Wait for Morning (Sniper 1 Security #1) (12 page)

Friday

Just after one in
the morning

An annoying—yet not completely unfamiliar—sound
pulled Marissa from a deep sleep. Her eyes popped open as soon as her brain
registered what the noise was. The alarm system in her parents’ house was loud
enough to wake the dead, and the damn thing was echoing through Marissa’s
bedroom, along with a flashing strobe light that was mounted in the far corner
of the room—one of her father’s many contraptions used to ramp up the security
on the house.

Rather annoying but clearly effective.

The room was pitch black, except for the repetitive
flash of light. Looking around, Marissa took stock of the things around her:
bathroom door, dresser, mirror, chair…

Oh,
God.

Sucking in air, Marissa did her best not
to scream. There was a man standing in front of her windows, silhouetted by the
moonlight filtering in through the sheer curtains. He was tall and broad. A
menacing presence.

Her heart lurched in her chest, forcing
the air from her lungs as panic rushed in. She glanced toward the door,
wondering how fast she could get to it and whether or not this guy was faster
than she was. Six feet, maybe seven, separated her from the exit. Not
impossible, but…

“
It’s
okay,
Marissa. It’s just me.”

With her blood rushing in her
ears—combined with the blaring alarm—she hardly heard the words, but she
recognized the voice. “Trace?”

What the hell was he doing in her bedroom?
And how had he gotten in? She’d locked the door before she had climbed into
bed. Hadn’t she?

“
Wh-
what are you d-doing?”
she stuttered, sitting up and holding the blankets tight to her body with
trembling hands. It wasn’t that she was modest—she was wearing fleece pajama
pants and a sweatshirt, for goodness sake, which was more than enough to cover
her completely. No, at the moment, decorum was the last thing on her mind. This
was something else entirely. This was a deep-rooted fear that suddenly chilled her
to the bone.

“We’ve got a man attempting to come over
the wall.”

Marissa swallowed hard, processing his
words through her muddled brain.

The wall?

The
eight-foot
wall?

Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

Doing her best to breathe, Marissa stared
at Trace’s silhouette.

They were coming for her now at her
parents’ house? Was she not safe anywhere?

“And you’re standin’ there why?” Marissa
questioned, hating the quiver in her voice.

“Don’t worry. He’s not gonna get close to
the house. Or you. It’s just a precaution.”

A precaution. Great.

That meant if Trace was inside, then
someone was running interference outside. “Who’s out there?”

“RT and Con.”

Although Trace didn’t live at the
compound—which raised the bigger question of why he was there in the first
place—both Ryan and Conner had houses on the property, and the security systems
were linked together, which explained how they knew what was going on. Marissa
knew for a fact that her brother—all of them, actually—slept with his gun under
his freaking pillow.

“Can you at least make the noise stop?”
she asked, tempted to cover her ears to keep the violent, piercing screech from
bursting her eardrums.

“Not yet,” Trace explained, his voice loud.
“Your father wants to make sure this dipshit hears it. If he thinks he’s
getting anywhere close to you, he’s delusional.”

“My father?” Marissa asked, confused.

“No. The asshole in the yard, Marissa,”
Trace replied, sounding as though he were talking to a kindergartner. She
pretended not to notice.

Marissa knew that Trace was good at what
he did. So were the rest of them. She’d always trusted every single person
employed by Sniper 1 Security implicitly, and only recently—since her world had
started crumbling apart—had that trust started to waver somewhat. It didn’t
help that an intruder had targeted her at her family’s home less than
forty-eight hours after she’d arrived there, nor was it giving her a warm and
fuzzy feeling.

Worse was the fact that she couldn’t do
anything about it.

Not that she hadn’t expected them to come
for her sooner or later. And this wasn’t the first intruder they’d dealt with
at her parents’ house over the years, hence the need for a compound. But it was
the first time someone had been after
her
.
And there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that whoever the intruder was, he
was coming for her.

“If everyone’s armed and waiting, what’s
with the alarm?” she asked, raising her voice again so he could hear her over
the irritating wail.

“Your father insisted. If it were me, I’d
have silenced it. Busted the asshole when he tried to get in the house.”

Marissa shivered. The idea of someone
getting that close made her stomach churn.

Then again, she was pretty sure someone
had been in her house in Connecticut the night it’d blown up. Someone other
than Trace. Just a hunch.

Rather than interrogate Trace about that
night, or any night thereafter, Marissa opted to prop herself against the
headboard and cover her ears. The sound was so monotonous she was sure she’d
hear it echoing in her brain for the next few hours.

So much for sleep.

□«»□«»□«»□

Standing in Marissa’s bedroom in the
middle of the night wasn’t Trace’s idea of a good time.

First of all, her scent overwhelmed him.
Made him long for things he couldn’t have. And secondly, there was only one
reason he would be there … she was in danger.

Rarely had he ever been in her bedroom,
never when she’d been there, and tonight he would’ve avoided it at all costs
except he was tasked with ensuring her safety. Leaving that to anyone
else—including her father and brothers—hadn’t been an option. She was his
charge, his responsibility, and he damn sure wasn’t leaving her in anyone
else’s hands, no matter how capable they might be.

And he damn sure wasn’t going to think
about what
that
meant. Nor was he
going to try to explain it to Bryce. Marissa’s father was already looking at
him funny.

Nudging the curtain open with the barrel
of his gun, Trace narrowed his eyes on the asshole who had cleared the eight-foot
wall and was walking toward the gate as though he were out for a midnight
stroll. Whoever this guy was, he was certifiable,
that
was for damn sure. But something wasn’t sitting right with Trace, which was the
reason he was standing guard in Marissa’s bedroom.

The alarm cut off, suddenly plunging the
house into eerie silence. Trace’s ears were ringing, but he was grateful to whomever
had shut the damn thing off. The bright flashing strobe, similar to a fire
alarm in hotels, signaled that the alarm system had merely been silenced, not
shut off completely.

Sparing a glance at Marissa, he noticed
she was sitting in her bed, the blankets pulled up to her neck as she stared
back at him, the whites of her wide, concerned eyes visible in the darkened
room.

He felt like a shithead for not warning
her, but the entire reason he was there was to keep her safe, not to hang out
and chat. It helped that he’d been expecting this—or something relatively close
to it—because of some Internet chatter Austin and Dominic had picked up on
earlier in the day. Marissa’s younger brother and her cousin were the computer
geniuses in the bunch.

It was the blatant warning that had Trace’s
hackles raised, though. Almost as though someone wanted them to know that this
idiot would be attempting to break in. Not the normal work of a criminal
mastermind.

And that was the reason Trace hesitated to
believe this blatant break-in attempt was the work of the people who were after
Marissa. They might be responsible, but probably not directly.

No, this was something else. Likely
someone who was put up to it in order to get more
intel
.

Dumb ass.

Speaking of… The guy moved closer, walking
right through the interior gate—which had been opened by RT as soon as he and
Conner had gotten into place, simply to allow the idiot to get closer.
Seriously, the bad guys were going to have to hire smarter people, or this was
going to turn into a comedy.

Trace fought the urge to laugh when he
watched RT and Conner tackle the guy a few feet inside the gate. They’d been
lying in wait, and the idiot had walked right into their trap. The only thing
better than watching the startled man flounder around on the ground like a fish
out of water as the exterior floodlights flashed on would’ve been the
opportunity to listen to him cry like a little girl.

Now that they’d caught the intruder, Trace
could stand down.

Somewhat.

Lowering his weapon and turning away from
the window, Trace peered at Marissa in the darkness.

“They got him,” he informed her.

“So it’s … it’s
over
?” she asked, eyes still wide as saucers.

“I wouldn’t say that, but they caught
this
idiot.”

“He’s not…?”

“No, he’s not the guy who’s after you,
Marissa. I wish he were that stupid. If that were the case, this would’ve been
over a long damn time ago.”

The sob that tore free from Marissa
startled the hell out of him, and the next thing Trace knew, he was standing a
few feet from her bed watching her cry into her hands.

Shit.

What the hell was he supposed to do with a
crying woman? More specifically,
this
crying woman. When they’d been in the motel, he’d held her, but here … in her
bedroom … that wasn’t an option.

Knowing he couldn’t walk out on her—crying
or not—
Trace
hesitantly eased closer to the bed, but
not too close. As it was, he was having a damn hard time keeping his thoughts
from all the ways he wanted to console her. Preferably naked.

God, he was an ass.

“Hey,” he whispered.

He had no idea what he was going to tell
her, and he definitely wasn’t going to touch her. As much as he wanted to pull
Marissa into his arms, hold her until the sun came up, and tell her that it
would all be okay, he didn’t know that for a fact, and he damn sure wasn’t
going to lie to her. Not to mention, touching her again was merely inviting
trouble he wasn’t interested in signing up for. This was some serious shit, and
they had yet to get a handle on it.

Instead, he settled on urging her to lie
down and close her eyes. “He’s not gonna hurt you. You can go back to sleep,
Marissa.”

When she looked up at him, her soft cheeks
streaked with tears, his heart broke for her. And when she reached for him, her
slender arms coming around his waist, her cheek resting against his stomach,
instinct kicked in, and he curled his hands around her head, holding her close.

God, he should not be doing this. Touching
her. Her touching him. It was a recipe for disaster, yet he couldn’t seem to
push her away.

“I’m scared, Trace,” Marissa whispered in
the darkened room.

He wanted to tell her that she should be,
but he didn’t. He also didn’t tell her that there was no way in hell he’d let
anyone get close to her or that he’d make sure no one ever hurt her again. But
that was exactly what was going through his mind.

That and, well … other things. Other
things that were better left alone but damn near impossible to ignore with her
head against his stomach, dangerously close to…

“You need to get some sleep,” he repeated,
purposely pulling away from her before he passed the point of no return and
found himself in her bed, holding her in ways he’d only dreamed of.

“Are you leaving?” she asked when she got
settled, her voice trembling from her tears.

“No,” he stated, pointing across the darkened
room. “I’m sleeping in one of the chairs. Just to be on the safe side.”

Marissa’s gaze met his briefly and Trace
had to force himself to turn away. The last damn thing he needed was her
turning those crystal-blue eyes on him. For as long as he could remember, his
one and only weakness had been Marissa Trexler.

She was also the one and only woman he
couldn’t have.

□«»□«»□«»□

 
“Is
this guy serious right now?” Ryan asked Conner, referring to the idiot who was
pushing himself up off the ground and dusting himself off as though he hadn’t
just been tackled to the ground by two men damn near twice his size. The same
guy who’d come over the top of the eight-foot stone wall that surrounded the
compound and then waltzed right through the open gate, coming closer to his
parents’ house. And never once had the dumb ass realized they’d given him an
open invitation.

“No one said criminals were smart,” Conner
replied, his voice low, his hands fisted at his sides.