Consume
Seven Deadly SEALs #6
Alana Albertson
Consume
The Se7en Deadly SEALs Series
Episode Six
Copyright © 2017 by Alana Albertson.
Cover Designer: Regina Wamba of Mae I Design
Cover Models: Callan Newton and Dani Cooper
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Ebook ISBN: 978-1-941665-07-7
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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2017 by Alana Albertson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-1-941665-62-6
Created with Vellum
Consume: The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.
Thomas Hobbes
Contents
SINopsis
1. Grant
2. Grant
3. Mia
4. Grant
5. Mia
6. Grant
7. Mia
8. Grant
9. Mia
Covet
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Alana Albertson
Acknowledgments
SINopsis
Consume
Se7en Deadly SEALs are no longer the brothers I trusted
6ix months since Mia transformed into another woman
5ive minutes since I learned she’d betrayed me.
4our times I’ve seen Joaquín in jail
Thre3 years ago Mia and I conceived a child
2wo days since she agreed to be mine forever.
1ne week since I laid eyes on my son.
Zer0 chance I’ll rest until I find him.
He’s out there and once I locate him, I’ll never let him go. He’s my flesh, my blood, my son. No one will stop me, not even Mia, no matter how she consumes me.
1
Grant
NCIS Special Agent Ashley Pierce’s eyes narrowed in on me. “Your son is in grave danger. Our time is limited, and we must have your complete cooperation.” Her gaze was icy—a look that told me that she felt there was a good chance I would never see my son again.
My blood ran cold. I wasn’t afraid of terrorists in a firefight, bombs injuring me again, or guns pointed at my face. My only fear was being unable to save my son. If something happened to my boy, a kid I didn’t even know and had only met once, it would destroy me. “Of course. I’ll do anything. Please tell me everything you know.”
My eyes were locked on Autumn AKA Ashley. I’d suspected her of being involved in this case but not as law enforcement. I’d been with her the night of Paul’s party, and I’d realized now that it hadn’t been a coincidence.
I attempted to make eye contact with my commanding officer, Paul Thompson, but his gaze remained locked on his feet. His white summer dress uniform blended into the barren walls, as did his skin, which seemed paler than normal. I felt his pain. This claustrophobic space wasn’t doing anything to ease my anxiety.
“Lt. Commander Thompson, you are free to leave. I would like to speak with Petty Officer Carrion in private.”
Paul didn’t even reply. He stood, nodded to both of us, and made a quick exit. I watched him until the door closed again. Mitch had told me that he would hook Paul up, and in exchange Paul would tip him off about drug tests. And Ashley had Mitch’s dealer, Rafael, under surveillance. Man, depending on what she had discovered, Paul’s career could be over. But there was no guarantee that Ashley had unearthed any of our secrets. SEALs covered for each other. That had never been more apparent to me than when this whole ordeal started.
And although my priority was locating my son, I would not rat out my brothers. I had to tread carefully.
“Special Agent Pierce—”
Her turquoise eyes brightened with a twinkle of amusement. “Grant, I think you’ve earned the right to call me by my first name.”
My mind flashed to our drunken make out session the night Tiffany had been murdered. Autumn’s mouth had been hot and wet, her tight, little body had pressed against mine. I had tried to drown my longing for Mia in Autumn’s embrace. And for a moment in time, it had worked.
“Fine, Ashley. Where is my son?”
She pushed out a deep breath before saying, “We don’t know. What we do know is that Joaquín has gang connections and we believe he was involved in kidnapping your son from Mia in the hospital.”
I almost felt relieved to hear her say that because it validated my theories, which Mia had dismissed. “When did you find out he was mine?”
“Well, officially we don’t actually know he’s yours. We would need a court ordered DNA test for that. But when I brought Mia to meet the boy, I had hoped to be able to trip her up, that she would’ve known about her nephew. But then when I saw her reaction to the boy, I started to connect the dots. He looks like you, by the way. I found records that showed that Mia had given birth to a baby boy in San Francisco two years ago.”
I was immediately suspicious of her. She had found records that had vanished from Mia’s storage unit. The ones I believed Joaquín had taken. Maybe he had given them to her. How did I know she wasn’t a crooked agent? And she had approached me at the SEAL party I took Ksenya to, offering to help me free Joaquín. I couldn’t trust her at all. “How could you have possibly made that jump from him resembling me to him being my son? Seriously. It’s a big one.”
“It was just a hunch, and I’ll admit it was a weak one. Grant, I’m trained to hunt down leads and test all the angles, so I did. Plus, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was Mia’s kid. Since you were the only guy she’d dated, it was logical that you were the child’s father. That was why I met you at the coffee house and showed you a picture of Julián so you would investigate on your own.”
I tempered my anger and forced myself to acknowledge her impressive detective work. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have known I had a son. Thank you.”
Her lips pressed into a satisfied smile. “Don’t thank me unti
l we find him. We have eyes on Joaquín’s known gang and cartel connections. But so far, we have been unable to locate your boy.”
“Tiffany’s mom was last seen in Marin.” I gave her the only piece of information I had, hoping that she could find something we couldn’t.
“We know. After you gave Kyle the DNA results, he called in an inquiry to a former SEAL turned PI, who tipped us off.”
Damn, NCIS had eyes and ears everywhere. “Does Kyle know who you are?”
Ashley shook her head. “No, Kyle doesn’t have a clue about my involvement or my identity. Only Paul knows for now, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
I wasn’t going to praise her for her correct assumptions. I was more pissed that she was following me. But I wasn’t going to call her out—my son’s life was on the line. “You said Julián is in grave danger. Why? Isn’t he just with the grandmother? Is she involved? Who is she?”
“Her name is Lorraine Reynolds, but we don’t think she would hurt him. We believe that the Ramirez Cartel is holding your son as leverage to keep Joaquín in line.”
She was blowing my mind. “Cartel? So what does Joaquín know about Julián? He mentioned his name to us at the jail. Mia’s theory is that he did that so we could find our son. I think he did it to frame me for Tiffany’s murder. Because if I had thought she had kidnapped my son, I’d have a motive to kill her. Hell, I probably would’ve killed her.”
She eased over to me and sat so close I could inhale her floral perfume. “You shouldn’t repeat that. And remember, I was with you the night of the murder. I know for certain that you didn’t murder Tiffany. And for you, Grant, I would blow my cover and risk my career to ensure you were never charged.” She cast a downward glance. “As for Joaquín’s name drop, I have a different theory.”
I hated that she was making me ask exactly what she thought, but I did it anyway. “Would you care to share?”
“No, I wouldn’t. And I don’t want to speculate until I have proof. We need to stick to the facts.”
I exhaled, knowing that she had been running most of this investigation on her gut instinct with little facts to back her theories up.
“And the facts are that your son is missing, Joaquín has been involved with a cartel, and we aren’t sure of Mia’s involvement.”
“This doesn’t point to her being involved. It is consistent with her obsession with freeing Joaquín. As for your pictures of her and Mitch at Rafael’s . . .” I closed my eyes and tried to push the thoughts of Mitch’s hand riding up her thigh, her lips covering his mouth, his cock pressed against her as she straddled his lap, “they don’t prove that Mia or Mitch are involved with a cartel. I know Mitch. He’s a jackass, but he probably brought her there so she could scan Rafael’s place. Hell, he even told me that he thought Ksenya could make Rafael open up.”
“You knew Joaquín well also, did you know he was involved with a cartel?”
I sneered at her.
“That’s what I thought. Whatever Mia’s motives are, she’s lying to you. About how much, we aren’t sure.”
“I thought we were dealing with facts now, Ashley. What kind of proof do you have that she’s still lying?”
“She’s crazy, Grant. She has gone too far and done some incredibly outlandish things to free her brother. Why is she doing this? Yes, she loves him, but it isn’t normal for a sister to do this for her brother. Their relationship is atypical. Maybe . . . never mind.”
“Say it, damn it. Maybe what?”
“Maybe she gave your child to Tiffany. After all, she hid the pregnancy from you, the baby’s father. Have you considered that she’s plotting something with Joaquín?”
I let out a bark of laughter. “No, I haven’t considered that. If you believe that, you’re crazier than she is. She loves her son and would never have considered giving him away.” I knew she had lied to me, but I also knew why she lied. I could feel her love for me. She loved people so deeply that she was blinded by her devotion. To me, to Joaquín, and to our son. “You don’t have a fucking clue about what happened to Mia. She left me because she had been raped, and then she almost died in the hospital after giving birth. Mia is elated that her son is alive. Do you have any other theories?”
Ashley’s eyes bugged. “I had no idea she had been raped. I’m sorry to hear that. Did she press charges?”
“No. She doesn’t know who did it.”
Ashley sat on her desk and crossed her legs. I scanned the room and made a mental note of the lack of personal effects in her office. There was a steel name plate, and a framed picture of a little girl who looked like Ashley. But the picture seemed dated, from the nineties by the clothes the girl was wearing. There were no other pictures on her desk.
I remembered that at the party I had met her at, she’d told me that she’d been a screw up in school, dated some abusive guy, and didn’t talk to her parents. I realized now that her story was probably a pack of lies as part of her cover, but the way she had told me made me think there had been an ounce of truth in her lies.
She noticed me looking around the room and hopped off the desk. “You just need to consider everything. You’re a good man, Grant. Better than most of the SEALs I’ve met. I can’t find anything negative in your background. You deserve better than her.”
I shot a look at her. “Like you? You targeted me from day one and haven’t given me a single reason to think Mia is lying about anything she knows. You were at the party when Tiffany got killed. All over me, but you were just using me. You came with Tiffany! Why were you there, damn it?”
“Because we were investigating Joaquín’s connection to the cartel. Tiffany had been arrested for prostitution with a SEAL and in order to get the charges dropped, she traded us information.”
“Which SEAL?”
Ashley shook her head. “I’m not going to divulge his name, but he has been disciplined and is cooperative. It isn’t relevant to finding your son.”
The hell it wasn’t. It wasn’t a secret that SEALs frequented hookers. But if the SEAL was with Tiffany, maybe that SEAL was involved with Joaquín’s shady deals. Maybe that SEAL was Paul. “And you didn’t know she had a kid?”
“At the time we made the deal with her, we were unaware that she had given a boy to her mother to raise. If we had known, we would have investigated that before we allowed her to go undercover for us. She tipped us off that Rafael dealt to some SEALs who also smuggled drugs. We believe Joaquín pirated drugs in Aruba and Afghanistan.”
I believed that, too. Kyle had mentioned that Joaquín had snuck off one night in Afghanistan. It made perfect sense. I kept my thoughts to myself and let Ashley finish.
“That night, Tiffany was supposed to just wear a wire and try to get him to talk. We think Joaquín saw the wire and killed her. Unfortunately, she is dead and Joaquín is a psychopath so we will never know why he killed her.”
“And you didn’t get any of it on recording?”
“No.” Her lips pursed, and I shook my head. “We believe Joaquín disabled it.”
Of course he did. We had both been trained on how to deactivate bombs and disable wires. Joaquín was smart. NCIS was stupid if they thought a highly-trained SEAL wouldn’t notice a wire.
“If you have all this evidence against Rafael, why aren’t you arresting him?”
“Because we aren’t after him. We are working with the DEA, and he will be dealt with later. I’m NCIS. My concern is drug smuggling in the Teams.”
My blood chilled remembering the picture of a young Rafael Hernandez, the man whose truck had killed Mia’s parents. But maybe Rafael wasn’t the mastermind; maybe Joaquín was. There were still some clues to the puzzle that both Ashley and I were missing.
“So what’s the plan? What can we do now?”
She sighed and sat behind the desk. “We’re working with the DA to build the case against Joaquín. Maybe if they offer him a plea deal, probation, and time served, it will be enough incentive for him to give us some informat
ion about the cartel. And he would have to reveal the location of your son.”
My throat constricted. That was the stupidest idea I’d ever heard. Joaquín would never admit to anything. He would rather hang himself in jail than give up his secrets. We were SEALs. We were taught how to resist interrogation. How to lie. Not even the promise of his freedom would make him confess, and I told her as much.
“Well, we think it’s the best shot we have of finding your son. The murder charge won’t stick in court, and we are still building our case against the cartel. We have enough to get him on the smuggling charges, and we do believe he murdered her, but our goal is to find your child and get intel on the drug operations.”
For months, I had dreamed of the day that Joaquín would be freed, that I’d have my best friend back. But now, everything had changed. I’d learned too many of Joaquín’s secrets. I didn’t trust him anymore. My best friend was dead to me forever. In my heart, I knew he had killed Tiffany, and I believed that he had been involved in kidnapping my son. I wanted him to rot in jail. If he was freed, I would kill him myself.
“When will this plea happen?”
She pursed her lips. “I’m not at liberty to say. But soon enough.”
Soon enough didn’t cut it. This could take months, and by then who knew where my kid would be. How the fuck did they expect me to trust them to find my son when they had lost him once?
I didn’t trust them. I only trusted myself.
“And when you free him, Mia will be in danger.”
“Yes, she will. But we can protect her.”
I laughed, not caring if it was rude. The only person who could protect Mia was me. I was still pissed as fuck about her pictures with Mitch, but she was still my girl.
Consume (Se7en Deadly SEALs Book 6) Page 1
