Gabriel West: Still The One

He relayed the warning, knowing as he did so that the team would move in, poised to get him out if they could. Not that a clean rescue was probable now; he was well within Renwick’s circle of influence.

His options weren’t good. He could go for cover, and risk being pinned down, maybe even shot before the other team members could get to him, or he could keep his cool, get in close, use the car as a shield and Renwick for collateral to negotiate his ass out of there.

The cold warning increased the closer he got to Renwick, culminating in a preternatural tingle that stirred along the length of his spine and settled at his nape. He could feel the impending combat, almost taste it.

West felt the familiar shift inside, the peculiar calmness that came with battle—an altered state that freed him to act and react without conscious thought—and the odd, light-headed sensation, as if a part of him had drifted free, a cold observer to the act. He didn’t question the shift; it was as natural to him as breathing, a survival mechanism that had been in place since childhood, and one he’d consciously honed with years of meditation and martial arts. Odd as it seemed, the cold discipline required for both activities had dovetailed perfectly with the despair and savagery of his upbringing, binding the drifting, disparate parts of his being into a formidable whole. He’d learned early on to fight with everything that he had, and that included his mind. No matter how much edge he gave himself with weapons and a well-trained body, there was always someone bigger waiting to take him down.

A trickle of sweat eased down his spine. The muted thud of his boots hitting the pavement echoed dully, the sound almost instantly absorbed into the heavy press of the night.

He carried a knife in a spine sheath, another in a custom-made slot in his boot. A pocket-sized Walther was strapped to his left ankle; the small-calibre sidearm as slick a piece of hell as he’d ever handled. The meet with Renwick stipulated no firearms. Naturally, West had ignored the stipulation. Strolling into an arms deal without the benefit of a semi-automatic was about as close to naked as he ever wanted to get.

Renwick’s head lifted in a brief signal of recognition, his gaunt face taking on a yellowish hue in the glare of the sodium streetlamp, his dark gaze hooded. West noted the bulge under his left arm. He was carrying—naturally—a handgun so big it was wrecking the line of his jacket.

Grim humor dissolved the tension knotting his belly. Oh yeah, Renwick was an asshole: no style, no class.

A surge of recklessness flowered inside West, shafted through him on a hot, savage beat. His mouth curved in a slow, cold smile and he resisted the urge to close his eyes and ride out the hot feeling. That would get him killed for sure.

God, he was crazy. Certifiable. Renwick was itching to use some of the second-hand Russian weaponry he’d been hawking all through Indonesia and the South Pacific, and in the next few minutes he probably would. West could die, and he was suddenly enjoying himself, so alive he could hardly bear it, the rush better than sex. If the SAS psych team ever got their hands on him they’d lock him up and throw away the key.

A door popped open midway along the stretch of pavement between West and Renwick. Light flared across the street as two women emerged from a warehouse that, at four-thirty in the morning, should have been deserted. The door swung closed, the flat sound broken by the click of high heels on concrete.

The unexpectedness of the intrusion threw West off balance; his attention was caught by the tawny swing of hair shimmering around the first woman’s shoulders, the pure line of her profile.

Tyler.

The shock of recognition hit him like a belly punch even as his mind rejected the information. Tyler couldn’t be here. She was safe in New Zealand, thousands of miles away, but the notion persisted as the woman lifted a startled hand to sweep hair from her face.

A shadowy blur of movement snapped West’s gaze back to Renwick. He caught the dull gleam of a gun in the arms dealer’s hand.

He cursed, going wild inside, even as his fingers closed on the throwing knife. The woman whirled, face swamped by shadows. The glitter of her eyes clashed with West’s as Renwick’s arm came up.

Slow. He was too damned slow.

The thought hung in West’s mind as the knife flashed through the air and he dove, taking the woman down onto the pavement with him. In that split second he registered the flat report of the gun, once, twice—Renwick crumpling.

His shoulder slammed into the pavement, but he barely noticed the shock of the fall as he rolled free of the limp weight of the woman and came up into a crouch, the Walther in his hand. He fired across the street, then into the mouth of the alley, berating himself for not following his instincts and carrying a nine-millimetre weapon. The Walther was cool, but it was strictly a close-quarters weapon—short-barreled and light, the magazine fully loaded with only six shells.

Brick exploded behind him, showering him with fragments. A high-pitched moan, more animal than human, pierced the thick heaviness of the night as the second woman scrambled for the door she’d walked out of just seconds ago. West’s stomach knotted as he snaked, belly-flat, to reach the still form of the woman, the keening moan spinning him back to his years on the streets when he’d been little more than a child, fighting to eat, sometimes fighting to breathe after he’d endured beatings that had come close to killing him.

The cloying scents of blood and fear and cheap perfume flooded his nostrils as he clamped her slight body against his and crawled to the cover of Renwick’s car. She was still alive; he could hear the sound of her breathing, faint and very rapid, laced with a liquid rattle. His stomach knotted as he eased her flat beneath the wash of the streetlamp. Renwick had fired twice. One of those bullets had hit the woman. The large-calibre round had pierced her rib-cage, shattering bone and tearing an exit wound beneath one arm.

Cursing beneath his breath, he laid his gun down and propped her upright against the car, elevating the wound in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. Her head lolled as he tore his T-shirt off and bunched it over her chest and beneath her arm, applying what pressure he could without adding to her injuries, but the tell-tale sponginess indicated massive soft-tissue damage, and that more than one rib had been broken. With every shuddering rise and fall of her chest, fluid aspirated into her lungs. She was literally drowning in her own blood.

The roar of a vehicle accelerating down the street snapped West’s head up. The van fishtailed and shunted the back of Renwick’s car, riding up on the pavement and almost hitting West in the process. Disbelief punched through West. Carter, the crazy bastard, had come to get him out.

The street erupted with gunfire. The crack of a rifle shot bounced off the stained facades of warehouses and dilapidated shop frontages. The sharp rat-tat-tat of rounds hitting metal punctuated the tortured whine of a ricochet. The stench of cordite hung in the air, an acrid contrast to the salt tang of the sea and the pervasive smell of rancid fish oil from the nearby docks.

The van door was flung wide. Carter swore, his voice gravelly as he flowed out onto the pavement and kicked the door shut with one booted foot. The moment took on a surreal quality as West pressed his fingers to the side of the woman’s throat, searched for a pulse, and didn’t find one.

A woman had just died, and Carter was bitching about who was going to pay for the van.

More gunshots sounded, followed by a flurry of automatic fire. Minutes later the street was silent, the absence of sound faintly shocking.

It was over.

West didn’t question the sense of finality that settled inside him, or the spookiness that went with knowing. To him, his gut reactions were simply an extension of the physical reflexes he’d trained into his body, and over the years he’d learned to trust in them.

Gently, he let the woman go, sat back on his heels and let out a breath.

He studied her face in the wash of the streetlight, abruptly curious. He touched her cheek. She wasn’t the wife he’d walked out on five years ago, but she was someone, and she’d taken a bullet that had been meant for him. He was covered in her blood.

Gently, he laid her flat on the sidewalk, retrieved his damp, stained T-shirt and reached for dispassion.

Carter’s hand landed on his shoulder. He heard his voice, recognized the soothing rumble. This was a job, and the lady—a hooker—had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It had been quick, one second she’d been there, panicked gaze locked on his, the next…

The crazy thing was, she hadn’t even looked like Tyler. She’d walked like her, had that long pretty hair, a certain way of holding her head. That was all it had taken and he’d lost it. Dropped the ball.

Sweet Jesus… West lurched to his feet, turned aside from the two bodies, Renwick’s still oddly elegant in death. He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair, took a deep breath, and then another, and something broke apart inside him, an essential hardness as much a part of him as flesh and bone. For years he’d walked an edge, caught between not caring, and caring too much…a hungry street kid’s recipe for survival. And like the street-smart kid he’d once been, he still reached for the cool not to feel. Feelings shoved you off balance, opened you up….

He knew what was happening—it had been creeping up on him for months. There was even a name for it: battle fatigue. He was tired, his commitment for the job gone. He was still sharp, but it was becoming more and more of an effort to maintain the level of focus and acuity required for active undercover operations. Whatever he chose to label it, the fact remained—he’d been in the military too long.

Two members of the team, McKee and Sawyer, melted out of the darkness, followed seconds later by the fifth and final member, Lambert. Lambert made brief, neutral eye contact with West. McKee and Sawyer both gave him a wide berth.

West didn’t bother with the mental shrug. He had a reputation for being cold and distant—a little scary. He never did anything to alter that impression because the solitude suited him. He’d never been anything but a loner, and at thirty-one years of age the pattern was ingrained. He had friends, some of them as close as he was ever likely to get to actually having family, but essentially he was alone.

He examined the tinge of gray lightening the grim canyon of the street, turned toward what passed for sunrise in this city of heat and humidity and jungle mists. In half an hour this place would be a steam bath, the sun dominating a hot, clear sky, the streets teeming with raucous life.

He’d come close to not seeing it.

Lambert handed him his knife. West took the blade, cleaned it on his T-shirt, then methodically slipped it back into its spine sheath. Carter tossed him a bottle of water, took his cell phone out and called in an ambulance. West tipped his head back and drank, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then tipped water over his naked torso to clean off the blood. He became aware that Lambert was surreptitiously watching him—read the repelled fascination in the man’s eyes. Lambert was a rookie, ten years younger and fresh-faced—a nice boy doing a dirty job. He hadn’t liked handling the knife, or the way Renwick and the woman had died.

There was blood everywhere, still smeared across West’s chest, streaking the backs of his hands. His hair was tangled around his face, sticking to his shoulders. He must look like a damn vampire…not someone Lambert, or the other two, would ever want to get comfortable with.

A hot blast of emotion threatened to burn through his icy calm. Not someone that the majority of the human race would ever be comfortable with, come to that.

Something of what he was feeling must have registered with the younger man. His gaze slid away, locked on the body of the woman lying on the ground. Abruptly, he wheeled and joined Sawyer and McKee in the back of the van.

West knew what was going through Lambert’s mind. Over the years he’d garnered a reputation for being lucky—of having some kind of magical immunity, so that when everything went to hell West walked away with barely a scratch. There were men who wouldn’t work with him because that fact spooked them. They figured they’d be the ones to die.

Not for the first time West worried at his own apparent good luck. The fact was he had a reckless streak—a bad, bad habit that kept him choosing risky assignments and walking the edge. In a numbers game, he’d long since played out the odds. Sometimes the way he was scared him. He’d gotten too cold, too fatalistic about dying.

He eyed the steadily increasing glow in the east, felt the first touch of heat burning through the early-morning mists.

He hadn’t felt cold or fatalistic when he’d thought it was Tyler on the street. Fear had lashed through him. Every cell in his body had reacted.

His jaw clenched against a replay of the panic that had shafted through him when he’d thought his wife was about to walk straight into the barrel of Renwick’s gun. In that moment a part of him had gone wild. He hadn’t cared if Renwick’s bullets had slammed into his chest; all he’d wanted to do was save Tyler.