SEAL's Secret: A Navy SEAL Romantic Suspense Novel (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 24)

by Flora Ferrari

  He’s reaches out his hand and puts in on top of mine. The hand that’s holding the prescription. He gently guides it down and away. He’s still staring at me.

  He says, ‘Not that kind of business.’

  I ask him what he means.

  He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. Pulls out a few photographs. Hands them to me.

  On the first picture there’s a woman. She’s in really bad shape. Really bad. She’s living on the street. I don’t recognize her, but I think he wants help. He wants me to see her. I start wondering why he didn’t just bring her in.

  He reaches down again and puts his hand on mine. He guides my hand. Pulls the picture away and tucks it below the others.

  The second picture is a prescription I’d written. It was from my pad. Had my signature and everything. I look at it. It’s for a painkiller. I look at the name. The woman from the first picture … I picture her face. It was her prescription. I feel sick. I want to vomit. He’s showing me that she’s hooked. She’s become a junkie. He’s blaming me.

  His hand is still on top my hand. Guiding my movements. He slides away the second picture. The third picture shows me in the Bahamas. It was one of the holidays I won. Someone had photographed me with a long lens. Like a paparazzi shot. I get freaked out right away. Someone had been watching me.

  He brings the second picture back up to the top. I realize what he’s saying. I won that holiday at the time I was writing that woman prescriptions for painkillers.

  He slides away the second picture and then the third.

  The fourth picture is a lab. I’d never seen anything like it. It was huge. Absolutely enormous. It looked like it could have been one of the shipping facilities for Amazon. But the people weren’t running around or driving forklifts, they were working on assembly lines. And they were dressed in street clothes, not white lab coats. And they all appeared to be Hispanic.

  I looked closer. I could see they were preparing and packaging meth.

  He slid the picture away.”

  The doctor leaned forward. A few hard short exhales were followed by tears running down his cheeks.

  “The last picture was my wife and daughter.”

  Donna could hardly believe it. She could clearly profile the doctor. All signs showed his body language and words were truthful. She couldn’t imagine what he felt at that moment. The verdict was still out for the doctor, but she felt a small bit of sympathy for him. Even though he was already well down the wrong path by that point in his life, bringing his family into the equation was enough to allow her to feel compassion for him.

  “We see you’re already playing ball, he says,” the doctor said. “We just want you to play for the other team.

  Then he took out a cigarette. Right in my office. Started smoking it.

  Actually not the other team, the guy says. Then he took a big drag on that cigarette. Blew it right in my face. Both teams.”

  CHAPTER 54

  “The way it would work, he said, was that I’d still write prescriptions for the same drugs I was already writing for. All the bonuses from the pharmaceutical company would be given to him, which I found out later would be turned over to his cartel leader.

  In the meantime I also needed to offer a “solution,” that’s what he called it, for the people who couldn’t afford prescriptions. That’s where he came in. I would provide the names and contact information, including address and phone numbers, to the people who I saw who couldn’t afford the prescriptions. I quickly discovered that his ‘people’ would follow up with them.

  All my cash and assets were slowly transferred to bogus companies that we would set up. The ultimate ownership in those companies belonging to who knows who?

  I would continue to live what appeared to be comfortable lifestyle. Everything would seem the same on the outside, the inside, the ‘guts,’ as he said, would be ripped out and replaced. So I’d own nothing. I would be, and am, technically broke. I had nothing, and continue to have nothing.

  It got so bad, my wife would ask me for a little spending money, and it would take me time to get it. She thought I was hiding it from her or cheating on her. In fact, I didn’t have it. Eventually she left me.

  I didn’t put up a fight. I knew deep down it was for her own good, for her own safety. I wanted her to take our daughter, but I couldn’t allow it. They wouldn’t allow it. And later I found out why.”

  The doctor began crying uncontrollably. Donna didn’t want to imagine the things they would have done to her. She felt sick to her stomach. Her stomach heaved and tightened.

  “Not that,” the doctor said. “Thankfully, not that.”

  He pulled himself together somewhat as he stared straight ahead at the wall. On it hung his daughter’s picture.

  “They sent some of their boys in to befriend her. They were so charismatic, but she was a girl. She had the looks. There was only so much the boys could do. Only so much clout they had in the area. They knew whatever they could do, she could do a hundred times better. A thousand times better. And she did.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She got half that school addicted to their drugs. Okay, well, maybe not half, but a whole heck of a lot. Those kids couldn’t get enough. So while I wrote their parents prescriptions for pills, she sold them methamphetamines, heroin, anything those guys produced. Their parents were too drugged up themselves to notice, or maybe just too involved with their own problems to even care. I mean, I should know. I did it to them. We did it to them. We controlled the drug trade in this area. I just turned a blind eye to it. It was so obvious but I never asked her about it. Not once. Of course I knew what was going on. The plan was set in place in my very own examination room years before. They were going to use me and my family to run everything. The friendly, successful doctor and his beautiful family would corner every angle of the drug trade in Southern California. Together we were moving millions, tens of millions a year. And what did we have to show for it? Not a cent.”

  “But what about your daughter? She must have received payments.”

  “See, but you don’t know my daughter. My Andrea. She’s honest to a fault. She wouldn’t skim any off the top, and she’d never use. I never once saw any signs of her using. Never once!”

  “Then why did she do it?”

  “She loved shopping. That was her vice. They promised her they were keeping an offshore account for her. They’d give her some money from time to time so she could go up to South Coast Plaza, or L.A. and pick up a nice handbag. Sure, but nothing real. Not any real money compared to what they were pulling in off of her. Off of us.”

  “So why was she killed?”

  “Are you kidding? Aren’t you supposed to be a detective? Are you blind? They killed her. Just look at how they did it. How gruesome. How violent. How ritualistic. She threatened to talk. That caused the alarm bells to go off. And they didn’t need her anymore. She’d done her job too well. Once everyone was hooked, all they had to do was step in and feed the beast. Supply that insatiable demand.”

  “But you said you never talked to her about what she was doing.”

  “So? You’re going to call me a bad parent now. After what I just told you?”

  “I’m saying if you weren’t speaking to her about it how did you know she was going to tell?”

  “I went though her room when she was out. I found her diary. I already knew it was starting to wear on her, but when I read that diary…”

  The doctor began crying and tried to catch himself as best he could. Through tears and sobs he said, “I knew trouble was coming. She had enough, but she didn’t know how to get out. She thought the only way was the authorities. She was trying to figure out a way to do it without getting caught, a way where she could walk away. Run away! She knew by that point she’d never see the money. She was more likely to get caught and see jail than to see any of that money. But she had a get out of jail free card. At least she hoped.”

  “What do you mean?�
�

  “There was one cop she was selling to. He promised her he’d do what he could to help her if anything went sideways.”

  “A cop? Who?”

  “Sergeant something or other.”

  “You don’t remember his name?”

  “Dudley, it was Dennis Dudley.

  CHAPTER 55

  “So he tried to play the victim?” Cain asked.

  “They all do,” Donna said.

  “So what are you going to do with him?”

  “His lawyer’s coming down.”

  “Then what?”

  “He won’t talk anymore. Or he’ll want a deal.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t want him to talk.”

  “So you can nail Dudley?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And just how do you plan to do that?”

  Donna smiled, holding it three or four seconds for emphasis and to convey a subliminal ‘don’t you wish you knew’ message. Then she winked at Cain as if to say, ‘I got this.’

  “I want in.” Cain said.

  “It’s better to keep you where you are. Not show our cards.”

  “But what if there are cards you don’t know about?”

  “What cards?”

  “Let me out and I’ll tell you.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Come on, Donna. We’re better together. Stronger together. We can do this together.”

  “I can do it by myself.” She knew she could, but having Cain by her side would make things a lot easier, and a lot easier on the eyes. But it wasn’t only her eyes that wanted him. Every part of her wanted him. She wanted them to do this together, to get their final justice together and to win together. But it might be too risky, and it was too late in the game to tip her hand.

  “What, exactly, can we do together?”

  “Get El Toro. Bring him in?”

  “You’re going to just bring in the world’s most wanted man?”

  “Or take him down. Either way we get him.”

  “And just how do you plan on doing that?”

  “I know how to get him.”

  “You’ll never get to him.”

  “I didn’t say that. I know how to get him. Make him come to us.”

  “Are you joking? He’ll never come to us. He’ll never even come close to the border.” If anyone other than Cain had said it she would have written them off as a crazy person. Being that it came from Cain, she was intrigued.

  “He’ll come alright. I’ll make him come. He’ll have to come.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’ll tempt him with what he wants most. What he loses sleep over every night.”

  “And that is?”

  “His family.”

  “They’re back in Mexico.”

  “If you believe official reports.”

  “Isn’t that the purpose of official reports?”

  “To believe them?”

  “Uh, yes,” Donna teased.

  “There’s a distinction to be made. The purpose is to create belief. That doesn’t mean you should, or that it’s even remotely accurate.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because by misleading everyone it puts an end to this, at least in the public arena. How crazy was it right after the judge dismissed the case?”

  “Are you kidding me? Pandemonium.”

  “Right. And how long did you expect that to last?”

  “Months.”

  “Right. And how long did it last?”

  Donna looked up towards the ceiling and cocked her brow, visualizing the timeline of the events all over again. “Maybe a day or two.”

  “Exactly what they wanted. Just let it blow over. Something new will come along soon enough, and if not, they’ll create something new to take its place.”

  “Okay, so what?”

  “So we give him a glimpse of his family and we pull him out.”

  “He’ll send someone else to do the job.”

  “He won’t. I know this guy. I studied this guy.”

  “And why won’t he?”

  “Because he loves them. They’re the only thing that’s pure to him. But he hates them too. He knows someone turned on him. He thinks it was his brother-in-law, but he’s not sure. There’s that seed of doubt. See, the strange thing is he hits his wife, and what happens is he shouldn’t trust himself, right? But what happens is he doesn’t trust her. He knows now she has a reason to do something unpredictable. He doesn’t see that at the time, because he’s the big boss down in Mexico. No one will cross him. But once she’s up in Chicago, and things start to go wrong, he starts to question that. He wonders who rolled over on him. Who might have played the other side? And now? Now he has to know.”

  “And where is his family then?”

  Cain smiled. Holding it those same three of four seconds Donna had just a minute or two before. Even looking at her with a similar ‘don’t you wish you knew?’ face. He winked at her. “We got this,” he said. He intentionally paused before continuing, knowing the importance of adding emphasis to what he would say next. “Together.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Donna stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep. The emotional rush of passion she shared the prior three hours had her feeling high. A high she couldn’t and didn’t want to come down from.

  She rolled and looked to her right. Cain was sawing logs. He deserved it. It was a much-needed upgrade from what the jail offered in terms of overnight accommodations.

  Their plan was brilliant. Sure, nothing in her line of work ever went exactly according to plan, but this was about as good as it could get.

  They’d give the illusion of El Toro’s family to El Toro, without even alerting his family, let alone endangering them. There was no way she would ever put a woman and child in harm’s way in order to advance a case.

  Even though Cain knew where they were, they decided together that it was better not to tell them. This case had been more than full of participants, both willing and unwilling. Participants who held too many cards too close to their chests. And things not seeming as they were was becoming the norm. The last thing they needed was an eleventh hour change of heart and El Toro being tipped off, or perhaps worse.

  When they approached Doctor Worthington he crumbled like a house of cards. His story was eerily similar to Doctor Townsend. At this point all he wanted was revenge for his daughter. He put on the electronic tracking device without much hesitation. An ankle device would be too big and bulky and risk detection. It had to be something concealed. It was amazing what could be slid just under the surface of his skin, and being a doctor, he performed the procedure himself, including the closing sutures.

  He had emailed his daily patient report to the numbered email address as he had each and every workday for years. Now it was just a waiting game and the ball would be rolling. Rolling like a snowball that would quickly turn to an avalanche.

  Although the plan was as tight as could be at this point, Donna wondered how the end would play out. She was confident in how the confrontation with El Toro would go, but more importantly what would happen between her and Cain.

  Once they both had cleared up such an overwhelming part of their pasts, what would happen? The question kept tossing and turning in her head like a ship at sea during a storm. Then what? And tossing and turning would be how she would spend most of her night, unable to sleep. Not wanting to have a nightmare. With her professional life at such an emotional high it was possible. Those odds magnified exponentially with her personal life riding an even greater emotional high.

  Knowing how much it affected her helped her to know something else, something much more important. She could trust him. She could grow with him and face life’s battles with him. She could love him.

  And she did love him. And she knew it. And that was the part that scared her most.

  She was one hundred percent committed. She wanted it all. To wrap up this old chapter in both their lives before
they knew each other, and start a new chapter together. Begin again fresh, as one, as a team. A team that they’d proven could meet any and all challenges together.

  But she was getting ahead of herself. There was still El Toro. Confidence is one thing. Execution is another.

  And first they had to execute their plan for El Toro, before they could make plans for the future. Together. She hoped with all her heart.