Sharpshooter (Shadow Agents 3)

Chapter Three

Gunner wouldn’t look at her. Sydney crept quietly through the jungle, stepping so that she wouldn’t so much as snap a twig, and she was too aware of the silence that came from the man behind her.

Cale and Logan were scouting on the west side of the area. She and Gunner were alone on the east side. The chirps and calls from the insects and creatures in the dark jungle drifted in the air.

And no sound came from Gunner.

She stopped. Took a deep breath, and turned to face him. “Say something.”

The moon shone down on him, but she couldn’t read his expression. Like Logan, Gunner was too skilled at hiding what he felt.

“Are you happy? Stunned? Talk to me!” Didn’t he realize that he was her best friend? When she had a secret to share with someone, she always went to him.

He was her rock.

Her...lover.

Slade’s alive.

“It was a mistake,” Gunner told her.

Her heart slammed into her chest. “You don’t think it’s Slade?” Her voice was quiet, so she stepped closer to him. So close that she could feel the seductive warmth of his body. “Logan’s wrong and—”

“We were a mistake.”

Her body trembled, but she kept her chin up. She kept her eyes on him only because she wouldn’t break there, not in the jungle. Not in front of him. “Is that really how you feel?”

She didn’t feel that way. Being with him had been the only thing that seemed right in her world.

Something that felt so amazing, no, it couldn’t be a mistake.

“It won’t happen again. We won’t be together again.”

A bullet wound would probably hurt less. Actually, she knew from personal experience that it would. “It might not even be him.” Her hoarse voice. But it was true. She’d given up on Slade, put him to rest and moved on.

“And if it is?” Now Gunner was the one to take a step toward her. “I left him. I thought he was dead. If he was alive, for all this time, do you know the hell he would have been put through by his captors?”

She didn’t want to think too much about that. She couldn’t think about it now.

“I’m his older brother. I was supposed to keep him safe.” Disgust tightened his mouth. “Not screw his fiancée.”

Pinpricks of heat shot across her cheeks. “Is that what you did? Because I thought we’d been making love.”

Her mistake.

“We need to finish scouting so we can secure the area. “Now isn’t the time to talk about this.”

Right. Of course. But would there ever be a time when he wanted to talk? “It was more to me,” she said, and turned away.

That was when she realized...all of the chirps and calls had stopped. The jungle was eerily silent around them, and clouds were starting to drift across the surface of the moon, making the shadows even darker.

Sydney brought up her weapon, and she knew Gunner was doing the same. She stepped forward, her body tensing now. Something had changed in the jungle.

Shifted.

She and Gunner had been hunting before, but now she had the feeling that they were the prey.

The rebel camp should have been about a mile away. No one should be in their immediate area.