My Protector (Once a SEAL, Always a SEAL Book 5)

by Layla Valentine

  Shadow doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he steps closer, his hand coming once again to rest on the butt of his gun. Jenna gives a small, muffled shriek that sounds as if she’s trying to swallow it. I look over at her quickly. I’m aching to go and stand between her and Shadow, to make her feel safe, but this situation is so delicate. One wrong move could lead to the discharge of that weapon. I can’t risk that.

  Shadow has noticed Jenna’s fear too. “I don’t need you,” he says. He makes a gesture to indicate that she should step aside. “Boetsch only wants your father.” He turns to Fred. “If you come with me, she’s free to go.”

  Fred swallows hard, and I see what’s about to happen as clearly as if I’d lived it before. This, of course, is why I brought Jenna into protection in the first place—she’s a powerful tool that can be used against Fred. She is his only child, and he is her only surviving parent. The bond they share is intense. I know by the look in Fred’s eyes that he would do absolutely anything to protect her. He’s going to hand himself over. He’s not even going to think twice.

  Jenna grabs his arm. “Dad, no!”

  He shakes her off gently and steps forward. “All right,” he says to Shadow, sounding resigned. “I’ll come with you.”

  I cross the room before Shadow can make his move and insert myself in front of Fred and Jenna. Shadow and I face off. “No,” I say. “I’m not going to let you take him.”

  “This is my job,” Shadow says. “I’m sorry, Joel. I know you feel betrayed.”

  “I feel betrayed because I was betrayed,” I say. “You took my information—”

  “You got your information on Fred Shears from me in the first place.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I had independent research, and he is my client. Besides, you’re working with Boetsch, Shadow. Forget me. You betrayed yourself.”

  “Get out of the way,” he says.

  I stand my ground. “No.”

  His first blow spins my head to the side, and my mouth fills with the taste of blood. But all I can focus on as the world sways around me is the sound of Jenna screaming.

  Chapter 15

  Jenna

  Joel never sees the attack coming, and Shadow has him on the floor in a fraction of a second. The two men are about the same size, and in a fair fight I think they’d probably be equals, but there’s nothing fair about what’s going on here. Shadow is standing over Joel and pummeling him, not even allowing a break for Joel to get to his feet and potentially fight back. This isn’t a sportsmanlike fight, I realize. Not some manly way of resolving differences. This is a beating up, the kind of thing bullies do in schoolyards, and it hurts to see Joel on the receiving end of it.

  I don’t even realize that I’ve been trying to dive in and protect him until I feel my father’s hands on my arms, restraining me. He’s saying my name, over and over, trying to snap me out of my rage and panic. Finally, his voice breaks through. “Jenna! Stay out of it!”

  I calm myself, taking deep breaths, and nod to indicate that Dad can let me go. Once he has, it takes all my strength to keep from diving in anyway. Joel has done everything he could to protect me, and it’s killing me to watch this happen to him. He spits a mouthful of blood on the floor, and my heart wrenches. I look around for something, anything, with which to interrupt the fight. Surely there’s something that can be used as a weapon in here?

  Joel attempts to strike back at Shadow, but his fist is loose, and there’s no force behind the swing of his arm. Something is wrong, I realize. His wrist is discolored and swollen. At first, I can’t figure out what could have happened, but suddenly it hits me—the handcuffs, the pipe. He must have injured it in the process of freeing himself. That means it’s my fault he can’t fight back, my fault he’s lying bloody on the floor trying to defend my father and me. I want to scream. I want to fling myself over his body and make Shadow stop.

  Shadow pins Joel’s shoulders down and kneels beside him. “Stay down,” he says.

  “You know I can’t,” Joel says.

  “I don’t want to keep doing this, Joel. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’m not making you do this,” Joel says. “No one is making you do this. You made a choice. Don’t be surprised when decent people get in your way.”

  “Decent people,” Shadow says, his voice a low snarl. “You think you’re the judge of who’s decent and who isn’t? You think everything divides up so simply?”

  “You’re hurting people,” Joel says. He’s choking on his own words. Shadow’s hand is on his throat.

  I can’t stand it. I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin. Dad isn’t holding me back anymore, but his hands are on my arms, and I know he can tell I’m itching to move toward the conflict. He’s trying to keep me in place, keep me sane, keep my focus on the fact that there is no way I could hope to overpower Shadow.

  “We both hurt people,” Shadow hisses. “When we served together, we both hurt people. We both did things we never thought we would do.”

  “That was for the greater good,” Joel says.

  “For the greater good,” Shadow says. “And you decide what the greater good is, right? You decide which causes are worth fighting for and who deserves to be protected?”

  “The law decides,” Joel says. “Not me.”

  “Laws can be wrong,” Shadow says. He shifts his knee so it’s pinning Joel down by his sternum. “Trust me, I’ve seen my share of laws abused and taken advantage of. But a good law protects the rights of the people, and it doesn’t put them at risk. It doesn’t allow random agents to come in and look for evidence of wrongdoing without so much as a warrant or a reason for suspicion.”

  “Maybe…there was a reason.” Joel’s voice is little more than a gasp now, and I can see that Shadow is leaning on him, putting pressure on his chest. I’m terrified that Joel’s ribs may crack under his weight. “Boetsch is…a criminal.”

  “He’s a family man,” Shadow says. “He has children. He has a wife. He has people to take care of. Maybe it’s not our business how he chooses to do that.”

  Joel makes a gagging, choking noise, but no words come out.

  “Let me take Shears,” Shadow says. “I’ll leave the girl with you.”

  Joel gags again, and I am suddenly beyond afraid. Is he going to say yes? Is it possible he would allow this man to leave with my father?

  I slip my arm out of my dad’s grasp and edge my way slowly along the kitchen counter which divides the kitchen from the living room. Shadow doesn’t notice me moving. His back is to me, and he’s focused on Joel. Dad is watching me though, beckoning me back in quick, panicky motions.

  I don’t go back.

  Instead, I close my hand around the neck of an empty beer bottle sitting on the counter and, with all the force in my body, bring it crashing down on the back of Shadow’s head.

  Shadow stiffens, then crumples to the ground, his body still on top of Joel’s. Joel shoves him off and scrambles out from beneath him. He stares up at me. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “He was hurting you.” I’m unable to take my eyes off Shadow’s unconscious body. “Am I going to get in trouble for assaulting a police officer?”

  “I don’t think so,” Joel says. “He can’t bring any kind of charge against you without explaining what he was doing here, and he’s definitely on Boetsch’s dollar. That’s not something he’ll want the department finding out about.”

  He gets to his feet, takes two quick strides toward me, and wraps me in a hug that lifts me off my feet. My arms wrap around his torso, and we inhale and exhale as one. It is such a relief just to be here with him, to feel him in my arms again and know that he’s safe. My feelings for him, I realize, are so much stronger than I had ever guessed.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, barely above a whisper, into his ear. “You told me not to leave the cabin. You warned me. I should have listened. This is all my fault.”

  “Shh.” He strokes my hair with one hand, rubb
ing circles on my back with the other. “None of that matters now. You did what you thought you had to do. And we’re all safe. That’s all that’s important.”

  “You could have died.” My voice breaks, making my face redden in embarrassment.

  “No,” Joel says. “He never wanted to kill me. He wouldn’t have done that.”

  He sounds unsure. I can understand. In Joel’s stories of his days in the SEALs, Shadow was a trustworthy ally and a hero. The man lying on the floor is none of those things. Joel must be completely reexamining how he thinks of his old friend. If Shadow was capable of this, what else might he be capable of?

  I trace my fingers down Joel’s arm and carefully lift his wrist in my hand. He hisses slightly as I touch it but doesn’t pull away. Up close, I can see that it’s swollen and discolored, and as I turn it, it’s clear that the discoloring forms a ring that matches the place the handcuff would have been.

  “I hurt you,” I say, rubbing my thumb so lightly over the injury that it might not even count as a touch.

  “I did that myself,” Joel says.

  “You wouldn’t have if I hadn’t locked you up, though.”

  “It was still my choice,” he says. “It isn’t your fault, Jenna. I just wanted so badly to get to you.” And he leans in close and rests his forehead against mine.

  Dad clears his throat. He’s standing with his bag already packed and his coat on. “I don’t mean to interrupt,” he says, sounding utterly bemused, “but I think we should seriously consider getting out of here before he wakes up.”

  Joel’s face seems to clear. “You’re right,” he says. “Jenna, the car keys?”

  I hand them over, reminded as I do that it’s my fault he ended up in this mess in the first place. “Do you think Shadow followed me here?” I ask. If I led that man to my father, I might never forgive myself.

  But Joel shakes his head. “That would be almost impossible unless he happened to be wandering around the mountains looking for you, which seems very unlikely. My guess is that he found your dad’s location some other way.”

  “Where do we go from here?” Dad asks as the three of us make our way out of the house and down the sloping driveway toward Joel’s car. “Back to the other safe house?”

  “No,” Joel says. “If this place was compromised, I think we have to assume that one was too. Which means it’s only a matter of time before Shadow or one of his accomplices show up there. Our best bet is to get out of the area entirely and discuss our next move on the road.”

  “On that note,” Dad says, “let me drive, Joel.”

  Joel frowns. “I should do it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Dad says. “You wrist looks broken, and for all we know, you may have a concussion. Just tell me where to go.”

  Joel hesitates, then nods and relinquishes the keys. Dad gets into the driver’s seat, and I steer Joel into the back so I can look over his injuries as we go.

  “Where to?” Dad asks.

  “Follow the road down the mountain,” Joel says. “You won’t come to any turns for the first ten miles or so.”

  Dad nods, puts it in gear and eases the car out of the driveway.

  I hold up two fingers in front of Joel’s face. “How many?”

  He frowns. “I’m fine, Jenna.”

  “He was punching you in the head,” I say, and I’m embarrassed to hear the emotion in my voice. “You could have a concussion,” I say, making my best effort to keep this clinical instead of sentimental.

  “I don’t have a concussion,” Joel says gently. “I don’t think I even have a broken wrist. It’s just bad bruising. Look.” He moves his fingers around for me.

  “I’m so sorry I did that,” I say.

  “Stop blaming yourself,” he says. “You thought I would just sit and wait for you to get back.”

  “I should have known you wouldn’t.”

  “I should have known Shadow was dirty,” he says, and suddenly volume comes back to his voice. “I told him exactly who you were. Who knows what other information I gave him without even meaning to. I can’t believe I trusted him.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Dad says, his voice floating back to us from the front seat. “He was an old friend of yours, wasn’t he? That’s what Jenna said, before you arrived.”

  “He saved my life,” Joel says, more softly.

  “Then it’s only natural that you would trust him,” Dad says. “At any rate, there’s no point in dwelling on the past. Shadow is what he is. At this point, the only thing we can focus on is what we’re going to do about it. What are we going to do next?”

  Joel shakes himself and seems to be stirring from a reverie. “You’re right,” he says. “This changes everything.” He sighs. “I work so hard putting together the plans for a person’s disappearance, and it’s so easy for them to be ruined. Now we’re going to have to start over. Nothing I had planned for the two of you is feasible now. We have no idea how much Shadow knows.”

  “Can you come up with something new on the fly like that?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says, his voice riddled with doubt. “In the past, I’ve always had the whole operation planned out and ready to go before we began. The only way things went wrong was if my client didn’t follow my instructions.”

  “I didn’t follow your instructions,” I say. I feel so guilty.

  “But I don’t think that’s what happened here,” Joel says. “I should have been able to follow you to your father’s and bring you both back. The whole area was supposed to be secure. I was always planning to have the option to travel between the two houses. The fact that you did it shouldn’t have caused any problems. The problem was Shadow, plain and simple.”

  “But I almost caused my dad to be captured,” I say.

  “Jenna, if you hadn’t been at your dad’s cabin when Shadow arrived, Shadow would have busted down the door and grabbed your father at gunpoint,” Joel says. “When you look at it that way, your actions saved him.”

  I smile at Joel. He’s being generous to make me feel better, but I appreciate it.

  “So what do we do now?” Dad asks.

  “We need to get to somewhere secure,” Joel says. “We need to buy some time so I can think. I need to figure out what our next steps are, and in the meantime, the two of you need to be off the grid. Turn right.”

  “What?” Dad spins the wheel, barely in time, and I realize Joel has directed us onto a small road that hasn’t been plowed or even driven over since the snow started to fall. “Where are we going?”

  “Away from Colebrook,” Joel says. “Farther north.”

  “What’s farther north than Colebrook?” I ask. “Canada?”

  “We can’t cross the border,” Joel says. “None of the fake documents I worked up for the two of you are reliable now. But I think we’ll hit something before we get that far. Just keep driving. Let’s hope my hunch pays off.”

  Dad drives, the snow swirling in ominous patterns on the windshield as the sun starts to go down. Joel’s fingers thread through mine, and for a moment we aren’t a professional disappearer and his clients. For a moment, we’re just three scared people, heading into the middle of a storm with no idea what we’ll find on the other side.

  Chapter 16

  Jenna

  “Pull in here,” Joel says, breaking the silence. I haven’t been looking at the clock on the dash, so I’m not sure how long we’ve been driving, but it’s dark outside now. The neon lights on the diner Dad is pulling into are lit, although enough of the letters are blown out that I can’t figure out what the name of the place is.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Joel says. “And I bet you could use some coffee, Fred.”

  “Hell yes,” Dad admits, unbuckling his seat belt.

  “Is it safe?” I ask. I’m still spooked by the close call we had back at the cabin. It feels like, if Boetsch and his people could track us there, they could find us anywhere. They could walk into this diner whi
le we’re drinking our coffee and grab Dad before Joel or I can make a move to stop them.

  “It’s as safe as anywhere,” Joel says, which is hardly reassuring. “I don’t think Boetsch would make a move against your father in public, anyway. Remember, he is operating illegally. He doesn’t want any witnesses to his actions.”

  “But if he’s in there, he’ll know where we are,” Dad says.

  “Yes,” Joel says, “but we’d also know where he is. The disadvantage would be mutual.”

  Dad and I fall silent, impressed. Joel has clearly done this before. Even though we’re flying by the seat of our pants right now, it’s obvious he’s still thinking several steps ahead. It’s good to know that somebody has at least a semblance of a plan.

  We enter the diner and nab a corner booth, far from the counter but with a direct line of sight to both it and the door. I wonder if I’m starting to think more like Joel, becoming alert to potential dangers around me. It would be good, I think, to be more aware, especially as my father and I are being hunted.

  Joel slides a few bills across the counter to Dad. “Why don’t you get us some coffee,” he says.

  “Are you sure he should do it?” I’m anxious about letting Dad go off on his own, even though we’ll be able to keep our eyes on him. After all, he’s the one Boetsch is after.

  Joel nods. “If Boetsch has agents in the field, they’ll be looking for a certain profile. They’ll be looking for someone like me to be in charge, with an older man following my instructions.” He turns to Dad. “The more autonomous you seem, the more it will throw them off.”

  Dad nods, takes the money, and walks up to the counter. Immediately, Joel gets out of his seat across the booth from me and slides into the seat Dad had occupied beside me.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “This is so it doesn’t look like we’re father and daughter and you’re an employee.”