Free Protected by a SEAL: Hot SEALs (Volume 5) by Cat Johnson

Without thinking, he’d knocked Sierra to the ground, shielding her with his body.
    Sierra hit the ground with a grunt. “Rick. What the hell—”
    “Sniper!” His brain worked only slightly slower than his body as he reviewed what had happened seconds before.  
    “What?” Obviously things had happened so fast, Sierra had missed it. She didn’t realize they’d been shot at.
    He sure as hell had felt it—the rush of the bullet too close for comfort. The splintering of the fiberglass trailer just behind him where the shot had hit. He’d decide later if it was better she was blissfully ignorant of exactly how close that bullet had come to hitting him, or not.
      Judging by the angle of the bullet, the shot would have come from the other side of the street.
    Where they were now, on the ground between the truck and Sierra’s trailer, put the bulk of his vehicle between them and the shooter. But that would only remain the case if the shooter didn’t relocate. The fact was he could very well be on the move.
    “Can you get off me now?” Her annoyed muffled request from beneath him proved she still wasn’t taking this threat seriously.
    What would it take? Her getting actually hit? Him taking a bullet? Both were definitely possibilities given the circumstances.
    Keeping that reality in mind, Rick lifted just a bit of his weight off her and said, “We have to go.”
    “Go where?”
    “Away from here. Someplace where people aren’t shooting at us.” It was the best answer Rick could come up with.
    Obviously, the lot wasn’t secure. He didn’t need to call Chris to confirm that. He did need to tell them what was happening though.
    Rick rolled them closer to the truck until they were almost beneath it. He pulled out his cell and punched Chris’s number. They’d need to get into the truck eventually but more pressing was the need to call in back up.
    As he kept his eyes on their surroundings, he couldn’t see Sierra beneath him, but he could feel her breathing hard and fast, probably from anger at him more than fear of the shooter.
    Stubborn, hard-headed woman.
    He needed her to listen and follow orders otherwise her usual obstinate, loose canon attitude could get them both killed.
    Rick punched to dial Chris. After two rings he heard, “Hey. You on your way here?”
    “We’re here and fucking dodging bullets outside Sierra’s trailer.”
    “What?” Chris’s tone rose. “I put you on speaker so Brody can hear. Tell me where you are so I can get to you.”
    It wasn’t as if there were any street signs and he could give them an address. It was a damn movie lot. “I drove in through the front gate, hung a right at the first building on the right. There’s a row of trailers up that street. You’ll see my truck.”
    And their dead bodies if Chris and Brody didn’t move faster and get here before the sniper got brave and came out of his hide.
    “On our way. Hang tight, bro.”
    Rick reached down and maneuvered his weapon out of the holster beneath his pants leg. The pistol wasn’t much of a match for a high-powered sniper rifle with a scope but it was something.
    It would work just fine at close range if the bastard was stupid enough to walk around this truck and face Rick head-on, man to man.
    Sierra had said that she thought her stalker could be either a male or a female, but Rick had to disagree.
    If the threats had been limited to just the photos and a note, a mental battle, an attack of intimidation, maybe he’d buy into the theory it was a woman. But now there was firepower added to the list of assaults.
    Call him a chauvinist, but that screamed to him that their opponent in this deadly game wasn’t a female.
    And speaking of female . . . Sierra was still crushed beneath him breathing hard enough he feared she’d hyperventilate. He felt exactly how small she was. Her build was slight, and she was too damn thin, like too many of Hollywood’s darlings were to try and please the overly critical