Excerpt From GABE

In the Company of Snipers, Book 8

©2015 by Irish Winters

Pop! Pop! Bang!

Backfire? Gunfire? Could’ve been, either.

Junior Agent Gabe Cartwright jerked his gaze to the exit gate of the underground garage. He’d just parked his Land Rover in its assigned stall. With his revoked driver’s license, he shouldn’t have been driving, but he was. Barely had his feet on the ground.

His boss, Alex Stewart, lingered at the gate in a black SUV. Always in a hurry, the speed demon should’ve stomped on the accelerator and roared off into traffic by now.

Damn. Was that gunfire?

Gabe couldn’t get to his boss fast enough, then couldn’t believe his eyes. Alex sat slumped forward in his seatbelt, his forehead tilted down and his mouth open in shock. Three crimson bull’s-eyes blossomed dead center of his white dress shirt.

“No! No! No!” Gabe jerked the door handle. Locked. His palms hit the window. “Boss!”

Alex didn’t move. The damned engine still idled.

This can’t be happening. Not here in America. Not to Alex.

Gabe grabbed his cell phone and stabbed 911, his heart roaring in his ears. He barked address and details to the dispatch operator, then his teammates two stories up. “Shooting. Parking garage. Alex. Get down here now!”

Where the hell had those shots come from? The busy traffic on the street looked normal. The office building across the way, too. No glint of a scope. No shadowy figure skulking away. It was just another sunny day in Alexandria, Virginia. Like hell.

No time to waste. Gabe braced the sole of his boot to the windshield and pushed it inward far enough to loosen the window seal, then jerked the entire sheet of safety glass out.

“I’m... shot?” Alex gasped.

Yes, damn it. Only Alex would be surprised at that. And still talking. Had to be in shock.

Leaning over the dashboard, Gabe shoved the shifter into park and unlocked the doors.

“Gabe?”

“Yeah, I heard you, Boss. Help’s coming. You’re gonna be okay.”

Please. Don’t let him die. Not Alex! Not my boss!

He didn’t need CPR. He was still conscious, still huffing shallow breath. A sheen of sweat glistened on his upper lip. There just wasn’t enough blood. He had to be hemorrhaging internally. To death.

“Kelsey,” Alex whispered, his eyes glazed and his voice fading. “Tell... Kelsey...”

“No, Boss. You get to tell her yourself. Promise.”

Lies. All lies.

Alex didn’t curse. Not even once. He closed his eyes with a soft sigh, barely breathing.

Just that fast Gabe was inside the vehicle with him, releasing his seatbelt, easing him out of the SUV and onto the concrete. He locked his hands together and commenced first-aid, applying hard pressure to stop the bleeding.

Alex would not die. Not today.

The men and women of The TEAM tumbled out from the stairwell. Gabe heard the rumble of boots on concrete, but offered not one second of precious time to acknowledge them. All ex-military, they knew what the hell to do.

“Is he still breathing?” Harley asked, shoulder to shoulder with Gabe on the cold garage floor.

“Yeah. Three shots. Professional hit. Came out of nowhere.” Gabe kept the pressure up. Not Alex. I’m not losing another friend. Not again.

Mark knelt at his other side with a fistful of sterile packing. He covered Gabe’s hands with it, and together they applied enough pressure to make a grown man cry.

Alex never even groaned.

What kind of man survives three mortal wounds? Superman, maybe. Ironman. Alex was close to invincible, but the harsh reality of ballistics sucked.

Sirens shrieked. Maybe two. The paramedics barked orders for everyone to step back. They took over first-aid and had Alex off the ground and on the gurney in no time.

Gabe sucked in a lungful of stale concrete air. Damn. Could this be Alex’s lucky day? Could he bully Death as he’d bullied everyone and everything else?

God, I hope so.

The medics loaded the ambulance, the clock ticking. Gabe stepped forward, going with his boss every step of the way.

“No riders.” The driver secured the tailgate, his palm in Gabe’s face.

“But I—”

“Follow in your own vehicle. We need to move.”

They didn’t waste time. Sirens blared away as quickly as they’d come.

Every team member scrambled to his or her vehicle. Gabe found himself pulled into Junior Agent Zack Lennox’s family van. “Come on. He’ll need Kelsey.”

“You’re not going after the boss?

“No, Gabe. We’re not. We’re going to take him his reason to live.”

Good thinking. Gabe climbed into the van, wiping the blood off his fingers, needing the sticky stuff to stick somewhere else. Anywhere else.

“Did anyone call her?”

Zack only growled. Obviously not. This kind of news had to be delivered in person. With tender care. He aimed the van toward the elementary school where Kelsey taught.

Gabe pushed a fist to his sternum as if that could stop the drum roll in his chest, the creeping suffocation of an imminent panic attack. Triggers. It was all about managing his response to the triggers that initiated that claustrophobic sensation of the world closing in.

Not now. Keep it together. Breathe in. Breathe out.

By the time Zack roared into the school’s loading zone and hit the school ground running, Gabe had it under control. He followed. Maybe Zack knew how to break this kind of news?

Yeah, right. Words always failed. How do you begin to tell a woman her husband had been mortally shot? How do you to tell her he may already be dead? That it could be too late?

Gabe flat out didn’t want to know. K.I.A. notifications sucked.

The morning kindergarten class must’ve barely begun. Kelsey looked up, smiling from the two-foot high table where she sat surrounded by her teaching assistant and maybe a dozen adoring five-year-olds. “Zack? Gabe? Why are you—? What’s wrong?”

“Alex needs you,” Zack replied calmly, his hand outstretched to take hers, his fingers urging her forward. “Come on, Kels. We’ve got to go. Now.”

The light left her eyes. She already knew. With barely any words of instruction to her assistant, she left the quiet morning behind and hurried with Zack and Gabe out the door and into the van.

“How is he?” she asked, her chin up, Zack’s van already ten miles over the speed limit to get her to the hospital in time.

“Not sure,” he replied evenly, squeezing her hand on the console between them.

“He’s been shot before, you know,” she offered quietly. Hopefully.

“Yes. He has,” Zack agreed.

Sitting behind her in the van, Gabe kept his mouth shut. Kelsey needed to believe her fierce warrior husband could survive this time because he’d survived others. Too bad life didn’t work that way. A man only had a certain number of chances before the bullet with his name caught up with him. The odds always decreased. Any dumb jarhead knew that.

Gabe glanced at his watch, needing to run instead of sitting on his ass. The trip took too damned long!

Finally at the emergency room, he joined his somber teammates with poor Kelsey sandwiched between him and Zack. As if that could stall the inevitable. As if anyone could protect her tender heart from what lay around the tiled corners.

She’d clutched Gabe’s hand when he’d helped her out of the car. She hadn’t let go. He couldn’t bear to.

Junior Agent Izza Maher wiped her face when she looked up and saw them. Ember Dennison turned away. Their husbands, Connor and Rory, stood tall and silent.

Newbies, Taylor Armstrong and Maverick Carson were ashen. The office IT genius, Mother, bowed her head, her shoulders trembling.

Harley was nowhere to be seen.

Damn. We’re too late.

That everyone was there should’ve been Kelsey’s first clue as to how bad things were. Instead, like the lady of grace she was, she offered small talk to her too quiet friends. “Mark. Connor. My goodness. You’re all here. Hi, Rory. Taylor. Any word yet?”

She made it sound as if this was simply another pickle Alex had gotten himself into. As if this too was all in a day’s work for a covert operator. But Gabe caught the tightened grip of her fingers. She needed a lifeline. Someone to hold onto. He let it be him.

“The doctor’s waiting,” Mark said, his voice tight. “Come with me.”

Kelsey nodded.

Gabe steeled his heart as they followed Mark beyond the waiting room, his whole being screaming, ‘Hit rewind. Replay. STOP!’

The corridors seemed to narrow with every step. Mark pressed the metal push pad to activate the wide emergency room doors. Once beyond, doctors and nurses in light blue scrubs hurried through the corridors as if Death didn’t stalk right along with them.

At last, another door. Not just a curtained-off examination room, though. More like one of those family counseling rooms with solid walls. In case of crying. Cursing. Screaming.

A doctor had barely exited. “Mrs. Stewart?” he asked gently.

Kelsey’s hand lifted out of Gabe’s to her lips. “Yes?”

“I’m so sorry.” The doctor reopened the door, ushering her into the room where Harley stood somber and still over a sheet-draped body. Bloody packing splattered the floor. The stifling drift of alcohol and antiseptics filled the air.

“No,” she whispered. “Please, no.”

Gabe didn’t need to hear the words. He could read, and Harley’s bleak, teary face was an open book with an ungodly ending.

Hell had come to The TEAM.

Alex Stewart was dead.

It took a while to figure it out. The first clue? Gabe Cartwright, leaning over him, both clenched hands pressed to his chest, crushing the hell out of him, as if his life depended on it. The kid had crystal-green eyes, a fierce shade he hadn’t noticed before. Full of life. Just as full of rage. Disbelief maybe?

The second clue? Softhearted Harley crying big, sloppy tears. The guy never should’ve been a soldier. Never should’ve been a sniper. Too much heart. Just wasn’t mean enough.

But the third? Mark turned away with a too somber face and a tight lip, his jaw clenched, the way a warrior shuts down when he’s seen too much. Gone too far. Can’t bear any more.

Plus, he had stopped cursing. Even the unseen gentlemen who’d fired the killing shots had received no more than a mild rebuke, which was rare coming from a man with a formidable vocabulary of curses. The passion that had stoked his life only minutes before dissipated in the bright blurred light of—wherever he was. “Oh,” became his strongest oath, somehow sufficient, maybe even a little bit over the top. Just—oh.

The fog in his head made everything surreal—the siren, the lights. The dark. The cold.

Air filled him with weightlessness until he was no longer bound to Earth by anger, bone, or muscle—a rare sensation for a man who‘d once carried the weight of a few too many kills. Regret for never having been a better man. For all the wrongs he’d not been able to set right.

For Sara.

For Abby.

And now—Kelsey.

A brilliant light enveloped him from every side, blinding him to the strict methodology and logic that had ruled his life. Things like means, motive, and opportunity paled to mist and vapor.

Think.

But he couldn’t. The light shone so purely he could barely focus. Numbing darkness followed. Then came the cold. Time drifted in this new place. This new dimension of—where am I?

He struggled to remember anything, but nothing came to him.

That was... then.

This was... now.

A man can’t decipher nothingness.

But. Oh. Wait. This was weird. He floated over a casket while a collage of shadows marched by. The guy in the casket looked like—me? It couldn’t be, could it? He slapped his heavy right palm to his chest for verification. That was what real men did. They proved they could keep on keeping on. But his hand hit nothing. No flesh. No bone.

The casket morphed into shadows, then people come to say—goodbye? To who?

Me?

How odd to see them, but not be able to shake a friendly hand, or tell an old Marine’s lie. Friends. Governors. Congressmen. Faithful Marines. Soldiers. Airmen. Sailors. Sad and somber, they came and went.

He shifted through the dimension of here and now, pulled toward a somber group lingering beyond the coffin. He should’ve known right then and there. Something was dreadfully amiss, but nothing mattered because he’d caught a glimpse of her—the woman who’d saved his soul and breathed new life into his heart.

Kelsey. My Kelsey.

Her eyes searched for him. The hungering love of dewy brown riveted his heart to hers across time and space. She truly looked for him. More than once, he thought for sure she’d seen him.

He reached for her. God, he tried, but his fingers clutched nothing. They passed through her like shadows. She looked away, a tissue to her nose, a depth of sadness in her eyes. The kind of sorrow he used to be able to shield her from.

He would’ve cried if he could’ve cried. She’d always had that effect on him. She’d made him feel when others could not. She’d helped him remember the man he truly was. She made him want to live again. Even now.

Another man pulled her into a gentle hug of condolence. He whispered into her ear, like a knight of old swearing undying fealty to the queen of his fallen king. “I’m here for you, ma’am. Any time. Any day. You let me know what you need, I’ll make it happen.”

No. No. No! That’s my job!

Who was he? Who did those startling green eyes belong to? Zack? Maybe Gabe? Maybe not.

Everything blurred, pulling him from the lovely, sad scene. He hurried to commit the exquisite details of Kelsey’s face to memory. This might be his last chance to see her in this—this wherever he was.

Time ran out.

Her smile faded.

He couldn’t breathe, the loss of his beloved more than a man could endure. His hand clutched the ragged hole where his heart used to be. Air no longer mattered. He had no reason to breathe. No more reason to live.

Realization dawned slowly. He’d just witnessed a funeral.

His funeral.

His widow.

Her tears.

He, Alexander Bradley Stewart, toughest dog in the fight, was nothing but a shadow. A memory.

A ghost.

Can it be true? Alex Stewart is dead? Murdered?

While The TEAM struggles to deal with the blow they never saw coming, former USMC scout sniper, Gabe Cartwright is assigned to protect Alex’s widow, Kelsey. Already haunted by the fear that he let his boss die, he vows to protect her with his life. Nothing and no one will get in his way—until bossy Nurse Sullivan arrives to care for Kelsey. Sullivan is anti-gun, anti-dog, and seemingly anti-the whole male gender. The last damned thing he needs...

 

It’s her way or the highway.

Shelby Sullivan is an admitted control freak. She loves her new client, Kelsey Stewart, and intends to help her in any way possible, but has no use for Kelsey’s bodyguards. Not even the semi-charming Agent Cartwright will interfere with the perfect performance of her duties—until Shelby disregards his protective measures and leads Death straight back to Kelsey. It seems Gabe isn’t the only one who’s haunted…

 

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