by Jana Leigh
“Sammy,” she whispered his nickname and almost giggled when she felt his hand tighten. He hated that name, and she called him it just to get a rise out of him when they were younger.
Thane cleared his throat and Mel opened her eyes. She saw the tears in his and nodded. “You are not to blame,” she whispered.
Thane closed his eyes and shook his head. Dario read the letter and then folded it neatly and put it back on the table and sighed. “Thane?”
“Damn it, not now,” Thane said gruffly.
“Yes, now,” Melanie said. “Before anything else happens, you need to face the facts. You are not a superhero. You are not to blame for everything that happens.”
“I was their leader,” Thane said thickly and stood.
Melanie shoved back from the table and walked around to the other side of the table. She stepped toe to toe with the large SEAL and without fear poked him in the chest with her finger.
“You are not omnipotent, you are a man. I hate to tell you the facts too, but seriously, you don’t always have to carry the world on your shoulders,” Melanie said. “Snap the fuck out of it.”
Thane stared down at her and frowned. “Well that’s a nice thing to say.”
Mel laughed and looked at Dario, “I think we need a brick wall, you know to pound his head against it.”
Dario laughed and stood. “Maybe we should take a break and get something to eat and find a place to sleep.”
Thane nodded glad of the change of subject. “Of course, I will give you a crash course in this place.”
Chapter Seven
It had been twenty-four hours since they had returned. Mel and Dario had been shown rooms next to Thanes, after the emotional meeting. The three had remained in their rooms, trying to deal with everything that had happened.
Now they needed to focus back on what had brought them there in the first place. They cleaned up and met downstairs in enough time for Thane to receive an update from the Commander.
They had a lot to talk about and Mel had a few things she wanted addressed before this went on too much farther. It was personal and she was going to make Thane stop and talk to her. Dario as well, both of the men were going to have to deal with her.
Thane waited to speak about the call from the Commander until they were with the others.
“Dario, right now our Commander has made the phone calls needed to get you reinstated as a NATO Officer, you will be reporting directly to him while this is going on. They have requested a sealed file for you and our Commander has assured the appropriate people you have been working undercover for us. You will not be blamed for anything your family did,” Thane said.
Dario frowned and looked around the room. He had missed the camaraderie of being with a team. Being with these men, he felt it again. Of course he did know all of them, they trained him. “Thank you.”
“We can worry about the rest later,” Thane said and pointed to the computers the guys were all huddled around and asked, “Anything?”
“Encrypted files we are now trying to break,” Drake answered and turned back to the screen.
“Let me introduce you to the rest of these people. We have a conference call in thirty minutes with the rest of us,” Thane said to Mel and Dario.
“Rest of you?” Dario said confused.
“Yeah, about that,” Thane said and Harper held up a hand.
“I got it, BigMe. I already told you about the whole menage thing,” Harper said and Thane raised an eyebrow. “Hey, we should all come with a warning label now. Anyway, it is like a Band-Aid, just rip the damn thing off and then blow on it, the pain eases. Back to my point, everyone here gets in everyone’s business, nothing is sacred, so basically we are having a meeting with everyone and their dog, get ready.”
Mel laughed and looked at Thane who was shaking his head. “She was hit in the head a few times this last week, ignore her.”
Drake and Joel stepped forward and hugged Harper. “LC, don’t get her on a roll.”
The next few minutes were filled with introductions and reacquainting Mel and Dario. Harper took great pleasure in introducing her new team, although all had not arrived. Tank, Brennan, and Sig were there, they were going to be the leaders of the training for Harper’s new teams she was building. Dario was impressed when they gave him the rundown. Investigation teams that would work with local police departments. Thane felt himself relax knowing they were all safe, and now they were going to be able to make some headway, especially now that they had a name and face with the people trying to kill them. Now they needed to figure out how to take them down.
Thirty minutes later, Alex and the others sat around the table with all of the information that fit into place. They were still waiting for Vince and the Commander to show up. The two men had been at the base making calls on the secured lines there. Until they had their network setup, no one trusted the phones.
Sable appeared on the screen. Mel knew her name because Harper kept pointing to people and telling her who they were. She was pretty and pregnant. Mel felt a pang of longing—that is what she figured her life would be like when she was younger. Well, not with two men, but pregnant and glowing, surrounded by family and loved ones. It had been a pipe dream she realized now.
Mel looked at Thane who was smiling at Sable on the screen, being with both of the men made it even more confusing. If only she had made a move before all of this shit came down, then she would know for sure if there was something. Last night she had thought about everything. And damned if the movie “Speed” wasn’t on the TV, when the lead actress said, ‘relationships built in stressful situations rarely worked out’, Mel had realized that is what her, Thane, and Dario’s would be. A by-product of the stress. Then she looked at Dario, he was staring at the screen in interest when Slone came on the screen with Sable and held her from behind while he talked to his best friend. Mel looked at Alex for any signs of jealousy, there was none. The only thing she could see was the love showing in his eyes. She wanted that.
Mel smiled as Harper kept whispering who was who so she could put a name to a face, and one after another, the threesomes all showed her there was nothing wrong with a menage. When the time finally came for them to start the meeting, Mel felt a bit of disappointment for reality to have interrupted the whole thing.
Thane stood as the people on the screen took their seats. One of the men, West, had been severely injured recently and was being helped by the women to get comfortable. Mel already knew he had been shot during a mission in Texas where Diego had ordered the hit. She felt bad she had not been able to stop it.
Thane introduced Melanie and Dario to the people on the screen. An older woman whom they had introduced as Mason’s mother leaned forward and stared at Dario and Melanie intently.
“Do they know?” Tulu asked and Mel frowned at the woman’s demanding tone.
Thane sighed, put his head down, and shook his head. “Not now, Tulu.”
“Tell them, I have a message,” Tulu pointed at Thane.
There was silence in the room as the men shifted uncomfortably and finally Mel spoke up, “Tell us what?”
A man from the back of the room spoke, Mel jumped as she turned and looked at the distinguished older man. He was handsome and gruff. Short silver hair and a weather face only added to his appeal. Melanie thought when he was younger he had to be a ladies man. He had that aura about him. Next to him stood the Commander. Melanie knew him from the times she had met him. He was about the same age as the other man and together they looked like a force to be reckoned with. Although she had never spoken to him personally, she knew from Sam that he was larger than life. Everyone knew Commander Greese. He was a highly decorated SEAL Commander who didn’t take shit from anyone.
“Tell you that for some reason these men have been gifted with the chance to help their teammates and friends rest in peace while finding the truth about this whole mess. They can speak to their dead comrades and although it is unusual, it is true,” the ma
n said and walked to the front of the room and stared at Melanie. “Sam and the others can’t move on until things are set to rights. We are here to help them make sure that happens.”
Mel and Dario grinned and looked at each other. That had to be the last thing they ever expected to hear right now. “Uh…” Dario said uncomfortably.
“Young man, please allow us to continue,” Tulu spoke up. “When souls are ripped from this world before their time, they linger. These men have been lucky enough to be able to help their friends rest. Now, I know you don’t believe this, nor do we expect you to.”
“Tulu?” Thane said slowly and then shifted. “I already told them. Although not in such detail but they do know.”
“Well why didn’t you say so,” Tulu said with an exasperated tone. Thane rolled his eyes, and then looked at Mason who shrugged.
“I can’t control her,” Mason laughed.
“We have things that need to be discussed,” Commander Greese said briskly.
“Norman, you need to sit down and listen,” Tulu said and the Commander stopped and looked up at the screen and frowned.
“How did…” he stuttered.
“Too long to actually explain,” Tulu said. “Needless to say, we need to have a discussion when this is all done.”
The Commander frowned and then sat down. Tulu took a deep breath and looked at Dario and Mel. “It is not done, you need to go back where it all started in order to get the answers you seek, Dario.”
Dario frowned, “What answers? My family has betrayed me and all I believe in, there is nothing that I need to know.”
Mel felt her heart break for the man sitting next to her, it was bad enough learning your family was a bunch of monsters, but to face the victims of what they had done, it boggled the mind how Dario still remained calm.
Vince cleared his throat, “Dario, you are not the only one to be fooled by your mother.”
“Let’s just break this all down together,” Thane said and stood. “We start at what we all know, and what we found out. These are the missions we know are connected in one way or another. They were all when we were just with a single partner, except for the suicide bomber when we were all together; none of these were on the books per se. Voodoo, your mission with Dag when you took out the guy who was going to bomb the embassies, the keys are yours. Master Chief, yours, and Raider’s was the mission you dubbed ‘Pencildick’, the M16 was yours. Ice, the mission where you and Emo took out the dude with a sniper rifle at his hideaway, yours was the bullet. Drake, the building piece, it was from the mission where you blew the dock and lost the money. The blanket we know. We haven’t found the common denominator, although each one of these missions went a little wonky, they were accomplished. Also, Javor and Diego Dragomir seem to be at the head of all this. We captured Javor almost three years ago. Although he was the leader of a terrorist organization, I cannot believe it has everything to do with just capturing Javor. There has to be an endgame we don’t know anything about. We are tracking all the messages coming to and from the embassy now, we may find more, but for right now, we can assume these are directed at us for some reason.”
Thane paused and turned around and looked at Dario. “What do you know about these missions? Did they have anything else in common?”
Dario frowned and took out his notebook and began to search. “Each of these dates you have listed were starred and highlighted in a document we copied. Mel and I had no clue what they meant. What about a blanket?”
“What other documentation went with the dates,” the Commander barked out.
“I asked a question,” Dario said firmly.
Vince leaned forward, put his arms on the table, and sighed. “I knew your mother when she went by the name, Amani Faisal, a woman I met many years ago. She worked in the public eye in her home country, a woman who spoke out against the atrocities in her country, and I fell for her. She apparently didn’t feel the same way and married someone else, your father. I was hurt and needless to say, an asshole, I sent a blanket to her as a gift, a baby blanket. This blanket showed up with the other clues we talked about.”
Dario was silent and looked at the older man. His mother used him, of that he was sure, she couldn’t actually feel love, for anyone. “Why?”
“We don’t know, it doesn’t fit the rest of what we know, and unless we actually ask your mother outright, we are clueless,” Thane said.
“My mother does nothing without a plan, I guarantee this is all connected,” Dario said.
“The dates were in a file from my mother’s safe. We copied as much as we could before we left,” Dario said. “There are a three more additional dates listed with the others.”
Mel nodded her head. “We also have some of his brother’s phone calls recorded. We listened to as many as we could, but there were more we didn’t have a chance to listen to. They are on the blue hard drive I turned over.”
Drake nodded. “We are running them through our program as we speak.”
“What are the dates you have?” Thane asked.
Dario looked down at his paper and then read the extra dates. “Mel and I checked the dates with public records, but we couldn’t find anything important on them.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Alex said quietly.
“What?” Thane asked and the rest of the team waited while Alex kept typing on his computer.
“All of these things corresponded with missions where we were involved in some way,” Alex said slowly.
“Yeah, we know that,” Thane replied.
“This date is too early for our team to even have been involved,” Alex said and then turned and looked at the Commander who was frowning.
“I will send it to the analysts to check. What about the others?” the Commander said slowly.
“The others are dates where we were involved in missions in Rhutain,” Alex said.
Dario looked intently. “Was I involved?”
“Yes,” Alex said and they all sat back.
“All of this because we interrupted my half-brother’s illegal operations?” Dario said incredulously.
“Yeah, we are missing something,” Jessie commented. “I mean, sure, losing money sucks, and I can see why we would be targeted for that, but our families? That doesn’t make any sense. This seems personal and yet there is something else going on.”
“I agree. We need to go through every single piece of paper Dario and Mel brought us,” Thane said.
“I will contact the authorities but until we have something concrete, they will not mess with an embassy or its staff,” the Commander said.
“Here are the files,” Mel said and put a handful of drives on the table.
Chapter Eight
Diego slammed his hand into the wall. Nothing was going correctly. He did this all in his father’s name. His mother and father had made a choice when he was born. They were not a traditional match because of their countries’ backgrounds; their parents would never have allowed their match. It didn’t matter, the two of them were a force to be reckoned with, drawn together by the same cause, the same hatred for Americans.
They passed it to Diego, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to show either of his parents that he was worthy of their affection. When he found the documents from his father, and then his bastard brother’s birth certificate, Diego knew what he had to do, and his mother supported him.
Now, just before he was set to deliver the final blow to them, he had been discovered. His sources said that currently his name was being investigated. His brother was the only one who could tie it all together. Not that he knew the whole story, but he knew enough.
“Get me the location of where they are,” Diego gritted out between his teeth.
“Sir, we are trying, but they are already looking for us,” his second said.
“I don’t care if they send out the entire fucking military, you find them. Before this is all said and done, they will pay for what they have done. The rest of the
plan is set, and will go off without a hitch, the timing has to be perfect,” Diego screamed and turned. The rage in his eyes was scary. His second backed up a step knowing that Diego was close to snapping.
“Yes, sir,” he stammered and then backed out of the room.
He should be afraid. If his plan was to have its full impact, Team TEN needed to be dead. Then the others would know why they were being affected, Team TEN needed to take the blame for all of this. It was imperative.
He needed to make sure that no one connected the dots. His career and life depended on it. All those years ago, being on a SEAL team had been so important. It made his career, and now it could be taken away in the blink of an eye.
If anyone found out that he sold secrets when he was young and dumb, he would be thrown into jail for the rest of his life. Everything he had built would be ruined. For years, he had looked the other way so his secret would remain just that. A secret, and it was all about to end if they found the right paperwork.
LT Skolfield had been his supervisor; the idiot actually thought that he had been the only one on their payroll. As if he were so important. Javor had been smarter than that. He knew sooner or later the LT would be useless.
When he got out of the military, he thought it was all over. He was elected to office, and moved up the ranks until he was where he was now. No one was going to find out what he did. It would ruin everything he had worked for. A few phone calls and his team would be on the case. When something was found, he would be able to bury it.
Joel had inadvertently tipped him off, and there was no way he would be able to cover up everything in time. There were a few phone calls he needed to make, and then he would be going to San Diego, it was better to be on scene if something happened. He just needed a reason to actually go there.