the other men. Not at all answering his question. Really? Is that necessary, you think?

I do. I’m hoping the Fed was wrong, and this was just another attempt to get you alone. He was beginning to worry now. When Paige told him to get back to her, he did something he’d never done in all his life—reached out for another person other than his sister.

Mr. Marshall? My name is James Avery. Can you give me some answers about what is going on there? The man broke down. James, unsure of what was going on, knew it had to do with his other sister and her little family, and he sat down. The car that was going to meet him here pulled up and took the woman away. What’s happened? Tell me, please?

Your sister, Belinda Avery, she passed on a few days ago. James didn’t know what to say but did ask if it had been Todd. Yes. She was carrying his children when he beat her and those little girls of hers. My grandson—you might remember, he’s a doctor—did all he could to save them babies. She had herself a little girl and a boy. Todd, he’s in jail for attempted murder and murder. More to that, but I’m