Page 14 of Shielding his Legacy (Shattered SEALs #7)

Gavin stood on the side of his house, the structure shielding him from view as icy air bit into his skin. He focused his binoculars on the Hummer parked in the woods as an uneasy drip of adrenaline churned in his gut like acid on an ulcer.

The vehicle was matte black, the finish absorbing the dull moonlight like a black hole. If he hadn’t heard its engine coming, it would be damn near invisible as it sat motionless and hulking on a stretch of government land.

The men inside were no joke, either. Three of them, from what he could see, though a well-outfitted group like this was likely just a satellite for the mothership of a larger piece of the organization.

If HERO Force were on a mission like this, the chopper would be nearby, or another team of men staked out at the only exit from Gavin’s property.

He had to assume these men had done the same.

Who the fuck were they? Police? A cop had been killed—a detective—but this seemed much bigger than Gavin had first imagined.

He needed backup, and he needed it quickly.

The car door opened, and his hand moved to the gun at his hip, his fingers brushing the cold metal as he slipped from the house into the shadows of the woods surrounding it.

He might have been hidden if it weren’t for the clear trail of footprints he left in the snow. But he needed the better vantage point more than he needed to be clandestine right now, so he’d take what he could get and run with it.

He thought of Eva and Abby in the house, wishing he’d given them more detailed directions before heading out here alone.

Stay inside, he telegraphed to her now, as if their connection tethered them together on a more cosmic level.

But all he got back was a deep sense of alarm, making him think he was crazy for attempting such sideshow communication in the first place.

Gavin stayed low, his breath a thin mist of microscopic frozen crystals as he watched the men spill out of the vehicle.

He cursed under his breath. They were muscular, geared up in tactical black, and didn’t have a hint of hesitation between them.

They moved with purpose, just as he would do in their position, and he said a silent prayer he would prevail in this battle for Eva’s life.

He had to prevail.

One of the men, a burly guy with a black cap pulled low over a heavy brow, swung his head toward Gavin’s perch in the woods.

His eyes were narrowed and alert. Fuck footsteps.

They knew where he was already. Gavin’s jaw clenched as he calculated angles, distance.

His hand tightened on the Sig Sauer. Three against one, but he’d faced worse odds with a hell of a lot less motivation.

A twig snapped behind him.

He whirled, the hulking shadow of a tango coming into view as Gavin fired, the man dropping to the snow with a neat hole between his eyes. It was on, now.

Gavin pivoted, the rush of combat heightening his senses as he moved behind a thick tree trunk.

Four. There’d been fucking four, and he’d foolishly assumed they were still near the car.

He was distracted, compromised by his emotions, and he berated himself for a failure that had nearly cost him his life.

The scene that had crept along in slow motion now came alive with the metronomic ticking of violence, all pretense of cat-and-mouse long past. The three men were charging him across his property, bark flying off the tree trunk as bullets whizzed by his head.

The men made it more than halfway to Gavin before he clipped one of them in the chest, the energy of the projectile pushing the tango almost backward mid-run.

But there were still two men coming at him strong, enemy fire peppering the tree in front of him with a frequency that proved at least one of the men had a semi-automatic.

He was out-manned and out-gunned, and damn near out of options, but he kept firing. The man on the right stumbled then kept coming, though much more slowly. Gavin knew he’d hit the guy. From the way the gunfire slowed considerably, he also knew who’d been firing the semi-auto.

Determined to take the wounded man out for good, he focused on the task at hand and fired four shots at his center mass. While he’d never know how many actually hit their intended target, the man hit the snow like a duck shot out of the sky.

One more to go. The distance between them was nothing now—twenty feet—the bright flashes from the other man’s muzzle exploding in Gavin’s field of vision like fireworks.

Knowing his own shots were announcing his location just as clearly, he stopped shooting and took several quick steps back from the tree just as the tango reached his nest.

The man hesitated, as Gavin had hoped he would.

It was only a moment, not even an entire breath, but in that fraction of an exhale Gavin fired, striking the man in the chest. He knew all too well these men likely wore body armor, so he finished him off with a shot to the head before turning to do the same to the others—and found one of them no longer on the ground.

“Drop it,” said a voice behind him.

Gavin cringed but did as he was told, tossing his gun into the snow.

Run, he mentally screamed to Eva, knowing she couldn’t hear him now any more than she had the last time.

She could get away. Run into the woods. Somehow survive.

He needed to believe that as the bullet went through his brain, needed to imagine her getting older, Abby by her side.

It would have been nice to see it for himself.

But the man didn’t fire, no bullet went in the back of Gavin’s skull, and he immediately wondered why. He wasn’t the target, Eva was. But they’d have to be out of their minds to let him walk away from here, so why not kill him the first chance they got?

“Where’s the woman?” barked the man, the words triggering a cough so wet Gavin knew it came from blood in his lungs or trachea.

“You need a doctor,” Gavin said. “I can get you to a hospital.”

“Where is she?” he yelled, coughing up so much blood that a spray of it hit Gavin’s back and neck. He was coughing uncontrollably now, the sound of his hacking shifting as he bent toward the ground.

Gavin pulled out his knife as he whipped around. The man fell face-first into the snow. Yanking him by the shoulders, Gavin flipped him over, disarming him easily. “Who sent you?” he demanded over the man’s bloody cough.

The man’s lips curled into a grim smile, a gurgle of blood bubbling up. His eyes went glassy before he could answer.

“Damn it!”

Gavin sprinted back toward the cabin. They didn’t have much time before round two arrived, and they needed to get the hell out of here ASAP. The front door was ajar, swaying slightly in the breeze.

“Eva?” he called, his voice sharp. He pushed it open and stepped inside. Silence.

His gaze swept the room, his chest tightening.

Abby’s blanket lay on the couch, abandoned.

There was no sign of Eva. He yelled her name, running from room to room, even checking the basement.

Aware of time ticking by and what he felt certain was an impending attack, he needed to figure out where she was, pronto.

A sound from outside—the faintest creak of metal. If he weren’t intimately familiar with the noises on this land, he might have missed it.

He bolted to the back door. He imagined she’d been hurt, imagined the baby hurt with her, and a desperation unlike any he’d ever known tore through him.

Bursting outside, he saw small footsteps in the snow, their path leading to the garden shed.

Running toward it, his boots slipped on the snow-covered ground.

The door flew open, and a shovel swung toward his head just as he glimpsed Eva in the dim moonlight. He ducked, barely avoiding the blow. “It’s me!” he said, raising his hands.

Her face, pale and fierce, crumpled in relief as she dropped the shovel, the baby clenched tightly in her other arm. “God, Gavin.” Her voice trembled. “I thought— Is that blood on your face?”

“It’s not mine.”

“Are they still out there?”

He shook his head. “They’re dead, but the second wave will be here any second. We need to move, now.”