Taylor

by Irish Winters

  TAYLOR

  IN THE COMPANY OF SNIPERS

  Book 7

  IRISH WINTERS

  COPYRIGHT

  TAYLOR - In the Company of Snipers, 7

  Copyright ©2015 by Irish Winters

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogues, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Cover design and author photo by Kelli Ann Morgan,

  http://www.inspirecreativeservices.com

  Interior book design by Bob Houston, eBook Formatting

  ISBN Paperback: 978-1-942895-11-4

  ISBN eBook: 978-1-942895-12-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937756

  Irish Winter’s author website is http://www.irishwinters.com

  or irishwinters.blogspot.com

  IN THE COMPANY OF SNIPERS

  This multi-book series revolves around ex-Marine scout sniper, Alex Stewart, and his covert surveillance company, The TEAM, home-based out of Alexandria, Virginia. An obsessive patriot and workaholic, he created the company to give ex-military snipers coming back from the wars a chance at a decent job.

  In the Company of Snipers is a collection of love stories. Book 1, ALEX, reveals how The TEAM came to be, as well as how Alex and Kelsey met, fell in love, and fought all odds to stay together. Each of the following books is a complete romance in itself where, in the course of an active TEAM operation, one agent will come face to face with his or her demons. They’re all patriots and warriors, dealing with what they’ve lived through or the mistakes they’ve made.

  By the end of the telling, it is my hope that you, my reader, will come to realize along with my heroes that....

  Love changes everything.

  Reviews for the series

  In the Company of Snipers

  ALEX, Book 1

  “These characters were so well written at times I felt like I was feeling the love, the loss, and the triumph right along with them.”

  – Tabitha, (Amazeballs Book Addicts)

  MARK, Book 2

  “Irish Winters has outdone her first book, Alex!”

  – My Secret Book Spot

  ZACK, Book 3

  “This is my first book by Irish Winters and I have to say I'm sold!”

  – Janett Gomez

  “Fantastic. Around every corner it just keeps getting more intense.”

  – Susan Sims

  HARLEY, Book 4

  “I have been so anxious to read Harley's book. He is one of the sweetest male heroes that I have come across in a long time. Don't let that fool you though, he is also terribly flawed and a down right bad ass when he needs to be.”

  – Malissa Coy

  CONNOR, Book 5

  “Every time I read one of her books, I swear it's my favorite.... until I read the next one.”

  – Nikki Booth

  “Thrilling, suspenseful, heartbreaking and tender - you will not want to put this book down once you start.”

  – Jen M. (Whittier, CA, US)

  RORY, Book 6

  “Irish Winters’ Sniper series is a pure, one hundred percent, five star read!”

  – LJ Vickery

  “WOW! Best one yet. From tears to smiles she had me right at the beginning. “

  – Toni Harper

  DEDICATION

  To my friends

  Rhett and Emmaline Hoffmeister

  For showing me the way

  Prologue

  Two angels and now two whitened sepulchers...

  Mary White Hawk’s death occurred just as the bright Virginia sun kissed the April soil with the warmth of another spring day. A single shaft of sunlight stretched across her nursing home bed like a warm hand from the great beyond reaching to guide her home. It seemed fitting she’d leave while the world shook off the chill of winter. She’d loved this time of year—before it happened.

  Peter was holding Mary’s hand when she left, the gnarled, twisted excuse that no longer resembled fingers, thumb, or palm. Mary’s brothers, Luke and Matthew, had been called, but she couldn’t wait for them. Instead, she breathed one final gasp that sounded like Mama, and left in the twinkling of an eye.

  Sweet Mary hadn’t spoken for years. Had her mother come to take her home to Heaven after all this time? The thought comforted Gracie. She placed a call to Luke and Matthew to let them know there was no need to hurry. Mary was home at last.

  For too many years, Gracie had stood by Mary’s side with Peter or his sons, Luke and Matthew. He’d bought her a horse in hopes of tempting her away from death’s door, but she never learned to ride. He filled her room with flowers and pictures, anything to bring her back to the living side of the veil, but day after day she lay oblivious to him and the world around her.

  Gracie sang lullabies from Mary’s baby days, camp songs, silly songs, church hymns and movie scores, but nothing broke through to the limbo where her soul had fled. She seemed stuck. Forever gone and yet, forever there. Unable to live. Unable to die.

  For fifteen years, she lingered. Her muscles curled. Tendons withered. Her once shiny black hair thinned, then fell out. Mary wasted away. Breathing became a thing for machines and medicines to accomplish in her behalf. Her strong heart betrayed her, refusing the mercy of death in her hours, days and years of need.

  To Gracie, Mary was an older sister. Though not related by blood, she couldn’t remember a day Mary was not part of her life. Only twelve when it happened, Gracie learned the gentle ways of caring for another from her mother, Patience. Bound by oaths of love, family, and tribe, Gracie knew what it meant to promise and then to fulfill that promise day after day and year after year.

  She’d made two in her life. One to care for Mary. The other to watch over Peter’s grandson. It was the way of her people. Her tribe. Her heart. That was why she also called Peter “Grandfather,” her love for him and stronger than the confines of blood.

  Peter gazed upon the face of his baby girl one last time. Gracie knew he didn’t see the tubes and wires. He didn’t notice the skin that sloughed from Mary’s shell either, that empty chalice drained of its last drop of life. Nor did he see the woman who looked more like an eighty-year-old dried-up crone.

  All he saw was his youngest child with streaming black hair trailing behind her as she used to run to him with a heartfelt, “Papa!” at the end of a weary day. All he remembered was the infant girl he’d rocked on his knee and held in his arms so many moons ago. Her smile was his sunshine, his breath, his life. She had been his treasure to guard and his darling to love. Now his alone to avenge.

  Gracie went to his side, but there was nothing left to say. Mary’s funeral had been planned for years. “I want to come with you,” she murmured, though she already knew his answer. For this final hunt, there could be no companions, accomplices, or witnesses. This was the work for one man and one man only.

  He patted her cheek gently but said nothing.

  “There is another way,” she whispered. There has to be.

  Again, silence.

  She tried one last time. “Please don’t go. Don’t do this.”

  He retrieved the single arrow from Mary’s bed where he’d set it when he’d arrived. The long shaft glistened with spots of blood-li
ke red near the fletching of white goose feathers. Most white men wouldn’t understand the significance of those particular markings unless they were trained, but Gracie did. They were nothing less than Peter’s signature. His pride. His declaration of war.

  He’d only brought his masterpiece to tell Mary one last time of the old ways, the blood hunt, to promise he’d not fail her again. His sorrowful words were no more out of his mouth when she breathed her last. He’d taken that as a sign of her approval. There’d be no stopping him now.

  The next time Gracie would see him, he’d be a wanted man, the subject of a manhunt, a fugitive from the deceitful, blind trickster called Justice. If caught, he was prepared to die at the hands of others. If not, honor demanded he turn himself into the authorities when the deed was complete. And she, Gracie Fox, daughter of the proud Mattaponi Indian tribe, would be his willing accomplice if only because she knew and would not tell.

  With his hand on Mary’s, at last he spoke. “I have work to do, Little Bird. Please stay close to my grandson until I return.”

  “I always have Grandfather. I always will.”

  “He was the best of me.” His voice caught. “I would have taught him the way of the wind. Instead, he has only learned the way of war.”

  “Yet you’ll go to war,” she murmured, wishing with all her heart there was a way to avert the inevitable. This day had been coming for fifteen years, but she’d prayed Peter’s heart would be softened during that time, that he wouldn’t seek the redress of ancient ways.

  He pulled her into his side and placed a grandfather’s kiss on her forehead. “Yes. I will. A warrior must stand for his own or he stands for nothing.”

  Chapter One

  An arrow!

  Taylor Armstrong bowed his chin to his chest and shuddered. Waves of red-hot pain slapped over him from the arrow nestled like a living thing just below his collarbone, high above his right nipple. Any lower, it would’ve hit his lung. For that he was thankful, but it was still master. Satan incarnate.

  The morning that began with routine arms certification at the shooting range with his team had morphed into a nightmarish struggle for survival. He and his buddy, Gabe, certified easily. They’d chatted. Discussed NBA playoffs. Work. The latest madman in Alexandria, Virginia. Some wack-job hunting innocent people with a bow and arrow. Local press tagged him the Chronicle Killer because he’d offed a couple reporters with that lethal weapon. How crazy was that?

  Damned crazy. The bastard got me. Me? An ex-Marine scout sniper. Thought I’d be a little more invincible.

  Bright sunlight at the bottom of his prison door told him the morning was long gone, and hell was just beginning. He swallowed hard. Another wave of gut-busting pain. He shook it off.

  You missed, you sonofabitch.

  Stabbing pain—the freaking mother of invention. Every tug of his cotton shirt against the arrow enhanced his misery. It had to go. Tearing the cloth, he tossed it to the shadows. Every movement hurt. Every breath. The feathers at the end of the shaft caught even his slightest breath, offering jolts of razor-sharp reminders to ‘Hold still. Leave it the hell alone.’

  God Almighty, he wanted to, but the barb had gone too far into his body to be pulled out the way it entered. He would know. The pain in his back demanded instant compliance in the split second he’d leaned against the wall behind him, thinking he could use it for support. Not so easy when a guy’s been impaled.

  Damn. What couldn’t be reversed had to go forward. Only then could he snap it off and pull the remaining shaft from his chest. At least, that was the plan. Sounded easy. If he lived. Like stupid bone-headed Marines, arrows weren’t created to retreat, only to advance.

  Getting back on his feet would be a chore in itself, but if some guy in Utah could hack his arm off to escape the boulder that tried to kill him, Taylor could do this. He knew wood. The polished shaft would follow wherever the tip led.

  Blood ran down his chest. It didn’t gush, just trickled like it had all the time in the world. The trail of hair down his belly funneled the red stream to the dimpled bowl of his navel. An innee, a bizarre and silly sight on such a desperate day. Funny the things a guy noticed when Death hovered. How some things became clear. How others faded.

  Like Two Star USMC Lieutenant General Michael Armstrong, his father, the last image Taylor needed here at the hour of what very well might be his death. He forced his mind from the cold-hearted man who’d raised him, and upward to the only One who heard. Who listened.

  It took eighteen years to learn to pray, and from a USMC chaplain no less, but prayer brought comfort. It brought hope. Even here in this darkest of dark places with a killer on the loose.

  “Listen up, God. I’m not ready to die. I wear your patron saint on my neck. Tell him to get his ass down here and help.”

  Saint Michael the Archangel. Patron saint of warriors. Marines. The tough-looking guy on the medal Taylor had worn as long as he could remember. Funny. Never once had he related that guy to his father, though their names were the same.

  The angel decked out in an armored breastplate, his spear stuck in the top of the serpent Lucifer’s head, always seemed more of a buddy, someone a guy could rely on. Was it asking too much to get a special appearance now? Isn’t that what patron saints did, show up in a guy’s darkest hour?

  The prayer would have disgusted his father. What didn’t?

  Real men don’t cry. Only sissies pray. Quitter. Loser.

  “Screw you, General!” Anger surged along with the pain.

  The paternal chant nagged, its lesson ever taught. Quitters never win. Winners never quit.

  A thousand times he’d heard it in rain, in snow, in defeat and in tears. That’s what got a man killed—what went on in his mind. He needed his father out of his head.

  Just that fast, another tough man sprang to life. Of all the unlikely guardian angels God could’ve sent. Alex Stewart. His single favorite admonition, too. Think. Move it, Armstrong. Time’s a wasting. Suck it up. Get ’er done.

  “Easy for you to say, Boss,” Taylor murmured, worried he’d lost too much blood, maybe his mind here at the end of his time. The shed was getting crowded. All this chat didn’t help.

  Still, Alex knew how to motivate a guy.

  Taylor pushed sideways from the ground, a task all by itself when a guy tried damned hard not to bump the three-foot spear in his chest. Sweat trickled into his eyes. Sucking in a careful breath, he climbed to his feet. He stood. And so it began. The final dance with Death. Or life if Taylor had anything to say about it.

  Shadows lapped up his legs and at his peripheral. Hell, no. Not going down in the first round. Getting upright was just the beginning. I can do this.

  He faced the wall, but damn. Only his fingertips and the end of the shaft touched concrete. At least, the shaft pierced his body at an angle, another lucky break.

  Who knew what he have done if it met the resistance of his shoulder blade? Or broken it. Of all the pitiful things to be grateful for.

  He steadied his weight, one foot forward, the other behind. He’d only get one chance. Summoning the stern image of the arrogant prick who’d only ever taunted and called names instead of lending a hand up, Taylor let loose the torment of years. “You. Sonofa. Bitch!”

  He rammed the shaft into the wall and into his body. Resistance vibrated up every inch of the wooden cylinder, but Taylor couldn’t quit. Wouldn’t quit. If only because the General always said he would.

  He growled. He grunted. His one good chance turned into agony. Hot, rolling nausea flooded his body from the ground up. Onward he pressed, determined he would not die.

  At last, the tip ripped through his back, piercing his skin. And still he pushed. The damned tip wasn’t enough. Not yet. The arrowhead had to follow. Several inches of the shaft, too. Had to. The plan wouldn’t work otherwise.

  Shifting his weight for added leverage, he eyeballed what was left. A couple more inches. That’s all. Might as well be a mile.

&nb
sp; He groaned and pushed closer to the wall. Willing endurance. Success. That’s what got a guy through firefights and battle. Absolute belief. Anger. A good solid plan for revenge.

  I’m coming for you, Chronicle Killer coward.

  Finally. Enough! A good portion of the shaft extended out his back, its evil twin wedged between the concrete and his heaving chest.

  Adrenaline roared over him, an avalanche and him a spindly twig in its path. He bowed his head, blinking at the ferocity of the onslaught. Or the weakness of his damned legs. Waves of unconsciousness surged hard and fierce.

  Not today. Sure as hell not with some chicken shit arrow sticking through me. Hell, no.

  He brushed the sweat and tears off his face. Sure seemed like Death had a good grip. His life flashed before his eyes, a lightning strike he couldn’t control. His past unwound—his childhood, all those angry, awkward school years of never belonging. Always looking over his shoulder for someone to be there, for someone who wanted to be there for him. Like her.

  A childhood friend he hadn’t thought of in years smiled through the murky mist, a dark-haired girl with sparkling stars in her eyes. She’d seemed the only bright spot in life back then, but what was her name? Was she even real? Reality eluded him, not that it mattered. He’d given up on happiness long ago. Why wonder now?

  He flattened his palms to the wall and refocused. Round two coming up.

  Bowing his head, he let the ways of a good sniper wash over him, let it wash the agony away. His breathing slowed. His heart rate decreased just a fraction, but enough.

  The chant of a steady man began anew. Think calm. Think center. Think peace. You’re a proven warrior. A winner. A fighter. It’s just an arrow. Just wood. Think calm. Think center. Think peace. You can do this.

  Oh, yeah? Sure didn’t feel like it. All strength had fled his legs. He sank to his knees in the dirt. Then his butt, paying strict homage to the Devil still lodged in his chest. Maybe sitting down would work just as well.