5

Waldrop laid cover fire as Coop and Taggart sprinted the length of three football fields. Pumping blood and adrenaline kept them warm in the fifteen-degree weather; their breath escaped in frosty white puffs as it left their burning lungs. When they reached the target building, they drew their guns and took a few seconds to suck in some breath and assess the building. Ten stories of brick, it took up an entire block. Graffiti was scrawled across the walls and the few ground-floor windows that weren’t broken out.

“I’ll go left,” Coop said, and Taggart immediately took off to the right.

When Coop reached the first corner of the building, he pressed his back against it, checked around the brick, then raced for the opposite end, stopping at every doorway to check for a possible entry point.

“Locked tight,” Taggart said, breathing hard, when they met at their original point of contact.

“I didn’t see any vehicles. You?”

Taggart shook his head. “Nope.”

So either the shooter had already left, had a driver waiting for him somewhere nearby, or had arrived on foot. That gave them two chances out of three that he was still up there. And still shooting to kill.

“Ideas?” Coop asked as they bolted toward the closest door.

“A good, hard kick ought to do it.”

Holding his pistol in a two-handed grip close to his body, Coop mule-kicked the door open and burst inside. He cleared the left side of the stairwell and felt Taggart at his back, clearing his sector.

They’d breached enough enemy strongholds together that their actions were a well-choreographed, deadly dance.

A hand clasped his shoulder, confirming that Taggart was ready to go up.

Stairways were a bitch to clear. The “fatal funnel.” The bad guys could toss a grenade or fire a burst of shots and be guaranteed to hit something.

Quickly, but taking care, they cleared each stairway and landing.

Coop’s pulse pounded in his head by the time they got to the sixth floor, where they figured the shooter had been hiding.

Office doors flanked either side of the hallway. They eliminated the side to the north and center of the building.

“Which window?” Coop glanced down the hall.

Taggart looked at the first door. “The thirteenth.”

“How many windows in each room?”

“Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

“Cover me.”

Two-handing his 9mm in front of him, Coop drew a deep breath. Then he hauled back again, kicked open the first door, and burst through the threshold, staying low and out of the kill zone.

Taggart rushed in low behind him.

The room was empty.

“Captain America couldn’t have done it better,” Taggart said, a weak attempt to cut the tension.

“Just count, smart-ass.”

“Five.”

Five windows in the room.

They hustled back to the door, checked out the hall, and, finding it empty, rolled out of the empty room together.

Taggart stopped by the next door. “What do you think?”

Though they both knew the room after this one held the thirteenth window, it never paid to assume.

“Clear it just in case.”

Taggart went in first this time. And again, they found the room empty.

As they stepped back out into the hall, Coop heard the soft click of a latch on the next door down the hall.

Beside him, Taggart nodded. He’d heard it, too.

•    •    •

Rhonda hoped that everyone in the restaurant was asking whatever power any of them believed in to save Eva. With more pleas sent in Taggart and Cooper’s direction. They were out there now, easy targets for whoever was doing the shooting.

“They’ll be fine,” Steph said, reading her mind. “They know what they’re doing.”

She might not like Cooper much, but her heart beat more for his and Taggart’s safety than for her own.

And it beat more for Eva’s.

She fought back tears. Her teammates weren’t just battle buddies. They were good friends, including their wives and kids. To many of them, this extended family was the closest to normal that it got. And now she was one of them. Now she understood that when one of their own was in danger, they’d move mountains to remove the threat.

She felt so helpless. It seemed like an eternity since the first shot had been fired, though it had barely been four minutes since Eva was hit. Less than two minutes since Taggart and Cooper had raced out the back door after the shooter.

“Where are the police?” Mike demanded. “Where’s the ambulance?”

She wanted to help him, to reassure him that Eva was going to be okay. But she’d seen the wound. She knew . . .

The sound of sirens cut into her dark thoughts and provided much-needed hope.

“Thank God, they’re here!” She felt a rush of relief as the first wave of squad cars rolled to screeching stops in front of the restaurant, lights flashing. Uniformed cops piled out of the cars, guns drawn, and carefully approached the building.

“DOD!” Joe Green shouted, flashing his government credentials high in the air so the cops could see them clearly. The rest of them did the same.

“Take cover,” Green warned them. “The shooter’s still out there.”

Half a dozen cops scrambled inside and tucked in low beside them.

“We’ve got two men out there looking for the shooter,” Green said.

Normally, Mike would coordinate the action, but his head and his heart were wholly focused on Eva. It broke Rhonda’s heart to watch him.

“And we’ve got a victim down,” Green told the lieutenant in charge. “GSW to the abdomen. Big bleed.” He glanced over his shoulder at Mike, who looked lost and desperate.

“There’s an ambulance on the way,” the lieutenant said after double-checking with dispatch.

“Tell them to step on it,” Green pleaded. “Tell ’em we’ve got a critical.”

Rhonda felt as if another lifetime passed during the next several seconds, before the wail of another siren announced the rapid approach of the ambulance.

The restaurant, the terrified customers, and the rest of her team all faded away amid the eerie flash of red, white, and blue strobes that rolled against the walls and glinted off the broken glass.

Her gaze fell to Eva, who was now unconscious and who she feared was dying on the floor.

Fear for Eva, for Mike, for Taggart and Cooper pressed down on her shoulders as she watched the ambulance crew tend to Eva, load her up while the police provided cover, and finally race away to the hospital with Mike at her side.

Don’t let her die. Please, don’t let her die.

Several more police cars arrived in the meantime. As soon as the restaurant was secured, Green, Waldrop, and Santos took off to provide backup for Taggart and Cooper.

Rhonda and Stephanie stayed to supply information to the police. Sitting in the kitchen on a stack of boxes, Rhonda answered question after question . . . all the while thinking, pleading, and bargaining with the powers that be that no one else got shot.