Page 85 of Forbidden Protector

Gideon told me once, in his own study, standing where I've stood my whole life pretending to be furniture: you never wanted anything. That was the whole use of you. A man with no wanting in him doesn't get talked out of his post.

He didn't tell me what happens to that man once the post doesn't need him either.

I find out I already know. He becomes a foul-mouthed, pissed-off, worthless piece of shit standing at a window watching somebody else drive his truck.

Mackenzie comes in from the barn with hay dust in her ponytail and Gus at her heel like he's been reassigned to her permanently, which he has. She takes one look at my face and doesn't ask how the appointment went.

"That bad?"

"Fifteen percent."

"Fifteen percent of what?"

"Grip strength. Whatever number they had before I put my hand between me and a rifle scope." I set the coffee down harder than I mean to and some of it jumps the rim. "Fifteen percent of a hand that used to hold zero at four hundred yards in wind. You want to guess what fifteen percent of that gets me?"

"I'm not going to guess, because guessing feels like a trap you built on the drive home."

"It's not a trap. It's math." I look at my own fingers like they've personally betrayed me, which they have. "Fifteen percent gets me a hand that can maybe someday hold a coffee cup without shaking. It does not get me a hand that can hold anything that matters."

"Depends on your definition of matters." She says it flat, not soft, and not managing me. It lands better than anything anybody's said to me today, even while I'm furious at everyone, including her. "Because from where I'm standing, that hand took a bullet meant for me and never once stopped to do the arithmetic. Matters is a wider category than you're currently allowing it to be."

I don't have an answer for that one that doesn't sound like feeling sorry for myself, so I don't give her one.

I go to the window instead, because looking at a truck I can't drive is somehow easier than looking at a woman telling me true things I don't want.

"There's something else." Her voice changes register, and I know before she says it that whatever's coming is going to be worse than a physical therapist's chart. "Another one came through this morning. Different number this time, another burner probably, same as the one from the night at the hospital. No name, same as before." She doesn't have to remind me what the first one said. I've read those three words enough times in three weeks to have them by heart, right alongside the rest of it.

"Same message?"

"Same three words." She crosses her arms, and her jaw sets, that one muscle at the hinge going tight right before she decides not to say how scared she is, which is almost none, ever. "Whoever it is didn't just have eyes or ears on that hospital room three weeks ago, Holt. They're still watching. Still know exactly when it's worth reminding us."

Three weeks of nothing to aim at, and now there's a name for it.

"Voss."

She goes still. "You've never said that name to me."

"I'm saying it now." My hand, the bad one, closes as far as it'll go, which isn't far, and the failure of it makes the anger worse instead of better. "Dane Voss. Counter-sniper. Contract work, most of it overseas, some of it closer than anybody likes to say out loud. John flagged him for me months ago, told me that if a body ever turned up shot from a range and angle no amateur could manage, a kill too precise to chalk up to luck, that would be Voss's work. I've had it in my head since that night at the elevator. I just never had a reason to say it to you."

"Do you have proof it's him?"

"I have John's read and my own gut, and in ten years of doing this for a living, those two things have never once been wrong at the same time."

"That's not evidence. That's a hunch with a body count behind it." She isn't arguing to argue. I watch her take it in, fast, precise, already building the frame she'll need to make it useful instead of just true. "I need something I can put in a report, Holt. A name in your head doesn't survive a judge."

"I'm not building you a case. I'm telling you Voss is the one out there deciding what he's willing to do next, whoever's paying him to do it." My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to, aimed at the window and not at her, though she's the only one in the room to catch it. "And I can't do one goddamn fucking thing about it, because the hand that used to end men like him is all but useless. I couldn't hit the broad side of that barn out there right now if you paid me to."

"You could call Roy. Get eyes on the perimeter."

"Roy's moving pairs to summer range. Roy doesn't have time to babysit a man who can't hold his own rifle."

"Then call somebody who does."

"There isn't anybody else. There's me, and I'm fifteen percent of what I used to be, and this ranch has already figured that out without anybody bothering to tell me to my fucking face." It comes out louder than anything I've said to her since the study, since Tatum, and since the ugliest night either of us has survived. I watch it land and watch her not flinch, which somehow makes it worse instead of better.

I cross to the gun safe anyway, because rage doesn't make a man stupid, it just makes him move faster. I get the sidearm out left-handed, work the mag free, check the load by feel the way I've done ten thousand times, and set it on the counter within reach of the door instead of putting it away. If Voss wants to test how useless fifteen percent actually is, he can find out at close range instead of four hundred yards.

The phone rings before either of us can decide what happens next.