Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,41

one night, Walker had company.

Chapter Fourteen

Persia smoothed one palm over her trim waistline, proud of the clean figure reflected back at her from her full-length bedroom mirror. Dressed in powder-blue today, she’d slipped into matching heels, then stepped up to make sure she looked presentable, professional, and able. She had an early meeting with her boss today, and this time, she would make a solid impression on Alex Stewart, if it was the last thing she did.

Since day one, she’d been on his bad side, and not just because she’d sir’ed him once too often. Even Mark’s assurance that Alex had her six, seemed at odds with the way he snapped when she was slow to reply, even the morning she’d had a flat tire on her way to work. That hadn’t helped.

“But shit happens,” she told herself, then, “Get over it,” she told Alex, though he wasn’t there. Taking a deep cleansing breath, she left her boss’s ornery imaginary image behind, locked her apartment, and marched to her car with her head held high. She’d brought bastards the world over, down. She could certainly handle one former Marine.

Her mission in NYC a month ago had gone without a hitch, mostly because Alex had utterly paved the way for her and Izza. How could anything have gone wrong? He knew the Queen of England, for pity’s sake, and she hadn’t really needed two TEAM bodyguards.

She’d had her own, ones Persia knew would’ve never allowed her or Izza, much less anyone else, to get close to their Queen. Yet Alex had given his only female operators that specific easy-as-hell assignment. Okay, so none of the other assignments he’d doled out to his male agents had been any more difficult, but Persia got the impression Alex didn’t quite trust her. He’d set her up, that was all he’d done. Made her feel useful when he hadn’t really needed her at all. The dirtbag.

Well, today was the day she changed that. “God help me if I sir him,” she told her rearview mirror. “That’d be just my luck, so don’t do it.”

Too bad that determination to be all Alex expected her to be, didn’t last once she hit the office. Ember and Beau were there. No one else. Persia greeted them with a casual, “Hey guys. Where is everyone? I was supposed to meet Alex this morning.”

Ember didn’t take her eyes off her monitor when she answered, “Mark’s in Florida. Something came up, and Alex will be with Sec Def all day. David’s out of the office TFN.”

TFN was TEAM talk for until further notice, which meant Senior Agent David Tao was probably on his way back to Cambodia, and The TEAM safe house for sex-trafficked children that he operated there.

“And Zack had to run home.”

“LiLi forgot her permission slip for her field trip to Gettysburg,” Beau added, his gaze also on his monitor. “He’ll be right back if you want to hang around.”

Persia leaned over their customer service counter, wishing she could see what was on their screens that was so important they couldn’t break away even to make eye contact. But all TEAM monitors wore security screens to prevent the wrong person from accessing confidential information. Which, at that moment, was her.

“Okay, so…” She let those worthless words hang as she scanned the empty work bay that could hold forty agents, if and when they were all there at the same time. Not today. It looked like everyone else was out of the office on real work. Didn’t that figure?

“Do you two need help?” she asked brightly, still determined to give this damned job and her equally damned boss her all.

Slowly, as if it were too hard to talk at the same time that he watched his screen, Beau shook his head. “Sure… don’t. We’ll call… if we need you.”

Luckily, Adam Torrey burst through the fire doors then. But like a heat-seeking missile, he walked past Persia and zeroed in on Ember’s counter. “You found it yet?”

She shook her head. “It’s not where you thought, but I’ve got a lead. Singapore, I think.”

“There’s more than one and we’re both tracking them,” Beau added, his dark brows narrowed into a perfect V that made him look primitively angry all the time. “Can you give us anything more? A specific amount would be nice.”

Adam rested his forearms on the counter. Persia had never seen him look so threatening. Blond and tan, he always cut a strikingly masculine profile, like most of the guys