SEAL My Home: Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3, Book 2 (SEAL Brotherhood Series 9) (25 page)

Her phone rang, but she didn’t even look at it. No one could explain this away, or make her feel any better. It was time to pick herself up and deal with the reality she was all alone. Again.

And maybe that wasn’t so bad.

Megan sat on the beach, her knees to her chest, not watching the audience of mostly young females eyeing the guys who would battle it out so that a mere handful of them could wear the Trident. Of all the places she could go today, why, she wondered, did she go here? So she could feel sorry for herself? Or to prove that she could look at another Rory prototype and not feel violated, vacant or empty.

People were snapping pictures. Children played with the plastic fencing. Others chased sea gulls that could easily outrun them as they skittered in the surf looking for food. The ocean muffled everything except for the barking of the BUD/S instructors, and then she could only hear the sound, but not the orders they pounded out.

The men ran back to little rubber boats and organized in teams, putting them atop their heads. Rory had told her at one point that he’d been so tall, he’d rubbed the hair off the top of his head from running those drills and it took two years to grow it back.

She put her palms to her ears.

Enough!

The noise in her head was deafening. Why was she even thinking about all the bullshit Rory had told her?

Confident she could look at another hard body, just not one in her bed anytime soon, she got up and headed back toward the hotel and to the room she’d reserved. It was going to cost her a week’s salary, but it was worth it. It was tucked away, not with an ocean view or even a very big room, but for five hundred dollars, it would do.

The hallway was dark and she felt slightly dizzy so touched the sides of the wall to steady herself before she came to the room.

Inside, she double-locked the door, collapsed on the bed, and then rolled over to face the ceiling.

She wondered what he was doing. If he ever thought about her, not what they did. She remembered watching him drink cappuccino, the way the sunlight trapped in his light brown hair made his head look like it was on fire. She’d noticed that if he grew a beard, it would be red. She remembered his forearms with the little frog prints tattooed up from his wrist to his elbow, something he said all the guys in Kyle’s platoon had.

She’d traced the Celtic bands around his biceps, followed the line of his protruding vein that ended nearly to his armpit. His fingers were rough and callused, overused, probably abused. He was missing the ring finger on his left hand.

She giggled at her schoolgirl logic. “So of course he can’t get married. He can’t wear a wedding ring,” she whispered. She should have known, she thought as she smiled to no one but herself.

The spinning room reminded her she needed to eat something. She’d order room service, perhaps go down and watch the sunset on the beach and have another margarita, come back upstairs, fill up the tub, lean back and read until she fell asleep.

“Now that’s a romantic evening if ever there was one,” she said as she stood up and walked to the phone.

She made a mental note to pick up some pants and a sweatshirt so she’d have a change of clothes tomorrow. She wished she could spend a week here, but that wasn’t in the budget. She got out her sandals and placed them in the closet, brushed her hair and put on lipstick before she heard the knock at the door and the distinctive message, “Room service.”

She unlocked both bolts. Immediately they burst through the door so fast she couldn’t see their faces as she went sprawling to the floor. There were at least three of them. Before she could react, the first man knocked her nearly unconscious, landing a blow across the side of her face and nose, resulting in a cracking sound and then the warm feel of her own blood as it dribbled over her lips and down her chest. They secured her hands with a heavy nylon cord, placed a wide strip of duct tape across her mouth, wrapped her ankles together with the same, put a pillowcase over her head and started carrying her like a rolled up carpet. Dazed and confused she heard her keys jingling and the ring of her cell phone sounding from deep inside her purse.

Now she wished she’d taken the time to see who had called her before.

Someone said a few clipped words in some dialect, and she continued to hear the ringing as they loaded her into what sounded like a delivery van. She was shoved onto a maze of cords and equipment, loose pipes and boxes her knees scraped against. Her nose gushed blood she could taste at the back of her throat. She tried to scoot her way through the debris as they closed and locked the door behind her. She wanted to find a side of the van so she could sit erect and stop the bleeding, worried she could die from being unable to breathe through her obviously broken nose.

Where are they taking me?

At last, her elbow shoved against the van’s side wall and she was able to prop herself to sitting position. As she took a few deep breaths she could feel her eyes swelling from the blows. Squinting, the sharp pain told her perhaps her cheekbone had been broken.

She tried to pay attention to the sounds of streets, keep track of right and left turns, as they drove away from the Hotel Del. Eventually, she got confused and just started listening to distinctive sounds of traffic. Then she heard the roar of a freeway, and the van lurched as the driver gunned it nearly sending her back on her side, her stomach tumbling over itself. Her next fear was that throwing up could make her drown in her own vomit, so she mentally ordered her stomach to relax and received a little relief from that. Her head began pounding and she felt a trickle of blood coming from her right ear.

The van was hot and muggy with a strange chemical smell hitting her every so often. She heard metal clanging, like equipment, and some chains rattling on the sides of the van and hanging from the ceiling. There was no light coming through the pillowcase, so she figured the van had no windows. Adrenaline from her capture had been keeping her awake, but at last the heated space, and the droning sounds of tires on the freeway added to the chemical smell and the pounding in her head made her dizzy. She fought not to lose consciousness, willing herself to stay alert, but in the end she slumped over onto her side. She felt a sharp pang in her thigh as her muscle grazed against something sharp, but she didn’t have the energy to rouse herself. She allowed sleep to overtake her.

She awoke with a start as the van stopped suddenly. Freeway noise from overhead mixed with the sounds of a huge mass of sea gulls told her she wasn’t too far from the shore. It was of some comfort, at least, to hear something she’d heard before.

She bunched her knees to her chest, mentally checking herself out. The nausea had subsided, but her nose and eyes were swollen and extremely painful. She didn’t feel like she had any other major injuries so she began preparing mentally for being beaten further or perhaps killed. Her bladder wanted to burst, but she knew that was the least of her problems.

Light poured in when she heard the rear van doors open. Instructions were given in the strange guttural dialect. She was hoisted from her seated position and roughly thrown over the shoulder of a smelly man who carried her into what sounded like a large storage building. As she was carried, the blood in her nose started to flow again, and she discovered this relieved some of the pain in her swollen face.

She’d heard what sounded like a metal door opening and then slamming behind her. It was a tall structure, but her assailant’s footsteps didn’t echo like it was a large building. She heard the buzzing of overhead fluorescent lights. A piece of furniture was moved, its legs dragging across a hard surface floor.

They put her on her feet. At first, she nearly toppled since her balance was off due to her ankles being bound. A rough hand held her about the neck, and a harsh voice issued a command she didn’t understand. Someone else slashed the duct tape binding her ankles with a cold metal knife that clipped part of her skin on the inside.

Someone then slapped her across the cheek, and her nose began to bleed again. This blow, buffered by the cotton pillowcase, hurt only because of the previous injury to her cheek and nose. She was pushed to move forward. She walked on the cold concrete carefully at first. It was littered with pieces of grit and a sand-like substance. She stepped on something sharp and stopped abruptly, but she was nearly thrown forward again and had to work to gain her balance.

Megan’s slacks were stuck to her legs and she could feel a welt from the cut on her thigh. It was painful to walk now on the injured foot. If it was a deep cut, she knew it would become infected soon.

Her legs were kicked out from under her, and she landed on her rear so hard, she saw stars and cried out. She couldn’t stop the groan from escaping her lips and felt the pointed toe of a boot, which was aimed at her stomach but partially was deflected against the forearms of her secured wrists. Waves of nausea flooded over her as she toppled on her side.

“Quiet!” he said in a heavily accented voice.

With her hands still tied in front of her, she righted herself and gingerly shook her head to dislodge hair that had stuck to her face. The inside of the pillowcase was wet with the moisture of her own breathing and the fresh blood from her nose. She was having difficulty getting air and willed herself not to pass out.

Whatever was going to come was going to be harder. She remembered Rory’s comment, the SEAL motto,
The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday.
In a surreal moment of sick humor, she thought about her little hissy fit and pouty behavior to the Naval personnel who might have been able to help her. If she had only listened. Maybe all this was her own damned fault. They told her she was in danger. Why the hell didn’t she pay attention?

In the direction she had come from she heard the door open again and listened as two sets of footsteps in hard-soled shoes came toward her. Surely she would be learning her fate soon. The ground was cold. Her cotton top stuck to her body stubbornly.

The pillowcase was yanked from her head, taking several long strands of hair with it. She stifled a groan, instead making it a priority to look up at whomever was before her with some show of defiance, grateful that at last she could take in a deep cool breath of relatively fresh air.

A group of young, very thin men of Middle Eastern descent who looked to be in their late teens, stood in a semicircle around her. Two of them reacted, showing shock at the condition of her face but the third, probably the one who had delivered the blows, gave her a hard look straight from hell. Which is where she mentally sent him. The young man raised his arm with a trajectory to land another blow, but he was yanked back by a dress-shirted arm.

The command wasn’t a compliment or any form of encouragement, except to Megan. She briefly celebrated this miniscule victory, hoping it wouldn’t be her last.

The staring boys around her had not covered their faces and wore shabby, dirty clothes, but she could not see who was in the dress shirt. The group parted and an attractive man in a crisp white shirt, suit pants, and expensive shoes polished to perfection kneeled down in front of her. Next to him was the young man from her yoga class with a smile on his face that sent a chill down her spine.

The well-dressed man said something to one of the youths while he examined her swollen eyes. The young man responded nervously, shrugging. The man in the suit barked another command and then waited. A clean, white, wet towel was brought to him, and he wiped her face. The rough texture of the towel hurt, but the cool dampness was soothing, and she found herself leaning into it.

“I am sorry this violation occurred. It was unnecessary, but more importantly, it makes identification more difficult.” His English was perfect although heavily accented. Megan thought he sounded well educated.

She pulled her face back from the towel and away to the side, glaring at him.

Her captor removed the duct tape from her mouth carefully. “Better?”

She nodded. “Why have you taken me?

“You are insurance. You will not be harmed unless our demands are not met.”

He scanned her body as if looking for something, lighting on her chest and her thighs.

“What demands? What have I done? I work in a bookstore, for Christ’s sakes.”

He tilted his head to the side. “But I think someone cares a great deal about you. You and one other.”

“What other?” She was beginning to think perhaps Rory had another girlfriend and she was settling in with it when she realized perhaps he meant Rory’s father.

“You’ll see. But for now please accept,” he placed his palm over his heart and bowed slightly to her, “my humble apologies for the fact that I cannot have you wait in a nice room with a decent comfortable couch with pillows. Although I didn’t intend that you look injured, perhaps that will serve another purpose.”

“Nobody is going to negotiate with you.”

“Perhaps.” The man stood. “But then that would be very unlucky for you.”

Megan decided to test this man’s authority. “Do I look very lucky to you now?” She tried her very best glare at him.

His eyelids fluttered as he digested the insult. But he was more in control of his emotions than his henchman had been, and showed her a slow, poised smile with a hearty twinkle in his eye. His comment made her want to cry.

“I can see why Mr. Kennedy finds you so irresistible, although in my country, that trait would not bring you a husband and you would die in the streets a beggar.”

She swallowed.

The man gave more instructions and a navy and white headscarf was handed to him. “Now. I’m going to tie this around your mouth and cover your head, so we don’t upset your more traditional guards who take offense at such things. It will be tight, but not nearly as tight as if I was going to strangle you, so just relax.”

Megan remained stiff, making him have to move her entire upper torso to reach behind and tie the final knot at the back of her neck. Terrified, she kept telling herself that it would all be over soon, one way or the other. She hoped there was some way she could get a message to Rory. She’d been such a complete fool.