Gabe (In the Company of Snipers, #8)(41)

“You do know she had strong feelings for Alex.”

Mark grunted. Yes, she’d been known to declare she loved everyone on The TEAM, Alex included. Mark just hadn’t thought of it as that kind of love.

His cell phone interrupted the awkward conversation. It was Mother’s snippy voice on the other end of the line. And that was another thing. Why hadn’t she buzzed him on the intercom, as she would’ve done with Alex?

“If you’re not too busy, would you mind spending a couple minutes with Steven and me for a change?”

He drew in a deep breath and prepared to be extra patient. “Be right out.”

David excused himself while Mark went immediately to Mother’s workstation as summoned. Actually the center of the work bay, her station formed command central, a beehive of monitors, CPUs, phone lines and everything else computer related.

She stood behind Junior Agent Steven Cross, her crisp navy-blue blazer and skirt complementing her silvery short hair and cream-colored blouse while she followed his progress over his shoulder.

Mark wasn’t worried about the crime scene across the street anymore. He doubted the roof would hold a hint of believable evidence once the FBI was through with it. Thankfully, the lack of hard evidence hadn’t stopped Mother or Steven from checking into it.

Steven pointed at his monitor the minute Mark arrived. “Look at this, Boss.”


“Don’t call me that.” Mark didn’t mean to snap.

“Sure. Sorry, but you need to see this,” Steven continued unfazed.

Mother rolled her eyes. Something was definitely bothering her. She’d taken a stern position behind her poor apprentice, her arms crossed over her chest and her toe tapping.

Mark rested his hand on Steven’s shoulder to take the sting out of his rebuke. “Whatcha got?”

Steven reversed the video and ran it forward in slow motion. “The shooter. I think. Watch this.”

Mark watched while once again, Alex pulled up to the security gate on the day of the shooting. He extended his left arm through the driver’s side window and keyed in his pass code. The gate rolled to the right. The vehicle’s left-turn indicator blinked bright red.

Everything looked normal until the car’s tires rotated forward.

A flash of bright red followed by puffs of white hit the windshield. Alex slumped forward in his seat belt and Mark’s heart hit the floor. Damn. The god-awful empty feeling of losing a buddy never went away.

“Run that again. Slow it down,” he said hoarsely, licking his lips to restore moisture.

“Yes, sir.” Steven reversed the video and decreased the tempo.

This time Mark knew where to look. There it was again. The flash of red highlighting the front windshield a scant second before the burst of white, only the flashes hadn’t come from the same location. One was high. One low.

“Run it again.”

Steven complied quickly, and there it was. The flash of red from the rooftop, exactly where the FBI and ME reported the kill shots came from. Hell, they’d even trumped up diagrams to support their so-called evidence. Liars. The kill shots came from a window directly across the street from the parking garage exit, not the roof.

Guys in Afghanistan called it painting a target. They’d laser tag a Taliban terrorist’s front door or a munitions dump to guide an F-16 bomb strike. Some * had painted Alex from the roof while another murdered him. What the hell? Was that sniper so poor of a shot he needed his targets marked? Or—

Damn. David was right. The FBI and ME’s reports were bogus. Every word out of their lying mouths was intended to one hundred percent misdirect them. That’s why the Bureau refused to release the so-called crime scene. It wasn’t one, but as long as The TEAM believed that, they hadn’t looked further.

Only Steven had. And Mother. And David.

Another wave of frustration edged up Mark’s spine, filling him with the need to strike back. Hit something. Had he had his head in the sand all this time?

He stuck his index finger to the monitor screen, pointed to the dark window across the street. “Can you zoom in right here? I want to see this area closer.”

“Already zoomed in and enhanced, sir.” Steven brought up the requested image.

At first, Mark could only make out the blurry outline of the tools of the trade—the tripod holding what had to be a sniper rifle, the round lens of a scope that brought targets up close and personal.

Steven worked to bring the image into better focus.

The broad shoulders of the bastard behind the scope materialized. The man raised his head to assess the damage he’d caused. The sonofabitch smiled.

“Who the hell is he?”

Steven handed Mark a printout from their private facial recognition database, a compilation of every national and foreign facial rec database. The sonofabitch in question was Samuel Becker. Ex-Navy SEAL. Current FBI undercover sniper. Flaming *.

“The FBI killed Alex.” Mark lowered his voice too late. Every head in the work area popped up and all agents crowded into Mother’s workspace.

She stood smugly behind Steven, rocking back and forth on her heels. “Go on. Show him what else you found.”

He handed Mark another photo. “Sir, I also ran thermal imaging on this sequence of shots.”

“What am I looking at?” Mark asked, his blood humming with a spike of adrenaline and a boatload of righteous indignation. The day Libby lost her sister, Faith, to an FBI protective detail gone bad was the day Mark knew Alex was right. The Bureau couldn’t be trusted. Ever.