Page 10 of Shane
“No problem. Turn around and meet the boss. Alex Stewart, Shane Hayes. Shane—”
“I know exactly who he is,” a terse male voice hissed at Shane’s back.
Ah, shit.He pivoted to his left, not sure how he’d missed the assassin seated in the corner behind the gawddamned open door. Clever asshole.
“Mr. S-S-Stewart,” he choked, his throat and tongue as dry as a sandstorm outside Kabul. “Sure. Yeah, I’ve heard of you.”Cough, cough.“Pleased to meet you, sir.”Oh, God, I’m dead.
Damned if Stewart’s left eyelid didn’t twitch. Shane cringed all the way to his toes and his heart damned near climbed out of his chest. He’d pissed Stewart off with that one stupid word:Sir.Shane knew better. Stewart was non-com, a sergeant, an enlisted grunt, not an officer. And Shane—shit!shit!shit!—had committed the unforgivable sin of calling a man who had actually worked in the Corps,sir.
He stumbled over himself to rectify the fatal error. “I mean, yes, I’ve heard of you, Mr. Stewart. Who hasn’t? Didn’t mean to lump you in with asshats like my CO. Won’t happen again.”And now I’m talking too damned much.
“Sit,” Stewart hissed.
The guy Shane had thought he could work for was mean-eyed, dark-haired, and dressed impeccably sharp in a light-tan suit, a crisp, white—and impeccably clean—dress shirt, and brown silk tie. His blue eyes were daggers, though, sharp as the arctic wind. Right then, the cold rolling out of them drilled Shane like a thousand frozen arrows, all fitted with titanium, razor-sharp tips, and hitting the only dumbass target in the room. Him. But beneath that dressed-for-success business apparel, lay a very cold, lethal sniper, and Shane was as good as dead.
He nodded once and took the seat by Mark’s desk, but turned the chair enough that he faced Stewart on his left and Mark behind the desk on his right. Stiffening his spine, Shane dropped his palms to his knees and studied the sniper in the corner, wishing he could start this morning over.
On his reputation alone, Shane had expected Stewart to be bigger and wider. Certainly not the elegantly dressed professional who looked more like he’d just stepped off some high-class business magazine instead of a gun range. There was no mistaking the killer vibe shuddering off the athletically built, clean-shaven owner of The TEAM, though. If Shane had met Stewart in a dark alley, he would’ve considered him lethal at first sight, and he might’ve turned tail and run. Then. Not now. He’d come here today to speak with Stewart, and he wasn’t leaving until he did. Despite his arrogant glare, this man deserved to know what only Shane could tell him.
“Boss, here’s everything you need to know about Shane.” Mark slipped a file folder across his desk to his boss. “He’s perfect for The TEAM.” Houston was everything Stewart wasn’t. Friendly. Relaxed. Kind.
For now.
Stewart waved the offer off. “Why are you here?” he clipped at Shane, his tone nasty and his glare full of more killer arrows.
By then, Shane’s heart was rat-a-tat-tatting in his chest like an overheated fifty-cal. He swallowed hard, but shit. Nervous or not, this was why he’d come here today, to finally meet Alex Stewart. Face time, damn it. This was all Shane had wanted—and so much more. Too much.Kiss that shit goodbye.
Summoning his courage, he raked his fingers over his hair and faced the bastard who still might kill him. “I need a decent job, that’s true. But I really came here to tell you what happened that morning, Mr. Stewart. You need to know I wasn’t drunk like the papers said, and I wasn’t texting or distracted. The accident, it just happened and—” And there was no way Shane could gauge what was going through Stewart’s mind. No expression. No reaction to his words. Just the stone-cold stare of America’s deadliest sniper bearing down on him.
“What are you talking about?” Mark asked. “What happened that you need to explain?”
That was an unexpected development. Stewart hadn’t ranted to everyone about the shithead who’d killed his family? That might be good news. But it also let Shane know there was no TEAM hit list with his name at the top.Yet.He took the only opportunity he expected would come his way and broke eye contact with Stewart. Turning to Mark, he asked, “You mean you don’t know?”
“I guess not, so tell me. What’s going on, Shane?” That was the other thing Shane liked about Mark. He relied on first names, not ranks or stuffy salutations.
“I’m…” Shane swallowed hard and tried again. “I’m him, Mr. Houston. I’m the guy who killed his wife and daughter. Me. I’m the bastard that destroyed Mr. Stewart’s life and ruined his USMC career.” He licked his lips before he could go on. “It was me.”
Mark groaned. “You were driving that delivery truck? God, the one that—”
“I was, yes.”
Mark shoved his chair back, his fingertips firmly planted on his desk “Boss, I’m sorry. His records are stellar, but I had no idea he was that guy.”
Crap. The way Mark said,‘that guy,’sounded a lot like a death knell. Shane thought Mark might be an ally. Guess he’d thought wrong. Tremors began deep inside his already tense body.
“Of course you didn’t know,” Stewart snapped out like a whip. “It wasn’t your business. It happened before we met.”
“I’m sure sorry, Mr. Stewart,” Shane said before he found his ass kicked to the curb. Might as well get it over with. His voice wavered like a chicken-shit coward’s, but that was just nerves. He’d tried his best to prepare for this meeting, just hadn’t expected he’d be ambushed right out of the gate. He’d thought he’d have more time. Also thought he’d have more courage.
Deep down, Shane knew he hadn’t set out to hurt anyone that morning. He hadn’t been charged with vehicular manslaughter, hadn’t even been ticketed. Several witnesses had stepped forward and verified everything he’d told the police. That he’d already applied his brakes before Mrs. Stewart’s car had swerved into the intersection. That he wasn’t to blame. Hell, even the utility guys working the electrical nightmare in Alexandria that day weren’t to blame or no one was held liable. They’d taken all necessary precautions, had posted more than enough hazard cones, blinking barricades, and warning signs. That there was no intent, just dumb bad luck on everyone’s part that morning.
But Shane suspected Stewart already knew everything. Still, he explained, “There was a power outage the night before. A severe wind storm. It lasted most of the next morning. There were four-way stops all over Alexandria to handle the morning rush. But traffic was heavy, and every street was a mess, and...” Shane couldn’t bear to look at the man whose wife and daughter he’d killed. He kept his head down, his gaze fastened on the hardwood flooring. But he now knew there was no future for him here. Not anymore. Stewart wasn’t that kind of stupid. As soon as he said what he’d come to say, Shane was out of there.
“It was early, still dark,” he went on. “Lots of tour buses on the streets. Lots of tourists on the sidewalks and crosswalks. People were jay-walking everywhere. You know how bad rush hour traffic in Olde Town gets. Traffic lights were flickering greens, yellows, and reds, then not working at all. Someone got confused, thought he had the right-of-way. Didn’t even slow down. I don’t know, maybe he was in a hurry or something, but he ran the four-way stop. I’d already entered the intersection. I slammed my brakes to miss the guy. Thought I got off easy. Only thing in front of my van was an iron lamp post on the corner. No great loss there. But then your wife’s car—”
He swallowed hard, the rest of the story agonizingly hard to tell. The man who’d run the four-way stop had also clipped Sara Stewart’s vehicle and sent it careening like a bullet into Shane’s path. There was no way for him to stop in time. He’d already been standing on his brake pedal. Didn’t matter. The much heavier delivery truck he’d been driving broadsided the driver side of her much smaller, cheaper car with enough impact to flatten the passenger side against that iron light post. Her airbags went off. Just the front airbags. There were none in the sides and nothing but seatbelts in the back.
Sara and Abby Stewart took a hard hit. A lethal hit. Abby had been sitting right behind her mom. She’d had her seatbelt on, for all the good that did. Shane still remembered the wide-open surprise on that little blonde girl’s face at the precise moment of impact. How her slender, little-girl body had flopped sideways within the confines of her seatbelt. How her neck had snapped. How her mother had screamed. How the crushing silence afterward became the biggest, loudest noise of his life.