The Girl Next Door (Shadow Agents #6)(13)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Gabrielle started counting in her head. One, two, thr—

Cooper kicked the door open and rushed inside. He’d only taken about five steps when he froze—then dropped to the floor.

Because there was a man on the floor, a man sprawled in a pool of blood.

“Call an ambulance!” Cooper barked. He grabbed for the man, rolled him over.

Gabrielle flinched when she saw the man’s neck. Fumbling, she yanked out her phone and managed to dial 911.

“Don’t do this,” Cooper growled. “Don’t.” Blood poured through his fingers as he tried to staunch the wound on the man’s neck.

The man—Van McAdams?—his eyelids twitched.

He’s still alive.

“What is the nature of your emergency?” the cool voice on the other end of the line asked Gabrielle.

“A man’s been attacked! He’s dying, please, get help here, now!” She threw out the address even as she tried to get closer to Cooper. His head had bent. His ear was right above the wounded man’s mouth.

Surely McAdams couldn’t talk with that kind of wound.

“We have an ambulance en route, ma’am,” the operator told her.

“Get more than an ambulance!” She fired back. “Call Detective Lane Carmichael! He needs to get here, too.”

“Gabrielle!” Cooper snapped out her name.

She blinked.

“I need you to put pressure on the wound.” A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I have to search the apartment. The SOB who did this…he could still be here.”

The breaking glass… Her gaze flew to the floor. There was no glass around McAdams. Someone else had made that sound.

“Gabrielle!” he snapped again.

She jumped to his side.

He positioned her hands. “Keep the pressure on him. Van, you look at her, okay? You stay with her.”

Van wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t looking at anyone.

Cooper surged to his feet. He had his gun with him as he ran down the hallway.

“It’s okay,” Gabrielle lied to the man who didn’t even seem to be breathing. “Help’s coming. You’re going to make it. Just keep fighting. Stay with me.”

Blood. So much blood.

It reminded her of another night.

No, don’t go there. All of the scenes had reminded her—too much—of her past.

But…this scene… Her eyes were on the blood. Her breath froze in her lungs. Had Van…written something in the blood? It looked as if he had. An E. An O.

She squinted as she tried to make out the last letter. D?

What in the world was an EOD?

“Van, please, stay with me,” she whispered to him as her hands pressed against his wound.

She leaned toward him, and felt something press into her knee. Her gaze darted from Van’s pale face to the pool of blood.

Metal was there. Glinting. Rectangular in shape.

A dog tag?

A military dog tag. Its chain was broken.

When the killer cut his neck, he cut Van’s dog tag right off him.

“Stay with me,” she said again, but this time, she was begging because this man—he was the key. He could tell her the identity of the killer. He could solve all the crimes.

If he just lived.

* * *

THE BEDROOM WINDOW had been smashed. The shattered glass had fallen—a bit inside the room, but most had flown outside.

Cooper tried to lift the window.

Stuck.

So the killer had just improvised. When he heard Gabrielle at the door, he’d busted his way to freedom.

Cooper shoved his head outside and glanced below. There was no sign of the killer. He’d gotten away.

Again.

Van McAdams. They’d worked a case together over in Paris. Van was a good guy, quick to smile, slow to anger. Always cool under fire.

And now he’s dying.

“Cooper!” Gabrielle yelled.

He knew what that yell meant. Cooper raced down the hallway as fast as he could, but he was too late. He’d been too late from the beginning. By the time that the glass shattered, the killer had done his work.

Gabrielle looked up at him, tears glinting in her beautiful eyes. She was crying for a man she’d never met before that night.

His guts were tearing open because he knew Van. They’d laughed together, talked about their lives, women.

Van had been hoping to…

Marry. He’d had a girl that he’d been seeing for years.

Cooper put his hands on Van. He worked frantically to try and bring the guy back.

My girl…she hated all the traveling that I did, the secrecy. But things are going to change. I’m gettin’ out of the EOD. I’m going to have a life. With her. Van’s Mississippi drawl had rolled through the words and so had his determination to have his happiness.

But he hadn’t gotten his life and that happily-ever-after dream.

“She was his girlfriend, wasn’t she?” Cooper asked, his voice flat. He hadn’t been able to find a link between Melanie Farrell and the EOD, because there wasn’t a link. Not anymore.

Van had left the organization for her. So no one at the EOD had known about her.

His gaze fell on the message that had been written in blood. Every muscle in his body stiffened.

No, someone at the EOD knew. Someone damn well knew.

His boot slid out, smearing the blood and hiding the final message that Van had left behind.

Footsteps thundered outside of the apartment.

Help had finally arrived.

Too late.

* * *

“YOU DON’T LOOK like a killer.”

Gabrielle’s head whipped up at Detective Lane Carmichael’s low voice. She was at the police station, in the interrogation room of all places.

She’d been the one to call Lane, but when he’d swung in with his cavalry, she’d found herself in police custody.

“You know I’m not a killer, Lane.”

His lips compressed. “Maybe I don’t know nearly as much about you as I thought, and I certainly don’t know anything about the new guy you’ve got with you.”

Lane had separated her from Cooper as soon as they arrived at the station. “Where is he?” Gabrielle demanded instead of responding to Lane’s jibe.

Lane pulled up a chair and stared back at her. “Van McAdams is in the morgue, but you knew that, right? He was dead when you called for help.”

Bile rose in her throat. “He wasn’t dead then. He was trying to talk.” An impossible task, considering what had been done to him.

“Giving you a last-minute message, was he?” Lane asked.

She thought of the letters that she’d seen in the blood. Her eyes squeezed closed. “Look, I know you saw what he wrote. Despite this crazy act right now, you’re a decent cop.” Actually, a good cop. Maybe he was jealous. She didn’t really know what his deal was. But there’d been a definite edge in his voice when he referred to the “new guy.” “You’re a—”