Gabe (In the Company of Snipers Book 8)

by Winters, Irish

  He glanced over his shoulder, needing to put more distance between him and this annoying woman. She had one of those cute little perky noses that barely turned up at the end. For a scant second, remorse flickered across her face. And why Gabe noticed, he didn’t know, but she seemed—lost. Maybe baffled. Out of her depth.

  He gave her the benefit of the doubt and explained a few things to set her straight. “Look at the debris field,” he muttered, pointing to the tire tracks leading down from the concrete highway all the way to the river. Another deputy stood in the center of the road with a camera and scribbling on his notepad, hopefully documenting the accident instead of just accepting his boss’s version.

  The more Gabe looked, the more things didn’t add up to the sheriff’s hasty conclusion of a driver losing control. He pointed to the muddy trail between the road and the river. “See there? Do you see any plastic trim or shattered glass?”

  Sullivan followed the direction of his index finger. “I see some red plastic pieces on the highway, but—”

  “Probably brake lights. That’s all. But if a car rolled like the deputy said, there’d be a trail of litter and car parts all the way to the river. Side mirrors. Trim. Maybe hubcaps. Other stuff, too. And another thing.” He scrambled back to the roadway where the alleged rollover began, dragging the nurse along to make sure she knew better. He pointed at the overabundance of black rubber on the road, most of it fresh and dark, arcing across the four-lane highway. “She had to be travelling west to east. What do you see?”

  Sullivan shielded her eyes against the weak morning sun with her right hand. “Umm, nothing.”

  “Give me a break. Skid marks. You see skid marks. Look at ’em. See how they tend toward the river? Looks to me like someone hit their brakes and jerked their wheel hard to the right. And that one.” He indicated a clear set of rubber to the east of the first arc. “Someone else braked hard to the left. And those.”

  He pivoted, needing Sullivan to understand the dynamics of what most likely happened on this stretch of road before she shot her big mouth off again. “Those wider patches are called yaw marks. All that rubber you’re looking at is what gets left on concrete when tires are forced sideways. Normal skid marks are narrow except for the point where they turn. You see anything that looks like a car rolled now?” he asked, his Irish up and his blood pressure with it.

  He would know. His ex-Air Force father, now a police officer in Texas, had once testified against a mob killing along the Trinity River. At that time in his teenage life, Gabe only cared about hotrods and racing his sixty-three Chevy Nova.

  Watching his father’s detailed testimony of automobile forensics in the courtroom, a testimony that resulted in the conviction of a powerful gangster, had turned Gabe’s head around. He still loved a good race, which explained his revoked driver’s license at the moment, but he also understood the dynamics behind laying a patch of rubber.

  Funny how that particular insight precipitated Gabe’s joining the Corps. Like father, like son? He only hoped. Officer Nathaniel Cartwright was an honorable servant of the law and a father to be proud of. Gabe sure was.

  This was no rollover. Whoever had committed this crime had left a map any good law enforcement officer should’ve been able to read. That this particular sheriff wanted to chalk it up to a bullshit reason like a grieving widow losing control of her vehicle shot a righteous dose of anger up Gabe’s spine.

  “Now that you mention it, no, it doesn’t look like a car rolled. You really know your stuff, but the sheriff said—”

  And enough was enough. Gabe bristled. “The sheriff should keep his big mouth shut until his deputies finish running the crime scene. This was no accident, damn it.”

  His heart pitched. The tow truck driver had just winched the butt end of Kelsey’s car high enough that the driver’s side door flopped open.

  “So what do you think happened then?” Sullivan asked. “How many cars were involved? I mean, in your opinion?”

  He raked an impatient hand over his head, wanting to be anywhere else but explaining collision dynamics to this particular woman. “I think someone swerved in front of Kelsey. She stopped. See those two lines there?” He pointed at what was to him an obvious roadmap to what had occurred earlier. “She braked hard. Those narrow tire marks came from a car the size of hers. The vehicle behind her had also come to a hard stop, leaving a wider stretch of rubber on the road. He left wider marks, and look at the wheel to axle ratio.”

  Shit. He might have rammed her with a big truck. Gabe took a deep breath, forcing his empathy for what Kelsey might have gone through back to a manageable level, but damn. Her little car wouldn’t have stood a chance if her attackers were in some big four-by-four.

  “What else do you think happened?” Sullivan pointed to the deeply gouged ruts leading all the way to the river. “It looks like someone might have gotten stuck in the mud. See there?”

  Gabe focused on forensics. Not Kelsey’s very likely anxiety. “I think she was double-teamed. One guy swerved in front of her. The other hit her from behind hard enough to break her taillights and scare the hell out of her. There might have been a fourth car involved, another jerk who rammed her from the side. Maybe not, but someone shoved a lighter car into the river. Sideways. Look at the mud trail between the road and the shoreline. See how the yaw marks end at the roads’ edge? See how the reeds and bushes are mashed all the way to the water’s edge? Either that or…”

  He gulped at the terror she must have felt in those last few minutes. All alone, and fighting for her life. His heart rate kicked up and his throat went dry. A full-blown panic attack welled up from his gut. He forced it back down. Again. “Either that or someone else was waiting for her.”

  “I still don’t get it. How did your office even know where she was? If you’re right, her phone had to be underwater by then. If that’s the GPS signal you were track—”

  He lifted his cell phone to Shelby’s view. “Ever heard of ruggedized cell phones, ma’am? All of our equipment is built to withstand crap like this.”

  I just never expected Kelsey would need a waterproof cell phone. Shit. What’s going on?

  Gabe dared Shelby to argue. Instead, she seemed to be honestly trying to understand, her lower lip trapped between her teeth as if she needed a moment to reason through what he’d just explained. “Then she has to be around here somewhere,” she said. “We need to look for her.”

  At last. Sullivan said something worthwhile. He sized her up. Typical California blonde with shoulder-length hair. Slender and petite, a waif-like quality hung around her, as if she needed an arm to steady her against the light breeze blowing off the river. Worry lines crinkled her forehead. She looked east to the Potomac, then west.

  The whine and squeak of the winch drew his attention back to the scene. By then, they’d drawn closer to the police tape nearest the tow truck. Gabe leaned into the tape for a closer view of the car dangling out of the water, the rear winched high in the air and water running from the open doors. Show and tell was done.

  Sidestepping the tape, he muttered a quick, “Sorry, ma’am, but I’ve got to talk with this guy,” to Shelby.

  “Hey. You shouldn’t get any closer. It’s against the law.”

  Bullshit. Just watch me.

  He left Sullivan standing on the law-abiding side of the tape. Too much evidence stood to be destroyed. He needed to record as much of it as he could, as quickly as possible. So he did. Gabe snapped picture after picture while the tow truck operator worked around him, preparing to winch the car onto the flatbed.

  “Hey.” The guy cast a furtive glance at the sheriff still at his vehicle and talking with Zack, then nodded toward the front seat of Kelsey’s sedan. “I’ve got something you need to see if you’re interested in what really happened.”

  “You bet. Whatcha got?”

  The tow truck operator left his station at the winch and positioned himself between the driver’s seat of Kelsey’s sedan and the s
heriff, nodding his chin for Gabe to take a look. “Just that.”

  Gabe peered inside. The airbag had deployed, but one long slash left it hanging over the steering wheel in ribbons instead of simply deflated like it should’ve been. The seatbelt had been cut. Not hacked. The slices were too clean.

  “It looks to me like a Good Samaritan might’ve come along and rescued whoever was driving this car.”

  “Kelsey Stewart,” Gabe said, looking through the vehicle.

  Good Samaritan, nothing. This looked like the work of someone who knew exactly what they were doing. Gabe didn’t know what to think anymore, but if she’d cut herself out of her own seatbelt like it looked like she might have done, where was she? She would’ve used that ruggedized cell phone by now to alert Mark or someone. Kelsey was smart like that.

  She’d lived long enough with Alex. Hell, she carried a concealed weapon, probably a SIG if Gabe knew Alex’s first choice of handguns. He’d taught his wife to shoot. Why not how to carry a trusty blade, too?

  Gabe growled at his jumping to conclusions. Maybe he had this all wrong. Maybe Kelsey was that Good Samaritan. Maybe she’d come across someone else in trouble and attempted to help. That would be like her.

  Mud and silt from the river bottom mucked up the floor, but it was the windshield that caught his eye. The darned thing was still intact as if nothing had happened. A Saint Christopher’s medal dangled from the rearview mirror. The damned patron saint of travelers must’ve taken the day off.

  The fact remained. Kelsey’s car was empty and battered.

  “Then where is she?” Gabe asked out loud, scanning the river’s edge through the passenger-side windows. The only one standing on the edge of the muddy riverbank was Nurse Sullivan. Watching him. What did she want now? She looked away. Good. This is your fault as much as mine, damn it. We both should’ve been there when Kelsey needed us.

  The tow truck driver shrugged, a heavy tow strap looped in his hand. “I only know I’m not pulling a car out of the river with a body in it today. That’s good enough for me. Hey. Ain’t your Mrs. Stewart the lady whose husband was gunned down a few days ago? They had his picture in the obits. Looked like a nice enough guy.”

  “Yes,” Gabe said somberly. “Alex Stewart. He was my boss.”

  “I was sure sorry to read that. His missus helped my daughter a while back when Crissy ran away from home and was living on the streets. Mrs. Stewart’s a real nice lady. Least, she was.”

  “She is.” Gabe met the man’s apologetic eyes. Damn it. She is.

  The awful thought that she might be hurt, lying somewhere in the mud, galled Gabe. There was no reason she should’ve been out here all by herself. Nurse Sullivan should’ve stayed with her. And I shouldn’t have let Alex die.

  “Just thought you’d want to see this. Sometimes these guys”—The driver jerked his thumb back toward the deputy—“think they know what happened without even paying attention to little things, like this seat belt. Here.” He handed Gabe a set of keys. “You might as well take ’em. These guys won’t notice they’re gone. Heck, they ain’t even looked inside her car yet. Guess they’ve already decided what happened.”

  The man was right. For now, the sheriff and his deputy stood with their backs to Gabe, talking with Zack and seemingly uninterested in the vehicle. Good enough. Zack was running interference, giving Gabe time to accumulate evidence before being forced from the scene.

  He glanced at the jumble of keys the tow truck driver had handed him.

  Didn’t it figure?

  The heart-shaped, plastic-covered face of Alex Stewart smirked back at him.

  Chapter Five

  Not again.

  The sensation of a five hundred pound weight on her chest squeezed the life out of Shelby. She scanned the river, on the verge of hyperventilating and running for cover. One glance back over her shoulder told her all she needed to know.

  Agent Cartwright would rather she left and never came back. Both the guys were too busy to care what she thought—not that she expected them to. Not that she’d ever tell them.

  It’s your fault. Again.

  You should’ve known better.

  What have you done?

  The eternal voice of recrimination rang in her head with her words. Her guilt. Her shame. She used to love working in the pediatrics ward at the Northern Virginia Hospital Center. Children gravitated toward her, and she’d loved working there until...

  You don’t give a child the wrong medication and not expect everything in your life to change.

  And change it had.

  Her throat closed in sympathetic response to what had happened less than a year ago. She could still see little Rudy gasping for air, gray from struggling to breathe while his lungs nearly shut down.

  The hospital didn’t even have to fire her. She just quit. They’d wanted her to come back. It wasn’t her fault, none of it. Libby Houston had been her greatest advocate, but Shelby couldn’t take the chance ever again.

  It might’ve been the pharmacist’s fault for sending the wrong medication to her floor, but she, the Certified Nursing Assistant on duty, put the mislabeled inhalant into Rudy’s lungs. She was the one who’d nearly killed him. Not Libby.

  Everyone said it was an honest mistake, but the terror of watching a two-year-old asthma patient nearly suffocate at her hand resulted in an out-of-control need to micromanage everything and everyone in her care.

  They called it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It might go away some day. It might not. It surely wouldn’t with Kelsey Stewart possibly out there in the water, and all because Shelby had insisted on all food groups instead of simply toast for her client.

  She turned her back on yet another of her failures, rubbing her biceps to ward off the cold that never went away. Agent Cartwright stood with his back to her, preoccupied with the tow truck driver. Agent Lennox had joined him, but everywhere Shelby turned, she saw Kelsey’s sad face and she heard that sad question. Do you think I’m crazy?

  Shelby lifted her hand to her throat at the thought of that sweet woman drowning. This tributary emptied into the Potomac six or seven short miles to the east. That’s where Kelsey would be. Downstream. Floating. Agent Cartwright had to be right. Kelsey had to be alive.

  Agent Cartwright’s adamant declaration ‘Not Kelsey!’ offered her hope. Shelby marched straight back to the sheriff. “What are you waiting for? You need to get searchers on the water and divers in the river. Right now.”

  Her reflection glared back at her from the shiny barrier of his dark glasses. He nodded, his face a mask. “Already on their way, ma’am. I wouldn’t get your hopes up, though. Looks pretty straightforward to me. Seen a few rollovers in my time, you know. The car door sprung when it rolled. The force of the roll ejected the driver. Since there’s no body on the road, there’s only one place it could be.” He nodded downstream. “And a woman in that river isn’t going to be found alive. Not anymore.”

  The need to do something—anything!—spurred her into action.

  Agents Cartwright and Lennox were combing the riverbank, Cartwright downstream, Lennox up. Shelby opted to join Cartwright. She didn’t have to like these guys to help search. She just had to get to Kelsey in time.

  “You were so beautiful,” Mark told the picture of Kelsey that Alex kept on his desk. “God, how do we run this place without the two of you? How do we even begin again?”

  He and Harley had come back to the office to double check incoming correspondence in the hope something turned up. While Harley scanned incoming calls and voice messages at Mother’s desk, and hopefully remembered to call home to check on his long overdue pregnant wife, Mark did the same at Alex’s office.

  For three long days The TEAM searched, but there’d been no sign of Kelsey. No body. No footprints leading out of the river. Not even a hint that anyone saw or knew where she was.

  Nurse Sullivan had proved unstoppable. She’d organized search grids, door-to-door efforts, and a newspaper campaign tha
t kept Kelsey’s face in the public’s eye. She’d logged as many foot and driven miles as any agent, but nothing mattered. Kelsey seemed to have disappeared, and Mark dreaded the day when someone found her poor body along a lonely river shore. Or in a fisherman’s net.

  This second blow felt deeper. More personal. Losing Alex was one thing. He’d always been a target. The man rattled more sabers and made more enemies than most, but Kelsey? She’d never hurt anyone. Defending herself against her demented ex-mother-in-law didn’t count. Ethel Durrant deserved to die. Kelsey didn’t.

  At least Alex and Kelsey are together now.

  That line of bullshit didn’t bring one moment of comfort. Mark lowered his face to his folded arms on the desktop. He needed a moment to think or pray, trying like hell to draw strength from his personal beliefs that taught of life after death, resurrection, and hope. Not today. He plain didn’t have the heart for this business anymore. The TEAM was running on empty and so was he.

  “Show me a way,” he whispered. “God, we do thy work. I know we do, but we can’t do this alone. I can’t. Not anymore.”

  The silence in the empty room echoed the hollow feeling in his chest. He ached. There seemed no light left in the world after this double hit. Tears got the best of him. He honestly didn’t know what he’d expected. He’d just hoped.

  Instead of waiting for an answer that wasn’t going to come, he wiped his face and pushed back from the desk. The sheriff might be right. They weren’t going to find Kelsey.

  “You what?” Harley bellowed from the outer office. “Say again.”

  Mark scrambled out the door. Hope stirred in his soul at the excitement in Harley’s voice.

  He stood at Mother’s desk, scribbling on a notepad with the office phone in his ear, his eyes wide with anger and his tone filled with authority for the first time in days. “Who are you? How do you—?”

  He slammed the phone down. “I know where she is!”

  “God, he’s an ass.” Gabe jammed his cell phone into his front jeans pocket after another hostile confrontation with Harley. “Someone called in an anonymous tip. Kelsey’s supposedly at these coordinates. He wants us to check it out. We’re closest. Come on. Let’s go get her.”