Also by Holly Castillo
TEXAS NAVY SEALS
A SEAL Never Quits
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2020 by Holly Castillo
Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Dawn Adams/Sourcebooks
Cover art by Craig White
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
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—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
About the Author
Back Cover
Chapter 1
The sound of shots fired in the distance stopped Phantom in his tracks. He listened carefully before dropping and rolling into the nearby shrubs. He paused, his body tense and ready to move the moment he heard a sound. The crunch of dry brush underfoot brought a smile to his face.
He pivoted toward the sound and aimed through the shrubs. His target let out a startled shout a split second after he fired. Chuckling, he stood, lifting his safety goggles.
“Shit, Phantom! You didn’t have to hit me where it really hurts!” Hunter “Santo” Gonzalez groaned, glaring at Enrique “Phantom” Ramirez, his close friend and former BUD/S partner in crime.
Phantom’s grin only broadened. “You should have been paying attention to your surroundings.”
“As if anyone ever knows where you are,” Santo fired back. “Your name is Phantom for a reason.”
“Over here!” another voice called out. “Phantom brought him down.”
“You know, just wait until it’s your turn, pal. I’m going to hit you right in the cojones,” Santo muttered as he glared at the paint-gun splatter from Phantom’s shot on his upper thigh.
“That’s if you can find me, punk.”
“No, that’s when I find you. Care to make a wager on how fast I make that happen?”
Phantom held up his hands and shrugged.
“Did I hear someone say ‘wager’? If there’s betting going on, I need a piece of the action.” A large man walked into the small clearing where Phantom and Santo stood, the afternoon sun beating down on them.
“Buzz. Nice of you to join the party.” Phantom clapped the big man on the back, earning a glower.
“Nobody said this was a race. You could have given the rest of the team a chance to catch up.” As Joseph “Buzz” Gomez finished ribbing Phantom, several other men stepped into the clearing and began to laugh at Santo’s frustrated expression.
“He took you down in less than eight minutes. That’s a new record,” Amador “Stryker” Salas, their SEAL team leader said, joining in the laughter.
Santo shook his head, though he, too, started to smile. “Glad you’re all having a good laugh.”
Together, the six men teased and joked their way back to their equipment shed to put up the paint-ball guns and goggles. Stryker held Phantom to the back of the group, giving them some distance from the rest, and Phantom’s gut told him his team leader didn’t plan to chat with him about his record-setting target practice for the day.
He sighed. After four hours of intense PT and a run through the hot Texas sun for their paint-ball training drill, he’d been looking forward to a hot shower and a cold beer. He shook his head at himself. He must be getting soft if such a light day made him ready to ring out before the afternoon was over.
If a new mission had come up, though… His gut clenched at the thought. They had wrapped up their last mission nearly a week ago. A surge of adrenaline pulsed through him at the thought they could be headed out again.
“How are things going in the horse industry?” Stryker asked, surprising Phantom. It was the last thing he had expected to hear.
“Good. I’ve got to say, working and training quarter horses is a lot different from handling the thoroughbreds I grew up with.”
“When are you planning to get out into the community with them? You know that’s a critical component of our assignment here.”
Several months back, Admiral Frank Haslett had approached Stryker to put together a team of SEALs to go undercover in Hebbronville, Texas, a small town near the border with Mexico. Their cover was as a group of close friends who had gone in together to purchase massive Bent Horseshoe Ranch to raise cattle and horses, while covertly keeping their ears to the ground for information about illegal activities in Mexico and Central and South America that posed a threat to Americans. The more the team could do to eliminate crime south of the border, the safer it would be for immigrants, asylum seekers, and everyone else at the border itself.
Their last mission had involved a drug cartel that obviously had connections within the United States, but the SEALs hadn’t yet identified the players on the American side. The team had succeeded in bringing down the cartel and the drug lord, Benicio Davila, but there clearly were larger stakes involved.
“To get out into the community with the horses means showing them. I’ll need to understand quarter-horse shows a lot better before I take that step.” Instantly, the image of a determined, energetic woman popped into his head. Elena Garcia had been the horse trainer for the ranch’s prior owner—until two weeks ago when Phantom had told her they no longer needed her services. His intention had been to secure their undercover mission, but he was beginning to doubt his hasty decision.
Stryker paused and turned to face him, a knowing look on his face. “You need to talk to Elena.”
Phantom scowled. “I can make it without her help. I just
need a little more time.” Even to his own ears his argument sounded weak.
Stryker shook his head. “Admit that she’s your best chance at being able to network and get involved as quickly as possible. Activities in the criminal world aren’t going to slow down while we get our shit in gear. We can’t waste any time. Your job is to gather intel in the community. You can’t do that working the horses out here on the ranch. We’re SEALs. We’re the experts in our field, but outside of it, we go to the experts in theirs, and Elena is the expert you need.”
Phantom gripped his paint-ball gun tightly. He suddenly wished they had another drill to run so he could take out his frustration. “I’m not sure of the best tactic to approach her.”
Stryker smirked. “Business is business. Anya talks about Elena all the time, and it sounds like the woman is smart as hell. If you come at it as a business proposition, I’m sure she’ll take us back as a client.”
When it came to business, Phantom often deferred to others who had a gift for it. He knew how to track an enemy for miles and sneak up on him in total silence. He knew how to be a deadly force in nearly any situation. This experience outside an assigned mission was testing his nerves. He had to remind himself it all served their ultimate goal of defusing a hostile situation with minimal casualties. He’d have to take one for the team.
“I’ll call her tonight,” he said, relenting. Stryker’s fiancée, Anya Gutierrez, and Elena were best friends, which meant he had to handle the situation even more delicately.
“It’s best to conduct this type of transaction face-to-face. Calling her could put you at a disadvantage. Who knows? She may demand double the previous fees.”
“That could still happen if I meet with her in person.” Phantom doubted Elena would try to double the fees regardless. She didn’t strike him as a person driven by money.
“Not as likely. Go out and meet with her tomorrow. Maybe you can even convince her to come back to the ranch to see that you haven’t destroyed her years of hard work training those horses. I’m sure Anya would be thrilled to visit with her for a little while.”
Phantom nodded. One way or another, he was going to convince Elena to take them back as a client. He cringed. He just hoped she didn’t hate him for cutting her loose in the first place.
* * *
Elena barely lifted the reins and the horse jumped forward, moving swiftly and smoothly beneath her to cut the heifer from the small herd gathered in the arena. She balanced her weight in the saddle, shifting left to right to guide the horse, barely touching it with her heels. She had trained it to respond to her body’s movements, not to the feel of spurs against its side or the bite of the bit in its mouth.
That wasn’t the way some cowboys she knew worked the range. There were bad ones who were notorious for digging their spurs into a horse’s flesh until its hide became tough from misuse, and a horse could become nearly unresponsive to a bit in its mouth that had been yanked around constantly. Those practices were outdated, and with proper training for both horse and rider, a lighter hand could be used.
Fortunately, the ranch where she was working today employed her methods and style in the field, and none of the ranch hands wore spurs to guide their horses. She smiled as the horse began to move without a cue from her, having honed in on the heifer she wanted, and aggressively pursued moving it out. A few minutes later, the heifer had been separated from the herd and Elena chuckled, patting the horse’s neck as a reward.
A couple hours later, the sun had climbed, and she decided it was past time to take a break. She dismounted smoothly and led the horse—the third she had worked with already that morning—over to the trough for a long drink of water. She began to scratch it between the ears, a favorite with horses as it was always a difficult spot for them to scratch on their own.
The horse cocked one leg in relaxation and leaned its head against her, and she chuckled. “That’s a good girl. You did some hard work out there. I’d say you deserve an extra share of oats.”
“Do you sweet-talk all of them like that? Is that how you get them to do what you want?” A deep male voice nearby startled her. It wasn’t anyone she immediately recognized, and unease slid down her spine.
She turned and let out a small sigh of relief. “Do you always sneak up on people like that?”
“My name is Phantom, you know.”
“Ah, yes. The name suits you. Are you friends with Henry?” she asked, referring to the owner of the ranch.
“I just met him. I came out here hoping to find you.”
Elena led the horse away from the trough near the arena and started walking to the barn, Phantom falling in alongside her. She dug her phone out of her back pocket and waved it in the air. “Easiest way to find me.” Why is he here? What could he possibly want? She couldn’t say she was glad to see him. Just watching his granite features reminded her of the way he had tilted her world on its side with a decision that changed everything for her.
He shrugged. “Too impersonal. I prefer to look people in the face when I’m talking to them.”
“You were born in the wrong times, then, I hate to tell you. Texts, email, social media… That’s how everyone stays in touch. It’s rare even to hear a voice these days, let alone see a face.”
“Call me old-fashioned.”
“Okay. I just might. Why are you looking for me anyway?” Her words came across a bit stronger than she had intended. She couldn’t conceal her frustration at the way he had so quickly and casually told her he no longer needed her services with his horses. In a few brief sentences, he had cut her off from quarter horses she had been training for years and had practically come to think of as her own. With that same move, he had destroyed the main reason she had come to Hebbronville—to work with some of the finest quarter horses she had ever seen.
The Bent Horseshoe Ranch had recruited her as soon as she graduated from A&M to train the quarter horses to be some of the best in the nation. She had jumped at the opportunity, and it had been her main source of income—up until two weeks ago. Once Phantom had fired her, she’d had to act fast to find new clients. She found a couple close to Falfurrias, but the cost of gas to drive out to them barely made it worthwhile.
“For someone who loves to brag about her tech world, you don’t check your phone often.”
Surprised, Elena clicked open her phone and found she had missed multiple text messages from Anya. “Is she okay? Did something happen?” she asked, quickly scrolling through the texts.
“Everything is fine. She’d like to see you, that’s all. She wanted to know if you could come out to the ranch today. If we go soon, Snap will probably be making lunch.”
Elena looked at him skeptically as she began to undo the cinch on the saddle. “Snap? Who else lives at your ranch? Crackle and Pop?”
For a moment she thought he was going to smile, but the face carved from granite stayed serious, though his tone seemed amused. “Good one. Never heard that before. We admit our nicknames are…interesting…”
“And yours? You specialize in sneaking up on people so you’re called Phantom?”
“That, and I can make like a ghost and disappear.”
“Right.” She chuckled. “Good to know. So did you really come out here just because Anya wants me to come out to the ranch today?” She grabbed a soft brush from a bucket of cool water and began to wipe down the horse with long, smooth strokes. The horse looked half-asleep.
“That and I wanted to see my competition at work.”
She hesitated midstroke, then resumed quickly. “Your competition? Does that mean you’ve decided to start showing the horses?”
“Yes.”
Elena felt a dull ache in her heart. She should be the one showing his horses. She had trained them, guided them, prepared them to be their absolute best. She wanted to show them. “Good luck. I hope everything goes well for you.”
>
“I’ve done a lot more research since I saw you. I appreciate the tip about the horses’ feed, by the way. It made a world of difference when I did what you recommended and switched them from sweet feed back to coastal hay and oats.”
Elena laughed as she remembered how hyper the horses had been on the sweet feed and his dismay when she told him what to do about it. “Glad I could help.” She dropped the soft brush back in the bucket of water and led the horse into its stall, sliding the bridle off and turning the animal loose with a pat on the withers.
“There are still plenty of things I have to learn,” Phantom said, stepping closer as she came out of the stall.
Hope blossomed in Elena’s heart, making it thud hard in her chest. Could he be rehiring her? Was that why he had come out to the ranch to watch her work? Was this some sort of test?
“Always will be,” she said with a bright smile. “The day you think you know everything about raising or showing horses is the day you find out you’re wrong. I just got thrown by a two-year-old filly last week. I certainly learned a lesson that day.” She nearly bit her tongue. She needed to tell him about all the things she was great at, not her misadventures.
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you okay? You didn’t get hurt, did you?” She sensed genuine concern in his voice. Was there a human being beneath all that granite?
“I would think you’d be happy if your competition got sidelined for a few shows,” she teased.
“Not my idea of fair competition. Seriously, are you okay?”
“I’ve got some bruises that are fading into lovely colors. Other than that, I’m fine. Thanks for your concern.” She forced herself to look away from him. Something about him drew her in and made her curious to know more about him, especially this glimpse of a softer side she didn’t think existed. “How soon are you going to start showing?” She hated talking about herself and wanted to hear more about her—his—horses.
“I’m not sure. That’s another reason I’m here today. I wanted to pick your brain about the best horse shows to take them to. Given that it is your area of expertise and all.”
A SEAL Always Wins Page 1
