by Fiona Brand
He was standing, rifle fitted to his shoulder, scope to his eye, bringing the gun to bear on Ben and West. She wouldn't have seen him at all if he hadn't moved in the precise moment her gaze passed over him, because, like West, he was wearing army fatigues and blended so perfectly with the bush around him that he was all but invisible.
She didn't yell, afraid that he would shoot if he heard her. She simply pulled out the Sig, thumbing the safety off as she swung the gun up, levelled and fired, and kept firing systematically. There was a moment of startled eye contact, then the man ducked out of sight.
"Damn it all to hell," Ben roared. "Get down."
A heavy weight crashed into her side, the gun was knocked from her hands, and Ben's arms wrapped around her as she fell sideways, cushioning her as they hit the ground. The whine of a bullet stung in her ears, followed by a hollow report that echoed across the hills. A second shot followed; dirt and grass exploded a bare foot away.
West's voice came deep and cool and unshakeable from the edge of the bush. "Move. Now."
She caught the blur of shadows as West stepped from the cover of the trees, the Ruger fitted to his shoulder, swinging in a smooth arc.
Ben's arms clamped tighter around her, his body shielding her as they rolled, sky whirling past in a kaleidoscope of brilliant blue and fluffy white clouds. Something hard jolted her shoulder, the root of a tree; then she was half dragged behind a thick gnarled trunk.
West's heart pumped hard as he caught the shiver of leaves, the glint of sun on metal, and was startled by the ice-pure magnification of a tanned face, a shock of dark blond hair. Deliberately, he adjusted his aim lower and let the breath sift from between his teeth.
The Ruger kicked back into his shoulder. The echo kept going, ricocheting off granite faces, finally absorbed by the dense hush of the bush. He sighted the scope again for confirmation, keeping Linden's collapsed figure in his crosshairs.
He was aware of Ben and Roma lying on the ground a few metres away. "You can get up now. He's down."
Ben ignored West, who was already walking toward Linden, with Carter covering him. He was too intent on the woman lying half beneath him in the damp grass. His heart had nearly stopped when he'd turned to see her shooting at Linden as calmly as if she were on a shooting range. She could have died. He framed her face, his hands shaking. "Don't ever do that to me again."
Roma reached up and brushed a smudge of dirt from his jaw. "I'll do it as many times as I like. He was trying to kill you."
Ben went still inside, all the hairs at the back of his nape lifting. He began to understand just what kind of woman he'd got. "If you'll risk your life for me, then you'll damn well marry me without any more argument, because I don't want to live without you."
A tear trickled down her cheek. She blinked and sniffed. "Is that a proposal or an order, McCabe?"
He framed her face with his hands, his thumbs brushing at the tears. "Yeah, I know, I'm so romantic," he said softly. "You bet it's a proposal, and I'm not taking 'No' for an answer."
"Bingo," West said coldly. "Our hit man."
Carter terminated radio contact, pushed his lip mike out of the way and nudged Linden with his booted foot. The man moaned with pain and clutched his leg. Carter saw with savage satisfaction that Linden also had blood streaming down one arm from a deep gash on his bicep. West had only used one shot, so that piece of damage belonged to Roma. She hadn't managed to stop Linden, but she'd winged him, numbing his right arm and spoiling his aim. But the fact that West had only used one bullet and Linden had two wounds posed a problem. The police liked closure in these matters, and a mystery gunman would keep them awake nights.
"West," Carter said briefly, "we've got two wounds here. Why don't you shoot your gun again so the equation works?"
West aimed the Ruger skyward and discharged a second shot, then calmly reloaded and trained the gun on Linden.
Carter ignored Linden's moans while he searched for weapons; he had his priorities, and Linden's health and well-being ranked somewhere around the zero mark—way below putting out the trash and deciding whether or not to take a trip to the laundrette.
"He's clean," he said curtly. He opened a pouch on his belt, pulled out a pair of thin latex gloves and pulled them on. "I'm going to give you a shot of morphine," he said to the man on the ground. "Then I'll bandage you while we wait for the chopper. Do you understand me?"
The man rasped agreement, but Carter still had to prise his hands loose from his bleeding thigh and repeat his words several times before he got Linden's trouser leg cut away from the wound.
"You're lucky," he continued flatly. "Neither bullet severed an artery, so you won't bleed out. You're in a lot of pain, because muscle tissue's torn and the muscles around the injuries are contracting, making the pain worse, but it's nothing you can't handle. You'll be fit to stand trial."
He broke open the small combat syrette of morphine and stabbed it into a knotted thigh muscle. Seconds later Linden relaxed with a groan, and Carter pulled out a couple of tampons. "I've always wanted to do this," he murmured as he inserted dense tubes of cotton into both the entrance and exit wounds.
"Should help you get in touch with your feminine side."
The tampons immediately soaked up blood and swelled, stemming the steady seepage. He applied pads and bandaging, then moved on to the arm wound.
A four-wheel drive came to a halt just metres away. Blade climbed out. "The chopper's five minutes away, the police team will be here in two." He stared down at Linden. He looked younger than the fifty-two years his passport claimed, and he was tanned and fit, something they hadn't expected when they'd found out he was dying of cancer. All the medical evidence had suggested he shouldn't be capable of the feat of endurance he'd just carried out. He'd had a rough sea landing, then he'd had to scale cliffs in the dark and walk several miles in dense rain forest, the going treacherously slippery with all the rain they'd had. The trek in should have killed him.
He shook his head. "He must have reconnoitred, then come in from the coast last night. One of the team just spotted a small runabout, pulled up on the beach."
The distant beat of rotor blades sounded on the air. Blade checked his watch, then switched his attention to West, who had slung the Ruger over his shoulder and was leaning against a tree, watching Linden. "Nice shot," he commented. "You kept him alive."
West's mouth curled slightly at one corner. "I aim to please. Your sister gave me some leeway. She punched the first hole in him. He had trouble aiming after that."
Blade's expression sharpened. "Roma's armed?"
West's half smile turned into a lazy grin. "It wasn't McCabe's gun this time. She was carrying her own weapon." He eyed Linden's arm. "Nice shooting, for a handgun. That girl's got talent."
Blade swore softly, appalled. "She brought her gun with her." His eyes closed. She had actually brought her gun with her. The gun he had given her because she'd pestered him so often to let her shoot his.
The ramifications began to pile up.
She'd carried the gun illegally out of one country and into another. God only knew how she'd managed to weasel it through customs. Then she'd shot a man who was on Interpol's Most Wanted list with it. She hadn't left a bullet in him as evidence, which was something. "Did anyone actually see her shoot Linden?"
Carter straightened from strapping Linden's arm, peeled his gloves off and zipped them into a disposable plastic bag. "I don't know about anyone else," he said mildly, "but I didn't see your sister shoot anyone. I was too busy covering West's sorry ass. He had to shoot twice. Must be losing his touch."
Linden's eyes flickered open, slightly dreamy, and fastened on West. "Why didn't you go for the head shot?"
West eyed the man who had executed Jake Lombard, stalked Roma, and tried to kill Ben. All people he cared for. He was thirty years old, and in all those years he could count the people he cared for and still not reach double digits. There was a hot rage in him when he looked at Linden, a
nd coldness. He knew what Linden was asking. He'd stood still for that shot. West hadn't obliged him.
Gray and Blade needed to talk to Linden. The whole Lombard family needed closure for Jake. West would be damned if he would deprive them of that just because Linden wanted a mercy killing. If his medical condition was correct, he would die soon enough, anyway, but with a bit of luck, he would get his day in court first.
He met Linden's gaze, studied the stoic acceptance he saw there, and answered the question.
"Too much paperwork," he replied softly.
* * *
Epilogue
« ^
Linden didn't make it to trial, but he confessed before he finally passed away in a prison hospital, providing details of his illegal activities over the years, including the approximate location at sea where he'd carried out the execution of Rafaella and Jake.
The Lombard family held a small ceremony as close as possible to the spot where they thought Jake had been lost. He was gone, but at least they had a measure of peace, and the knowledge that the threat that had dominated their lives for so many years, first from Harper and then from Linden, was finally gone. And the sense of lightness at finally being free of the events that had started with Jake's death was amplified by the anticipation of a wedding looming on the horizon.
The wedding was small, and was held in Bridget and Guido Lombard's garden. It didn't make any social pages, because the Lombards knew how to do things quietly when they wanted. The ceremony was strictly family and close friends, which made it a bun fight in anyone's terminology.
The bride wore white, the dress filched straight off the catwalk of Evan diVaggio's scene-stealing collection. The groom was handsome in his morning suit, with no Kevlar body armour or weaponry in sight. The groom had also made it his business to search the bride before the ceremony, and the hell with tradition. He hadn't put it past her to stash a gun somewhere. When he'd lifted her skirt, to the outrage of Bridget Lombard—who was despairing of getting her daughter to the altar with any semblance of propriety—he hadn't found a gun, he'd found something far more dangerous: the garter belt.
The sight of that lacy little confection wrapped around his wife-to-be's sleek thigh still had the power to make him break out in a sweat.
The ceremony was simple and moving; however, when it came to signing the register, tradition went out the window. McCabe's new wife refused to sign unless she had her list of demands met. McCabe read the list, which resembled nothing so much as a hard-ass ransom note.
His beloved wanted flowers and romantic candlelit dinners, and breakfast in bed every Sunday—he got his turn on Saturday. She wanted jewellery and perfume and lingerie—nothing nylon in the lingerie department or the deal was off. And if he ever waved a condom at her again, she would probably shoot him.
The demands were feminine and outrageous. McCabe sighed.
Carter was the best man, and one of Roma's longstanding girlfriends from boarding school was bridesmaid. The flower girl, the only kid with McCabe after her name at the wedding, fidgeted in her matching white gown and coronet of fresh flowers, and practised batting her lashes at the handsome, tanned, Lombard cousin who was page-boy. He was eight years old and fascinating, and she decided she might just marry him. If he behaved himself.
He didn't. Things got a little rocky when Bunny got into a food fight with her escort. After dispatching him with a slug to the eye, she announced in a penetrating voice that she may be the only McCabe kid now, but that was about to change. Her dad had told her that pretty soon there were going to be a whole lot more McCabes, so he'd better watch it.
The bride resolved the small silence that rippled through the gathering by briskly tossing her bouquet in the general direction of her school friend, who was too bedazzled by the attentions of the best man to notice.
The fragrant, delicate bouquet of white roses ended up in the lean, battle-scarred hands of Gabriel West.
McCabe decided that the garter was absolutely not being thrown. Like the bride, the garter belonged to him.
* * * * *