SEAL INVESTIGATIONS: A 5-Books SEAL Romance Series

by Lola Silverman

  He tried not to move. There was no reason to let his unwanted companions know that he was awake. He tried to gauge his condition. Very carefully trying to move his torso, he felt the sharp pain of a bullet wound. It felt as if someone had made a hasty attempt to shove something inside the wound. Judging from the matching stabbing sensations on the front and back, Sparks figured the bullet had gone through his side. That was actually the good news.

  The Arabic in the front seat dissolved into suddenly decipherable English. The driver was waving his hand in the air, obviously irritated. “What did he expect? He sent Turik back for the body. The man cannot watch the little whelp while he collects Jabar’s body!”

  “He should hire a platoon’s worth of guards for Asif if he wants to keep an eye on him. The only thing the boy knows how to do is run away to party,” the passenger commented.

  The driver snorted. “Wheels up in thirty minutes? Try wheels up at dawn, when Asif comes stumbling back to the hotel.”

  That was an interesting bit of information. So at least Sparks knew he had a little bit of time before they threw him on a plane and took him out of the country. Perhaps Romero and Bones would put their plan into action and Asif would suddenly go missing.

  “Is he awake?” the driver wanted to know.

  The passenger cranked his neck around to check. Sparks remained completely still until he heard the man turn back toward the front of the car. Then the passenger gave a chuckle. “He’ll be out for a while. Gunshot wound, gun butt to the head? I don’t think he’ll be bothering anyone for a while.”

  “Hasim wants these SEALS out of our hair for good,” the driver said grimly. “He’ll use this one as a warning to the others.”

  “Like the sister wasn’t enough warning?” There was something very odd in the passenger’s tone. “The things Hasim has been doing to that woman should have killed her. Eventually she will need to die just to be put down like a rabid animal.”

  Sparks’s gut tightened until he felt sick. They were talking about Rachel! They had to be. Tasha and Cassidy had been right. The Armeen al Sauds knew exactly who Rachel was. They had taken her on purpose because of her connection to Trapp.

  The driver gave a low laugh that sent a chill down Sparks’s spine. “Alexander Trapp will be sorry he ever crossed the Armeen al Saud family before this thing is done.”

  JAIPRIYA STRODE INTO the club with more confidence than she had ever felt before in her life. It was so odd. She was wearing the same pair of jeans that she’d put on two nights ago. Her plain black T-shirt was wrinkled, as if she’d been sleeping in it. She had no makeup, and her hair was a mess. Yet at the moment she was more dangerous and focused than she had ever been before in her life.

  Escape was one of Asif’s favorite clubs in the Baltimore area. He bragged constantly that he was one of their VIPs. She had even heard him claim to be the owner of the place. So it was the first place that Jaipriya decided to try.

  She skipped the line and walked right up to the bouncer standing at the door. Out of habit she started to push her way by, not even thinking that she would be stopped. Unfortunately, instant entry was part of her former life, not her current one.

  “Excuse me, lady.” The bouncer’s hand shot out, blocking her way. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Jai stared at him in shock. “Inside. You let me in here like two nights a week!”

  He made a chuffing noise and shook his head. “Then you need a shower and a dress before you get back in.”

  “I’ll have you know that I’m just here looking for my fiancé,” she blustered. Poking her finger right into his meaty chest, she raised an eyebrow and searched for the sense of entitlement she’d grown up with. “You know, Asif ibn Armeen al Saud?”

  The bouncer swallowed, looking uncomfortable. “You’re engaged to Asif?”

  “Yes!” She tossed her hair, a gesture that was a complete bust, since it was so tangled that it just got stuck halfway over her shoulder.

  “Go right in.” The bouncer dropped his hand and didn’t say another word.

  Hmm. She couldn’t help but wonder whether Asif might actually be telling the truth about this club. With that in mind, she hit the VIP section first. She spotted him almost immediately. He was lounging on a marshmallow couch in lurid purple. There were women hanging all over him, and he was shouting something about buying another round for his friends.

  She shook her head. There was no way in hell that she was going to marry this loser. But she was about to go pretend that she absolutely was. Marching past the velvet rope and straight up to Asif, she barely managed not to laugh when he straightened up and pulled away from his ornamental girls as if he were a naughty schoolboy.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded in a shrill tone of voice. “You’re supposed to be waiting for your brothers at the airstrip!” She was guessing, of course, but she knew she was right when he jumped to his feet.

  “Are we leaving now?” he asked, already heading for the exit. “Shit. Hasim will be so pissed at me!”

  “What about Jabar?” she asked. He’d only mentioned one brother. That seemed odd. What was going on there?

  “Jabar,” Asif said with a smirk. “Let’s just say my middle brother has started to become more of a liability than an asset.”

  There would be time enough to worry about that later. For now, Jaipriya grabbed Asif’s arm and steered him toward the door. What sort of idiot was so used to being ordered and jerked around that he didn’t even question the way she was treating him? She’d left the truck in an alley around the side of the building, and that was where she headed once they were outside.

  “Where’s the limo?” Asif wanted to know. For the first time he tried to put on the brakes.

  “Right here!” she urged. “The driver had to park in the alley. Too much traffic on the street.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  They made it around the corner, and Jai reached into her pocket. She grabbed the gun that she had taken from Sparks’s glove compartment. This next part she had only ever seen in movies. She pulled the gun out of her pocket, drew back, and smacked Asif on the back of the head with the handle of the gun.

  The little prince crumpled to the ground in a heap, and Jai realized that she now had to pick up his chunky body and find a way to get him into the truck. At least she was burning calories.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Asif might have been the smallest of the three Armeen al Saud brothers, but he was still a hell of a lot bigger than Jaipriya. She huffed and puffed as she grabbed him by the torso and dragged him to the passenger side of the truck. But once she got him there she realized that if he somehow regained consciousness while she was driving, it would be a disaster. There was no way she could withstand a direct attack from him without crashing the vehicle and killing them both.

  With that in mind, she dragged him back around to the bed of the vehicle. She had a bizarre mental image of him coming to during the trip down I-95 toward DC. What if he stood up and just fell out of the vehicle and died of blunt force trauma to the head or something equally mundane?

  Oh my God. Mundane? Who am I?

  She was actually giggling now. Not because it was particularly funny, but because the entire situation was so incredibly outlandish that she was starting to feel insane. She lowered the tailgate of the truck and managed to get Asif’s top half into the bed. Then she took a deep breath and prepared to grab his legs and throw those in too. Unfortunately, it overbalanced the top half, and Asif’s head wound up smacking the concrete.

  “At least he’ll stay unconscious if I keep this up,” she muttered.

  “Ma’am?” A male voice called out to her. “Do you need some help?”

  Shit. She was going to get caught! This Good Samaritan type was going to call the cops, and she was going to jail. That would suck! She hastily waved off any help. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it. My boyfriend just drinks too much sometimes. You know?”

  “Wow.” The g
uy looked at Asif in the minimal light of the overhead flood lamps. “He’s way out of it. Right?”

  “Yeah. Happens all the time. I’ve got this.” She smiled, but the man kept coming.

  “Here. I’ll help.”

  Blood roared in Jai’s ears as she watched this good-natured stranger assist her in kidnapping a man. The stranger efficiently put Asif in the bed of the truck and slammed the tailgate.

  “You be safe now,” he told her with mock sternness. “And maybe it’s time to think about what this relationship is worth, right?”

  Jai chuckled a bit to herself. “Oh, I am, sir. I really, really am.”

  COLD WATER HIT Sparks in the face and soaked his chest. He shook his head to clear it and tried to take quick stock of his situation. He was captive. Check. He was in a dark room in an unfamiliar place. Check. The sounds he heard were all airport noises, suggesting that they were at an airplane hangar somewhere. Okay, fine. The scent of jet fuel and oil hung heavy in the air. There was also something else. A faint copper odor turned his stomach. It smelled like old pennies. Very unpleasant, and unfortunately—very familiar. Blood. This room smelled like old blood.

  Someone had bound his hands behind his back with chain. He heard a click, and then a whirring noise. It was the sound of an overhead crane. His hands started to rise behind his back. Realization struck fast and hard. Sparks was barely able to contain his apprehension when he felt his shoulders reach their maximum rotation and then keep going. Both were dislocated at the same time, with a loud pop that drowned out the crane noise. Sparks bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, refusing to give his tormentors the satisfaction of a sound.

  “You know,” Hasim said from the shadows to Sparks’s left, “I have watched you SEALs train. I know how hard you push yourselves.” Hasim emerged from the dim corner and flicked the ash of his cigarette at Sparks’s face. “I have always wanted to see just how much one of you crazy bastards can take. I suppose now I shall have my opportunity.”

  Sparks searched inside himself for the place that all SEALs have. It is a dead zone where the mind can lay low while the body undergoes immense pressure, torture, or extreme environmental circumstances. He had a feeling he was going to need every ounce of that safe space and more before this was done.

  JAI CIRCLED THE block one last time to make sure she was in the right place. It was funny. She had been running away from this location and Sparks’s team in the last few days, and now she was trying to run back. She had no idea what sort of reception she would get from the team. In fact, she was a little nervous that Tasha or Cassidy would open the door and slam it in her face before she even had a chance to ask for their help or explain about Sparks.

  She wedged the truck into the alley as close to the front door of Yates’s basement apartment as she could get. Then she hopped out and knocked. She was holding her breath when the door popped open.

  “I have cameras,” Yates said, voice flat. “I could see you way before you illegally parked Sparks’s truck on my doorstep.”

  “I need your help,” Jai said hurriedly. “Hasim took Sparks and you have to help me get him back.”

  Yates cursed in a low fervent voice. “We’ll need leverage.”

  “I have it.”

  “How?”

  Jai motioned him to follow as she walked to the tailgate. She lowered it with a bang and pointed to the sleeping prince in the bed of the truck. It was more than a little satisfying to see Yates’s mouth pop open in surprise. Maybe it was time they stopped looking at her as an adversary and started respecting her as an ally.

  “Nice,” Yates growled. “Hey, Bones!” he called back into the apartment. “Looks like the girl here jumped your claim.”

  “What?” The big man walked out and rested his arms on the side of the truck. He gazed at Jai’s prisoner and shook his head. There was obvious admiration in his manner. “Well done.”

  “We have to hurry!” Jai begged. “You don’t understand what they’re probably doing to him.”

  The men exchanged a look before Bones cleared his throat to respond. “Sweetheart, we know exactly what they’re doing.”

  Tasha came striding out of the apartment. She narrowed her gaze at Jaipriya and curled her lip. “You! Do you have any idea what a fucking waste of time and talent it was for Sparks to go haring off after you just because you decided to run home to mommy and daddy?”

  Jai felt her temper reach the boiling point and keep going. She pushed away from the truck and stomped over to Tasha. She got right in the pushy blond’s face. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I am so sick of people like you judging me!” Jai fumed. “I just watched Hasim ibn Armeen al Saud murder my father. Did you hear that? My father is dead. I have no idea what has become of my mother. My house is a war zone. My parents were selling me to the Armeen al Sauds because of some debt my father owed Hasim and Jabar. Oh, and by the way, my father accidentally killed Jabar.”

  The men turned sharply, Yates whistled. “Did you say that Jabar is dead?”

  “Yes.” Jai frowned. “But it makes no sense. Hasim was angry about it, but he didn’t even grab the body! He was more concerned with taking Sparks hostage. It was almost as if Jabar was acceptable collateral damage or something. I don’t get it!”

  “He left the body,” Romero murmured as he stepped outside to join the others. “You’re right. That is significant.”

  Jai groaned. “Can we please just go? We have to get back to Baltimore before Hasim decides it’s more lucrative to be an only child.”

  “I think she just nailed it,” Romero told the group. “Think about it. Hasim and Jabar have always presented a united front. What if internally they had a lot of disagreements about business? The pressure we’ve been putting on them could have created friction.”

  “So you think Hasim wanted Jabar out of the way, and the accountant simply made it a convenient reality?” Yates did not sound convinced.

  Jai closed her eyes. She thought about everything she had ever heard from the brothers. They were bloodthirsty, rude, and chauvinistic. But usually they were united. That last party. They had been cordial. They had seemed as if everything was normal. And yet she could see the subtle shifting of their bodies away from each other.

  Jai looked around at the assembled group. “I think I have an idea.”

  THERE WAS ONE good thing about the dull ache in his shoulders from having them dislocated and then abruptly shoved back in by simple gravity. The pain in his shoulder joints was completely drowning out the pain in his feet.

  “Toes are such amusing things, don’t you think?” Hasim sounded so jovial that it was macabre under the circumstances.

  A big Arab with pliers was separating the toes of Sparks’s right foot and carefully pulling each one out of joint. Sparks didn’t respond to the taunt. He knew it was calculated to create a power vacuum where Hasim would expect Sparks to start begging for mercy. There was no way in hell that would ever happen. Sparks had been trained for this. He fell back on that now and remained silent.

  “You’re as boring as that bitch Rachel, you know that?” Hasim sounded disgruntled now. “She never cries anymore. Sometimes she even laughs at me. Of course, that just makes things worse for her, but she is arrogant and stupid, like her brother.”

  Sparks glued his mouth closed. He could not respond. It wouldn’t help. He could not ask about Rachel. That was what Hasim wanted. If Sparks was lucky, he—like Tasha before him—would suddenly wind up in a cage next to Rachel so that he would have yet another firsthand account of her continued life to pass along to his team. It was all they could hope for in this fucked up game they were playing with Armeen al Saud.

  Chapter Twenty

  “You are not cutting me out of this!” Jaipriya fumed.

  She glared at Bones, Yates, and Romero. Behind them, Tasha, Cassidy, and Marina were trying not to laugh. Jai didn’t know if the women were on her side or not. They were either laughing because t
hey totally understood what it was like to try to convince a pack of alpha males that she was just as capable as they were. Or—the women were laughing because they didn’t take Jai seriously either. She was getting very tired of worrying about what everyone else thought. It didn’t matter what they thought. It mattered what she thought, and she was tired of pretending otherwise.

  “Ms. Bhatia,” Bones began in a very reasonable tone of voice.

  She rolled her eyes. “Jai. Ms. Bhatia is my mother.”

  “All right.” Bones rubbed his closely shaven head. “Look. We’re not trying to cut you out—as you put it—but we can’t just let you put yourself in the sort of danger you’re suggesting. First of all, it’s just a bad idea. Secondly, Sparks would freaking kill us.”

  “I don’t care what Sparks thinks,” Jai snarled. “He’s the one whose ass is on the line here. Either he’ll appreciate whatever I can do to provide a rescue opportunity, or he can just be mad, pout, and I’ll deal with that when and if it happens.” She looked at the men and made a face. “You’re all being douchebags. Seriously.”

  They obviously didn’t know what to say about that. She took advantage of their silence to get in the truck. She was in the driver’s seat. Asif was trussed up like a pig awaiting slaughter in the back. He’d come to once, but Yates had dosed him with something that would supposedly keep him quiet until they got to the airfield.

  “You don’t even know where you’re going!” Romero protested.

  She snorted. “I have a phone. There’s GPS. It’s easy.”

  “Right.” Yates was actually laughing. Perhaps being with a woman like Tanya had forced him to become accustomed to letting women play a significant role in the mission.

  Bones heaved a sigh. She could tell he didn’t like it. “We’ll follow along behind.”

  “Good.” She put the truck in gear and carefully backed out of the alley.

  She was determined to do this. “This” being the rescue of Sparks. She was not helpless. She was not less intelligent, capable, or courageous than a man. Sure. She had been groomed her whole life to be a wife and helpmate. That wasn’t going to happen.