SEALs of Honor: Kanen

by Dale Mayer

  “No, but these look like blackmail photos,” Nelson said immediately.

  The men exchanged grim looks. Kanen put the photos back into the bag, zipped it up, handed it to Nelson for safekeeping and went through the rest of the locker one more time. When it was confirmed as fully emptied, Mark returned with a plastic bag. They packed it up with Blake’s belongings.

  Kanen shook Mark’s hand and said, “Thanks. We appreciate this.” He turned, and the group walked back outside.

  “Where to now?” Nelson asked.

  “We need to go through this blackmail collection very closely,” Taylor said. “Maybe take backup photos, so nothing’s lost.”

  Kanen nodded. “I agree. But where?”

  “Our hotel would be best,” Taylor suggested. “If we go to her apartment, we might find him there as well.”

  Kanen pulled out his phone and called Laysa. When she answered, her voice was sleepy. “Did I wake you up?”

  “No, I’m just dozing,” she said softly. “All of this is bringing up memories.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “No, you don’t understand. They are good memories. I miss Blake a lot, but we had a good life, and I realized I’m starting to deal with the loss instead of denying it.”

  “That’s progress then,” he said, “but it’s still difficult to finally accept the loss. It’s a process. Give yourself time. So far, we have not yet gone through the storage unit. But we did find something, and we need to figure it out.”

  “What did you find?” Her voice was sharp.

  “We don’t know yet. I didn’t want to open anything there in the gym, with all those prying eyes.”

  “So where can I meet you? Because I want to see this too.”

  “Hmm,” he said, frowning.

  “Don’t try to stop me,” she snapped. “This is about Blake’s life and about finding that asshole who invaded my home, who held me captive.”

  “I hear you,” he said quietly. “But it might not be that easy a chore.”

  “Neither was getting beaten up by that asshole, all for whatever you found. If not my place, another place or your hotel. Just name it. I’ll be there.”

  “We’ll meet in the lobby of my hotel,” he said. “Make that fifteen minutes from now?”

  “I’m already leaving a note and walking out of Carl’s apartment,” she snapped. “I should be there in ten. Make sure you guys are there.”

  He grinned, hung up and told the others what was going on. “Let’s go. She doesn’t wait well for anybody.”

  “She’s definitely a woman with a mind of her own.”

  “That she is.”

  “Did they have a good relationship?” Taylor’s voice was bland, but his gaze was intent as he studied Kanen’s face.

  Kanen nodded. “They’d been in love since forever. They were best friends who fell in love with each other.”

  “Were you and her ever together?” Nelson asked.

  Kanen laughed. “No. The first time she saw Blake, that was all there was room for in her life. I never quite made the cut.”

  “That’s okay too,” Nelson said. “If you wanted a chance, now is a good time.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Kanen said, shaking his head at them. “Nothing like that is going on between the two of us.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Taylor said. “I saw how she was in your arms this morning.”

  “Absolutely,” Kanen said. “But that’s what friends are for. To comfort each other. So … no matchmaking.”

  “No matches have to be made,” Nelson said with a big grin. “Looks like the match has already been made.”

  Kanen hopped into their rental car and turned on the engine. “That’s so wrong,” he muttered.

  “No, it so isn’t wrong. She can hold her own. She’d be prime girlfriend material for a SEAL. We’re delighted for you,” Taylor said, humor in his tone.

  “Don’t be,” Kanen replied. “That would be like stepping on toes or betraying my best friend. That’s something I can’t ever do.”

  “But it’s not,” Nelson argued. “Look at it from the other side. Blake’s not here to be with her, to look after her. He’d be happy to know she was safe and sound with you. He doesn’t want her to be alone for the rest of her life. If the two of you are together, you know he’ll be up there, smiling down on you and saying, ‘Dude, go for it, with my blessing.’”

  The trouble was, the way Nelson had said that sounded just like Blake. An eerie voice out of Kanen’s past looking down on him. It gave Kanen a hell of a shock. It also made him think. Was that what Blake would be happy with? Kanen and Blake had been best buds. That had never been a question before. But what about now? Would Blake be happy, and would he say something like that? As Kanen thought about it, he realized Blake, being who Blake was, would say exactly that.

  Chapter 5

  She sat in the lobby five minutes ahead of their appointed time; she couldn’t wait much longer. She didn’t understand what Kanen and his men had found, but obviously the trip to the gym had been worthwhile. It was early in the day. She kept watch on the front entrance, even as the hotel manager kept watch on her.

  With relief she saw the men move through the lobby with the same surety her husband had had.

  Like somebody in command of his life. A man in charge of his destiny. She’d always admired that sense of confidence in Blake.

  She’d never had it herself and recognized how valuable it was in others. Blake had always just laughed it off as being nothing. But it wasn’t nothing. He was somebody who had lived life to the fullest and who understood what he could handle and what he couldn’t. She’d always felt like she handled life well, but then everybody around her protected her and stopped her from fully experiencing hardships. And maybe that was a good thing. She tended to be an all-or-nothing kind of person. Like meeting Blake. When she did, she’d fallen instantly. Yes, they were best friends first, but she knew. Probably long before Blake did. There’d never been anyone else for her.

  Thankfully he’d felt the same all along their relationship trail—as they shifted from best friends to lovers, then got married. When she lost him, her world had fallen apart. He’d been everything to her—in a very real and tangible way. For the longest time she didn’t want to live, had nobody—outside of Kanen—who really cared if she lived or died, other than maybe her students. She had curled up in a cold ball of pain and had refused to acknowledge the world around her. But she had a job to keep and kids to teach, and she now needed that job in order to pay her bills, so she was forced to get up and go to school every day. And that was all fine and dandy until coming home at the end of the day … alone. Reminded of her loss each night.

  Kanen had been a huge part of her life. A good friend long before she and Blake were married, Kanen had been a much closer friend since she lost Blake. And she knew perfectly well her friendship with Kanen would be there forever. They’d been through a lot together. When she had miscarried, she had cried to Kanen. Blake had understood, but he was more philosophical about it, … maybe even relieved.

  He’d said it hadn’t seemed real to him yet, not a child he could see and hold. But Kanen had seemed to understand. That had endeared him to her like nothing else. She and Blake had kept trying, but conception never happened again. When she lost Blake, how she wished to have had his child, a piece of him, someone to hug, to love, to care for. Instead she just had memories from a lot of years together. Kanen had made a point of reminding her how she’d lived life to the fullest with Blake during their best-friends period into their dating period and then their marriage. That she should rejoice in having had the opportunity to have shared all those years with Blake.

  Cerebrally she knew Kanen was right. In her heart though, it didn’t matter—she wanted it all. She wanted another fifty years with Blake, sitting side by side in their rocking chairs on a porch, holding hands—although Blake had often said that he wouldn’t live that long.

&
nbsp; He was a bit of a risk-taker, a hell-bent-for-leather kind of guy. But that in itself was okay too. She’d been the opposite. She’d always erred on the safe side. Maybe that was what had attracted her to him. He was the opposite of safe. When he went snowboarding, he was forever going out of bounds and taking risks. When he had his Harley—thankfully, she had talked him into selling that motorcycle soon after they married—it was the same thing, always going way too fast, never really caring if he lived or died, because he lived full-out in every moment. Whereas she sat at home, waiting, hoping he would return to her safe and whole. She never understood that adrenaline-junkie side to him. But it hadn’t mattered because she’d loved it anyway. She had loved it because she had loved him.

  That didn’t mean she liked it. She didn’t like the fact that, when he said he’d be home, he didn’t come home for a couple hours afterward, and she’d worry and fret before he’d walk in with a silly grin on his face, wrap her up tight in a hug and cuddle her close, and all her worries would go away.

  As she brooded on her memories, the men stepped in front of her. Kanen reached down a hand, and she let him help her to her feet. “Don’t you look pleased with yourself.”

  His grin slipped. “Let’s go up to the room.”

  She followed the men to the elevator. They didn’t say a word but neither did Kanen let go of her hand. It was hard to know what to think, but she trusted him. And, if he thought this was the best thing to do, then that was fine with her.

  At their suite, she walked straight in to find they had a huge suite, with a couch in the central living room area and two large bedrooms with two big beds in each off on opposite sides. She sat down at the far corner of the couch. “So will you talk now?”

  Kanen dropped a leather bag on the coffee table. “Do you recognize this bag?”

  She looked at it and frowned. “No, I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”

  He sat beside her on the couch and unzipped the bag.

  She leaned forward to see envelopes with photos of all different sizes inside. “What’s all this?”

  “What we found in Blake’s locker at the gym.”

  “Really? I don’t remember ever seeing this.”

  Kanen nodded. “That’s why I’m asking if you know the bag.”

  Her gaze zipped back to the bag itself. She couldn’t remember ever seeing something like this. As a rule Blake liked modern contemporary, manly looking stuff. And this was definitely masculine, but it was older looking. Oval with odd straps, it reminded her of a man’s manicure kit but on a much larger scale.

  “It’s not something he would normally go for,” she said slowly. “He had a matching set of luggage, and everything he had was pretty perfect, if you remember,” she said, sliding a look toward Kanen.

  “I was thinking that myself,” he said. “I’m not sure if this is what your captor was looking for or if it’s something else entirely.” He pulled out an envelope and very carefully upended all the photos onto the coffee table.

  She studied them, her mind not really comprehending. “Lots of these are of the same people,” she noted, reaching forward to group related photos together. Her face scrunched up when she saw several were of people having sex. “Good Lord, where did Blake get these, and why would anybody want them?” She shuffled through the very flagrant ones, quickly setting them aside. As she continued to sort the photos, she said, “Not only have I never seen these photos but I don’t know any of the people in them.”

  Unlike her, the men sat on the floor on the opposite side of the coffee table and carefully went through every photo, as if studying the facial features of each person. She watched their actions and knew they didn’t care about what activities the couples were involved in. The men were just trying to identify who was in the photos.

  “Do you know any of them?” she asked them. At their headshakes, she glanced at Kanen. “Do you know any of them?”

  “No, I don’t recognize any of these men.”

  Sectioning off another portion of the coffee table, he opened up a second envelope and carefully laid out those photos. This time, instead of dumping them, he pulled them out one by one and put them on the table.

  Once done, Kanen took the leather bag to the table and proceeded to empty all the other envelopes. He laid the contents on the empty surface, so they were all spread out, and so everybody could take a look. Trying to be as methodical as possible, Laysa systematically went through every one of the photos, wincing at some of the compromising positions. There were photos not only of men with women but also of men with men and some of women with women.

  She personally was of the opinion that everybody should have the right to be happy, and, as long as they weren’t hurting anyone else, their sexual preferences were their own. But what if these were prominent figures—and ones who hadn’t gone public about their lifestyle? Or what if they were married and their spouses had no idea?

  As she stared at the one in her hand, she realized what this was all about. “These are blackmail photos, aren’t they?”

  Kanen walked toward her. He took a look at the photo in her hand and shrugged. “It’s quite likely they all are, yes.”

  “You can’t think Blake had something to do with this, do you?” She hated the worried note that entered her voice because no way she would believe Blake was involved in any of this nastiness. Surely his best friend wouldn’t believe it of him either. Warmth filled her heart as Kanen shook his head.

  “I know Blake as well as you do,” he said softly. “This isn’t his style. However, it does make sense that maybe this is the material he was asked to keep.”

  “Do you think Blake knew what was in the bag?” She waved an arm over the photos. “Do you think he knew what he was asked to keep?” She couldn’t stop worrying about the fact that maybe Blake had compromised his own sense of honor by allowing this to come into his possession.

  “I guess I would have a hard time,” Taylor said, “if somebody I respected asked me to keep a bag for them. I’d want to know what was in it. And, once left in my possession, I would probably open it,” he admitted. “Because, as a general rule of thumb, someone you respect shouldn’t ask this of you.”

  She winced at that thought because she figured she would want to know too. “Blake might have asked,” she said cautiously. “He might have accepted the man’s version of what was in here.”

  “How do the dollar bills and the combination numbers fit in with this from Blake’s point of view?” Nelson wondered out loud.

  “Blake was a lover of all things puzzles,” Laysa said. “He loved to hide things—my anniversary present, birthday gift, an extra Christmas surprise—then give me clues to find them.”

  “He certainly did like to make things convoluted,” Kanen agreed. “He used to write down clues for where to meet him later in the day, like is done for scavenger hunts, leading us on a merry chase.”

  “Maybe Blake was following instructions himself. Maybe he felt he needed to be cautious—maybe thinking his friend was in trouble?” Nelson theorized.

  Kanen stared off in the distance.

  She studied Kanen’s face, worried that all of this would change his impression of his best friend. Impulsively she said, “I don’t think Blake had anything to do with it.”

  Surprised, Kanen turned to look at her, saying, “I don’t think he had anything to do with the blackmail, no. Was this just some joke, some game? I don’t know. I mean, if you consider how Blake and I talked all the time, who else did he talk to? Can you think of anyone who’d know him this well?”

  She shook her head. “No one. And I certainly didn’t recognize my captor’s physique or voice.”

  “But Blake had to have another best buddy, another best friend,” Taylor said. “No way he couldn’t have bonded in the navy, with the teams and the closeness of the units. Once he left the navy, especially moving to England, it must have deprived him of many of those friends. He had to make new ones. Because you don’t store
something like this for somebody who wasn’t a friend. If Kanen had called Blake and had asked him to do something like this, Blake would have done it in a heartbeat. And vice versa.”

  “But, if he’d been in any kind of trouble, he would have told me before it came to this,” Kanen said. “And that’s the interesting point here. Because we were such good friends, Blake would have come to me if there was a problem.”

  “So, from that, we can gather this wasn’t a problem for Blake,” Nelson said. “And the guy who owned these wasn’t as good a friend as you were.”

  “So we’re looking for somebody who was a good friend but not a best friend,” Taylor said. He twisted to look at Laysa. “What about at Blake’s work? Was he close to somebody there?”

  She sank into the corner of the couch, a little more unnerved at the thought of somebody in Blake’s life who she didn’t know about. Of course he had had friends, but she thought she knew everyone in his immediate circle. “He didn’t talk about work much. At the time I never really worried about it. After he left the navy, he wanted to leave the States and for some reason chose to go into sales in the medical equipment field. Strictly in-house, no traveling. Surprised me that he wanted office work. I know he was constantly busy with stacks of files and always trying to drum up more sales. Like some telemarketer salesman.

  “I didn’t understand that choice, but I wanted Blake to be happy and to spend my life with him. So, of course, we came here. But I don’t remember him ever talking about anybody more than once. A couple people in the office he didn’t like. A couple people in the office he thought were useless. A couple people had come and gone over the years who he had no appreciation for. One guy he really did like, but he moved away about two years ago.”

  “Do you remember what his name was?”

  She looked up at Kanen and shook her head. “No, I don’t. I’m not sure I ever knew it. Blake just came home one day pretty upset because the only decent person in the office had just quit. He did go out and meet him for a beer a couple weeks later. As far as I know, the guy left the country.” She tried to recall the memories from way back when. “It was actually three years ago now, but maybe he returned to the US.” Laysa sagged in place as she contemplated what that could mean. “But it’s not as if we can say he’s the guy who invaded my home and beat me up.”