Hot SEAL, Independence Day

by Elle James

  “I’m sure or I wouldn’t have offered. Now, is it yes or no? I need to make a plan.”

  Her brow furrowed, and she chewed on her bottom lip. Finally, she said, “Okay, but just to Montana, and then you’re free of me.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “I’m not so sure it’ll be good for you,” Anne said. “But I’m with you until Montana. I’d like to meet this Hank Patterson, if you really think he can help me.”

  “I worked with Hank on deployments a couple of times. He was a Navy SEAL. He’s highly trained and highly efficient.”

  “Yeah, but the civilian world can be different,” Anne said.

  “He’s been pretty successful since then. From what I understand, he helped his wife Sadie McClain in a stalker situation.”

  Anne blinked several times. “Sadie McClain, the movie star?”

  Jack grinned. “Yes, Sadie McClain, the movie star.”

  “How does he know her?”

  “She’s his wife. They have two kids together.”

  “Wow,” Anne’s eyes widened. “How’d they get to know each other?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “I think they grew up together. Sadie McClain is from Montana.”

  “I’ve agreed to go with you, but I don’t want to be any more of a burden than I’ve already been.”

  “Good,” he said. “Because I don’t need any more of a burden.”

  Her brow creased. “I’m sorry about what happened to your truck.”

  He shrugged. “It was just a truck.”

  “Yeah, but it’s slowing you down. You needed to get on the road in order to make it to Montana in a reasonable amount of time.”

  “I can do that in a rental, and that’s what I have planned. My insurance will cover the rental of a truck, so it won’t slow me down too much.”

  “Will you leave tonight or in the morning?”

  “We can do either, but I’m sure that the rental car company will be better able to locate a truck by the morning, if I give them a call tonight.”

  “Which will give Derek more time to follow us,” Anne said.

  “I’m not too worried about him,” Jack said. “He ran pretty fast when he was faced with opposition.”

  A smile curved Anne’s lips. “He did, didn’t he?”

  “The main thing is,” Jack said, “for us to get out of here. The sooner the better. If you need the sleep tonight, I can get the casino’s security staff to stand guard on this room to make sure Derek doesn’t make a reappearance. Or we could find a rental truck immediately and hit the road.”

  “You’re the one who’s driving,” she said. “You decide. I’m okay with staying here or hitting the road.”

  “Then we’ll stay here for the night, because I don’t think the rental car company will be as accommodating if we leave right now.” He clapped his hands together. “In the meantime, I’m hungry. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  “We had hamburgers just a little while ago,” she pointed out. “If you haven’t noticed, it’s only been a few hours. I can stay here while you go eat.”

  “Nope. The last time I left you, here your ex-boyfriend showed up.” Jack shook his head. “You’re coming with me.”

  She looked down at what she had to wear. “I’d prefer to stay here. I’m not dressed for anything else.”

  “Fine, we’ll take you shopping as well.”

  Anne shook her head. “No way. I can’t afford to pay you back for half of what you’ve done. I can’t let you buy clothes for me as well.”

  “I’m not leaving you here. You’re coming with me.”

  Anne cocked an eyebrow. “Is that an order?”

  Jack stared at her for a moment. “I could care less whether or not you do what I say. But if I’m responsible for you, you need to come with me. I can’t leave you alone because your ex-boyfriend is bound and determined to make your life miserable. He got into our room once before whether you let him in or not.”

  “I didn’t,” Anne clarified.

  Jack nodded. “Exactly my point. He knows where you are. He knows who you’re with. What’s to keep him from coming back again while I’m out?”

  “Nothing,” Anne said. “He’s got some idiotic notion that I belong to him.” She frowned heavily. “I don’t.”

  “You belong to nobody,” Jack said. “If you don’t want to go with him, you don’t have to.”

  “I should go with him,” she said, “if I want to leave others out of it. Others like you. Don’t you get it? He wants to kill you. He doesn’t like anyone interfering in what he considers his business.” She sighed. “You are not responsible for me, and you are not responsible for his insanity.”

  “You’re right,” Jack said. “I’m not responsible for you or for his actions, but I’m not leaving you to him. That bastard’s crazy. He doesn’t appear to want to give up easily.”

  Anne snorted. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “What makes him think that way?” he asked.

  “I made the mistake of moving in with him several months ago. Once I did, he took control of my life, my money, my movements. When I tried to escape, he beat me up and locked me in a house with bars on the windows.” She gave a tight smile. “But I got away. I don’t plan on going back to him, if I can help it.”

  “What do you mean, if you can help it?” he asked.

  “I’ll do what I have to protect myself, even if it means giving in to him to avoid being beaten.”

  Jack’s fists clenched. “No woman should have to live under those kinds of restraints. Why don’t you turn him in to the police?”

  “He’s good at covering himself. One time he beat me, but he kept me locked up long enough all the bruises had faded. I couldn’t go to the police without the evidence. I had to figure my way out without him knowing. Again. He doesn’t let go of what belongs to him.”

  “You don’t belong to him,” Jack said.

  “I know that, and you know that, but he doesn’t agree. To him, I’m a possession.”

  “All the more reason for you to come with me to Montana. Hank will take care of you.”

  Anne stiffened. “That’s the problem. I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I need to learn to take care of myself. To make the right decisions. To associate with the right people.”

  Jack brushed a finger across the dot on her neck. “He had a knife to your throat, didn’t he? The same knife he stabbed me with?”

  Anne’s hand rose to touch her neck. “Yes, so?”

  “Next time, he might not let you live.”

  “And maybe that’s not a bad thing.” Anne’s hand dropped to her belly.

  Jack touched her arm, his eyebrows dipping low. “Do you really want to die at his hands? That would be like letting him win.”

  “It’s not about winning or losing,” Anne said. “It’s about survival. All I want is to find a place where I can live in peace, away from Derek.”

  “What made you go with a guy like that in the first place?” Jack asked.

  “Until I moved in with him, I didn’t see him for who he really was. Then he made demands of my life, took away my friends, took away my income. I didn’t know any better until he tried to take away my life. He beat me within an inch of losing it. I realized there was more to living than letting a man control me.”

  “Okay, well, if you’re with me,” Jack said, “then we need to get moving.”

  “I thought we were staying the night in Vegas,” Anne said.

  “I was, but I’ve changed my mind. I think we’re better off leaving tonight.”

  Anne nodded. “Agreed. The sooner the better.”

  Chapter 7

  What was wrong with him? He’d set out on a quiet road trip to Montana. Alone. Not to share his time with somebody else. What had he been thinking, inviting Anne Smith to join him?

  A woman on a road trip meant chatter. Constant, incessant chatter.

  He’d come on this trip for silence and his chance to be away from
everything. If he took this woman along with him, it would be another twelve hours, at the very least, with her in the truck.

  Could he stand her company that long? And why did he feel he had to be the one to see her to Montana? Couldn’t he just stick her on a bus, pay for her ticket and send her up that way? That would require a whole lot less involvement from him.

  He could warn Hank ahead of time that she was on her way. Hank could meet her at the bus station.

  And her ex could find her along the way and make her life miserable, if not kill her.

  When Jack had come into his room and found Derek holding her with a knife in his hand, he’d practically lost his mind, charging in like an avenging knight on a mission to rescue a damsel in distress.

  He knew better than that. Women were trouble.

  Sure, it had been years since his last relationship with a woman. And it hadn’t ended well. His marriage, for the few short weeks it had lasted, had ended in more of an annulment than a divorce. His wife hadn’t stuck with him through BUD/S training before she’d given up on their union. Since then, Jack had resigned himself to the fact that marriage was not something a SEAL could contemplate. Their lives were far too complicated to try to share it with another.

  Jack spent the next few minutes contacting the police and his insurance company. He met with the police and the security detail from the casino at his truck, keeping Anne at his side the entire time.

  Casino security had already gotten wind of the damage done to his truck. Having gone through video footage, they’d discovered someone had hacked into the security system and erased all footage during the timeframe when the incidents had occurred in the garage and when Anne had been attacked.

  Anne had told Jack that Derek was good at hacking, but he hadn’t realized just how good he was. That he had gotten in that quickly and destroyed the evidence was disturbing. By now, he knew who Jack was. Anywhere Jack used his credit cards, Derek could find him. For that matter, he could sabotage his credit cards.

  The best thing Jack could do was get to Hank as soon as possible and let the Brotherhood Protectors take care of Anne and her ex-boyfriend. They’d have to do something about the hacker, or he’d continue to sabotage anything Anne or Jack tried to do.

  Unfortunately, they would need fuel the entire way up to Montana. He notified his credit card bank, asking them to verify every purchase made by texting him first. But if Derek was as good as Jack suspected he was, he’d find a way to circumvent that as well. Thankfully, Jack had taken out the four hundred dollars. If nothing else, that would get them to Montana in fuel.

  His insurance company arranged for a truck rental. It was delivered within an hour of Jack filing his claim. They also arranged for a tow truck to haul his truck to a repair shop where the damage would be assessed and determine whether or not the truck would be totaled or fixed.

  Either way, he’d be back through Vegas in two weeks if he needed to pick up the truck on the way home.

  Fully aware that they might be watched, Jack made quick work of transferring his belongings from his damaged truck to the rental. As soon as he was done, and the tow truck drove off, Jack and Anne made a run up to the hotel room for Jack’s overnight bag and the money he’d left on the table. Back down at the drive-through entrance, Jack helped Anne up into the rental truck, and they drove through town and out the other side, heading north. Before they left town, he stopped at a twenty-four-hour department store.

  “Why are we stopping here?” Anne asked.

  “I need a few things before we go on. I don’t know what we’ll have available between here and there.”

  Her brow puckered. “Do you think it’s safe to leave the truck?”

  “If we get in and out fast, I think it’ll be all right.”

  “I could stay out here and make sure no one damages it,” Anne volunteered.

  Before she finished her sentence Jack was shaking his head. “You’re coming with me. I don’t care if the truck is destroyed, as long as you’re not. I don’t feel like you’ll be safe if I leave you out here.”

  She gave him a weak smile. “I appreciate that.”

  He climbed down from the truck and came around the front.

  Anne was already out of the passenger side and met him at the front fender.

  Jack locked the truck and cupped Anne’s elbow, guiding her into the store. He walked straight to the women’s department.

  “Why are we stopping here?”

  “You need to grab some jeans and a couple T-shirts. You can’t live in just the clothes on your back.”

  Anne shook her head.

  He held up a hand. “The longer you argue, the longer it takes to get back out to the truck, and the more time it gives Derek to do a job on it. So, go. Then we’re going to get a burner phone. If he’s as good at hacking as you say he is, he will have found my phone and hacked into it. He’ll be able to follow our GPS signature to our destination. I’d rather not make it easy on him.”

  She hesitated.

  He frowned. “Go.”

  “Fine,” she said, with an obstinate dent in her brow.

  Jack stood guard as Anne chose one pair of jeans from the sales rack and a couple of T-shirts, again from a sales rack. When she returned to him, he nodded toward the rows of undergarments. “Get what you need in the way of socks and underwear.”

  “It’s too much,” she said.

  “Unless you want to stay in what you’re wearing, I suggest you get what you need. Trust me, I know how clothes start smelling when they’ve been worn for several days.”

  She grabbed a package of socks, one of underwear and a bra, her face turning bright red as she selected the last. “It would have been better if we’d gone to a thrift store,” she said. “I don’t know how or when I’ll be able to repay you. But I will.”

  “We can discuss that later. Right now, we need to get back out to the truck.”

  She nodded and carried her belongings to the electronics department where he purchased a burner phone and paid for all of their items at the counter where he paid for the phone.

  With their bags of purchases in hand, they left the department store and hurried out to the truck. Thankfully, it was still intact. Jack helped Anne up into the truck, loaded the bags into the front seat with her, and spent a few necessary minutes inspecting the truck, making sure nothing had been added to it that would allow Derek to track them. As far as he could tell by shining his light from his phone, he didn’t see anything that looked out of place, but he could easily have missed something.

  They would have to risk it. The sooner he got Anne up to Hank Patterson, the better off she’d be. Hank had spent the past few years in the civilian world providing bodyguard and protection services to people like Anne. He would know what to do. Whereas Jack’s expertise was in warfare. Give him a gun and a chance to shoot, and he would. This cyberwarfare was something he wasn’t as familiar with. He understood Hank had a computer guru who was good at hacking as well. Perhaps he could help put the kibosh on Derek.

  No matter what, they needed to get up to Montana and Hank Patterson’s place.

  As they pulled out of the city of Las Vegas, Jack glanced in the rearview mirror at the bright lights shining behind him.

  Anne sat with the bags in her lap, staring straight ahead. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’d planned on gambling and enjoying yourself in Vegas. I ruined that for you, and I got you injured.”

  “It’s just as well,” he said with a chuckle. “I was playing poker and losing terribly. I’m almost positive that leaving Las Vegas when we did saved me a lot of money.”

  “Thanks for that,” Anne said.

  “For what?” he said with a grin. “Getting you out of Vegas?”

  “That and making me not feel so bad about dragging you away.”

  “Well, it’s going to be a long night. If you want to get some sleep, do it now. I might need your help later to keep me awake.”

  “I’m not sleepy,”
she said. “I had a nap while you were out playing poker and before Derek showed up. If you want, I can drive.”

  “I’d gladly let you,” he said, “but I wouldn’t sleep anyway. When I’m not driving, I’m awake and afraid that whoever’s driving will run off the road. In that respect, I can be a little bit of a control freak. If you want to drive tomorrow in daylight, I will more than happily let you. Rest assured, I’m good at staying awake at night. I’ve had to during many deployments. Most of our missions are conducted at night.”

  “Anything I can do to help,” Anne said, “let me. It’s the least I can do.”

  “I’ll let you know,” he said.

  As the miles passed and the monotony of the desert stretched before him, Jack thought about the woman who sat beside him. He wondered what her story was. Why she’d ended up moving in with Derek. “Do you have some family somewhere?” he asked. “Should you let your folks know you’re all right?”

  The lights from the dash cast a soft glow over her face. “No,” she said. “My parents were older when I was born. They didn’t think they could have children, until I came along. Unfortunately, my father died just before he turned sixty. My mother died shortly afterward of a broken heart. I had just started college and had to drop out. They didn’t have much in the way of savings. I guess they were expecting to live a lot longer. Dad was still working when he died of a massive heart attack. Their insurance was only enough to cover his burial expenses, and then the rest of it went toward my mother’s and paying off their credit cards. I couldn’t afford the house payment, so I had to let it go back to the bank. Without a college education, I had to work doing the only thing I knew how to do and that was being a waitress.”

  “Is that where you met Derek?” Jack asked.

  She nodded. “Yes. He came in every morning for coffee. If it wasn’t busy, he’d talk with me. He’d seemed nice enough. When he asked me out on a date, I said yes. I was living in a house that had been divided into several apartments. It was the only thing I could afford on a waitress’s salary and tips. Derek was very attentive and pleasant when I was so sad over the loss of my parents. He took me out to eat and to the movies. It was nice not to be sad. Since I didn’t have any family, he kind of filled that void. The owner of the house I lived in ended up going to jail for tax fraud. The house was sold, and the occupants had to find new lodgings. That’s when Derek suggested I move in with him. I wasn’t able to find any other rental property or anything I could afford. His offer seemed to be a godsend. I packed up my stuff and moved in.” She laughed without mirth. “And that’s when everything changed.”