Escape with a Hot SEAL

by Cat Johnson

  The fact they came armed with nothing but Rocky’s granddad’s rifles and were staying at his family’s cabin helped the ruse that they were just three normal untrained civilian guys hanging out.

  Confident they’d be able to bullshit their way out of this situation Thom maintained his calm . . . until a dozen more men showed up, these kitted out as well if not better than their ghillie-suited friends, right down to the Kevlar vests and KA-BAR knives.

  “Shit,” Rocky said on a breath.

  Thom couldn’t agree more. This might not be as easy to get out of as he’d anticipated, even for them.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Have you heard from Thom today?” Ginny asked her soon-to-be mother-in-law.

  “Not today, no. Actually, not since he left for his boys’ trip. Is everything all right?”

  “I guess so. It’s just that when he called me on the way to the cabin yesterday we got cut off and he never called back.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about. You said he’s somewhere near the Poconos?” Thom’s mother asked.

  “Yes.”

  “We have friends who go skiing in that area every year and they say there’s terrible cell service.” The older woman leaned forward. “I bet that’s why these men like their hunting cabins in the mountains so much. They have a good excuse to not answer their phones when their wives call.”

  Ginny liked the idea that she’d be one of those wives in less than twenty-four hours once she and Thom officially said I do.

  She smiled. “You’re right. The connection was terrible while he was able to talk to me. He did say they would be home tonight, though I’m not sure what time.”

  He’d better not be too late or he’d be tired for the wedding in the morning.

  Directly on the heels of that thought Ginny remembered Thom telling her how little sleep he and the team usually got and how they’d work what he called vampire hours. She supposed she couldn’t expect him to be tucked in bed at nine p.m. like she’d be tonight so she wouldn’t look tired in the wedding pictures.

  “If they’re having a good time, I imagine they’ll stay as late as they can. Boys will be boys and he and his friends on the team get so little time off, they’ll want to take advantage of every minute.”

  “Probably,” Ginny agreed.

  It was hard to be worried around Thom’s mother. The woman was perpetually like a ray of sunshine. She brightened everything she touched.

  “You do realize if it rains the reception will be ruined because we didn’t rent a tent.” Ginny’s mother, on the other hand, was the polar opposite of Thom’s mom. Today, she’d chosen to be the voice of gloom and doom regarding the weather as she swept into the dining room from the adjoining kitchen.

  “Our next door neighbor owns a couple of those little blue pop-up canopy things,” Thom’s mother offered. “I’ll call and ask if we can borrow them, just in case of rain. We probably should anyway. We can set them up to keep the sun off the food and drink tables. The weather channel said it’s going to be a beautiful day.”

  Ginny’s mom let out a huff as she sat. “When has the weather man ever been right?”

  Molly, seated between the two mothers at the dining room table, said, “Rain or shine, I’m sure the tents will come in handy. We should definitely try to borrow them.”

  It was like watching a ping pong match. The pessimist versus the optimist and Molly was the referee. Ginny would be amused if it weren’t her wedding day they were talking about.

  She glanced down at the table, spread with lists and response cards from the guests, which were still trickling in even with the wedding day so close. That was to be expected she supposed since, out of necessity, she’d sent the invitations out a bit later than popular convention dictated she should.

  Her mother sat and reached for one of the lists. Beneath it Ginny spied an unopened envelope. She reached for it and tore it open, sighing when she didn’t recognize the name.

  “Who’s that from?” her mother asked.

  “Jack and Evelyn.” Ginny squinted at the scribble on the card. “Some last name I can’t read.”

  “Jack and Evelyn Jacobson. They’re on our side,” Thom’s mother supplied. “Old friends of the family. I hope it’s okay I invited them. You’d given me those invitations to mail out to our list.”

  She had misinterpreted Ginny’s disappointment. It had nothing to do with who Thom’s family had invited and everything to do with who Ginny herself had mailed one last minute invitation to.

  Ginny waved aside her concern. “No. Of course. It’s fine. You can invite whoever you want.”

  There was one reply she was waiting for specifically, but so far it hadn’t arrived.

  She drew in a breath and decided the best way to take her mind off everything weighing on it was to keep busy. “So, who’s ready to tie some birdseed sachets?”

  CHAPTER 19

  “I’m gonna ask you again. Who. Are. You!” The round-faced man, unidentifiable under the amount of camo grease paint he’d smeared on himself, asked the question with such fervor he spit at Rocky in the process.

  Since all three of them had their hands bound behind their backs with plastic zip ties, which their captors had strangely had on hand in bulk, there wasn’t much Rocky could do to defend himself from the flying splatter of spittle. He pulled his head back and narrowed his eyes against the saliva attack.

  With his nose still wrinkled in distaste, Rocky answered for the second time. “I told you. My last name is Mangiano. My family owns the cabin not even a mile from here. If you’d check it out, you’ll see. My pickup truck’s parked there now. Go look at the name on the registration. Or better yet, call my father in New Jersey. Or my uncle. They’ll—”

  “Shut up!”

  Rocky frowned. “Which do you want me to do? Answer your questions or shut up?”

  Thom pressed his lips together, wondering if Rocky’s tactic to antagonize the men holding them at gunpoint while their hands were bound was a wise one.

  He shot Brody a glance. Brody’s gaze shifted sideways to meet Thom’s as he lifted an eyebrow.

  They’d already been frisked and their meager stash of weapons as well as their cell phones taken from them.

  Now they sat on three wooden chairs around a small square table inside a plywood building that smelled of cigarette smoke and body odor intermingled with burnt bacon.

  It was a pretty nauseating combination. But no more nauseating than the fact they’d let themselves stumble right into the hands of these military wannabes.

  And that’s what they had to be—men playing war because it was becoming apparent these guys weren’t active military or even veterans. They seemed more like a group of guys who’d assembled themselves to form some sort of self-appointed citizens militia.

  What Thom hadn’t decided yet was if they were dangerous. Were they armed to the teeth in some misguided effort to defend the United States, or did they have a different, more damaging and far more dangerous agenda in mind?

  Terrorists didn’t have to look or sound like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Thom knew they could just as easily be a blonde haired, blue-eyed guy who goes by the name of Bubba, or possibly Junior.

  Meanwhile, while they worked on figuring a way out of this mess, Thom really wished Rocky would pocket his New Jersey attitude and play nice with the homegrown terrorists.

  “You!” The apparent leader of this motley crew had obviously had enough of Rocky and his smart ass attitude.

  He moved to stand in front of Brody, who was staring down at the floor refusing to make eye contact with him.

  The man kicked Brody’s boot. Only then did Brody raise his eyes and answer, in his slowest southern drawl, “Uh, yeah?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Brody frowned. “You brought me here.”

  The man narrowed his eyes. “I meant what were you doing here in the woods?”

  “Well, I was hoping to get drunk and shoot up some
shit.”

  Thom couldn’t hide the twitch of his lips at the response from Brody, cool as his southern grandmother’s cucumber sandwiches in spite of this volatile situation. What struck Thom as the funniest part was that Brody was telling the absolute truth.

  “What the fuck are you smiling at?” The man leaned in close to Thom as he spoke, thereby blowing a cloud of breath so bad it should have been visible directly into his face.

  “I wasn’t aware I was smiling.”

  “How about you try telling me what you’re doing here?”

  “Exactly like he said. We came to drink and shoot. Just like you guys.” Thom tipped his head toward the two guards in the room with them. “Just like you, we’re up here to shoot some guns so why don’t you just let us go?”

  It was a shot in the dark, but hell, it was worth a try.

  One of the guards let out a pfft. “With those guns you had on you? Fuck no, you’re not just like us. This is a gun.” He shook his weapon at Thom. “Those things you had are just . . . antiques.”

  The other guy chortled in agreement. “Yeah, they belong in a museum.”

  One scathing glare from their not-so-esteemed leader silenced the two guards before he turned back to Thom. “If that’s true, then why the fuck are you here in my camp making me look at your ugly faces?”

  Thom flashed back to BUD/S when the instructors used to yell insults at the training class while trying to get them to ring out. It hadn’t worked then and it wasn’t going to work now.

  Hell, here he was warm and dry and was operating on a full night’s sleep. That right there were just three things he hadn’t had benefit of during Hell Week and he hadn’t quit then. All three of them seated here had made it through then. They’d make it through now.

  Meanwhile they were still awaiting Thom’s answer in this circular line of questioning that never went anywhere. “Because you’re keeping us here?”

  The oversized man narrowed his eyes and Thom braced himself. He wouldn’t put it past these guys to take a swing at him even if his hands were tied.

  Of course that didn’t mean he couldn’t defend himself. The idiots had left their feet unbound and hadn’t even tied them to the chair.

  They had bound their hands behind their back rather than in front but that just made the confines more uncomfortable not more secure.

  The three of them had been through the Navy’s SERE training—more than once. Okay, so today they’d obviously failed at the evasion part of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape class, but they’d make up for it in the escape portion.

  Thom knew Brody and Rocky would be taking in the details, observing their surroundings and weighing the options, just waiting for an opportunity, just like he was.

  They were a team. Training together. Fighting together. He didn’t need words to know what they were thinking.

  “Do you really expect me to believe you three,” the man scowled as he waggled his finger back and forth between them, “are just shooting buddies?”

  Thom tipped his head in a nod. “Yes.”

  “Then tell me this, how come he sounds like a redneck, he sounds like a mobster and you sound like you went to Harvard?” He tipped his head to Brody and Rocky in turn before zeroing in on Thom.

  As dumb as he looked, he’d still picked up on the fact the three of them were from three different states in three distinct parts of the country—the deep south, New England and New Jersey.

  The military brought together and made lifelong friends out of people from all over the country, but Thom sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Bubba here that.

  Their training was their ace in the hole. Thom didn’t want their captors to know he and the guys had the skills to break out of there if these men were dumb enough to leave them unguarded for even a moment.

  Besides that, telling yahoos like these guys he was military would just be asking for trouble. They’d no doubt feel they had something to prove. Would want to show off by beating the big bad Navy SEALs.

  Nope. Thom wasn’t about to tell the truth this time, but he figured he didn’t have to because there was another place that brought together people from disparate backgrounds and locations and it would be just as believable as the truth.

  “We all went to college together.” He kept the lie short and sweet. No need to elaborate where or when if they didn’t ask and most likely, they wouldn’t ask.

  The man’s face contorted, making it even uglier than usual as he sneered. “College boys. That figures. Always sticking their noses where they don’t belong—”

  A man entered the cabin. “Ray.”

  Thom made a mental note of the man’s name as his buddy interrupted him.

  “What!”

  “We sent a recon team out to check on the perimeter.” The new arrival tried his best to give an official sounding report.

  “And?” Ray asked.

  “Nothing. They didn’t see anything.”

  “Then why the hell are you bothering me?”

  “Um, because you said you wanted a report.”

  The two formerly silent guards chuckled. They’d been manning the corners of the approximate ten by twelve foot room with weapons more suited for long range shooting, not close quarter combat.

  In this tight space, those long barrels were going to do nothing but get in the way and stop them from being able to take a shot, and that’s exactly what Thom was going to use to his advantage if given the opportunity.

  Ray, obviously thinking he was the leader of this weird cult of men playing war, shook his head. He turned his back on the new man, who took a solid minute before he figured out he had been dismissed. As Ray ignored him, he stood there and shuffled from one foot to the other until he finally took the hint and left.

  Thom was waiting for Ray’s next move, so he could decide his, when the sound of the crack of a rifle shot brought all of their heads up.

  “Who the fuck is that shooting? I suspended all range practice until we straighten this shit out.” Ray spun to stride toward the door.

  Thom didn’t know, but since the shot had drawn Ray and the two guards all outside at once, he had to think he liked the new odds of them getting out of there sooner rather than later.

  “What the fuck are you two idiots doing out here? Get back in there and watch them!”

  Or, maybe not . . .

  Thom heard Brody sigh and Rocky let out a low curse, and silently agreed with both of them.

  CHAPTER 20

  Clad in a robe over her pajamas, Molly checked her cell phone. “Twelve hours from now you’re supposed to be saying your vows.”

  “I know.” Ginny didn’t miss the words supposed to be in Molly’s announcement.

  She’d thought having Molly spend the night at her place the night before the wedding would keep her calm.

  It hadn’t worked out that way. This adult sleepover for her and her maid of honor had done nothing but stress Ginny out.

  Molly obsessively monitored the time and announced it as regularly as Big Ben. Ginny was ready to steal Molly’s phone and hide it so she’d at least have to go to the kitchen to look at the time on the microwave if she wanted to announce it.

  Ginny stifled a sigh. Molly meant well. She knew that. But Ginny didn’t have the strength to deal with both the complete lack of communication from Thom since he’d left and her maid of honor repeatedly reminding her about how close the wedding was while her groom was still missing.

  She should have spent tonight alone. All she wanted to do was go to bed—not that she’d be able to sleep. Not until she knew Thom was safely back from the cabin and at his parents’ house.

  Molly drew in a breath. “And remember we’re going to have to get to the church early to take pictures. That’s in exactly eleven hours.”

  “I know,” Ginny repeated.

  Pictures. She was going to look like crap in the photos, with big dark circles under her eyes that even every product on the shelves in Sephora wouldn’t be ab
le to camouflage.

  It figured that the one tradition Ginny hadn’t fought her mother on, the one she’d given in to whole heartedly, was hiring a professional photographer for their special day.

  Now she only hoped there’d be a groom to stand next to her in the photos.

  Molly continued to watch Ginny too intensely for her to be able to relax. “Aren’t you worried you haven’t heard from him? That he’s not back yet?” Molly asked.

  “No. I’m sure they just lost track of time.” Ginny waved away her friends concern, delivering the lie with as much conviction as she could muster.

  The truth was she had passed worry quite a while ago. It had hit her right after mild concern and just before the heart pounding panic she was experiencing now. The tight knot formed again in her belly and this time spread, moving up into her chest.

  She tried to talk herself down from the ledge one more time, like she’d been doing for most of the evening. If they’d left after dinner at seven or even eight they wouldn’t get home until after ten or eleven. But by now they should have good enough cell phone signal to call her . . . if their phones weren’t all dead.

  Of course! That had to be it. They were men. Men never remembered details like packing a charger. And it would have to be a car charger too since Thom had joked before he left how they’d be roughing it because the cabin had no electricity.

  So they could easily be on the way back right now and just not able to call or text because all of their batteries were dead.

  Maybe he was already back at his parents’ house and hadn’t texted or called because it was so late and he didn’t want to wake her on the night before the wedding.

  She felt moderately better with her new excuse for the lack of communications. Good enough to take a sip of the herbal tea Molly had made for her—her friend’s attempt at calming her, when just not bringing up the subject that had upset her in the first place would have worked much better than the Sleepy Time Tea.

  Ginny glanced up to find Molly watching her with that look again. The look that said her best friend thought she was being delusional.