Silver Shark (Kinsmen, #2)

by Ilona Andrews

The shock punched her. Claire shot out of the bionet and out of her chair, her vision still a blur. A blink and she saw the room: gun-grey walls, a long console, five chairs by it, one empty - hers, and four others supporting prone bodies, her teammates, her soldiers, each with a gaping hole in the back of the head. In a split second she saw it all: the jagged edges of the head wounds, the red blood dripping on the floor from Liz's blond hair, and Major Courtney Rome, a smoking gun in his fingers, his pale grey Intelligence uniform splattered with crimson spray and brain matter. Courtney's face was slack. His mouth drooped down. His eyes stared at her, hollow. She grasped his mind in a steel fist, ripping through the feeble protection of the psych blocker like it was tissue paper. He cried out and dropped the gun. She forced his brain to haul him upright, every muscle painfully rigid, his body barely balanced on his toes. They were dead. This morning all of them had eaten a spare breakfast in the commissary. They shared coffee. Liz hid her new nails. Now they were dead. She had protected them for so long and he'd put a gun to their heads and murdered them one by one. "Why?" she snarled. "The war is over," Courtney whispered. "We lost."

asshole