by Trish Loye
12. SEAL at Sunrise – Caitlyn O’Leary 9/17/19
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SEAL at Sunrise
Check out the first chapter in the next Silver SEAL novel by Caitlyn O’Leary!
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This Time, More Than Their Love Is On The Line
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Former Navy SEAL Commander, Liam McAllister, was neck deep in the Mexican jungle on a contract assignment for a highly classified sub-set of Department of Homeland Security. When Liam discovers a conspiracy that goes deep and spans decades it makes him sick. He asks his mentor at the DHS to provide him an intelligence liaison with Naval experience to help him ensure justice is served.
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Liam was stunned when Addison Sanders walks through the door. She is a blast from the past and a punch to the gut, a woman he’d loved and lost. But this buttoned up Addison is a shadow of her former self. He hardly recognizes her but nothing could disguise her intelligence and heart, and Liam quickly finds old flames reignited.
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With her help, Liam and his team start to close in on the dirty forces who are intent on covering up decades of crimes. They soon realize the corruption reaches farther than anyone could’ve imagined and it isn’t over. Now Addison is a target. When the clock starts ticking, Liam risks everything to make sure that Addison is protected. Will they finally have a chance on the future they lost out on before?
Chapter One
Fuck. Something stinks!
Liam McAllister had gotten used to the myriad smells of the jungle. Hell, he’d even tramped under a community of spider monkeys and gotten pelted by shit, so to say that it smelled putrid in this cabin was really saying something.
“My God, what is that stench?” Laird Campbell whispered almost soundlessly as they quietly pulled another board from the base of the shack. Liam glowered at his old friend who rolled his eyes, but nodded at the admonishment. Liam and his three comrades had crept up to the two cabins, and even though they were both padlocked from the outside, they weren’t taking any chances. They were entering, in stealth mode.
The wood was soft and rotten where it met the jungle floor, so it almost disintegrated in their hands as they removed it from the base of the back wall. Hell, they didn’t even need to use their knives. Both men kept at it—they just needed a big enough hole for them to crawl through with their weapons at the ready. Hopefully in one of these two cabins they would find the missing girl—a cache of guns would be nice too—but rescuing Heather Reading was most important.
Two weeks ago Liam had been approached by the Department of Homeland Security to put together a team to track down a notorious arms dealer. He’d said no. It didn’t matter how hard Silas Branson had twisted his arm, Liam had put in his time working for Uncle Sam, and he was through. But then everything had changed.
Three days ago, one of Liam’s oldest friends approached him. He was desperate. Laird needed help finding a young girl who had just been abducted from a resort in Cancun. Her mother and Laird had grown up together, and he had promised to find her. When the big Scotsman had come to Liam with information that Eduardo Riaz was trafficking in young women, and likely behind the abduction, Liam was all-in. The fact that this was the same man who was suspected of running guns was just a happy accident. Heather Reading was the fourth college girl to have been abducted in two years and none of the others had ever been found.
Liam called Silas Branson and told him that he’d help put a stop to Riaz’s operation with a couple of conditions. Si gladly capitulated. He gave him all the information and support he could. Two days later, Liam and four others were dropped in twenty miles from Eduardo’s hacienda. They’d infiltrated the big house two hours ago, just before dawn. Caught off-guard, it wasn’t much of a fight—still, some of Riaz’s men lost their lives. They’d finally found Eduardo passed out drunk and useless in the wine cellar as they searched the big house for Heather. They came up empty. They left Brannon Dodge to watch Riaz and the one guard who was still alive and went searching for Heather.
It was Hudson who found two barely-there tracks that led to these two shacks.
The two cabins were within spitting distance of one another. Hudson Wells and Cooper Laughlin were entering the second one.
“Report,” Liam ordered as he spoke into his headset.
“We’re prying the planks off. This cabin is solid.” Cooper said.
Interesting.
Liam wondered why the difference. But then his focus shifted as the hole in the wall became big enough to get through. The smell blasted him and he reared back. Ah God, it was the smell of a decaying corpse. He’d only smelled it once before, but it was burned into his memory.
“Jesus,” Laird breathed. He shoved Liam out of the way and crawled forward.
“Goddammit, be smart,” Liam whispered harshly into his mic. Laird didn’t bother to answer.
Liam hoped the smell didn’t belong to Heather. She had only been missing for four days, but still, the jungle could be pretty harsh to a dead body.
Laird stilled in front of Liam. Good, it meant he was surveilling the cabin before just charging in. He heard his muffled gag. Liam was close to throwing up, too. He started breathing through his mouth.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. There might not have been any windows, but the shack wasn’t well-built so there were feeble glimmers of light coming through the ceiling. That’s when Liam saw them. Two bodies, dangling from meat hooks in different stages of decomposition.
He’d seen a lot of things in his life. He really thought he was immune.
He wasn’t.
This got him.
Women.
Fierce rage.
Gut-wrenching sorrow.
When they’d scanned the room, it looked empty of any human life.
“Liam, Heather has to be here. She has to be,” Laird’s voice was hoarse with pain, the smell forgotten.
Laird’s flashlight scanned every nook and cranny of the shack, but nothing moved. There was actually a corduroy recliner.
A fucking puke green recliner!
Then there was a stained mattress and two folding chairs, one upright and one overturned, a tarp in the corner, a dresser, a cooler, and pile of beer cans.
Laird leaped across the room to the tarp. He flung it aside. There was nothing underneath. Liam went to the dresser. One of the drawers was on the floor. Empty. The two others hung open. In the middle one he found the remnants of white powder. He didn’t need to do a taste test to know it was either cocaine or heroin.
“Heather!” Laird’s despairing whisper carried throughout the hovel. Liam knew why he wasn’t bellowing because they didn’t know who might be outside or what Coop and Hudson were going to find in the next cabin over.
“She might be in the other cabin,” Liam tried to reassure his friend. “Hell, it’d be better if she was.”
Laird gave him an anguished glance, then looked up at the ceiling. “We have to help these two girls.”
“That has to wait.”
“No!” Laird’s voice was harsh. “We have to take them down. Now!” The big Scotsman was shaking out the tarp and gently wrapping it around one of the women as he lifted her bound hands off the hook. Slowly he rested her body onto the dirt floor. Not once did he flinch at the level of decay, but treated her with the utmost tenderness. This was the reason Laird was one of Liam’s best friends.
“Let me take care of the next woman,” Liam said as he moved toward Laird. It was then that the hair on the back of his neck stood up. They’d searched the room, but something wasn’t right. Liam felt a presence. He swung his head around. All he saw was the cooler and the dresser. The cooler had nothing but a nasty slime in it, and the dresser he’d searched.
Liam took three long steps ov
er to the dilapidated piece of furniture and yanked it away from the wall, his gun drawn. Brown eyes stared up at him.
“Heather!”
Laird hip-checked Liam out of the way as he skidded to his knees in front of the frightened girl. She was wearing a piece of cloth around her head that covered her nose and mouth, obviously to block out the noxious smell.
“Lamb, are you all right?” Laird’s hand cupped the back of her head. “Your mum sent me.”
The girl stared at him with no reaction, her eyes were wide and glassy.
“Heather, your mom is Clarissa and your dad is Tom. They’re worried sick about you. I’m getting you out of here and taking you home. Do you understand me?”
Nothing.
Laird pulled her into his chest and rocked her close. He looked over his head at Liam. “Get down the other lass and cover them both up.”
Liam turned away, knowing Heather was where she needed to be at the moment. As he carefully took down the next body and laid her beside the other one, he whispered into his mic.
“Did you hear all of that?”
“Yes,” Hudson responded. “That’s good news. We’re in. No bad guys. No bodies. But we have a situation.”
“What?” Liam demanded. He didn’t have time for Hudson to be coy.
“We’ve got guns and drugs. Millions of dollars’ worth of guns and drugs.”
“They’re American-made, right?”
“The weapons, yeah.”
“Okay, it’s what we thought, so what the fuck is your problem? So we’re done. Laird delivers Heather to her mother. We go back to the Hacienda where Brannon’s watching Riaz. Get the information we need from that piece-of-shit about who in America is delivering the weapons, we have the federales handle the drugs, and I tell Silas who the bad guys are in the States and I’m done contracting with him. Game over.”
“We’re not telling the federales shit, and the game’s just beginning,” Hudson said.
“What do you mean? Why aren’t we done?” Liam demanded.
“Because locked up in the desk is a tin box filled with trinkets,” Cooper responded. “The necklaces, rings, rosaries and shit weren’t a problem for me. The pinkie finger was a little fucked up, but the real problem are the dog tags.”
Liam went cold. “Repeat that.”
“Dog tags. There are eighteen. Looking at the chains, I’d say some of these are pretty damned old. Most are Navy. All are women.”
Fuck. The stench just got worse.
“Who were you with in the jungle?” Silas Branson demanded.
“My men,” Liam answered.
“I want names.” Silas wasn’t known for being patient, especially when he was pissed-off. Liam really didn’t care if Silas was mad, this was part of the deal. Liam was tasked to get things done, and to do it off the books. He did. End of story.
“Do you want me to pay these men of yours or not?” Silas growled.
“It’d be nice,” Liam said. “But on this mission they’ve volunteered.”
“Dammit! I don’t want a bunch of people I don’t know running around on one of my ops.”
Liam sat back in his chair and fought back a grin, the Assistant Director of Homeland Security saw it and scowled. “McAllister, I’ll pull you off this mission, don’t think I won’t. I’ve got about eleven other men I could hand it to.”
“I suppose you could, but none of those men have the dog tags, now do they?”
He could practically see the steam coming from Silas’s ears. “This isn’t a game,” he growled.
Liam sat up and set his coffee on his temporary boss’s desk. “I didn’t think it was. You’re the one who shanghaied me to begin with on that little adventure down to Mexico. I flat-out told you I didn’t want to have anything to do with DHS, but you sic’d Josiah on me. So I did that job for a friend.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” Silas leaned back in his chair. “You turned that whole mission into a rescue for Heather Reading. This wasn’t about Josiah Hale, this suited your purposes to help Laird Campbell. So I know one of the men you were down there with.”
“But that’s the only one you know of. You don’t know the rest of the team, they’re shadows.”
“I can’t prove it, but I would say that your nephew is involved since he and Laird have a history,” Silas said as he picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers.
“Prove it.”
“You know damn well I can’t. Unfortunately, the one person who might have helped to identify any of you met with an unfortunate shaving accident and died.”
“I keep telling you, he didn’t die from the knife wounds,” Liam said thinking about Eduardo Riaz’s whimpers. “If it hadn’t been for his heart giving out, we would have found out more than just his weapons supplier, we would have found out about the dog tags.” Liam was still pissed about the asshole dying on him.
Silas sighed. “I know, I know. At least we’ve put a stop to that.” He looked Liam dead in the eye. “So you’re telling me I won’t have to pay for anybody except you?”
“I’m going to be expensive. What’s more, I’m going to need a someone in intelligence who knows their way around the Navy.”
“You’re saying you don’t want someone currently in the Navy?”
“I don’t. My gut’s telling me that if I have somebody who has to report up through the ranks they’ll be compromised.”
“Ah shit,” Silas threw his pen down on his desk. “You think we have a killer in the Navy?”
“Si, is the murderer currently serving? I sure as hell hope not. But do I think they have a background in the Navy? You can take that to the bank.”
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I’ll get you what you need ASAP. Now spill it. Is Declan working with you?”
“Yeah. He and some of his men are going to be on my team.”
“They’re wildcards, Liam.”
“Hell Si, I thought I was a wildcard.”
“Hell no. I agreed with every damn thing you did in Oman. You saved your men’s asses. Those assholes in command had no right to ask you to turn your back on them. I was damned impressed by what your captain told me. You got a raw deal and I would have retired, too.”
“Even though I left under a cloud?” Liam asked. In his gut he knew that he’d done the right thing, but it still struck a nerve that after twenty-eight years of service he’d left under less than exemplary circumstances. Not that he wouldn’t do the same thing over again. Fuck yeah he would.
“It’s an honor to have you working for Bone Frog Command, Liam.” Silas got up and shook Liam’s hand.
To read more of SEAL at Sunrise click the link! SEAL at Sunrise
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my editing team! Tbird London, you totally are a story whisperer. And as always…Faith, you’re my copy editing rock.
Thanks to my writing girls who have always been there while I struggled to get this book out. Elena, Dara and Steena, I really couldn’t do this without you.
As always, thanks to my family for understanding my crazy emotional ups and downs, and for listening to my wild stories.
And last but never least, the hugest thanks to my readers. Never could I have done this without you.
About the Author
In a nutshell, I'm a wannabe Astronaut and Spy who writes stories to keep the voices in her head quiet. I drink too much tea and love anything that combines salt, caramel and dark chocolate.
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Longer version... I'm a Canadian girl who's had a variety of jobs from a Canadian Army officer to a research scientist to an IT project manager. I finally gave it all up and bowed to the stories clamoring inside me to get out. I stay at home with my children and write when I can. It's a life I love. I hope you enjoy my work.
For more information
www.trishloye.com
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