Gabe (In the Company of Snipers, #8)(2)

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.