“Medic,” a woman shouted. “Let’s have her, sir!”
Stunned, aching and dizzy, he was slow to react. A man hauled at his shoulder as gloved hands pressed Jan’s neck. Someone pulled her off his lap, out of his grasp. His arms flopped down.
“She’s gunshot,” he gasped. “Upper chest.”
“Looking for a pulse,” the medic said to her colleague.
Tanner tried to reach Jan, so still on the ground. He couldn’t move.
“Sir, get out of the way, sir.” The EMT did a double-take. “Sir, you’re bleeding.”
“Just a scratch. Tend to her. I’ll be fine.”
Speaking into his shoulder mic, the medic knelt at Jan’s side.
Tanner stared, believing and not believing they could reverse what he knew to be true. He’d held other dying people, held them and lied to them, sometimes even told them the truth, eased them out of life, he knew how it went. He knew she was lost to him. The two EMTs mumbled, and a multitude of radios crackled, people commanded and questioned.
Other people rushed past. Voices echoed. Everything was hazy. He blinked. Still misty, wobbly. The reek of gasoline, the dying whine of an ambulance, Agostino’s whimpers as he was muscled up the stairs…
“That’s the sonofabitch,” Cynthia Voight cried. A commotion, Cynthia weeping, Agostino’s frantic, stuttering voice trying to make it all go away. Tanner wanted to get up, go to Cynthia, or maybe to Jan, but everything faded.
A medic knelt at his side, asked him something. He stared dumbly. The medic lifted his shirt, yelled something about a gunshot. He pushed at the medic. Jan. He needed to…
“Tanner! Where are you?”
Athena. He pushed the EMT, got to his knees, pressed his hand to his side where fire gnawed and bloomed. Felt the wetness. Toppled over, everything going colorless, hollow, receding....so far...
But not before he heard the female EMT say, “Got a pulse! Let’s get her out of here.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tuesday, December 12
Tanner, fretting in his hospital bed, looked up as Grey Holden walked in. His boss nodded hello and pulled up a chair. Tanner didn’t miss Holden’s mixed-message expression.
“What’s up?”
“Agostino’s house was torched Sunday night. Crave torched last night. Definitely arson; enough gas to fuel a fighter jet.” He sat down. “And Richie Agostino’s dead. Shanked in the shower.”
Dammit. “Bad news. A lot died with him.”
“He was the kind to cut a deal. He not only knew who was kidnapped but where they went.”
“Lotta people wouldn’t like that. They had to be sweating blood when they got the news.”
“Yeah. So someone got pro-active. For now, the matter’s closed.”
“Hell, no, it can’t be.” Tanner shifted irritably, ignoring the volcano in his side. “After I’m back on my feet. We’ll find them. The property developer in southeast Georgia...”
“Maybe.” Grey looked at Tanner’s many tubes and sighed. “How’s Miss Jones?”
“ICU. They won’t let me see her. I sneak in late at night.”
“So I hear. Charge nurse is mighty tired of rousting you out of a critical patient’s bed.”
“She smiles when I hold her. She’ll come back.”
“Tanner, this wasn’t your—”
“Sure it was. I should’ve reacted quicker. I’m a pro, I should’ve known a lot of the blood was mine—"
“Really? Yours a special color? Considering your injuries, it’s a miracle either of you made it out of that shelter alive.”
“She’ll be okay,” Tanner insisted.
Grey nodded. “They’re not sure how long she wasn’t breathing. When she’s out of the coma—”
“She talked to me. Last night. She’ll be fine, dammit.”
“You’ll be out tomorrow. Your thirty days off will start then, Carl. And we’ll try to make your next job an easier one.”
Holden’s bedside manner grated. Tanner read pity in it. He deserved scorn, or a good reaming out. He’d fucked up on so many levels it made him dizzy. And the end result was on a bed up in ICU, lost to the world unless he held her in his arms.
“I don’t need eas—” His entire body tensed as a nurse he knew all too well hurried in. What was she doing out of ICU? His heart flipped. “What? Is she—”
The nurse smiled. “Miss Jones is awake and asking for you. Only you. Isn’t that good— Wait! Mr. Tanner, you really have to put more clothes on!”
Is Carl Tanner your hero, too? His next Omega assignment will be along soon. Skip down a few pages for a sneak peek of KILL OR QUIT.
If you like Tanner, you might also like Kyle Branson, whose first epic adventure is Sonora Heat, available on Amazon. Kyle’s mom nicknamed him Bunny, because he could take a lickin and keep on tickin. Nearly forty years later, post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan, Kyle hasn’t changed much. And it’s a good thing, too, because the Sonoran desert, and the evil that inhabits it, is no place for someone who’s a quitter.
In the meantime, join Shayla and friends at
http://www.shaylamcbride.wordpress.com
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https://m.facebook.com/Shayla-McBride-Author-1559266780795869/?ref=bookmarks
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for insider news and outtakes, discussions, contests, cover reveals, advance notice of releases, giveaways, the occasional recipe or weird-place travel photo, and lots of info for newbie writers. Be among the first to see new scenes and out-takes, new heroes (of all genders) to love, and new plots to follow.
SHAYLA McBRIDE TELLS ALL
First, a thank you to Desirée for letting me join the Omega Team, which is composed of a lot of very talented and savvy writers, and I gotta tell you I’m pretty intimidated by it all. Is Tanner, who’ll be forty on his next birthday, and his disastrous love life, going to fit in? I hope so, because I just love this guy and want to write a lot more about him. And his lover (or lovers...don’t want to do a spoiler).
I haven’t always wanted to be a writer. A while back, I was a business owner, then a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. Always a mom, always surrounded by cats. Princess CooCoo, the present feline-in-residence, is a long-haired, black, semi-feral paranoid schizophrenic who graciously accommodates my writing. Somehow, writing grabbed me and now if I don’t write I get withdrawal symptoms.
I’m a major foodie, always cooking. Love gardening. And always traveling to weird places to try the street food and admire the ruins. Which I am slowly becoming. It Could be Fun was edited in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Khazakstan...and Paris.
I write about six hours a day (I don’t own a dust rag or a Swiffer, kids)(but I do have a large, busy wine rack), six days a week unless I’m living out of a suitcase. Then it’s maybe three hours a day; yes, even in Paris. My travel pals, particularly Lea Nation (the Eveready Bunny of the walking set), are very understanding. Is there anything better than friends who understand when you’re lost in your writing world?
Establishing yourself as a genre fiction writer in an age where roughly 5000 books are published each day is daunting. So easy to sink without a trace. If you want more of Carl, I’d love to hear from you, the addresses are a few pages before this. A newsletter is in the works. Please take a couple of minutes to do a review. I'd be deeply appreciative as would prospective readers.
And I’d love to meet you at the next RWA Convention, in Denver in July of 2018. Let me know if you’ll be there!
Thanks for reading...Shayla
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CARL TANNER?
Tanner, doing his best to keep a fragile, tumultuous romance on an even keel, returns in his next Omega assignment on the trail of a world-class scammer who may have gone lethal. Whose wife claims to be a woman who Tanner once knew very, very well. Do memories of past delights translate into present-day attraction? Here’s the first
scene:
KILL OR QUIT
A Carl Tanner suspense-romance
Carl Tanner stepped back into the past on Madeira Beach, just a couple of blocks north of John’s Pass. He’d gone around the side of the small frame cottage, past the articulated tin Santa in a grass skirt, and down the narrow mulched path bordered by ranks of bromeliads.
The path opened into a large back yard, not a piece of grass visible. One hundred percent mulch. Above, palms and pines kept the space shaded from the fierce mid-day sun. It might be February, but Florida still steamed. He couldn’t see across the space for what hung there.
Bright fabric fluttered from a dozen lines rigged side-to-side on the fifty-foot lot. Just fabric, yards of it, sheer and not sheer, in a rainbow of colors. Tanner, in need of some beauty after his last job, stood and let the color and motion wash over him. A pair of sandal-clad feet trotted busily along one row, and he heard the feet’s owner chattering to someone in Spanish. The curse of Bluetooth: your kids could always find you when they ran out of money.
“Ola,” he called..
The feet changed direction and a short, curvaceous woman with long black braids popped out from between two rows. Her dress almost matched the fabric flapping around here. She smiled and her cheeks plumped.
“Si, señor?”
“Buenos dias, señorita. I’m looking for Jim Flannery, miss. Is he here?” No point anyone knowing he spoke the lingo.
“Señor Jim is not here. Sorry.” She’d spent a lot of time up in New Jersey. “But his wife’s in the cabin.” She motioned beyond the last of the lines. “Just knock and she’ll answer.”
He followed the pointing finger past the curtain of sapphire and indigo silk to a long, whitewashed, shed-roofed building whose front wall was a hodge-podge of salvaged wood-frame windows. Some were open, some fixed panes. The door was solid, with a shiny double lock. Silly, considering the windows. He smelled a faint chemical odor as the breeze brushed by. From inside came the strains of one of his least favorite pieces of music: Bolero.
A small sign hung on the hinge side of the door: Mariposa. A butterfly, done in foggy never-in-nature shades, was painted behind the letters.
He looked in. The wood-floored building was deeper than he’d figured, maybe twenty feet. Twenty by thirty-five, size of his apartment. What he could see of the back wall had only a few high narrow windows, leaving that area in relative gloom.
Long tables stretched side to side, an echo of the outside lines. Fabric hung from rods chained to the ceiling. Most of it was white or ivory, glimmering, swaying. He loved the sound and feel of silk. Unless it had been looped around his neck and pulled tight. There were hundreds of yards in there, he guessed. This was a serious operation, a big investment.
Bolero slogged on. He stopped nodding his head to it. Even very old habits died hard. At least he wasn’t fucking to it. Always drove him nuts when the music came before he did.
He discarded the memories and knocked.
“In a minute,” a woman shouted. “I’ve got my hands full!”
The hairs rose on the back of his neck. That voice. That smoky, sexy voice. Could it be Karen? The wild woman of his Bolero nightmares? He stared through a window, watching several figures moving in the interior, any clarity lost between layers of fabric.
“I'm coming!”
He’d heard those those two words before, under somewhat happier circumstances…
Could it be Karen? Hell, why not? The woman had always known where to find trouble. But hadn’t Karen died in an automobile accident over ten years ago?
Q: Why is there no more?
A: Because I haven’t written it yet.
I’m busy on The Man Who Hated Christmas, a real romance starring billionaire natural-food baron and Grinch-wannabe Lorne Foyle, and the kind-hearted, exhausted homeless shelter manager Mary Lynn Portman. Meet Fingers Nugent, eight year-old master pickpocket. And Cassandra Foyle, poor little rich girl. And Barney Heitz, who plays Santa Claus with a yarmulke. Get the whole story in mid-December, at Amazon.
ALSO BY SHAYLA McBRIDE
A is for AUTHOR, 333 Must-know Tips for Early Writers. A candid, not-very-reverent, non-fiction guide for new writers. Kick-start your career in genre fiction with this invaluable resource specifically designed to address basic questions and problems of novice fiction writers. Available in digital form; trade paperback through Amazon.
SONORA HEAT, the first Kyle Branson novella, suspense with not much romance. Branson, retired U. S. Army, works for a former CO’s security firm, doing what he does best: making things right. A simple, last-minute Mexico assignment is turned inside-out when an impetuous girl involves herself in Brandon’s anti-narco mission into the deadly Sonora Desert.
THE MAN WHO HATED CHRISTMAS, novella, a real holiday romance between a powerful man who’s shut his heart away and a determined woman with heart to spare. Due out mid-December 2018.
BARON’S GOLD, full-length novel, first in the Barons of Key West series. Available mid-2018. Meet the fun, feisty Barons, sixth-generation Conchs whose exploits, both horizontal and vertical, are the stuff of legend even on an island stuffed with legends. Charter boat captain Bo Baron, elder of the unruly clan, goes missing, and his kid brother Jake takes leave from the Navy to investigate. Margo Hollander, Bo’s girlfriend in their teens, returns to Key West to heal from a disastrous marriage. When the two meet after twenty years, will their decade age-difference matter? Sur out mid-2018.
The Omega Team: IT COULD BE FUN (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Carl Tanner Book 1) Page 13
