Hot SEALs: Love & Lagers (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by Liz Crowe

  “We’re dealing with a perp who’s got balls and connections and more money than God. That more money than God thing is probably what he’s using to get people to talk.” Owen stared down at his phone, willing her to message him as he’d been doing for a solid week. Of course, now the stakes were much higher. “Tell me again how you found out he had her.”

  Zane heaved a sigh. “I got a call from a strange number. I answered it. Some guy claiming to be Richard Case said he had his wife and he would be keeping his wife and that I could stop worrying about his wife because it was his job to take care of her. Then he hung up.” Zane looked over at Jon.

  “I got the same call,” Jon declared. He leaned his elbows on the high counter between the reception area and Lainey’s workstation. “Only he told me to tell you that if she chose not to be with him, that is, if she chose you over him, he’d make sure you never saw her alive again.” Jon shook his head. “I’d just got back from Italy and was so jet lagged, I didn’t know if I was dreaming or what. At least until this knucklehead called me in a total panic.”

  Zane glared at his friend then trained his gaze on Owen. “Richard Case is her husband? Christ in a sidcar. That’s a real wrinkle.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Owen admitted as he fired up his geo tracker. It was a waste, he knew. There was no way Lainey had managed to have her work phone on her when the guy showed up at Zane’s to snatch her. Besides, what was she going to say to him? ‘Hang on a sec, psycho killer hubby, while I get my work phone, so my new squeeze can find me, kill you, and save the day?’

  He sighed and leaned back, trying to force his spinning brain to concentrate on a solution. At that moment, his phone buzzed deep down in his pocket. He scrambled for it, stared at the screen, and then turned it to show the number to Zane. Zane nodded and mouthed, “Same number.”

  Owen pointed to his computer and stood. Zane opened the tracer app for their company lines and gave him a thumbs-up. He put the device to his ear. “If this is who I think it is I hope you have your affairs in order because I am going to find you and separate your head from your worthless body very soon.”

  A low chuckle sent a thrill of fury down Owen’s spine. “Right, right. You’re the hero. I almost forgot.” Richard Case’s voice was nondescript if a little high pitched for a man. “I wanted to make sure you heard this directly from me, Owen Taylor.”

  Owen clenched his fist, pressed it against the drywall, and took a deep breath. Negotiation with assholes had never been his strong suit. He preferred to fire his weapon and let the suits sort out the rest. He felt Jon’s hand on his shoulder. Instead of pissing him off, the touch did calm him enough to answer. “What is it, Richard? I’m pretty busy over here, packing my bag full of guns and knives. I’ve got an appointment with a loser asshole who hurts women for fun, see, and I don’t wanna be late.”

  “I’ll make sure my wife forgets you, Taylor. I’ll be putting you right out of her pretty little head. She has such a pretty little head, doesn’t she? And those lips. And that rack.” The low, almost cartoonish, evil chuckle forced Owen to close his eyes. “Ah, such a beauty. And wasted these past few years—but most especially this past week or so. Wasted on you. Oh, wait, here she is now. Hon? Sweetie? Come on over here and say goodbye to your hero.”

  Owen stood up straighter and stared at Zane who was frantically stabbing at the keyboard, trying to get a location. He marched over and glared at the screen and almost missed the soft sniffle.

  Almost.

  “Lainey,” he croaked out, stuffing his fingertip in his other ear so he could hear her. “Lainey. Are you all right? Is he hurting you? Can you tell me—”

  “Don’t try to find me. I’m leaving with Richard. He’s my husband, and it’s for the best.” Her cadence was weird, and she sounded muffled. “Don’t, Owen. Please. Forty-five fifty-one,” she whispered.

  “What?” He ran out into the hall so he could hear better. “Forty-five fifty-one what?”

  “Don’t try to find me,” she said, then ended the call.

  “I got it,” Zane said. “There.” He pointed at the screen, which showed a red flag waving on a street grid.

  “Let’s go,” Jon said, stuffing his Glock into a shoulder holster and handing one to Owen. “We’ll get her back. I swear it.”

  Owen nodded and followed the men to Jon’s truck. After about ten minutes spent speeding through the city, they screeched up to a line of busted former payphones beside a line of low-rent beach houses. The seagulls swooped and screeched above them as they tried each dangling handset, only to find them all dead. Owen glared around, desperate for something. When he spotted the number 4551 painted on the curb outside an old brick building, his heart nearly stopped.

  “There,” he said, pointing with a steady finger before pulling his weapon out and marching across the street.

  “Wait,” Jon said, following him and dragging him into an alley between the 4551 building which looked to be half meth lab, half abandoned apartment building, and a bombed out one story structure that was probably at one time a gas station. If he didn’t know better, Owen would swear he’d been dropped straight back into the hellish nightmare of street battle in the Middle East. “Let’s watch the building. See if anyone comes out.” Jon held up his phone that had a picture of Richard Case from some magazine cover or another, looking smug and rich and asshole-ish. “This guy?” He shook his head. “Wow. How we didn’t discover that about her when we did the background check, I have no idea.”

  “She’s good,” Zane said, admiration clear in his voice. “Almost as good as our token Marine here. Think Lainey’s her real name?”

  Owen ignored them both and stared at the front door of the brick building, willing the fucker to emerge so he could walk up to him and blow his brains out all over the sidewalk by way of “negotiation.”

  They waited for almost two hours, but no one came or went from building forty-five fifty-one.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Richard, Sir,” Lainey said, her voice cracking. She was unbelievably thirsty. He was sitting across from her in the room’s single chair, sipping from a bottle of Evian water while she watched from the bed. “Let’s just go home. I mean, forget about those guys.” She tried to smile, but it hurt her face too much.

  Richard sipped more water and studied his phone screen. The time passed slowly, so slowly Lainey believed she could feel the earth rotating. He had her wrists cuffed to the bed now, her arms apart and fastened to either side of her head. It was just a matter of time, she knew. She cleared her throat and tried again, keeping her gaze on the ceiling so she didn’t have to watch him drinking water that her body was beginning to clamor for in a primal fashion.

  “Richard? Sir?”

  A shadow loomed over her. Her husband’s small-toothed, tight smile filled her vision. He put a hand on her face. She closed her eyes and approximated a look of happiness, but the fingers gripped her cheeks hard, squeezing and making her no-doubt broken jaw sing out in abject agony. Unable to stop herself, she screamed.

  “Did you let him fuck you, Elaine?” Richard’s voice cut through her screams. He let go of her face and moved so he was seated next to her. He had a knife in one hand and used it to slice open her shirt and bra in one quick movement. “Did you? Did you let another man inside you while you were married to me? Did Owen Taylor fuck you with his hero dick?

  She shook her head, speechless with terror at the sight of the knife. “No, no, no he didn’t.” This was the truth of the matter. He hadn’t. A sillier, more selfish memory hit her brain. She’d been mad at Owen for that fact. But now, she was glad he hadn’t. Because Richard could suss out a lie better than a Russian interrogator.

  The tip of the knife touched her neck. Lainey froze. A tear rolled down her face as Richard traced a line with the metal down to her collarbone, then to her right breast. The metal felt ice cold against her overheated skin. He pressed the blade against her nipple hard enough to draw blood. Almost clinically, he studi
ed it as the blood ran down her right side. It was warm. Lainey’s nose filled with the sickening metallic odor of it.

  “P-p-p-please. Richard,” she whispered. “Sir. Please don’t.”

  In one quick motion, he freed her hands from the cuffs. He’d already cut off her sweat pants so within another second she was naked. Her jaw ached. Her head pounded from lack of hydration. She observed him, Richard Case, the super wealthy man who’d whisked her out of poverty into a dream life only to reveal himself as her worst nightmare.

  “Roll over, slut,” he demanded, standing up and unzipping his jeans. “I don’t want to see your cheating face when I take back what’s mine.”

  Lainey sobbed. Richard grabbed one arm and yanked hard, flipping her onto her stomach.

  When their phones all dinged at once, Owen sat up from his crouched, cramped position in the alley and fumbled for his. Jon had his open first. Without a word of warning, he knocked Owen’s to the sidewalk and stepped on it with his steel-toed boot.

  “What the ever loving fuck,” Owen spit out, trying to gather up the pieces of the destroyed device.

  “You don’t need to see it, trust me,” Jon said, glancing over at Zane. The other man nodded as he tapped his screen a few times, then glanced up at the building they’d been surveilling for the last few hours. He looked back down at his screen, then at the building across the street. It was taller than the 4551 structure, and if the various noises emanating from it were any indication, it was occupied. “She saw the number,” he said, pointing at the four digits she’d given to Owen painted on the curb. “From over there.” He pointed in the general direction of the top floor when a loud, piercing wail of agony floated across the warm air and hit Owen’s brain like a depth charge.

  He glanced down at the powerful handgun he’d been gripping and felt a maniacal grin split his lips. “I’ve got this,” he said. Instead of stopping him this time, Zane and Jon both nodded, their expressions grim. Owen snatched Jon’s phone before the other man could stop him. The sensation of the blood draining out of his face as he took in the image on the screen was never keener. He handed it back. “That fucker is gonna wish his money could save him from me.”

  “We’ve got your six,” Jon said. “Tell us how you want to proceed.”

  “There’s an outdoor fire escape,” Owen said, panting now as he tried to erase the image of Lainey’s prone, spread-eagled body out of his mind. Her face was a mess of blood. Her breasts were bruised, and some kind of clamps were on her nipples. He’d taken it all in at once, including the blood that had pooled under her on the bare mattress. “She’s not dead,” he said to himself. “She’s not.”

  A hand dropped to his shoulder. “Let’s get her out of there, whattaya say?” Zane’s eyes were glinting and his grin wide. “You lead.”

  Owen nodded and sprinted across the still empty street, sheltered under the front door’s leaning overhang then crept around the building to the metal fire escape. Zane slipped in the front door. Jon went to the back of the building, and then gave Owen a thumbs-up indicating there was a rear entrance. Owen nodded, holstered his weapon, and heaved himself up, hand over hand, until he reached the first landing.

  Musing that his years spent hauling beer kegs around with Dominic Love had put him the perfect shape for this particular exercise, he grabbed the next ladder and did the same. By the time he hit the topmost landing, he was breathing heavy, and his wounded shoulder ached like a son-of-a-bitch, but his mind was perfectly clear. He crouched below the window, listening for any clue that she might be in that room. It seemed almost too perfect. Surely, dumbass Richard knew that sending them a photo would give away his position.

  A low whistle made him look up. He spotted Jon on the roof, about ten feet above his own position. He motioned that he was going in through the window. Jon nodded. Another whistle alerted him to Zane’s position inside the building, right outside the door of the room.

  While he was dying to crash through the window, gun blazing, he knew that jeopardized Lainey’s safety. His first look at the room would likely be the only one he’d get. No one had left the building since the photo was delivered and he’d heard her gut wrenching scream of anguish. The meat sack that passed for her husband was still in there.

  Owen swallowed hard, pulled his Glock from the holster, and lifted the window slowly. The room reeked—mildew, rodents, blood, and the distinct odor of man spunk filled Owen’s nose and brain. He squinted, trying to get a bead on where Lainey was so he could keep her safe. The windows were all covered so the space was near pitch black. He gave himself a few seconds to adjust and then stepped inside, keeping his breathing shallow.

  “Well, it’s about time,” a man’s voice said. “Oh, honey, look. Your hero has arrived.”

  “Owen! Don’t,” Lainey screeched, her voice muffled.

  “Now,” Owen barked.

  Things moved in slow motion at first.

  The door crashed open.

  “Freeze, asshole,” Zane barked. Owen was still trying to adjust to the gloom when the sunlight from the window he’d opened glinted off something metal headed straight for him. He aimed in the direction of it and squeezed off two loud rounds. Pain pierced the veil of his adrenaline rush. The smell of his own blood filled his nose, covering everything else.

  Then things began to move fast. Something—the knife—clattered to the floor. A man’s voice cried out in pain. Owen stumbled further into the room, his eyes darting all over, seeking her. “You can’t kill me,” the now-familiar, high squeaky voice blurted out.

  “Wanna bet?” Zane said.

  “My attorneys will make sure you rot in prison,” the voice said, higher than ever now.

  “It’ll be worth it,” Jon added.

  “Don’t kill me,” the waste of space begged like a little bitch.

  “Oh, we won’t,” Zane said. “We’re saving that honor for her hero.”

  At that moment, Owen saw her. Rage flooded every muscle and sinew, every cell and molecule of his existence. She had a piece of fabric covering her eyes. She was screaming, flailing against the four metal handcuffs that bound her in place. Her naked body looked pale and washed out under her tan, but for the myriad red marks and bruises. Blood was…everywhere.

  His Lainey. He’d hurt her.

  He glared down at her, then turned slowly and raised the Glock.

  “Hasta la vista, motherfucker,” he said before he put a neat hole between Richard Case’s eyes.

  Three weeks later…

  Owen sat by Lainey’s bed around the clock the first week, then let Zane and Jon spell him for brief intervals once she’d been weaned off her painkillers and was a bit more lucid. He’d had a dozen stitches in his arm from the knife wound, something he’d hardly noticed for hours after the final confrontation. It had taken him nearly passing out from blood loss by Lainey’s intensive care bed for the doctors to realize he’d been injured too.

  GAPS attorneys had been in and out, taking statements and filling out forms. Once Lainey’s jaw had set and the wires removed, she told them everything. Turned out she had plenty of evidence against Richard. Photos of her injuries over the years, date and time stamped, kept in her own secure cloud storage.

  “We have to let the media in on this,” one of the lawyers insisted. Owen shook his head and kept his hand on Lainey’s arm. “We can win in the court of public opinion. Seriously. I know a producer at MSNBC. She’ll handle it as discreetly as possible.” The guy glanced over at Zane and Jon who were standing at the end of Lainey’s hospital bed. “It’s the only way to keep the company afloat, guys. Case’s platoon of lawyers is coming for blood.”

  “Fine,” Lainey said. Owen glanced down at her. Her blue eyes looked bigger than ever in the middle of old bruises. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her cheeks seemed sunken in, her entire body reduced, thanks to that…that monster.

  “No,” Owen insisted. She jerked her arm out from under his hand.

  “This is my problem
, Owen. And I’m not about to let you guys lose your company over it.” She wouldn’t meet Owen’s eyes. “Call the producer. I’ll do whatever you need me to do. Better interview me now, though, since I look like a bowl of death warmed over. Makes for better television.” A tear slid down her face. Owen dropped into the chair next to her bed and put his aching forehead on the sheet next to her. She rested her hand on his hair. “It’s all right. I can do this. It’s the only way.”

  The room emptied out, leaving them alone together. Owen lifted his face from the sheet and touched her cheek. Lainey closed her eyes and leaned into his hand. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “I love you,” he said. “Now get some sleep.”

  She smiled—a crooked thing now, thanks to that creep. “Hold me?”

  He got half in the bed, propping his prosthetic on the chair and gathered her close. The cloying, medicinal hospital odors made him want to gag, but he knew she needed this, and Owen had decided in the last three weeks watching her recover that he would spend the rest of his life giving this woman whatever she needed. He pressed his lips to her lank hair. She sighed and snuggled into his side and was asleep within a few minutes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lainey stared down at the thick, legal-sized envelope on the table in front of her. She glanced up at Owen, drawing strength from his presence as usual, then at the pair of attorneys who’d brought it into the GAPS office that morning. It was emblazoned with her full, legal name: Elaine Georgia Case. Her married name. Her widowed name. She shut her eyes tight, willing away the tidal wave of memories.

  A warm hand covered hers. She opened her eyes and met Owen’s gaze. He smiled at her and pushed the envelope closer. It had been four months since Owen, Zane, and Jon rescued her from Richard. Since Owen had turned around and fired a single shot into her husband’s brain, killing him “too fast,” Owen claimed.