The scorching, feral kiss ended with a lingering hug and straying hands that brought a smile to Gabe’s lips. He knew the feeling, because he wanted to get his woman into bed, too. Under the covers. Bare-assed naked and ready to play. Argh. He forced his mind from the pleasant thought before his misbehaving body got any harder.
When Kelsey stood on her own two feet again, Alex ran a quick hand over his face, while Shelby offered the happy couple the box of tissues. She returned to Gabe’s side where he could get his arm around her.
Kelsey blew her nose and wiped her eyes, still very much locked to the side of her man and still crying. Alex hadn’t let her go, his right arm securely around her waist.
“Did you ever sneak into our bedroom, besides the night you brought the rose?” she asked.
He shook his head, his eyes misted. “No, but I wanted to. This is the first time I’ve held you since I hid you at Olsens’ place.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “Then I really was dreaming all those other times when I thought you were there. Umm, do we know the Olsens?”
Another shake of his head. “You don’t. I do. Craig is Murphy Finnegan’s Army buddy. A damned good man.”
“So it really was you who saved me? Not Sam Becker?”
Alex growled. “It was me, damn it. I saved you. Not him. Becker only told you that to throw you off track. He needed you to think I was dead until this whole mess was over and done. Damn him.”
A small smile tweaked Gabe’s lips. His boss was one possessive man where Kelsey was concerned.
“God, I love happy endings, Boss.” Zack’s sarcastic voice disturbed the reverent moment. “Don’t be looking to me for no hug and kiss, though. I’d just as soon kick your ass. Where in hell have you been?”
Alex blew out a deep breath. “You’re right, Zack. I’ve been in hell, which is why I’m here now. It’s time I set things straight. I’m going back to work today, and I need my two best bodyguards on my six. You coming with, or do you plan to stand around the rest of the day and blow smoke up your ass?”
Gabe caught the attitude of a damned hard man, a man he could follow. He placed a quick kiss in Shelby’s hair. “I’m going. You coming?”
She wiped her nose one last time. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The whole back-to-work moment couldn’t have gone better if Alex had planned it. He made a commanding statement walking into what had once been his TEAM headquarters without so much as a warning. And alive.
Gabe adjusted the sling immobilizing his arm. He’d made it to his feet and intended to be all he could be. Pain meds worked wonders. He’d donned the clothes Zack had brought.
Shelby stayed at his side. There’d be no relaxing until this showdown was done.
Mark Houston looked up from what had previously been Mother’s workstation where he stood with Maverick and Taylor. He did look more rested than he had the last time Gabe had seen him. But he was wary. Instantly defensive. His left brow lifted. His shoulders squared when he spotted Alex. He leveled an accusing stare at Gabe and Zack, and ouch. Damn it. That hurt.
Gabe offered a shrug in return, feeling like a traitor to his beleaguered boss.
Maverick gave him a silent nod. Taylor very nearly smiled, if one could call the twitch of the corners of his mouth a smile. Everyone else seemed frozen in place. And that clever saying about a place being so quiet you could hear a pin drop? Times that by a couple million, why don’t cha?
Once Alex drew to a halt, the whole damned world stopped turning. Again.
Mark nodded at Kelsey first, then the man who used to own The TEAM. “Alex.”
Not Boss? Ouch. Not off to a good start.
Alex returned the nod. “Mark. I hear you did a great job while I was gone.”
“We did.” Mark’s gaze flittered back to Gabe. “Why are you not in the hospital where you’re supposed to be, Junior Agent?”
Gabe cleared his throat. “Duty called, umm, Boss.”
Mark’s gaze narrowed, and remorse flooded Gabe. He’d just slapped Mark in the face, figuratively maybe, but just the same. Being here with Alex was all-out treasonous to the man who’d salvaged a dying team in the middle of damned tough times.
Alex tried again. “This is still the best team in town.”
Mark’s upper lip curled in a definite ‘No shit, Sherlock’ sneer.
No one spoke. Hell. No one dared breathe.
“The President will be here in thirty minutes,” Alex continued evenly.
Still Mark didn’t speak, his eyes still locked on the ghost in their midst.
Alex ran a hand over his head, and Gabe wanted to referee or something. These two seemed locked in a stare-down that wasn’t going anywhere, but Alex had made it clear before the elevator doors opened on level two. He’d do the talking.
Kelsey had taken position at Ember’s counter. Zack still stood at military rest behind Alex, another open declaration in support of the treacherous renegade in their midst and a slap in Mark’s face.
Alex looked around the circle of his personally handpicked agents—or at least they were his. Right now they worked for Mark, and they seemed to know it. None of them had so much as smiled at their former boss. They seemed to be waiting on a cue from their leader, and that person wasn’t Alex. Not yet.
“Thanks for helping Kelsey these past couple of weeks,” he offered.
“What? She forgive and forget already?”
Mark’s sarcastic question drew Alex’s ire. He raked his fingers over his head. Gabe cringed. Here it comes.
If Mark only knew what had transpired at the hospital between Alex and Kelsey, he wouldn’t bait Alex as he had. The man had a flaming, nasty temper on a good day. It wouldn’t take much to goad him. But Mark knew that.
Again, Alex faced the newly baptized-by-fire owner of the best covert surveillance team on the East Coast. “What do you want me to say?” he asked quietly. “I had no choice in this, Mark. Hell, I didn’t even know I was deep undercover until I woke up the day after my sonofabitchin’ funeral. By then, some joker was in my grave, my wife was devastated and all my protocols had kicked in.”
“Your protocols?” Mark lifted his brow.
“My will—the legal document that turned this place over to you, David, and Harley.” Alex looked around the group. “Where’s—”
“Wisconsin. Safe,” Mark said icily.
“Good. Good. I take it Libby and the girls are there, too?”
Mark nodded.
“And all the other families?”
“Safe,” Mark hissed.
“Harley’s boys were born then. Are they doing okay? Damn, I’m sorry I missed that, but they—”
“Stop bullshitting me, you arrogant sonofabitch!” Mark bellowed. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Working.”
Mark folded his arms across his chest and glared. Gabe had to give it to him, he wasn’t making this easy, but The TEAM’s reaction was just as interesting. All along, they’d argued Alex was alive, but now that he stood in front of them, they were hostile.
It wouldn’t matter in the long run. Alex would only tolerate this standoff for so long. Any second now, he’d tell them to go to hell, march into his office with Kelsey and slam his door until he was ready to talk with them.
“I’d be pissed if I were you. It was a damned dirty trick they played on us.”
Mark grunted. “You mean you played.”
Everyone should’ve been paying better attention. Izza had just arrived with Connor. Apparently, they’d stopped to pick up breakfast on their way to work. She dropped an armful of brightly colored fast food bags on Ember’s counter and headed straight to Alex. “You’d better have a damned good reason for what you did to Kelsey. And us.”
He acknowledged her with a curt, “Izza.”
Wrong move, Boss. Gabe took a full step away from Alex. Izza was mad. Damned mad.
“Hey. I’m talking to you. Did you knoc
k me out?” She took a menacing step closer, her hands clenched into fists and sparks in her eyes. “When Taylor, me, and Steven tailed you? Huh? Did you knock me out and tie me up? Did you put a yellow sticky on my forehead with a stupid smiley face? Did you?”
He smirked. And that was all it took.
She cocked her arm back to deliver a solid punch, but Alex caught her wrist and easily spun her back to his chest. Izza had anticipated the countermove. She turned a full circle, kicked his feet out from under him and tackled him to the floor, business suit and all. Square into the middle of his chest, she let him have it, fists flying.
“You’re an ass! You let us think you were dead, and we buried you, and... and...”
“Izza. Stop.” He grunted under her assault, dodging her fists but not before one connected and she clipped his chin. “I didn’t... ouch... do the smiley face, damn it.”
“I thought you were dead! We all did, damn you! I saw you die. I thought I saw you...” she collapsed, crying unashamedly into his shirt. “God, Alex. You’re Jamie’s godfather. You gave me away at my wedding. You can’t pull this kind of bullshit on people who love you. You just can’t.”
Mark and Connor gave them both a hand up off the floor, but Alex kept an arm around Izza while he rubbed his chin. “Sonofabitch, I’ve missed you guys.”
When Mark clenched Alex’s shoulder, Gabe relaxed.
Rory spoke up next. “I didn’t have the heart to tell Tyler you’d died.”
Ember wrapped her arms around both Alex and Izza. “And Harley named one of his baby boys after you. Did you know that? Alexander Marcus and George Patrick. The Mortimer twins.”
And the showdown was over.
Everyone swarmed Alex. Izza still bawled, and Gabe didn’t mind if he wiped his eyes, either. There was a lot of back thumping and handshaking, not the norm for guys and gals who could eliminate a target at one thousand-plus yards without batting an eye. Even Zack mellowed. He snagged a breakfast biscuit and doctored a cup of coffee from the new coffee maker at Mother’s desk.
“Where’d the FBI take you?” Connor wanted to know. “We know Becker shot you, but the round was some kind of paintball gizmo. The paramedics were phonies, too. What’d they do to you?”
“The Bureau’s got five lower levels I knew nothing about,” Alex explained, “including a complete dispensary. Physicians. Staff. The whole nine yards.”
“They shot you with a muscle relaxant and a mixture of cow’s blood,” David informed him. “Vecuronium bromide, to be precise. That’s what was on your clothes, Gabe.”
“No wonder I felt like shit,” Alex said. “Damned crap gave me hallucinations. Bastards kept me under five sonofabitchin’ days. Waited until everything was over before they had the balls to wake me up and tell me they’d destroyed my life.”
Gabe shuddered, knowing exactly how Alex must’ve reacted. The Bureau might not be as dumb as they seemed. They must have restrained him while they explained, probably from ten feet away. The man was lethal on a good day.
“We saw you at the morgue,” Mark said somberly. “Sure looked dead to me.”
The tougher-than-nails boss chewed his lip, a shadow shifting over his face. “Guess it really was me. That Vec crap turns a man into a corpse. Slows everything down to damned near hibernation. Must’ve made for a convincing viewing and funeral. Assholes.”
That explained a lot. The Bureau had a lot of nerve to fake an American citizen’s death, much less a man of Alex’s notoriety like they did. Unbelievable.
“They totally screwed your civic rights,” Gabe said.
Icy blues zeroed on him. “I remember you. In the car when I died. At my funeral. You were there, weren’t you? You stood by Kelsey through the whole damned nightmare, didn’t you?”
Gabe could only nod. Hell, yeah, and I’d do it all again. That’s... who I am.
“God, I’m sorry, guys. I’m sorry for everything.” Alex motioned Kelsey back to his side and released Izza to Connor’s. “Sons of bitches put us all through hell.”
Ember still had a tight grip on his other arm. She leaned into him and kissed his cheek. “But you’re back now. You’re home. That’s what matters.”
He blinked through watery eyes, nodded at her, but a hoarse “yeah” was all he could muster. He dipped his nose into Kelsey’s hair and closed his eyes.
The elevator pinged and a dozen Secret Service agents flooded the office. Another contingent swarmed through the stairwell fire doors at the same time. Within seconds, there was standing room only in the work area.
Tension spiked higher when the elevator opened again and the President of the United States, Thomas Beauregard Adams, entered the office with yet more security. Every agent stood at attention, their backs straight and their eyes forward.
President Adams had run and won on an independent ticket that purported bi-partisanship above all else. Somehow, he’d gotten elected in a close contest with the traditional parties. He was the American Dream in the flesh. He walked straight to Mark with a nod to Alex.
The man was as big as Mark, broad chested, thick necked, and every bit a country boy turned politician. His brown hair was fastidiously trimmed. His nails manicured. He looked as if he’d rather spend his days outdoors instead of behind his desk in the Oval Office. Like Alex.
“This your team?” President Adams asked, both hands gripping Mark’s.
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” Mark acknowledged stiffly.
“Mark. At ease, son. Please. Be at ease. I’m not here to make more work for you people—not after what I’ve just put you through.” He straightened his tie, then changed his mind and took it off, handing it to the agent at his side. His suit jacket went as quickly. “As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the Vice President was killed last night in a tragic helicopter crash. What you don’t know is that he wasn’t the target of Chaos Now. I was.”
He paused as murmurs of surprise rippled through the group. “That’s right. Winston was the wizard behind the curtain. At least, he thought he was. He funded the malcontent, Ron Fallon. In the process of their little revolution, I was designated to die tragically at their ground zero, along with thousands of others. From what I’m told, Fallon built a dirty bomb with enough explosives to take out most of the Mall and a couple of Potomac bridges, too. The radiation alone would’ve wiped the District of Columbia. Sons of bitches, every last one of them.”
Gabe nearly grinned at all the sons of bitches, bastards, Goddamnits, and assholes flying around the office. Alex was a prolific curser all by himself, and President Adams was too by the sound of it. Tough men the world over talked the same language.
Ahh. Home sweet home. Nothing ever sounded better.
President Adams did an about face to Gabe, his hand extended. “Special Agent Becker tells me you were responsible for stopping the bomb, that you did so at great personal risk, son.”
Gabe swallowed hard. He accepted his President’s hand, surprised Adams knew who he was. “Thank you, sir.”
“No, young man. Thank you. I understand your girlfriend assisted, too. Is that right?” He winked at Shelby. Apparently, the President already knew everyone.
She shrugged, her pretty face a delightful rosy glow. “Oh, no. I mostly watched and, umm, yeah, I mostly just watched and prayed real hard.”
He grinned. “Me, too, young lady. Me, too.”
President Adams pulled Alex to stand beside him. “It was only through the heroism and sacrifice of this guy here that we have irrefutable proof of Winston’s planned sabotage.”
Alex looked steadily into space while the President clutched his shoulder.
“This guy here had the audacity to face Winston down, to convince him he was through playing Mr. Nice Guy. That he was sick to death of the status quo in the country, enough that he wanted out of his marriage and his business. Enough that he’d faked his own death to put an end to it. The whole shebang.” President Adams snapped his fingers. “I only had two men I could trust with my lif
e, Alex Stewart and Sam Becker, so you people blame me. All of you. It’s my fault. I’m the one responsible for what you’ve been through. I tasked the FBI to procure your boss, and believe me, I gave him no choice once they did. He was under direct orders from me as his Commander in Chief, as well as a black ops non-disclosure. You all know how binding that is.”
Gabe blew out a breath through pursed lips. Damn. The President was behind this? Who’d have thought?
President Adams turned slowly and looked each agent in the eye. “I needed a man I could trust without reservation—someone the Vice President would find believable as well. Winston had to think that Alex was fed up with governmental bureaucracy enough that he’d deserted his wife and joined a subversive underground terrorist cell. It actually worked very well. Once Alex was eliminated, so to speak, he was able to infiltrate Winston’s inner circle while Sam Becker worked Fallon’s. Can you believe my VP was arrogant enough to think a man like Alex would turn on his wife and country?”
He took a deep breath. “I thought Winston would be a good fit for the compromises this administration needed to make. These are tough times. We all need to work together. I chose wrong. As it turned out, the bastard also wanted your boss to work for him as an undercover assassin. Once I was out of the picture, Alex was supposed to eliminate Fallon and Sam Becker. Winston wanted an enforcer, a hired gun in his new regime. Someone without a conscience. Someone like him.”
President Adams paused to shake his head. “God bless us all if he’d been successful.”
He glanced toward his contingent. “By the way, I’d like you all to meet my newest Secret Service agent.”
Becker stepped around the army of security, offering that annoying devil-may-care smirk. “G’morning, Mark. Winston thought it was his idea to recruit your boss, so we let him think whatever he wanted, didn’t we, Alex?”
Alex grunted. “Bastard.”
Gabe wasn’t sure if he meant that term of endearment for Winston or Becker. It fit either. Murmurs of appreciation and wonder filled the room. The TEAM’s hostility was gone. Alex was back—in more ways than one.
Gabe (In the Company of Snipers Book 8) Page 36