SEAL My Home: Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3, Book 2 (SEAL Brotherhood Series 9) (29 page)

The well-dressed man arrived an hour later, brandishing a computer in an expensive leather case.

“You will write your Mr. Kennedy a love letter now,” he said in his syrupy sweet tone that almost sounded like an exotic tune.

She held her wrists out to him and his eyes focused on the bruised and puckered skin underneath the yellow cord. He frowned.

“I’m afraid that is out of the question.”

She considered her options with the tools she had. Since the knife would not cut through the duct tape on her ankles, she’d need both hands free to manage an escape through the window.

“But it will be difficult to type with my wrists bound. Perhaps you could release them. Just for the message.”

“I can, but I won’t.”

The gentleman dragged a chair over. Placing the computer on his knees, he opened the lid.

“You look very pretty today.”

She glared at him and then heard the click of the computer’s camera.

“That will do nicely.” He tapped keys, and she heard the email being sent.

“Hopefully, it will not be the last picture he sees of you, alive.”

He was a snake. He was worse than a snake. He had been bent, twisted, and had gone over the edge of that wall of no return. Megan could see there was no reasoning with him. No explaining, pleading. Any energy she’d give him, her emotional pain, or her bright hope for a release from this bondage, he’d feed on. His hatred for life colored everything he did. It made him feign sweetness when he was downright evil.

Thinking about how Rory would go about this, she knew he’d make a note of his vulnerability. Hard to do since the man was in complete control, unless—

“Are these boys your sons you are training?”

He hadn’t expected her question. His left eye ticked just slightly. She’d found a scab. She began to put her fingernail under one of the edges.

“Where
are
your sons?”

“I have no children. No wife.”

“But you are the father to these boys. You train them. They do your bidding.”

“It is our cause.”

“You train them to kill themselves, too?”

“If necessary.” He presented the keyboard with an almost delicate smile. His fingers were refined. He had his nails buffed on a regular basis. The cologne he wore smelled expensive, exotic, probably coming from Milan or Paris. “Now you will type the letter to your young beau. I want this to come from you.”

“And what is it you want me to say?” She rubbed her cheek with the back of one of her secured hands, her face so swollen it was pulling her upper lip into a right-sided grimace. Her eye stung, which probably meant she had a blood clot there. She had to scoot forward to reach the keyboard since he wouldn’t be kneeling on the mattress. She wondered how he would survive in a cave, living in a bombed out building, doing hand-to-hand combat like Rory had. He’d worry about things like soiling his clothes. He wasn’t a believer. He was an opportunist.

And his vulnerability was that he didn’t expect she could beat him. She had the nail in the wooden plank that could take out one of his eyes, perhaps go straight to his brain, but she doubted it was big enough. She had a sharp piece of glass that could slice across his neck. All she needed was the time and the opportunity.

“Dear Rory.” He pointed to the keyboard.

She didn’t try very hard to type the correct keys. “All I get is garbage.” She rolled her back. “I can’t do it.” She scooted back toward the wall.

The man grabbed one of her wrists, which brought both of her arms forward nearly touching his knees. He yanked upward and she screamed as loud as she could. The echo cast out over the inlet, across the water. She could hear the results of her sound rolling and crashing against rundown buildings outside. With his other hand, he tried to secure the computer but it crashed to the ground.

“No one can hear you,” he spat. He was holding her arms up, like pulling on a dog’s collar by the leash.

The door opened and three heads popped through the frame. One of them was the young man from the yoga class.

If she’d had the glass in her hand, it would have been the perfect opportunity. He turned his head, exposing his jugular vein and shouted, “Out! Leave us!”

The two younger men glanced up at the yoga student, who seemed to take pleasure in the man’s predicament.

“Tariq, you need some assistance?”

She noticed the young man didn’t seem to care he had given away his boss’s real name. Tariq’s murderous expression told her he did. His arms shook, and Megan could nearly hear the pulsing of the large blue vein cording down to his clavicle.

The student lowered his eyes and backed away, closing the door quickly.

Then Tariq’s head whipped around, his eyes piercing her with all the hatred in his soul. With his lips drawn up in a snarl, he threw Megan back against the wall, nearly knocking the air out of her. Her head hit the side of the metal building with a boom, sending particles of dust falling from the second story above. What he didn’t hear was the delicious crunch of glass under the mattress as her body fell back into sitting position. She hoped she might have a chard, some piece of the thick brown bottle large enough to defend herself if she had the chance.

The man she now knew was Tariq ran his fingers through his hair, pulled down the cuffs of his now-soiled sleeves and brushed the front of his chest with the his palms in a downward sweeping motion.

Like a cat, he walked carefully over to the computer and examined it, hitting the spacebar several times.

Megan hoped the screen had cracked or something internally had shaken loose, but the little laptop lit up like a neon sign in the darkened room. He grabbed the back of the metal chair he’d been sitting on earlier, scooting it as close to her as he could, even a few inches closer than before, the legs making divots in the edge of the dirty pad. He placed his still perfect shoes over the blue mattress ticking and sat, placing the laptop once more on his thighs.

“Again. We will attempt to write another letter to your Mr. Kennedy,” he said as he pointed to the keyboard. “You will tell him he comes alone with the money. I will call him when the arrangements are made.”

Megan leaned forward and nodded, extending her arms and studying the screen. There had been a message from Rory’s cell he hadn’t seen. She pushed on the up arrow twice with her little finger, and instead of writing on the box he’d provided her, to send Rory a return message she knew would go directly to his cell.

In the dialog box she typed clumsily while she dictated, “Bring the money, and come alone. He will call you when the arrangements are made.” She placed her finger over the send button, but Tariq shook his head and leaned over to double check her work. She brought her hands down on the right side of her thigh, moving her shoulder like it pained her. It wasn’t hard to fake.

While reading over the notation upside down, she looked for some change in his eyes to indicate he’d caught on to what she’d done, but there was none. He was concentrating on hitting the return button with his forefinger, an action she had anticipated. She twisted her body to the right, reached behind her, grabbed whatever she could get of the neck of the beer bottle, jabbed the jagged end under his jaw, into the soft tissues and back against his windpipe, and ripped it across his throat and back toward her.

Tariq arched backward, his eyes wide in shock, as he held his throat with both hands, attempting to stop the blood that was spurting over both of them. In his nearly upward gaze, the angle of his face was perfect. With the strength of both hands, clutching the only smooth end of the bottle, she jammed the bloody jagged edge into his right eye with all the force she could muster.

He sputtered. Trying to scream but unable to do anything but send blood spray up into the room. Droplets of his red elixir rained down on Megan like a baptism. Tariq looked at her as he lost consciousness and collapsed forward onto her.

She watched the door as her fingers searched Tariq’s trousers for a knife, and she was rewarded when she found a long-bladed pocketknife. She opened it, finding the object was curved like a scimitar. She pushed him aside and worked on the cording, slicing herself in the process but not causing a deep wound. Finally, the yellow material fell open and she was able to give her wrists the freedom they’d needed.

The knife quickly sliced through the duct tape at her ankles, and this tiny victory gave her hope. Her hands were shaking. Her heart was pounding in her chest like a galloping horse.

She repositioned the body so his partners might think he’d fallen asleep, drawing his legs up to his chest, facing the back wall, bending his knees and removing his shoes, setting them aside like he’d done it on purpose. She was careful to keep him in the center of the dirty mattress so the blood still exiting his body soaked in without running out onto the floor.

She kept his knife, tucking it into the front pocket of her slacks, picked up the computer and headed for the window.

The broken glass near the wall was a problem for her feet, but she dared not stop and pick out the new crystals embedded in her soles. She didn’t have time to brush them aside, so placed the computer under her arm, stepped firmly onto the littered ground so as not to make noise and hoisted one leg over the windowsill and outside onto caked dirt. Taking one last look at the still-closed door, she clutched the laptop, withdrew her other leg from her dungeon, and ran as fast as she could in the direction she smelled smoke. She pushed aside the pain of window glass shooting into her flesh as being completely irrelevant.

Smoke means home. Smoke means people. Smoke means freedom. Safety.

A future.

‡

R
ory had been
scrambling, swearing under his breath, trying to stay calm so he could focus, silently searching the debris and abandoned vehicles in the marshes. They’d left Corrigan with the computer and a small Invisio earpiece so he could message them in case they got further instructions from Tariq.

They all knew she was very close, but didn’t know if she was in a shed, a vehicle, or a crumbling warehouse. There were easily thirty such structures littered over the wet and soggy terrain, and they had to quickly and silently search every one. The Team had been messaging each other, operating in a wedge formation as they moved away from the inlet toward the row of concrete freeway columns.

He was looking for a kill today, and if it meant his career, no matter if Megan was dead or alive, he would kill the sons of bitches who’d kidnapped her, and then he intended to surrender and face the consequences. He would make them pay for preying on and hiding behind innocents so they could play their dirty little game.

When he heard the scream echo throughout the canyon, his heart leapt out of his chest because he knew that voice was Megan’s. He stopped at the back of the house he and T.J. were searching and scanned the direction the sound came from.

“You hear that?” T.J. asked.

Rory was still listening for more noise, so didn’t verbally answer, but nodded his head. Soon Coop was behind them.

“Came from over there. Maybe the other side of the inlet,” Coop whispered.

To a non-trained eye, they might have looked like seriously macho duck hunters, with their H&Ks mounted with scopes that could flip IFR, identical dark shades that wrapped around their eyes, equipment backpacks, goggles, gloves and hats turned backwards—except for Fredo, who had a hard time getting his hair into anything but a scrunchie.

All nine in the squad spread out and darted behind various objects like abandoned refrigerators, rusted pickups with their hoods raised, a windowless and wheel-less Volkswagen bug, some large pampas plumes and several rusted oil barrels that were still smoking in the morning mist.

Rory knew there was a homeless population that liked to hang out in the abandoned buildings and gutted cars. Somewhere a small trickle of water was leaking from a broken water pipe. He knew a young Hispanic family used part of an abandoned house’s kitchen to make homemade tortillas and tamales cooked over a wood fire.

The SEALs traveled quietly, dodging an occasional body sleeping in a shabby sleeping bag. The place smelled horrible, Rory thought, a combination of brackish water, fish heads, and human waste of all kinds. Beer cans and cheap wine bottles littered the entire arena. He took extra care not to injure himself on the filthy metal and glass objects that poked from the steaming ground like grave markers.

His hip felt pretty good now that he thought about it. He hadn’t noticed any pain since the morning cup of coffee as they headed in this direction.

He looked above him at the overpass carrying traffic down off the skyway into the bowels of the seedy part of the city. Maybe the scream had come from a car’s open window, he wondered.

A large bonfire was still blazing, sending large white and grey plumes up into the sky a couple hundred yards to his left, closer toward the dockyard. He saw several small brown bodies huddled in a semicircle around its heat. Heard the sound of a bottle being broken, coughing and a couple of dogs barking, warning the group of the SEAL’s proximity. He heard what sounded like another dog running through the mud a hundred yards beyond.