Page 34 of Serve ’N’ Protect

It amazed him how much she’d been put through the ringer by this guy, but she was compassionate enough to forgive him. After Hugh had left and she’d finally broken down, Markus hadn’t known what to do, hadn’t known what she’d needed. Then the answer came to him as clearly as if it was printed on his forehead. He held her while she cried.

What she’d really needed at that moment was her family. He was merely a stand-in. Selfishly, it had made him feel good to be there for her.

The hand he’d been working the laptop controls with fisted on the keyboard. That dickwad didn’t know what he’d had. A woman like Cassidy would make a great wife one day—not that he knew shit about marriage. But she had to open herself up to it again. If only she could see what he saw. A warm, beautiful person with more guts and courage than most people he knew. Any kids she wound up having would be as cute as a doll.

Movement on the screen drew his attention back to the video. More cars pulled up to the front of the mansion, discharging men in tuxedos and women wearing sparkling evening gowns. Many of the guests wore keffiyehs and robes. All were greeted at the front door by a Saudi embassy employee, the crown prince’s U.S.-based secretary. The guy began wringing his hands just before the next vehicle, a silver stretch limo, pulled up. Markus already knew this was the prince’s limo. He and Ghost had been patrolling the cars parked at the curb on the public road when the limo had passed through the front gate. Diplomatic tags and Saudi flags waving on the hood identified the occupant. Fashionably late for his own party.

He and Ghost guarded the front gate while the limo discharged its passengers. Several men wearing dark suits and black-and-white keffiyehs came out first. Eventually, the crown prince himself stepped from the limo, giving a warm handshake to the embassy guy before the entire entourage disappeared inside.

In the upper right hand of the screen, he could just make out Jack Barnes rounding the far corner of the mansion. Markus felt a thickness in his throat. It was disconcerting to watch his colleague—a dead man—on video. When they’d taken that overtime shift, neither of them could have imagined that three days later Jack would be gone.

“Dammit. Dammit all to hell.” Markus leaned back against the cushions. Ghost lifted his head, gazing at him with questioning brown eyes. Ghost was so attuned to him he might as well be human.

Powerless didn’t begin to describe how he felt. The idea that Jack’s killer and the guy who’d knifed him was out there somewhere, walking around free and doing whatever homicidal assholes did on their non-homicidal downtime, was driving him batshit crazy.

For the next three hours, he rolled through more video. He watched himself click the mic clipped to his shoulder. Jack had just called in suspicious movement at one of the cars behind the house and was about to investigate. Markus and Ghost responded to back him up.

The front door cam recorded them rounding the corner toward the back of the mansion. He’d have to roll the footage from the rear camera to pick them up again in the backyard, but he already knew what was on it. Just a couple making out in the back seat of a car. The local PD had already done their due diligence, following up on that lead and ruling it out as having no relevance.

Markus hit the stop button then rolled his shoulders, trying to stretch the kinks from his body without tearing open his gut again. That segment would be another eight hours of sheer torture, viewing exactly nothing of any consequence.

“Let’s take a break.” He patted Ghost’s head then stood, feeling not quite as much pain as he had yesterday.

Ghost scrambled from the sofa, bumping into the coffee table and nearly toppling the stack of books he’d brought from home. They were some of his favorites that he’d reread multiple times over the years.

He grabbed his jacket from the hall closet, then took Ghost out the kitchen door into the backyard to take care of his business. With the cool, fresh air and late afternoon sun on his face, walking felt good. Anything was better than sitting on a sofa eight hours a day.

John had over thirty acres, with a wooded area behind the manicured lawn. A clear path through the adjacent trees led to a shooting target tacked onto a dead tree. Beyond the trees, there was nothing but, well, more trees.

Between the house and the garage, the rest of the yard was all but completely concealed from prying eyes on the street. Only a narrow wedge of space between the two structures allowed him to see straight through to Chesapeake Bay Retriever Lane.

Convincing Cassidy to let him show her how to shoot a gun might take a bit of persuading. She hadn’t seemed all that eager when Captain McMurray had ordered him to teach her.

Slowly, he crouched to grab a stick then threw it for Ghost to chase after. The second the stick left his hand, tiny red-hot pricks of pain pierced his abdomen, and he winced. Okay, bad idea. Ripping open his guts again would only lead to more painkillers and after tumbling off a ladder like a drugged-out klutz, opioids were no longer on the menu. Thankfully, today the pain only felt like toothpicks jabbing into him. Yesterday, those toothpicks had been the size of javelins.

Ghost loped back with the stick in his mouth, prancing around Markus and trying to shove the stick into his hand.

“Sorry, pal.” Seemed like he was apologizing to his partner a lot lately. Somehow, he’d have to figure out a way to keep his dog’s natural appetite for action satisfied. He patted his chest and Ghost dropped the stick, rising on his hind legs to rest his front paws just below Markus’s shoulders. They remained that way for a long moment, as if having a silent conversation. Staring into his dog’s eyes always gave him a sense of peace. Ghost was the only living creature on the planet who understood him, and he didn’t even have to say a word.

Rumbling from a passing vehicle changed pitch, slowing and becoming louder as it came to a stop. Markus froze. “Ghost,” he whispered, and his dog lowered to the ground and sat. Markus twisted his neck, barely enough to look behind him. Through the wedge of space between the house and the garage, he had a clear view to the road. About twenty feet past the house, a black van had stopped, the engine idling.

From his position in the yard, he couldn’t see the driver. But the driver could see him.

“Down,” he said to Ghost, without even looking at his dog and knowing he’d obey as he was trained to do.

After the attack, photos of him and Ghost had been all over the news. A ninety-pound white German shepherd kinda had a way of standing out in a crowd and would be a dead giveaway, pardon the pun, that Markus was there. If Ghost remained exactly where he was, the driver wouldn’t have a clear line of sight. Unless he’d already seen him.

Drivers occasionally stopped on the side of the road for all kinds of legitimate reasons. But with so much at stake, that could be a deadly assumption he wouldn’t live to regret.

Just short of running, he hustled to the corner of the house, the gun strapped to his ankle thumping with every step. He plastered his back against the siding of the house. Leaning out a fraction of an inch, he did a quick sneak ’n’ peek.

The van had no windows and no insignia. He’d only seen the driver, but without windows, there could be a small army hiding inside the van.

Markus’s heart thumped a little faster but not much. He’d been in worse situations and with worse odds. Normally, he and Ghost would confront the driver, find out what he was doing stopped in front of the White House gates, and if he had no business being there, send him packing. This was anything but normal, and Sun Tzu’s words of wisdom lit up in his brain brighter than the JumboTron at Camden Yards.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious.

Frustration stung like a swarm of bees. Even with the gun strapped to his ankle, he was in piss-poor shape.