by Em Petrova
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved
Within Range
Ranger Ops Book 2
Copyright Em Petrova 2019
Ebook Edition
Electronic book publication 2019
All rights reserved. Any violation of this will be prosecuted by the law.
Ranger Ops
AT CLOSE RANGE
WITHIN RANGE
POINT BLANK RANGE
When trouble walks in, there’s no choice but to hold on tight for the ride.
Two years before, Shaw Woodward watched the love of his life walk down the aisle to another man. Since then, life has kicked him in the balls and lifted him up several times. Just so happens he’s on the downward dip of that cycle right now.
After a difficult mission in the Ranger Ops unit, he’s struggled to keep his focus, and his captain is forcing him to seek help. He just never expected to walk into the shrink’s office to find the woman he loved seated behind the desk in sexy secretary glasses with her blonde hair in a confining bun he wants to unravel.
Atalee Franklin has experienced a lot of highs and lows lately—a marriage and a divorce to name a couple. As a psychologist, she’s passionate about helping people through their most difficult moments, but then in walks Shaw, the gorgeous, muscled friend of her ex-husband, and also some of the reason her marriage failed.
With another shot at a relationship in his sights, can Shaw actually get his head clear enough to move forward? Leaving the Ranger Ops isn’t even a possibility—the only way they’ll strip him from the unit is by putting him in the ground. Atalee only wants Shaw to find peace while doing something he loves, though her worries for him are real. Losing him a second time isn’t even an option...
WITHIN RANGE
by
Em Petrova
Prologue
Two years ago
“Are you gonna stand here and let this happen?”
Shaw’s father gave him the sideways look that meant he’d better fix his disposition and do it fucking fast.
He tugged at the collar of his dress shirt. It felt uncomfortably tighter with each second that counted down to the wedding ceremony.
“What are you talking about?” Shaw shot back. But he knew—and playing stupid wasn’t going to fix the situation. The woman he loved was walking down that aisle, and it wasn’t to him.
His father squared up with him. Lawdy, this situation was going downhill like a pig in a mudslide. His father looked him in the eyes, and his voice came out low and intense.
“You love that woman. Have for years. Why the hell are you letting this happen? You don’t get many chances at happiness in this life, son.”
Shaw stared over his father’s shoulder toward the altar, where his buddy Johnny stood alongside his brother as best man, suited up and waiting for the first strains of the wedding march.
Without looking at his father, Shaw muttered, “I can’t just stop the wedding.”
“So you’re going to stop your life instead?”
The words struck Shaw like a hail of bullets, each finding its mark deep within him.
Goddammit.
He turned from his father.
His black leather dress shoes tapped out a beat on the floor that mirrored his heart. Stained glass flashed by his vision and he stepped through a doorway into the bridal suite.
A gasp sounded as Atalee’s female entourage saw him standing in the doorway, but he couldn’t see a fucking thing but the bride in white, her honey blonde hair piled in an extravagant updo with little fucking flowers tucked into the strands and a floor-length veil.
Dammit.
“I need to speak to Atalee alone,” he grated out.
Her eyes found his, big and sea green, the depths filled with surprise.
He was about to surprise her even more, and with any luck, three hundred wedding guests when she cancelled her wedding and ran away with Shaw.
The bride’s mother touched her arm, and she gave her a nod and smile. The women scuttled past Shaw, and he threw a glance over his shoulder to ensure they wouldn’t overhear what he was about to say.
As he moved toward the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen in his life, his throat dried out. He swallowed hard and stepped up before her.
“Atalee…”
With her face tilted up to his and wearing all white, his heart threatened to give out from pounding so hard.
Kiss your bride.
She’s somebody else’s bride.
Dammit to hell.
“What is it, Shaw? Is something wrong?” Her soft-spoken manner took hold of him by the balls. This woman owned him, pure and simple.
He grabbed her hands, hovering over her with the urge to kiss her so fucking strong, he didn’t know if he could even speak. Emotion threatened to close off his throat, but he wasn’t a quitter or a coward. He was a fucking Texas Ranger, and he wanted this woman with every cell of his being.
“Atalee, you can’t marry Johnny.”
She blinked up at him and paled slightly. “What happened? Did he back out?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” he rushed to say before she lost more color from her face. His heart flexed hard, painfully. “Atalee, I’ve known you for years now.”
Confusion creased her blonde brows. “Yes.”
He was fucking this all up. Just say it, he ordered himself.
“I can’t let you walk down that aisle and marry Johnny. Because I’m in love with you.”
A beat of silence followed, and her sea-green eyes widened.
“Baby doll, I can give you everything you ever wanted. I’m better for you than the man out there.” He gestured toward the main part of the church where all her guests were expecting her.
She dropped her head and stared at the bouquet she held. The petals of the brightly-colored flowers trembled in her shaking hands.
“Shaw, why are you saying these things to me? Why did you wait so long? We’ve known each other for years.”
“Because I can’t let you marry another man without telling you how I feel. I can’t watch you destroy your life with someone who won’t love you the way I do.”
She took a step away and then another. His instinct was to grab her back, yank her flush to his body and kiss her with all the passion flowing inside him. Three long years he’d wanted her. Johnny had been his friend for much longer. They’d trained together as Texas State Troopers, but only Shaw had gone on to be a Texas Ranger. All the while, Shaw had known Atalee as a driven woman as well as a sweet one, while she worked diligently to finish her Master’s of Psychology so she could move on to get her doctorate..
His chest inflated as he gathered wind to speak, to somehow convince her to walk away with him.
“Atalee, listen—”
Her face twisted in a grimace of pain. “No, you listen, Shaw Woodward. You can’t just walk in here and tell me you love me minutes before I’m about to marry your friend. Hear those words? Your friend. What kind of man betrays a buddy like this?”
“There are sides to Johnny he doesn’t show you. At least I don’t think he does.” Dammit, he was grinding up his words into pig slop. “Atalee, I don’t think he can give you what I can. All I want is you.”
She took another step away from him.
He was losing her.
Lifting the bouquet like a ward against
evil spirits, she glared at him. “Get out of here and don’t come back, Shaw. I’m marrying Johnny. I love Johnny.”
Jesus Christ, those words hurt.
Shaw wasn’t known for giving up easy, though. In two steps he was with her, a hand planted on her lower back as he jerked her against him and slammed his mouth over all that lipstick that another man was meant to kiss off her sweet, honeyed lips. For a moment, she stood still in his hold.
Then she melted.
Just a bit.
It was enough for him to sweep his tongue through her mouth, gathering all the flavors he knew were it for him for the rest of his life.
Till death did they part.
Suddenly, she shoved her hands against him. Flower petals crushed against his suit jacket and tumbled to the floor as she stumbled back.
“Damn you, Shaw! Leave!”
He felt his jaw muscles bunch up and knew he was getting pissed. He leveled his gaze at her. “You sure you want that? Because you felt yourself melt into my kiss just as much as I did.”
“Fuck you!” She came at him, bouquet flopping on smashed stems. She hit him square in the chest, but he didn’t even rock on his feet. She was an itty-bitty thing and he was six-two. Yet… who knew seeing hatred on a woman’s face could bring a man to his knees?
She was fucking killing him.
“Get out of here! I never want to see you again.”
He firmed his jaw and just stared at her for a heavy heartbeat. Her chest rose and fell with fury, but all he saw was the woman he wanted through thick and thin. It might be their first fight and later they’d laugh about it.
“I don’t have feelings for you, Shaw, and I never will. Now go.” Her eyes narrowed to slits, and her words were venom darts, striking him one by lethal one.
He brought a fist to his lips, pressing back any words that he might say to ruin her life even more than he already had. In the end, he gave a nod, sent her one last look that would have to suffice for the rest of his days and walked out.
On the way to the front doors, he walked past his father, who caught him by the arm.
The wedding march was playing, and he turned away from the sight of Atalee drifting up the aisle on her own father’s arm to meet her undeserving groom.
“Did you talk to her?” his father asked quietly.
He nodded. “Didn’t do any good.”
Tossing one last look up the long aisle, he found Atalee looking back at him before she turned to Johnny and joined hands with him.
Shaw walked out. Then he went straight to the Texas Rangers’ office and put in for a transfer, which he got three weeks later.
Chapter One
“Jesus. Not another active shooter situation.” Shaw ducked his head back around the corner. “I got no visuals, Sully,” he said into his comms device.
This particular armed gunman had holed himself up in the thick of the downtown district. Between SWAT teams, fire departments and the damn media that seemed more eager to get their story than to take their next breath, the vicinity was crawling with people.
“We’ll get you into a better position. Woody, Linc, get closer and keep low. Jess, Cav, head east and get eyes on the windows,” Nash Sullivan, captain of the Ranger Ops special forces unit, ordered in response.
“Where the hell are you, asshole?” Shaw scoured the front of the building. Shots had been fired from the fifth or sixth story and crumpled out two pedestrians approaching the building entrance.
With Linc at his side, Shaw ran in a crouched position through a courtyard area. Linc pulled up beside him, head tipped back to the windows across the street.
“C’mon, you fucker. Show yourself,” Shaw muttered. One flash of a scope in one of those windows, and Shaw would end this here and now. He kept his sights trained on the front of the building, but it was possible a lot worse shit was about to go down inside.
“I think we should go in,” Linc seemed to echo his thoughts.
“I’m with Linc,” Lennon said.
“Damn, I know you’re my twin but do you gotta copy everything, bro?” Linc said to his brother through the comms.
“Yep, that’s how I nailed your girlfriend last night,” Lennon shot back, a grin in his voice.
“Keep the chatter down,” Nash responded. “But yeah, we need to get in there. Lennon and I are breachers.”
Shaw peered through his scope, moving from window to window yet saw not so much as a shadow. Most of the windows reflected the street back to him, but he was trained to see things most people couldn’t. Hell, after only nine months in the Rangers Ops, he could even see ghosts.
“We’re in.” Nash’s voice came at them, low. Seconds later, tension filled his tone. “We need Cav.”
Shaw and his partner on his three, Linc, shared a look. This couldn’t be fucking good. If the captain needed Cavanagh, he’d run across something that most likely had a fuse and a detonator.
A short popping noise stiffened Shaw’s spine, coming from deep within the walls of that building. “What the fuck is that, Sully?” he demanded.
“Shooter’s on the move. Get in here. Now!”
The four of them converged and hit a back entrance. In a blink, Shaw assessed their surroundings and gave orders to search the floors, starting on the fifth, where the shots were suspected to have come from while Cav took off to locate the explosive.
A trickle of sweat coursed down Shaw’s neck, swallowed by the collar of his tactical jacket. It was hot as Texas in the dead of August in here, and it didn’t have anything to do with the layers he wore, along with his bulletproof vest.
“Cav, it’s mighty hot in this place. You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
“Yeah, I fucking am.”
The explosive could be tripped by temperature fluctuations.
“There’s more than one guy at work here. Watch your sixes,” Nash ordered.
Shaw, Linc and Jess took the stairs two and three at a time until they reached a steel door at the top. Jess raised his brows at Shaw, and he gave the nod to go.
They’d just breached the door and were fanning out, heads moving right and left, when Cav let out a whistle.
“Not any garden variety fertilizer here, guys. This is enough fucking explosive to bring down aircraft.”
“Missiles?” Shaw asked at once under his breath.
“Damn close. Housing’s different, to make it more vulnerable.”
“That’s where the heat comes in. Shit, can somebody get to the boiler room and get that A/C back on before we all end up stains on the earth? Jess?” Nash’s order had Jess splitting off from Shaw and Linc.
They moved in precise steps along the stairwell. A squelched scream had the hairs on the back of Shaw’s neck on the rise. Slowly, Shaw pushed open the door and he and Linc rushed the corridor. Office doors leading from it were mostly shut, and the open ones were empty.
“What the hell is this building? Who works in it? Someone important? Or is someone important visiting today?” Lennon asked. “This is enough explosive to make a big statement. This is not just a pissed off employee but the work of a group.”
“A very organized group too,” Cav drawled out as he worked over the bomb.
“So why the shooter? Why not just cut the air and walk away, letting the place rocket off the map?” Shaw firmed his jaw as the words left his lips. His pulse was tripping again, and he had to concentrate on keeping his head on straight. He couldn’t fuck up at a time like this, lose it like some weenie rookie who wet his pants at the first sign of conflict.
He bit the inside of his cheek, and the sharp pain helped him focus a bit. Weapons raised, they swept a room.
“Marco,” Linc murmured.
Of course nobody answered Polo.
“I’m not playing any fucking games,” Shaw barked out, sweating heavier now. The base of his spine was soaked. Damn, he had to stay on task. This wasn’t at all the same as Mexico. He wasn’t going to gun down another teenager.
That
shit had haunted the hell out of him, and he’d been battling for months now. Despite the fact the kid had a bead on Shaw and was about to shoot him between the eyes didn’t make it any better to his mind. He still couldn’t shake the memory of turning the guy over with his boot and finding him a lot fucking younger than he’d thought.
“There.” Linc’s breathed out word was barely audible even a step away from Shaw.
“Get the son of a bitch down, but make sure he’s not wired first. Cav, Lennon and I would like to keep our balls.” Nash’s words barely registered in Shaw’s ear as he stepped out around the corner and got a good look at the shooter.
Shaw closed one eye and took the shot.
The gunman hit the ground in a slump of dead weight, and a woman screamed. She jumped up and ran at Shaw. Weapon aimed, he prepared himself to squeeze off another shot before realizing it was just a woman dressed in office attire.
No. It was that teen boy from Mexico. Shaw stared at her, watching her face shift to the youthful angles and—
“Goddammit,” he swore at himself. Sticking out one arm, he grabbed the woman and swept her up against the wall, shoving her down. “Get down, under that desk and stay there, you hear me? There might be more shooters.”
“Shhhiiiit, this is one hell of a computer system on this explosive,” Cav was saying during all of this. “Jess, you got that air back on yet? We need you up here.”
“Shaw hit a mark. I’m approaching the body now,” Linc said.
Shaw watched his teammate move toward the crumpled form before realizing he should be watching for other threats.
Dammit, he was going to have to break down and get that help Nash kept haranguing him about ever since Mexico.
Linc nudged Shaw again. “Good shot. Clean.”
His mouth filled with bile, and for a second, he battled the urge to go make sure it wasn’t another kid he’d shot, even though he knew otherwise.
Yes, definitely needed that shrink, even if he and every man he’d ever worked with balked at sitting on a couch and having their childhoods probed when all they really needed to do was stop questioning whether they should have killed somebody who’d asked for it.
