The Girl Next Door (Shadow Agents 6)

“Vivian,” Deuce said softly. “My beautiful Vivian. She’s why.” He lifted the gun a few inches from Gabrielle’s temple.

That’s right. Get the gun off her. Focus on me.

“Do you remember her, Coop? You’d just joined the EOD on that mission.”

Cooper’s guts were twisted in knots. Vivian. Vivian Donaldson. “She was the blonde. She was—”

“Mine!” Deuce screamed at him. The gun went right back to Gabrielle’s temple. “Vivian was mine, and I was hers. We met in the Marines. We joined the EOD together. Our lives were together.” Deuce’s breath heaved out. “Until that mission...that last damn mission that got screwed to hell and back.”

“Did she die?” Gabrielle asked him softly.

“She jumped in front of me.” Deuce was staring at Cooper, but Cooper wasn’t sure the other man actually saw him in that moment. “She took the gunfire meant for me. The bullets—they tore through her body. She jerked and shuddered, and she died.” His breath heaved. “I was holding her in my arms, and more bullets came flying. They hit me. I should have died with her—”

“But we pulled you out,” Cooper said. They’d also taken Vivian. They’d tried to help her, but it had been too late.

And, once he’d recovered, Aaron Porter had become Deuce. The moniker was both for the fact that he could so easily assume the identity of another person...and because he’d been given a second chance.

A chance to kill?

“I lost her,” Deuce whispered.

“So you wanted them to lose, too,” Gabrielle said. She didn’t sound afraid.

She sounded...sad.

Once again, that gun lifted from her head. “Why should they get the happy ending? The EOD took my life away. They didn’t give me a second chance—they took her, and I had nothing.” He smiled at Cooper. A chilling sight. “So I took from them. I took their hope. I let them see what it was like to have nothing, and then I killed them.”

Cooper took a careful step toward him. “They were your friends.”

“They were the men who should have saved Vivian. You were one of those men. You were there, too. If you weren’t going to save her, then you should have let me die with her!”

Deuce wasn’t sane. Not any longer. Too much grief and pain had twisted him. Broken the man he’d been.

Cooper’s phone began to ring, vibrating in his pocket.

“Don’t!” Deuce yelled. “Don’t even think of answering it.”

The phone kept ringing.

“Vivian wouldn’t want you doing this,” Cooper told him, trying to reach the man that Deuce had been. Was Aaron even still in there? “She was in the EOD to help people, not to hurt them.”

But Deuce laughed. “The EOD isn’t what you think. We’re just Bruce Mercer’s attack dogs, nothing more. Well, guess what? I’m attacking on my own. I’m getting my vengeance, and I’m showing the world what’s really going on...”

Gabrielle pulled at the hand around her neck. “V-Van didn’t leave that message in blood, did he?”

Another rough bark of laughter escaped from Deuce. “Now you’re seeing things. That was me. All me.”

“Because you wanted me to find out about the EOD,” she whispered. Cooper still couldn’t look in her eyes. He didn’t want to see her fear. His body tensed as he took another step forward. He had to get close enough to attack.

“You wanted me...to write a story on them, didn’t you?” Gabrielle’s words were distracting Deuce, and Cooper needed the man to stay distracted. Distracted prey was easier to take down.

“You were supposed to show the world...but you didn’t!” Spittle flew from Deuce’s mouth. “Everyone should have learned the truth. At the EOD, we’re all killers! They should fear us. But you didn’t write the story. You just let him—” He pointed the gun at Cooper. “You let him seduce you, and you buried the story!” Red stained Deuce’s cheeks, and, in the light of the apartment, Cooper could see the blood on the man’s hand.

Rachel’s blood.

“He was using you,” Deuce snapped. “You were the assignment.”

Cooper took another step forward. “She’s not an assignment.”