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  ADAM

  IN THE COMPANY OF SNIPERS

  Book 11

  IRISH WINTERS

  COPYRIGHT

  ADAM; In the Company of Snipers, 11

  Copyright ©2016 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

  Editor: Lauren McKellar, McStellar editing,

  http://mcstellarediting.blogspot.com

  Editor: Katie Johnson, [email protected]

  ISBN Paperback: 978-1-942895-22-0

  ISBN eBook: 978-1-942895-21-3

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935820

  Irish Winter’s author websites are: http://www.irishwinters.com

  and irishwinters.blogspot.com

  DEDICATION

  To the wives and husbands who support their warrior spouses,

  To the children who miss their moms and dads,

  To the mothers and the fathers who pray for their military sons and daughters,

  To the brothers and the sisters, the grandparents, the uncles and aunts,

  The friends who support their warriors…

  You also serve.

  God bless America.

  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 like him a chance and a decent job. Along the way, he’s picked up a few other good guys and gals. He’s made a family.

  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.

  Prologue

  Not again! Shannon woke with a start.

  Once would’ve been enough, but she’d dreamed this exact same dream for three nights in a row. Three, mind you. And Brit’s Grandpa Denver starred in every single showing.

  Sweat trickled between her breasts under her nightgown, but she dared not look at her bedside digital clock. It couldn’t be three in the morning, could it? She cracked one eyelid, the sheet still balled tight in her fists, but yes. Three a.m. Straight up. Again.

  Sheesh. How utterly straight out of all the best horror classics could this get? Only a church bell tolling overhead would make this chapter in her life any creepier. For the past year, her dreams had gotten progressively more bizarre, but these exceeded the limits of weird by leaps and by bounds.

  Yet, Grandpa Denver had come faithfully to her for three nights in a row, like Dickens’ ghosts of old, and always with the same words. She squeezed her eyes shut, and there he was again. Silver haired. Grandfatherly. Kind but stern. And for the third time, childish embarrassment rose up in her when he declared, “It’s time you left him, Shannon, and you know it. That boy never appreciated you. He’s always taken you for granted.”

  Tears flooded her eyes. She, of all people, knew precisely who the boy was. His grandson. Her husband. Brit Paxton.

  Her marriage to Brit had failed. Miserably. From the beginning, his steady absences weakened their marriage vows, and too soon his vows had turned into idle promises. For better or for worse became only worse. Then worst of all. Brit betrayed her at every turn. First with Lana. Then Cheryl. Now some cheap trick called Tia Mia, like that was a name for a real woman.

  The harder Shannon tried to be the wife she thought he’d wanted, the moodier he’d gotten until…

  Ugh. She cringed at the awful memory, her fingers to her fluttering heartbeat. He’d come home drunk and more crude that usual one night. Forceful. Mean. She’d had no choice but to submit, not after he’d slapped her to the floor and climbed up and over her like a rabid dog in heat. And yet, she’d stayed with him. Like a fool… I stayed. Ugh. Just—ugh.

  Shannon gulped at her incredible weakness when it came to Brit. How odd that she ruled her small but successful boutique publishing business, The Dewy Rose, with business savvy and fortitude, but when it came to Brit, she held on with foolish, schoolgirl hope. She’d let him treat her so badly.

  But Grandpa Denver’s eyes twinkled as he’d continued with the most outlandish pronouncement. “You’ve done all you can. He is what he is. Think of the baby.”

  And in her dream, a flock of powder-blue baby pelicans fluttered away at that precise moment. Little children and baby animals of all sizes and colors scampered around Grandpa Denver. A rainbow of achingly vivid hues arched overhead while multi-colored baby turkeys stood in a row beneath it, singing the song that could stick in a person’s head forever—“It’s a Small World After All.”

  It was nothing but a dream—after all.

  Shannon drew her knees up for a much needed hug. There was no baby. There couldn’t be. She’d religiously protected herself against unwanted pregnancy when she’d realized how oblivious Brit was to her need for companionship. How vacant her marriage bed became too quickly after a less than fulfilling honeymoon.

  At that point, the crazy dream had three times now, morphed into the same scene of a Navy ship, and oddly, her fears fled. How bizarre? Yet she’d found herself feeling brave for the first time in—forever, at the striking sight the Naval officer standing stiff and stern at the bow of his ship, the gray-blue sea beyond him.

  Sandy haired. Impeccably dressed in his white uniform. He’d stood proud, his spine erect in the way of honorable men, facing the ocean beyond him as if he were a solid equal to its capricious power. Perhaps equal was too small a word. Despite the monstrous vessel beneath his feet, an unworldly authority emanated from the man. His fierce posture declared that he and he alone commanded this mighty craft. That he brought it to heel, and it dared not go but where he ordered it to go.

  To say her heart stuttered was to say that he was a mere mortal when he looked to be so much more, possibly as mighty as Poseidon, the God of the Sea, himself. Indeed, this solitary soul seemed willing and able to take on the world if it dared challenge him. If it so much as hinted that it needed a good, sound thrashing.

  Shannon swallowed a tiny gulp against the flutter in her chest at the memory. It was said that a true commander loved his ship above all women, but oh, to be this man’s vessel, to be commanded by this all-male specimen of shocking virility. To have those masculine hands that had gripped the rail of the boat, grip her writhing body instead, and to ride the waves of passion with him, and…

  Oh. My. God.

  Without uttering a word, this stranger had evoked her most feminine responses, some she’d never felt before. She cou
ldn’t help but notice how her thighs clenched just remembering. How she couldn’t cease licking her lips at this decadent, manly morsel. How her inner wellspring dripped with unrequited need and unfilled expectation. How she ached with desire for true commitment. For the love of an honest man. For the family she’d never had.

  Her faithful ghost, Grandpa Denver had nudged her forward at that point. Three times he’d told her the same thing. “Now go. Be happy.”

  It seemed so easy, but… logic intervened. Dreaming here. None of this is real. You’ll wake up, and, poof, he’ll be gone, and Brit will be back, and ugh!

  Yet, the scene shimmered and she found herself naked and under the covers with the handsome stranger. Like a faithful lover, he’d nestled her into the crook of his arm and pressed her to his muscular chest with exquisite gentleness. He’d placed a tender, chaste kiss in the middle of her forehead. The fragrance of Old Spice on his clean-shaven cheek still filled her nose. It still calmed her with an unfamiliar sensation of familiarity.

  “Shannon baby,” he’d crooned. “I’ve missed you so.”

  Ah! Those sweet words. Shannon baby. The words her mother had spoken so long ago. And with them came the fresh hint of wintergreen on his breath and a surge of hope in her heart.

  I know this man. I know I do. Shannon lifted her face to him and offered herself, like a willow to the wind. Like the ocean to her captain. A lover to her mate.

  He lowered his lips. He came so close to kissing her that her heart stopped, the deliciousness of his breath filled her nose, the masculine scent of him enveloped her like an old friend, and—

  The dream vanished. Every darned time. Right there. Right then. It popped like a bubble on the wind just as their lips would have touched. Just as she would have finally tasted what her heart hungered for. Ironically, also just at the point of no return, when she would’ve betrayed her marriage vows. When she would’ve sunk as low as the deceitful man she’d married.

  My God, what does this dream mean?

  The big, empty, and too-quiet house around her offered no suggestions or comfort. There was a time it might’ve been a home, but now it ticked and creaked in the hollow way of all empty houses in the middle of the night, when boards and joists expanded and contracted, whispering their toils and troubles to weary souls who cannot sleep.

  Shannon had been born, it seemed, to a life of perpetual loneliness. Motherless at an early age, her important and highly influential father had ensconced her in the lap of luxury, then all but left her. He’d assigned her to the oversight of a kindly nanny instead of concerning himself with her upbringing. True friends were few and far between. She’d grown up a solitary child with more books for companions than people. Well-travelled and well read, if not well loved.

  With attendance in only the finest schools, Shannon’s aptitude for all things literary developed early. She thirsted for the life and worlds beyond pretentious Reagan Manor, where mythic heroes like Odysseus struggled ten long years to return home to his sweet Penelope. Where Mr. Darcy overcame his pride and Elizabeth her prejudice. Where she, Shannon Olivia Reagan, could dream.

  But now she knew. Grandpa Denver was right. It was time to leave.

  Quietly, as if she needed to be stealthy in a house so empty, Shannon set her feet to the floor and left her marriage bed behind. After dressing quickly, she went to her office and stuffed her laptop with all its cords, thumb-drives, and chargers, into her briefcase. By the time she’d finished packing, Shannon had emptied her bathroom toiletries into her suitcase, her closet into a travel trunk, and their joint savings into her private account. The rest of her furniture and things could wait. She had a life to live, one that no longer included Brit Paxton, and she meant to live it. Who knew? Maybe she had a sailor to find as well.

  Standing breathless in her bedroom with her old life behind her and the thrill of the unknown ahead, she took a tube of lipstick from her purse. In the lovely shade of Hidden Rose, the shade Brit Paxton would never taste again, Shannon wrote her final message on her dresser mirror to the man she’d once thought she would love forever.

  Gone.

  Chapter One

  There comes a time when a man has to do what a man has to do. For Junior Agent Adam Torrey, that moment had come.

  “Sir, we are currently at thirty-five thousand feet and holding.”

  Adam nodded one curt acknowledgment to the Air Force crew out of Ellsworth Air Force Base, stepped to the vibrating loading ramp of the powerful C-130, and, with a backward step and a cocky wave, he pitched his body forward into the midnight sky. The flight chief’s acknowledgement, “Jumper away,” faded in his earpiece.

  Frigid air whipped Adam, making him instantly thankful for the polypropylene thermal undergarments beneath his TEAM flight suit. He leveled his six-foot, three-inch frame into a belly dive, his arms and legs extended like a giant bug descending to the planet below.

  Man, I love my job.

  HALOs, high-altitude low opening parachute jumps, were not uncommon in his line of work, at least for him. Known by everyone on The TEAM as the flying squirrel, the ex-Navy SEAL thrived in the weightless realm between earth and sky. All agents working for Alex Stewart had to be capable, physically fit, and qualified to jump. The day a man couldn’t perform he was put to pasture, or worse, turned into something dead called a senior agent. Adam was an ex-Navy SEAL, a man of action and a lethal sniper. He never intended to graze clover. He loved the sensation of flight too much, the freedom of falling, the heady rush of air over, around, and seemingly through his body.

  Specialized equipment allowed this miracle, and he relied on it. Every last piece of it. From the Special Forces HALO helmet with its oxygen mask strapped snuggly over his nose and mouth, to the goggles that allowed peripheral vision and much-needed facial protection, to the backlit altimeter on his wrist that registered nothing at the moment, its altitude range less than his. The lightweight auxiliary pack strapped to his belly provided a measure of assurance if his main parachute failed. His gloves kept his ten digits warm enough.

  God, what a ride.

  The experimental GPS wrapped around his wrist matched its digital partner’s lack of information. No matter. They’d both flash on soon enough—within seconds if the new technology behind them functioned as expected. The GPS was part of the reason for this extreme jump. This was its maiden flight, its beta-test, and he was just the man for the job.

  Until it kicked in, supposedly at a higher altitude than others now on the market, he gloried in the adrenaline rush, free-falling to what very well could be his death. Therein lay the rub and the magic of a precision drop—all the risk of dying only to pull up at the last possible second and spit in the stone-cold eye of the Grim Reaper.

  Nothing like it in the world.

  The fact that another brave soul had recently made a twenty-four-mile high jump from the stratosphere only proved Adam’s point. Some men were made to fly, and he was one of them. This ordinary jump of nearly seven miles straight down was enough for the adrenaline junkie he’d become. For now. Maybe someday he’d match that other guy’s record. Maybe not. Adam truly didn’t care about records. Just the fall. Just the flight.

  He liked that initial ‘What the hell have I done?’ sensation in his gut even more so because he understood the physics behind a HALO, the very real concept of terminal velocity when the downward force of gravity equaled the restraining force of drag. Law of gravity. Risk of splat. Gotta love it.

  Every HALO jump involved unique dangers—the frigid cold, decompression sickness, and hypoxia. Death never lingered more than a heartbeat away. But the thrill. The view.

  He could’ve pulled his body into a compact, cylindrical projectile, secured his arms to his sides and his legs together instead of splayed like they were, in order to increase his speed. Skydivers called it free flying, when a man’s body became more bullet than flesh and blood. But as much as Adam loved the thrill of downward acceleration, he loved the journey more. Only HALO jump
s brought him this close to Heaven. He truly loved the sea, but God, he loved the sky more. In the sky he was free, not so much bird as shooting star. On land he became a bulky beast of burden bound to the earth’s core. A turtle. Why hurry a three-minute ride?

  Suspended between earth and space, it seemed time stopped on a night like this one. No moon tonight, just the constellations and Ursa Major glittering in the sub-polar altitude, crisp and clear. Adam’s buddy, Polaris, shone exactly where the pointer stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper indicated it should be. The North Star beckoned like the true friend it was, as constant and a thousand times squared more reliable than any woman he’d ever known. Always beckoning him home.

  His failed relationship with his ex-girlfriend and ex-nightmare flashed to mind. The one he’d been damned glad he’d left behind. But none of that mattered now. He forced his very disciplined mind to the work at hand. Shirley was old news, the poison of her manipulative grasp at last diluted with enough good times mingled with plenty of scotch.

  The experimental GPS digital readout flashed to life right on schedule, reminding him he had better things to do than dredge up the past, like finding that wayward drone.

  Impact in less than two.

  South Dakota lay below, now the site of a lost prototype, the multi-million dollar HH UAV, the Hummingbird Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Named for its compact but predatory stealth design, it had gone down during its initial test flight out of Ellsworth Air Force Base, just a few miles away. Its advanced technology made it immeasurably valuable in the world of military intelligence. All of DoD held its breath when they’d heard it went missing. The CIA, too. This was their baby, their future, and now their worst nightmare. Too many foreign powers wanted the technology behind this particular drone. Russia. China. Terrorists. Allies.

  Ellsworth had been alerted. They knew he was dropping in tonight, but were advised not to engage in the search, only to assist with the drop. For now, this operation was just him, a missing baby bird, and maybe a few barking rodents.