Gabe (In the Company of Snipers, #8)(76)

“You get the bastard’s plate?” Zack bellowed, lowering his weapon but his gaze still fixed on the direction the assailants had gone.

“No. They were blacked out. Front and rear.” Gabe pulled himself and Shelby off the still rain-dampened lawn, his heart pounding at the near miss. He jerked her into his side, his free hand at the back of her neck while he holstered his weapon. “Two men. One driver. The other guy in the rear seat. One of us hit him. He was bleeding.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re gone.” Zack glared at Shelby. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I just went to the pharm—”

“I don’t give a shit where you went!”

“But I—”

“You’re insubordinate! I told you what the rules were and you ignored them. Look what you’ve done!”

“But Gabe’s sick, and—”

“Bullshit! In case you haven’t notice, Sullivan, Marines don’t get a sick day. They hump every stinking day, tired, hungry, or crying their eyes out. Gabe isn’t sick. He’s on duty!”

Shelby wilted. It was one thing to get an ass chewing, but another thing all together when an ex-Marine did it. An odd need to protect her from Zack skittered up Gabe’s spine. If anyone was going to chew her ass, it needed to be him.

“Lay off.” Gabe secured Shelby into his side. She trembled from head to foot. Her glasses were gone and those violet blues were brimmed and glistening. The damage was done. Raining crap on her wasn’t going to help.


“Don’t start on me, Cartwright.” Zack stabbed one angry finger at him with a clenched fist to back it up. “Get your gear. We’re moving.” He stomped into the house, not waiting for agreement or argument.

It was a good thing he did, too. The oddest inclination to kick Zack’s butt had just bubbled to the top of Gabe’s mind. His fingers curled had into a fist. One more word and there’d have been a different kind of showdown.

“I’m... I’m sorry,” she whined. “I thought the coast was clear. I made a big mistake.”

He couldn’t bring himself to look at her yet, not if she was close to crying. “Yes, you did. We don’t have time to talk about it now. Are you hurt?”

“My glasses,” she whined, looking down but obviously not seeing them.

Gabe swooped them off the ground, pissed at Zack and mad as hell at Shelby. He tucked them into his shirt collar and ushered her to safety, his nerves still on high alert. Whatever ordnance demolished her car came from nearby. Or some bastard had rigged the car her pretty butt had just been sitting in with a bomb.

Gabe pulled her tight against his hip, needing to keep this hardheaded woman safe despite herself and the panic attack poking at him.

Shit. The bomb might have been stashed under the hood and ready to blow when she drove home. He could have been picking up pieces of her instead of wanting to pound some real world caution into her. He quelled the rising darkness in his head and focused on getting her sweet little ass inside.

“Someone tried to kill me.”

“Damn it, Shelby. No shit. That’s why Zack’s smoking hot. You scared the hell out of him. Me, too.” Gabe blew out puffs of air through pursed lips, needing to get in control. She could’ve died. What do I have to do? Sit on her to make her listen?

He couldn’t have been more surprised at the front door. There stood Kelsey, a single-carry shoulder holster slung over her left shoulder and a pistol in her hand. A nine-millimeter SIG. Of course. Alex’s conceal-and-carry weapon of choice. What else?

She might have trembled a little when she rammed its magazine home. Her splintered fingers made it look all the more surreal, but the sight of a woman who knew the business end of a weapon? Nothing like it in the world.

“Who were they? The same guys who tried to kill Alex?”

“No ma’am, these guys were different.” Gabe aimed Shelby at a kitchen chair. “Sit. Stay.” Sam Becker is behind Alex’s murder. If he’s really dead.

Surprisingly, she did as she was told. He almost felt sorry for her as pale as she’d gone, but there wasn’t time to play nice. Not now. She’d screwed up. Big time. Zack had a right to be nail-spitting pissed.

The front of the house had taken the brunt of the assault. Glass and debris littered the front room. The plate glass picture window was shattered. Bullet holes pockmarked the ceiling and walls. The oil painting over the couch hung askew.

“Pack what you need to travel. Keep it light. Do it now,” Zack ordered. He’d already tossed his and Gabe’s sleeping rolls and gear to a pile by the door. “We leave in five.”

“But Zack...” Kelsey planted her feet in defiance.

Gabe held his breath. Did she honestly think she could stay there now that her home was shot to hell? She’d never win that argument, not with the enemy’s open declaration of war and Zack’s dander up.

She lifted her chin and stared him in the eye. “I can be packed in two.” With that, she retrieved another magazine from the gun safe, removed her family pictures from the mantle and marched to her bedroom. What a gal.

Zack went back to packing, but Shelby was the problem. Tears rained all over that bossy fa?ade of hers.

“We don’t have time for this.” Zack nodded his chin at her. He’d already stowed the laptop and computer equipment in their respective bags, and his cell phone was clamped between his ear and shoulder to notify Mark. “Get her ready to roll or I will.”