Page 155 of Only the Hunter

“He’s outside. Come out when Noah clears the floor.”

He’s outside.

Present tense. He’s outside. Not he’s coming up. Not stand by.

He’s outside.

My hand finds the wall. My chest drops and doesn’t come back up, and for one unprofessional second all I want to do is run down those stairs regardless of clearance, regardless of protocol, regardless of anything except getting to him.

I don’t. I make myself breathe instead.

“Noah.” My voice is steady, which surprises me—because inside, I’m quaking. “I need you to clear the floor.”

It takes ninety seconds. It feels considerably longer. When Noah opens my office door his expression does the thing faces do when they’re being professionally neutral, and I walk past him without stopping and go down the stairs and through the front door and out onto the sidewalk, and I don’t run, but it’s close.

The first thing I see is the response vehicle. The second thing I see is Jake, standing with his back to me. The third thing I see is Gabe, sitting on the ambulance bumper, jacket off, left shoulder dressed in white that isn’t staying white, directing two Metro officers with the particular focused economy of a man who has decided that the situation in front of him is more important than the situation happening to him.

He’s hurt. He’s alive. He’s hurt.

He looks up when I approach.

Whatever he was about to say to the officers stops.

His expression alters—relief, unguarded and immediate, there and gone before he schools it back into competence—and for a second neither of us moves.

I think about the last twenty minutes. His voice in my ear. Lock the handle. Noah is four minutes out. Keep talking. Steady. Present. Operational. Not a single word that would have told me.

He was already down here when he said all of it.

I cross the sidewalk fast, faster than dignity strictly requires, and sit next to him on the bumper, my hand finding his uninjured arm and gripping harder than necessary. My fingers quiver ever so slightly.

“You kept talking,” he says finally.

“So did you.” My voice isn’t quite steady this time, and I don’t try to make it be.

Chapter 31

Gabe

The van moved at 5:41.

I’d been watching it for six minutes—long enough to be certain, not long enough to have done anything differently. When the driver spoke into whatever comm he was using and my angle confirmed he was alone, the air shifted.

I gave it thirty seconds, then keyed the channel and moved. Not toward it directly. Parallel, using the parked cars along the south side for cover, working the angle so I could see the driver’s hands before he could see my face.

He saw my face first.

I don’t know if it was the earpiece or the way I was moving or just the particular quality of attention that reads wrong to people who are paid to notice it. But his head came up, and I watched him reach, and I was already going low when the window came down.

The shot came from the driver’s side. Disciplined. Precise. It struck the seam between vest and shoulder—the gap every vest carries, the one I’ve catalogued on other men for years. The shooter knew where to aim.

I fired off a shot. Don’t know if it hit.

The impact didn’t feel cinematic. It felt mechanical. A sharp torque through bone and nerve. My arm dropped before I told it to.

I went down on one knee.

The van fled.