SEAL INVESTIGATIONS: A 5-Books SEAL Romance Series

by Lola Silverman

  “Why would he know where you live if he was following me?” she asked suddenly. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  It was weird. Until that moment he’d assumed the little man was after Tasha. Now he couldn’t be certain. Surely he would have noticed if someone had been watching him for the last few days. Surely.

  “I suppose that’s the first thing we’ll ask him then,” Yates muttered. “Let’s go.”

  He sprinted out of the alley, going in low and coming up in what was likely Mr. Dean’s blind spot. Suffice it to say, the man did not see them coming. He gave a visible leap and even yelped, like a puppy that had just been swatted with a rolled up newspaper.

  “Hey there, Mr. Dean,” Yates said in a friendly tone of voice while gripping the man’s upper arm so tightly he could actually feel the muscle protesting.

  “Hey!” Dean said indignantly. “Ow! You’re hurting me! What is this? I’m just standing here. That’s not against the law!”

  “Who said anything about the law?” Yates wanted to know. He looked at Tasha. “Did you say anything about the law?”

  “No, sir.” Tasha said. “I thought we were just coming over here to talk nice and ask a few questions.”

  “Questions? What questions?” The tremor in Dean’s voice was pathetic. Yates wanted to recoil with disgust. This guy wasn’t just slimy. He felt off somehow.

  “Why are you following us?” Tasha demanded, going in bold and to the point. “And don’t try to say we were following you. We weren’t. We just took advantage of the fact that you’re shit at your job. So we circled around behind you.”

  “I’m not going to say.” Dean crossed his arms, looking stubborn. “It’s for a client.”

  “Who are you following?” Tasha tried again. “Me or him?” She gestured to Yates.

  Yates watched the little man try to decide how much to divulge. Did he have any idea he was that strong a broadcaster? Likely not. It was as if his brain were a flashing neon sign.

  “I’m following him,” Dean said, sounding sullen. “Then you showed up. Why? Just go bother the police like you always do.”

  “You’re following him?” Tasha raised both eyebrows. “Why? And don’t bullshit me, Dean. I really haven’t got the patience right now.”

  FROM THE CORNER of her eye, Tasha could see Yates working a few things through in his head. What angles was Yates working on this case that someone would hire a slimy thug like Dean to keep an eye on him?

  Tasha cleared her brain. This wasn’t the time to get all swept away in hypothetical details. She needed to focus on the facts only. “Who’s your client, Dean?”

  There was no way the guy was going to answer that, but Tasha wasn’t just looking for words. She watched the way his eyes shifted down and away. He was fidgety. His fingernails were chewed down to the quick, and his normally sallow complexion looked—well, it just looked worse.

  “You look stressed out,” Tasha told him derisively. “It’s obvious you’re in over your head. Why don’t you just tell me who it is that hired you?”

  “No.”

  “So basically you’re telling me that you’re afraid they’d kill you if you ratted on them. Got it.” Tasha bobbed her head, letting Dean know she was getting what she needed whether he was offering it or not. “You know, we’re going to find out. In fact, you’re pretty much telling me everything I need to know. So you’re probably going to die anyway.”

  “You don’t know them!” Dean said triumphantly. “You don’t know these people at all. They’re not even from the DC metro.”

  Yates seemed to stir. “You shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with the Inner Circle, Mr. Dean. They kill a lot of people. In fact, The Broker seems to kill anyone who is no longer of direct use to him. That very likely means that your time on Earth is limited. So whatever you do after you leave here—because you’re not going to be hovering outside my apartment anymore—you should think about leaving town. Or maybe going farther than that. You could leave the country. That would work.” The corner of Yates’s mouth twisted slightly, the resulting cruel smile giving Tasha chills. “Except The Broker has contacts in most developed countries. So maybe it doesn’t matter where you go.”

  “H-H-How do you know that name?” Dean’s eyes were wide as saucers, and his voice was hoarse. “Nobody talks about that.”

  “You just told me everything I need to know.” Yates gave the little man a few slaps on the cheek. “Now get out of here, and don’t come back. You do know that I can dispose of a dead body in about a dozen different ways without raising a single suspicion in local or federal law enforcement, right?”

  Tasha had to stifle a laugh as Dean’s Adam’s apple bobbed in an almost comical fashion. Then Yates dropped the guy. Dean stumbled, righted himself, and then sprinted up the street away from them with his coat flapping around his legs like an ugly dress.

  YATES SHOULD HAVE been watching the retreating weasel, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Tasha. Her smile was incredible. He’d never been completely blown away by a smile before. The only word that came to mind was “unabashed”. She was so damn honest. How often did that happen in the female population?

  “Come on,” he grunted, feeling surly and off balance. “You can come on into the apartment, and we’ll go over some things.”

  She heaved a sigh and followed along behind him. He was so aware of her presence. She walked with a slight sway to her hips. He didn’t even think she realized it. Her spine was straight, her shoulders back, and now he was completely fixated on her breasts. The woman had great breasts.

  Great. I’m turning into some horndog that can’t stop thinking about sex for five seconds.

  Maybe what he really needed was to get laid. Yeah. That was probably the best option. He could just go to a bar, pick up some random chick, and then spend a few hours between her legs to take the edge off of this—whatever this was. Of course, the chick would need to be blond. And she’d need a killer personality too…

  “Mr. Yates?”

  “Huh?” He turned to find Tasha staring at him, her brows drawn together in obvious consternation.

  She gestured to the door of his apartment. “Were you going to go inside?”

  Yates realized he’d been standing in front of his apartment door, holding his keys, and daydreaming about finding some chick that looked like Tasha to screw. There were not words for this affliction. He was sure of it.

  “Yeah. I—uh—just wanted to make sure we didn’t have any more unwelcome company.”

  “Uh huh.” She didn’t sound at all convinced.

  It wasn’t until he stepped inside his tiny basement hole that he realized he had most definitely not been expecting any company. The futon was out, the sheets and blankets mussed because he hadn’t bothered to put them away this morning. There were dirty dishes stacked in the sink, and a pizza box with one slice remaining sitting on the counter.

  “Nice place,” she commented wryly. “Very college dorm.”

  “Sorry.” He shrugged. If she was looking for some guy who cared about that kind of crap, she was in the wrong place. “One of my buddies and his girl are crashing here while we dig through some of this investigation stuff. I let them have the bedroom.” Yates considered that. “Although I’ll probably need to buy a new mattress when they leave.”

  She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort that he really couldn’t interpret. “They’re really into each other, huh?”

  “Totally.” Yates bobbed his head up and down with enthusiasm. “I’ve never seen two people so—I don’t know—desperate? It’s like they can’t get enough.”

  TASHA WATCHED ABOUT a dozen expressions flit across Yates’s practically unreadable face. How was it possible that the man could be so very expressive, and yet she couldn’t tell what any of his expressions meant? That wasn’t like her. She was usually so good at reading people. It was part of her job.

  She circled back around to the fact that his friends were crashing at h
is apartment. “So your buddy is working on this investigation with you? Is he part of your team?” She was pretty sure that was the right word. At the very least, he didn’t look offended.

  Yates was busy shoving dishes into the tiny dishwasher. “Yeah. Romero was the first one that our CO sent to Richmond to look for his sister. Romero lives at Little Creek, so it wasn’t far. And Cassidy was her roommate. The two of them had a time of it down there, I’m telling you. Insane! Cassidy even managed to get herself kidnapped briefly so she could try and find out how they were abducting the women.”

  “Are you serious?” Tasha’s excitement nearly made her jump up and down with glee. “So this chick has actually been inside the operation?”

  “Briefly.” Yates shrugged. “They use a lot of drugs to make their victims compliant. Let’s say that the people doing the actual abduction part aren’t exactly capable of controlling one of the victims if she should take the notion to be uncooperative. So they get them nice and high, then they dose them with Fentanyl, and we think it’s laced with Rohypnol too.”

  Tasha felt her mouth drop open. “They’re giving these women the date rape drug?”

  Yates nodded, shutting the dishwasher, spinning the dial, and starting it up. Then he made his way over to the bank of computer screens in the far corner of the room. Tasha couldn’t help but think that it looked like something off a futuristic movie. Yates sat down in his chair and started typing something into the computer at a furious rate. He was obviously comfortable with computers, but she’d already guessed that from the way he easily navigated the local chat rooms. He left no trace of himself. She had already paid one of her local contacts to check, thinking that Yates was actually one of the kidnappers looking to get an ego boost from inserting himself into the investigations. It was something that serial killers sometimes did.

  “Here.” He gestured her over. “See this list? Do you recognize any of these names?”

  She gazed at the screen. It was a list of both pharmaceutical distributors and also local drug dealers. Some of the dealers she knew. The other guys she would have considered suits. In her line of work she didn’t meet a lot of white collar guys like that unless they had angry wives who thought they were cheaters.

  “Wait.” She pointed to one name. “That’s not really a drug dealer. I mean he is, but he’s actually an undercover cop.”

  A slow smile spread across Yates’s face. “You might be more right about the cops being involved than you think.”

  “What do you mean?” Tasha frowned. “Are you saying that you think this guy is supplying the kidnappers with drugs?”

  “He’s my main suspect right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the product has to have a seriously high level of THC,” Yates explained. “These women are passing out sometime between being offered a few hits and being giving an injection of Fentanyl laced with Rohypnol. This guy”—Yates gestured to the name on the screen—“supposedly has the highest THC concentration in his product.”

  Tasha mulled that over for a moment. “I know him.”

  “What?”

  She felt uncomfortable. “Yeah. We used to date.”

  “Date?”

  “Okay, we were actually engaged for a while.” She shifted, wishing she could just say this and not sound so middle school about it. “He was a mean son of a bitch, and he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, you know?”

  Yates pursed his lips. For a moment, Tasha thought he was angry. And then she realized that he was just struggling to find the right words. He gently touched her hand, the contact searing her straight to her soul. “I’m really sorry, Tasha. Nobody should have to deal with that.”

  “Thanks.” Why oh why was she being stupid enough to fall for this guy? And why did he have to be so—perfect?

  Chapter Four

  Yates could not even wrap his mind around the notion that someone would actually cheat on a woman like Tasha, or worse, abuse her. First of all, she was gorgeous. And she was sexier than hell! He had to plow through the cavemanesque notions in his head that insisted he track this guy down and plant his fist in the man’s face. That wasn’t getting him anywhere. He needed to look at this from a psychological perspective. This information had to be useful.

  Yates got up from his seat at the computer and paced a trail back and forth across his tiny living room. He often did this when he was trying to work something out in his head. He did it in the field too. But when that happened they called it “patrolling”. Oh, the irony.

  “What are you thinking?” Tasha asked quietly. “You’re obviously trying to track down this Broker guy by following a supply trail. I get that. The part I’m confused about is, why pot?”

  “It’s innocuous.” Yates stopped pacing and gazed at Tasha. Even just staring at her had the power to knock him for a mental loop. “If a girl finds some seriously hot guy who seems interested in her, and he offers her a hit off his joint, she’s probably going to take it, because hey—it’s only marijuana, right?”

  “So if it knocks her out, why wouldn’t he pass out too? That makes no sense. I didn’t even realize people could pass out from smoking weed.” Tasha looked doubtful.

  Yates chuckled. “It’s not really the weed, although it is the THC. So”—he felt himself getting more comfortable as he slipped back into the world of facts and figures—“THC affects blood pressure. If you have a sudden infusion of THC into your body, it can make your blood pressure drop almost instantaneously. But we know—because Cassidy remembers this—that the guys are smoking it too. So what we think is happening, is that they actually take medication designed to raise their blood pressure in order to combat the huge amount of THC that they’re about to inhale.”

  “Oh my God!” She looked mystified. “That’s insane. Do you know how unsafe it would be to take medication to raise your blood pressure if you’re already normal, or even high?”

  “Dangerous, yes. But these are young men out to make a buck. Romero met a couple. He says they’re lemmings. Most of them don’t even realize that they’re baiting girls who will be kidnapped and sold.”

  “That’s horrible.” Tasha pointed at the screen. “Roddy has access to whatever drug stock the DC police have in holding. So maybe we should start by checking files at the department and seeing if there was anything seized recently that had a high THC content. They would have to check for that, right?”

  “Possibly,” Yates mused. “Obviously if he’s selling it, he knows. But the department might not have bothered. The farms in states where marijuana has been legalized keep meticulous track of the percentage of THC in their products. Most of the oils and such that are used to treat children have an extremely low THC. The THC isn’t the medicinal ingredient. It’s the psychoactive one.”

  “In other words, THC is what makes you high,” Tasha said grimly. “And I have to say that it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that Roddy is dealing behind the department’s back. But I’m really wondering if he’s not just the puppet.”

  “Then you believe someone is telling him to sell to these people?” Yates got distracted again watching her bite her lower lip. Had any other woman ever possessed such a full lower lip? It was really quite adorable, and, okay. Maybe it was sexy as well.

  “So what do we do next?” Tasha wanted to know.

  He wished he had some miraculous plan that would blow this case out of the water, but there really wasn’t anything like that in his bag of tricks. “At the moment, I’m waiting for Romero and Cassidy to get back from the store.”

  “Oh.” She looked uncomfortable. “So, I guess I can go. I’ll give you my cell phone, and you can text me or something and let me know what the plan is?”

  “You don’t have to go.” The words tumbled out in a rush, and he realized almost instantly that he sounded ridiculous. “I mean, they should be back any second.”

  TASHA COULDN’T FIGURE him out. Did he want her to stay or go? Did he care? Okay. That was completely the w
rong word. There was something so odd about his mannerisms. Yates seemed as if he wanted her to be anywhere else but here in his apartment, and yet he didn’t really act like he wanted her to leave either.

  “What’s your deal?” she asked suddenly.

  His eyebrows shot straight up in the air.

  Tasha gazed at his rugged countenance and wished she could read him even just a little bit. “I can’t tell if you’re absolutely against the idea of helping me, or working with me, or whatever. If you want me to go, just say so. It’s not going to hurt my feelings or anything.” That wasn’t entirely true. She wasn’t sure why, but the idea of him telling her to get lost was devastating. What was up with that? She shouldn’t give a rat’s ass what this guy thought of her.

  “I don’t want you to go.” He sounded so stiff! His lips barely moved when he spoke. “And I’m sure that we would appreciate a fresh set of eyes going over the information we’ve put together. I simply wasn’t certain what to do to kill time while I wait for Romero and Cassidy to come back.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “The store.”

  Right. He’d just told her that a second ago. Great. She was already having trouble concentrating while he seemed focused on her. In a few minutes she was going to be a drooling mess.

  “Okay. So is there something you’d like to discuss before then? About the case, I mean,” she added hastily. It wasn’t like she was expecting him to discuss the weird attraction she felt for him.

  “Why are you so invested in this?” he asked suddenly. “I’ve been considering every angle for days. You have no personal stake in this. The families of the missing women are not paying you for your time. You don’t know anyone who’s been taken. Why bother?”

  Tasha had asked herself that question about a thousand times a day for the last several months. “I’m not sure.” She spoke quietly, turning away and looking at the computer screen, where she could see the list of dealers. Beside that there was another screen. Several more, actually. One of them featured pictures of the missing women. Tasha pointed to the photographs. “They deserve better than to be forgotten. No matter what really happened.”