Page 5 of Shane

“Damned straight because I don’t care,” she shot back at him, pissed that he and his buddy were now wrapping her in a blanket, then strapping her onto their gurney, and trundling her off to the rear gate of their ride. Like she was an accident victim. Which she was not! The urge hit her to yell at the nosy rubber-necking drivers passing the scene, to tell them she was the good guy there, to stop gawking! That because of her, Virginia’s children were safe again. Well, safer. That she wasn’t really hurt.

Shit.A shiny black TEAM SUV pulled up alongside the EMT’s wagon. Walker Judge had arrived, and Everlee hissed at the injustice of her accidental takedown. He’d report every last detail back to Alex. Didn’t it figure?And Jiminy Christmas!He’d brought his buddy Brimley Scott along for the ride, wasn’t that just peachy?

Short answer, no!

“Aren’t you supposed to be in China or Thailand, Singapore or somewhere else?” Everlee bit out before Walker opened his mouth.

Brimley tipped his head as he strode by and went to talk with McKay. He was a kindly older gentleman with a thick, gray, street-sweeper mustache on his top lip. Usually, he’d have a white, Labrador-sized mutt trotting at his side, but he must’ve left Rover behind in the newly built TEAM kennels. Which was too bad. Everlee could really use a wet, furry kiss and a puppy hug. Her eyes were watering.

Walker had picked up Brimley and Rover on his wild-assed adventure in the Azores a while back. Unjustly targeted by his USN command, Walker had been falsely accused of a lot of shit before Alex intervened and ultimately, tracked down the real mastermind behind the false accusations made by the Navy. Despite his trials by some seriously shitty Navy politics, Walker was one of the steadiest snipers on Alex’s payroll. He was everyone’s friend, and he had the damnedest way of getting people to share things they’d ordinarily not talk about. He alone knew about Everlee’s biggest past mistake—her one and only marriage—and she intended to keep it that way.

Walker grinned that calm, cocky grin of his and walked up to the back of the EMT’s wagon, his gunslinger swagger down pat. Damn, she loved working with a sexy bunch of alpha males, but this one in particular was a pleasure to watch. The way his hips rolled with each step. The way he scraped his thumb nail along his jaw, like he was wondering what on Earth to do with her. He almost made getting hit worth it.

“Ev,” he said quietly once he came to a standstill. “You okay, kid?”

Her head bobbed. “Yeah, but my v-v-vest’s got a big old d-d-dent in it.”And I still can’t catch my breath.No need telling Walker that. He’d figure it out.

Everlee was used to working with mostly men. She’d been Air Force, stationed out of Anchorage, Alaska, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Major Command PACAF, as in Pacific Air Force, home of the 673rdAir Base Wing. Not only that, she’d been an officer, a lieutenant, not just A1C, airman first class. She’d been LT Everlee Yeager, Chief of Security Forces. She might not be a SEAL or a sniper like Walker and the rest of the guys, but she gave every last one of them a run for their money at the shooting range on certification days, by hell. Ask Ember Dennison. She was in charge of weapons certification. She knew.

By then, Brimley had helped Ralph drape a large camouflage-gray tarp over Finch’s sedan, hiding the death scene from John Q. Public, as well as the local news helicopter now hovering overhead. Brimley and McKay were on their way to her to witness her defeat.

“What’d he hit you with?” Walker asked.

“A thirty-eight.” Trooper Ralph McKay stretched a hand out to Walker. The men acknowledged each other in one of those arm-gripping handshakes guys did. “She’s lucky she was wearing a vest.”

Walker’s lips pursed into a whistle. “Damn, that’s a big round, Ev.”

“Yeah, but really, the ER, guys? I was just there,” Everlee complained, still working an angle to not have to ride anywhere with Rich and his buddy.

McKay’s brows lifted to the brim of his Smokey Bear cover. “You were? Why?”

“She fell up the front stairs at work.” Walker’s fist flattened against his smirking lips. The jerk was trying not to laugh but sure didn’t mind telling McKay that Ev had, “Sprained the hell out of her ankle. This is, err, was, her first day back on active duty.”

“And if you make me go to the ER, Alex will sideline me again.” Everlee crossed her arms over her chest, which did not hurt at all! Much. “This is a waste of time, guys. I don’t need the ER. Not for one little tap.”

“Better safe than sorry, little lady,” Brimley told her in that gruff, grandfatherly way he had. If anyone else had called her little lady, she’d have ripped their heads off for being sexist. But Brim was from a different generation, like Murphy Finnegan, her boss at the Seattle TEAM office. Neither were truly sexist. They just were who they were. She respected them for their service and their kind, gentlemanly ways.

“See you at the ER, Ev,” Walker replied.

Rich closed the rear gate, ending further discussion—or argument.

Officer McKay smacked the roof and waved Everlee goodbye.

Men!

Chapter Two

Jarheads made up most of Alex Stewart’s TEAM. Shane knew that because he’d Googled The TEAM and found nothing substantial from the source, as in from its CEO, former USMC scout sniper, Alex Stewart. But he had found plenty of third-party media bullshit, and hopefully some of it was true. It was damned hard to know these days.

Researching The TEAM was like following a stubborn thread of events around the world and through the past few years. Instead of a simpleWikipedialink that would lead to partial truths sprinkled with facts, Shane had been forced to track down and research newspaper and magazine articles instead. Seemed wherever Stewart or his men and women went, the media followed like a relentless pack of propaganda spewing trolls. Would’ve been easier if Stewart had maintained an informative website. At least the facts there would’ve been true—from Stewart’s perspective. But the man didn’t advertise and had not once extolled his TEAM’s extraordinary successes. Worse, he’d made the FBI look bad the few times he’d worked with them. Had done so for years. Of course, the press jumped on that nugget and magnified it into sensational bullshit.

Since the first article published in theSeattle Post Intelligencer,of the attempted murders of Stewart and the abused woman who had eventually become his second wife, to the next by-line in the more palatable and believable,News Herald,out of Marshfield, Wisconsin, the press had hounded Alex Stewart at every turn. If they weren’t bitching about the unsafe and inconvenient location of his TEAM Headquarters building, which he owned outright, in historic downtown Alexandria, Virginia, they’d outright invented shit that slandered the man, his wife, his TEAM, and their spouses, for hell’s sake. Typical of the amoral propaganda machine the right-to-free-speech press corps had devolved into. Truth was an elusive characteristic in the media business.

Shane scrubbed a hand over his chin, prickly stubble already present on a face he hoped Stewart wouldn’t recognize. Or be on the lookout for. He’d been about to turn eighteen that fateful day, and Shane hoped he’d aged enough these last years to make an impression—or something.

The latest unsubstantiated rumor Stewart refused to address publicly had garnered momentum since Vice President Mason’s recent death from stage-four Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Shane hoped that rumor was the by-product of some idiot reporter’s imagination. But it made honest to goodness sense that President Adams would ask Stewart to serve as his VP. He’d worked closely with Adams on a covert mission a couple years back, the one that had ended Adam’s first VP’s treasonous attempt to dirty bomb Washington, DC. President Adams had made it clear that Stewart was not only a smart businessman but also a loyal friend. What President wouldn’t want a man like that standing with him in the Oval Office?

But Vice President? If Stewart accepted, that’d make him the third VP under Adams. It’d also make him a target, because VPs sure didn’t last long in this administration.

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