In the Air Tonight A Shadow Force Novel [Paperback]

USStephanie Tyleris the author of the Shadow Force novelsLie to Me, Promises in the Dark,andIn the Air Tonightand the Navy SEAL trilogy:Hard to Hold, Too Hot to Hold,andHold On Tight. She lives in New York with her husband, her daughter, and a crazy Weimaraner named Gus.9780440423034|excerpt

Tyler: IN THE AIR TONIGHT

1

The gun pressed to the side of Paige’s bare neck, the cold barrel barely registering against her skin. She’d gone numb. Her hands gripped the beefy arm across her throat—it was close to choking her, pulling so hard her feet were nearly off the floor.

She tried to balance on her toes, but Wayne was moving backward, dragging her into the bowels of the ER and away from security.

The smells accosted her. Stale air. Rubbing alcohol and air freshener. Fear and death. No matter how well it was cleaned, those odors would never cease, embedded into the hospital as surely as they were into her senses.

In the background, she heard the cacophony—sirens and the screams of the patients and her co-workers—heard someone trying to reason with the man who’d taken her hostage.

“Mr. Wallace . . . Wayne, please, you don’t have to do this.”

Jeffrey, please—put the gun down, don’t do this.

The echo in her head threatened to take over everything, even as she told herself fiercely that this wasn’t the same situation—that the man holding her wasn’t her brother and that none of this was remotely personal.

Less than an hour ago, EMTs had brought in Cindy Wallace—she’d been beaten and at first insisted that she’d fallen down stairs. Paige had worked here long enough to recognize the signs, the excuses, the fear etched into the fine lines in the woman’s worn face.

After a few moments alone with Paige, Cindy had admitted her husband had been abusing her for years. Sló&