SEAL My Home: Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3, Book 2 (SEAL Brotherhood Series 9)

by Hamilton, Sharon

  She glared at him and then heard the click of the computer’s camera.

  “That will do nicely.” He tapped keys, and she heard the email being sent.

  “Hopefully, it will not be the last picture he sees of you, alive.”

  He was a snake. He was worse than a snake. He had been bent, twisted, and had gone over the edge of that wall of no return. Megan could see there was no reasoning with him. No explaining, pleading. Any energy she’d give him, her emotional pain, or her bright hope for a release from this bondage, he’d feed on. His hatred for life colored everything he did. It made him feign sweetness when he was downright evil.

  Thinking about how Rory would go about this, she knew he’d make a note of his vulnerability. Hard to do since the man was in complete control, unless—

  “Are these boys your sons you are training?”

  He hadn’t expected her question. His left eye ticked just slightly. She’d found a scab. She began to put her fingernail under one of the edges.

  “Where are your sons?”

  “I have no children. No wife.”

  “But you are the father to these boys. You train them. They do your bidding.”

  “It is our cause.”

  “You train them to kill themselves, too?”

  “If necessary.” He presented the keyboard with an almost delicate smile. His fingers were refined. He had his nails buffed on a regular basis. The cologne he wore smelled expensive, exotic, probably coming from Milan or Paris. “Now you will type the letter to your young beau. I want this to come from you.”

  “And what is it you want me to say?” She rubbed her cheek with the back of one of her secured hands, her face so swollen it was pulling her upper lip into a right-sided grimace. Her eye stung, which probably meant she had a blood clot there. She had to scoot forward to reach the keyboard since he wouldn’t be kneeling on the mattress. She wondered how he would survive in a cave, living in a bombed out building, doing hand-to-hand combat like Rory had. He’d worry about things like soiling his clothes. He wasn’t a believer. He was an opportunist.

  And his vulnerability was that he didn’t expect she could beat him. She had the nail in the wooden plank that could take out one of his eyes, perhaps go straight to his brain, but she doubted it was big enough. She had a sharp piece of glass that could slice across his neck. All she needed was the time and the opportunity.

  “Dear Rory.” He pointed to the keyboard.

  She didn’t try very hard to type the correct keys. “All I get is garbage.” She rolled her back. “I can’t do it.” She scooted back toward the wall.

  The man grabbed one of her wrists, which brought both of her arms forward nearly touching his knees. He yanked upward and she screamed as loud as she could. The echo cast out over the inlet, across the water. She could hear the results of her sound rolling and crashing against rundown buildings outside. With his other hand, he tried to secure the computer but it crashed to the ground.

  “No one can hear you,” he spat. He was holding her arms up, like pulling on a dog’s collar by the leash.

  The door opened and three heads popped through the frame. One of them was the young man from the yoga class.

  If she’d had the glass in her hand, it would have been the perfect opportunity. He turned his head, exposing his jugular vein and shouted, “Out! Leave us!”

  The two younger men glanced up at the yoga student, who seemed to take pleasure in the man’s predicament.

  “Tariq, you need some assistance?”

  She noticed the young man didn’t seem to care he had given away his boss’s real name. Tariq’s murderous expression told her he did. His arms shook, and Megan could nearly hear the pulsing of the large blue vein cording down to his clavicle.

  The student lowered his eyes and backed away, closing the door quickly.

  Then Tariq’s head whipped around, his eyes piercing her with all the hatred in his soul. With his lips drawn up in a snarl, he threw Megan back against the wall, nearly knocking the air out of her. Her head hit the side of the metal building with a boom, sending particles of dust falling from the second story above. What he didn’t hear was the delicious crunch of glass under the mattress as her body fell back into sitting position. She hoped she might have a chard, some piece of the thick brown bottle large enough to defend herself if she had the chance.

  The man she now knew was Tariq ran his fingers through his hair, pulled down the cuffs of his now-soiled sleeves and brushed the front of his chest with the his palms in a downward sweeping motion.

  Like a cat, he walked carefully over to the computer and examined it, hitting the spacebar several times.

  Megan hoped the screen had cracked or something internally had shaken loose, but the little laptop lit up like a neon sign in the darkened room. He grabbed the back of the metal chair he’d been sitting on earlier, scooting it as close to her as he could, even a few inches closer than before, the legs making divots in the edge of the dirty pad. He placed his still perfect shoes over the blue mattress ticking and sat, placing the laptop once more on his thighs.

  “Again. We will attempt to write another letter to your Mr. Kennedy,” he said as he pointed to the keyboard. “You will tell him he comes alone with the money. I will call him when the arrangements are made.”

  Megan leaned forward and nodded, extending her arms and studying the screen. There had been a message from Rory’s cell he hadn’t seen. She pushed on the up arrow twice with her little finger, and instead of writing on the box he’d provided her, to send Rory a return message she knew would go directly to his cell.

  In the dialog box she typed clumsily while she dictated, “Bring the money, and come alone. He will call you when the arrangements are made.” She placed her finger over the send button, but Tariq shook his head and leaned over to double check her work. She brought her hands down on the right side of her thigh, moving her shoulder like it pained her. It wasn’t hard to fake.

  While reading over the notation upside down, she looked for some change in his eyes to indicate he’d caught on to what she’d done, but there was none. He was concentrating on hitting the return button with his forefinger, an action she had anticipated. She twisted her body to the right, reached behind her, grabbed whatever she could get of the neck of the beer bottle, jabbed the jagged end under his jaw, into the soft tissues and back against his windpipe, and ripped it across his throat and back toward her.

  Tariq arched backward, his eyes wide in shock, as he held his throat with both hands, attempting to stop the blood that was spurting over both of them. In his nearly upward gaze, the angle of his face was perfect. With the strength of both hands, clutching the only smooth end of the bottle, she jammed the bloody jagged edge into his right eye with all the force she could muster.

  He sputtered. Trying to scream but unable to do anything but send blood spray up into the room. Droplets of his red elixir rained down on Megan like a baptism. Tariq looked at her as he lost consciousness and collapsed forward onto her.

  She watched the door as her fingers searched Tariq’s trousers for a knife, and she was rewarded when she found a long-bladed pocketknife. She opened it, finding the object was curved like a scimitar. She pushed him aside and worked on the cording, slicing herself in the process but not causing a deep wound. Finally, the yellow material fell open and she was able to give her wrists the freedom they’d needed.

  The knife quickly sliced through the duct tape at her ankles, and this tiny victory gave her hope. Her hands were shaking. Her heart was pounding in her chest like a galloping horse.

  She repositioned the body so his partners might think he’d fallen asleep, drawing his legs up to his chest, facing the back wall, bending his knees and removing his shoes, setting them aside like he’d done it on purpose. She was careful to keep him in the center of the dirty mattress so the blood still exiting his body soaked in without running out onto the floor.

  She kept his knife, tucking it into the front pocke
t of her slacks, picked up the computer and headed for the window.

  The broken glass near the wall was a problem for her feet, but she dared not stop and pick out the new crystals embedded in her soles. She didn’t have time to brush them aside, so placed the computer under her arm, stepped firmly onto the littered ground so as not to make noise and hoisted one leg over the windowsill and outside onto caked dirt. Taking one last look at the still-closed door, she clutched the laptop, withdrew her other leg from her dungeon, and ran as fast as she could in the direction she smelled smoke. She pushed aside the pain of window glass shooting into her flesh as being completely irrelevant.

  Smoke means home. Smoke means people. Smoke means freedom. Safety.

  A future.

  Chapter 43

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  Rory had been scrambling, swearing under his breath, trying to stay calm so he could focus, silently searching the debris and abandoned vehicles in the marshes. They’d left Corrigan with the computer and a small Invisio earpiece so he could message them in case they got further instructions from Tariq.

  They all knew she was very close, but didn’t know if she was in a shed, a vehicle, or a crumbling warehouse. There were easily thirty such structures littered over the wet and soggy terrain, and they had to quickly and silently search every one. The Team had been messaging each other, operating in a wedge formation as they moved away from the inlet toward the row of concrete freeway columns.

  He was looking for a kill today, and if it meant his career, no matter if Megan was dead or alive, he would kill the sons of bitches who’d kidnapped her, and then he intended to surrender and face the consequences. He would make them pay for preying on and hiding behind innocents so they could play their dirty little game.

  When he heard the scream echo throughout the canyon, his heart leapt out of his chest because he knew that voice was Megan’s. He stopped at the back of the house he and T.J. were searching and scanned the direction the sound came from.

  “You hear that?” T.J. asked.

  Rory was still listening for more noise, so didn’t verbally answer, but nodded his head. Soon Coop was behind them.

  “Came from over there. Maybe the other side of the inlet,” Coop whispered.

  To a non-trained eye, they might have looked like seriously macho duck hunters, with their H&Ks mounted with scopes that could flip IFR, identical dark shades that wrapped around their eyes, equipment backpacks, goggles, gloves and hats turned backwards—except for Fredo, who had a hard time getting his hair into anything but a scrunchie.

  All nine in the squad spread out and darted behind various objects like abandoned refrigerators, rusted pickups with their hoods raised, a windowless and wheel-less Volkswagen bug, some large pampas plumes and several rusted oil barrels that were still smoking in the morning mist.

  Rory knew there was a homeless population that liked to hang out in the abandoned buildings and gutted cars. Somewhere a small trickle of water was leaking from a broken water pipe. He knew a young Hispanic family used part of an abandoned house’s kitchen to make homemade tortillas and tamales cooked over a wood fire.

  The SEALs traveled quietly, dodging an occasional body sleeping in a shabby sleeping bag. The place smelled horrible, Rory thought, a combination of brackish water, fish heads, and human waste of all kinds. Beer cans and cheap wine bottles littered the entire arena. He took extra care not to injure himself on the filthy metal and glass objects that poked from the steaming ground like grave markers.

  His hip felt pretty good now that he thought about it. He hadn’t noticed any pain since the morning cup of coffee as they headed in this direction.

  He looked above him at the overpass carrying traffic down off the skyway into the bowels of the seedy part of the city. Maybe the scream had come from a car’s open window, he wondered.

  A large bonfire was still blazing, sending large white and grey plumes up into the sky a couple hundred yards to his left, closer toward the dockyard. He saw several small brown bodies huddled in a semicircle around its heat. Heard the sound of a bottle being broken, coughing and a couple of dogs barking, warning the group of the SEAL’s proximity. He heard what sounded like another dog running through the mud a hundred yards beyond.

  Though someone stood up, Rory knew neither group was any threat to each other. The man sat down and there was a peel of laughter and more coughing.

  As they rounded one of a set of six small metal warehouses, they came upon three vehicles that didn’t look like they belonged in the area. One was a BMW, one a brand new Buick compact, and the other was a fairly new Prius with temporary plates.

  Tyler threw a rock at the back of Kyle’s thigh and pointed to a window with the glass blown out of it on the backside of the building. Kyle looked inside and then motioned for Rory.

  He found himself swallowing hard, the back of his tongue and throat suddenly parched, not being sure what he’d find there.

  A body lay prone on the mattress as if sleeping. A man in western garb with a nice pair of slacks and a long-sleeved, apparently starched, white shirt. Rory thought he might be some kind of hostage. Kyle looked up at him and Rory shook his head. Megan was so small, if this man were covering her, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell. And they couldn’t determine if he was asleep or dead. Or if he had someone dead or asleep beneath him.

  Tyler pointed to his boots and that was when Rory saw his shoes neatly stowed at the foot of the mattress. Not knowing if Megan was sharing the mattress with this man still worried him, but somehow he couldn’t believe that could have happened. The body inside appeared not to be breathing.

  Fredo held up five fingers and tossed a percussion bomb into the room with a five-second delay. As the flash went off, T.J. and Brady broke down the front door, which literally shattered under their boots. Kyle and Tyler covered the doorway coming from the front of the warehouse. The door flew open and both SEALs managed to hit three young men in the shins with several rounds. Their howls as they rolled around the floor, holding their shattered lower leg bones pierced the canyon. It smelled like hell, looked like an evil painting of discord and destruction, and now with their screams it sounded like hell.

  Rory could hear T.J.’s distinctive swearing, which was louder than the sound of the BMW roaring to life. A fourth assailant had found an exit from the building, or perhaps was already outside and had taken off in one of the vehicles. Kyle was immediately on the phone, calling Collins and getting local law enforcement involved.

  “I can get him, Kyle,” T.J. hollered, but Kyle shook his head and continued his phone conversation. Rory searched the front room frantically without finding any trace of Megan.

  Until he found her purse. Drops of dark brown blood dotted one side of the purse. The handles were still damp with fresh blood. Her wallet, her cell phone and keys were still inside. He found himself fingering the single tube of red lipstick. He dropped the purse and ran to the adjoining room.

  Cooper was attending to the man. Brady stood behind Rory, who now inched forward. Tyler had stepped through the window and watched as Cooper rolled him over onto his back. Nothing but a bloody, filthy mattress was underneath him.

  Fredo swore in Spanish and crossed himself. The broken end of a beer bottle pierced Tariq’s skull. It had impaled him in his right eye socket. Underneath his jaw flaps of bloody muscle hung from a deep gash, probably made by the same object.

  “Son of a bitch,” T.J. swore.

  Rory was suddenly dizzy. He nearly fell backward, but Brady collected him under the armpits. He recognized the signs of shock. His clammy lips turned up in a half smile, his eyes melting from tears which came pouring out as he sobbed.

  “She’s—she’s beautiful. Look what she did. Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” Rory sobbed.

  Tyler and Brady scrunched up their noses and placed their hands on their hips.

  “But where the fuck is she?” T.J. asked.

  Tyler ran to the window ledge, searching
outside and examining the glass at the floor. “Blood all over here. She’s probably out there.” He pointed to the graveyard of broken things. “Judging from the amount of blood, she won’t get far.”

  Rory whipped past Tyler, nearly toppling the man, struggling to get his frame through the window opening. He heard someone chuckling behind him, but he was far from caring. He heard Fredo make a comment he didn’t have time to stop and appreciate fully.

  “Man. Those two get married? Remind me not to get that bitch knives for a wedding present. She gonna go all Bobbitt on him if she gets pissed.”

  Chapter 44

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  Megan was free at last, free to run with the wind in her face. Her arms swung free. Her lungs took in the salty air. She ran barefoot through puddles, splashing mud up on to her pant legs. The beautiful grey and white smoke of the bonfire curling up into the blue San Diego sky beckoned her like a wizard’s bony hand. Sea birds circled and bobbed, playing with dangling pieces of white and brown fast food wrappers.

  She ran past a dented turquoise refrigerator and a flattened red bicycle. A fifties-style pickup truck with a chalky green patina lay on its side. Inside an abandoned car nearby the opened trunk revealed a man sleeping, curled in a torn navy blue comforter, his little dog asleep at his feet.

  Someone had piled boxes, newspapers, and magazines in an old grocery cart which was stuck in the mud, a torn Chinese umbrella attached to the handle. As she drew close to that graceful plume and the semicircle of old men warming themselves by the fire, she called out.

  “Hello! Can you help me?” she rasped desperately into the morning fog, waving one arm above her head, still clutching the computer with her other. Her voice echoed across the rust and green grasses of the salt marsh. A hightop red canvas tennis shoe with no laces sat atop a cracked porcelain toilet bowl.

  Just as she came upon them, she heard a small explosion and the report of automatic gunfire coming from behind her.