by Dale Mayer
SHADOW
SEALs of Honor, Book 5
Dale Mayer
Books in This Series:
Mason: SEALs of Honor, Book 1
Hawk: SEALs of Honor, Book 2
Dane: SEALs of Honor, Book 3
Swede: SEALs of Honor, Book 4
Shadow: SEALs of Honor, Book 5
Cooper: SEALs of Honor, Book 6
Markus: SEALs of Honor, Book 7
Evan: SEALs of Honor, Book 8
Chase: SEALs of Honor, Book 9
Brett: SEALs of Honor, Book 10
SEALs of Honor, Books 1–3
Table of Contents
Title Page
About the Book
Complimentary Download
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Author’s Note
Complimentary Download
About the Author
Also by Dale Mayer
Copyright Page
Back Cover
Shadow’s life has been an uphill struggle. No wonder he’s so damn good at dealing with the hard, the difficult, and the dangerous.
Shadow’s all about being a SEAL. The one world he’s comfortable in. He knows what he can do, when to do it, and how to do it … until he sets off on a mission to rescue Arianna and her family, and his world goes from controlled action to chaos. Who knew women like her existed?
Arianna struggles to deal with the foreign world she’s been plunged into. Kidnappings, beatings, threats. SEALs. The only good thing is the darkest, most dangerous-looking saviour she’s ever met. And he doesn’t know what to do with her.
Well, she has a good idea, but will they get that chance? Not if the kidnappers have anything to say about it.
Arianna has been marked for extinction, and it’s up to Shadow to save her … before it’s too late and he loses something he had no idea he wanted in the first place … but now he can’t live without.
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Chapter 1
James Morrow, Shadow to his friends, watched the lake come into view below him. He leaned forward to peer through the cockpit of the small bush plane he’d been riding in for the last half hour. This wasn’t how he’d expected to be traveling. None of his team had. Mechanical trouble had brought their military helicopter to an emergency landing. Shitty timing. They were on a mission. To rescue a US senator and his family being held hostage in a remote Canadian cabin.
Instead they’d been the ones in need of assistance. They managed to land close to a small town, but without enough time to bring in a second military aircraft, and time being of an essence, they’d ended up in one of those small bush planes barely able to handle the weight of the four passengers fully geared. Dane and Swede were traveling with the Canadian unit in a different aircraft along with Markus and Evan, two other SEALs that were part of this mission. Good men. Shadow had worked with both before. Actually at this point, he’d been lucky enough to work with several dozen SEALs. It was just over time some were more memorable than others. Markus had lost his wife in his first year at Coronado. A loss that had hurt him deeply. It had been easy to empathize. That he’d kept his head down and his focus on his work, well, he’d earned everyone’s respect then.
Evan was a bit of a wild card. Divorced and possibly had a death wish with all his explosives training. Shadow was good, but Cooper and Evan rocked that world.
That didn’t mean he was giving up his position though. Shadow was in the passenger seat for once – where he could see for miles. The others were in the cargo hold. Interesting switch. Then as a SEAL, he was accustomed to change. And being prepared. And adapting. One had to.
Hopefully the senator’s family was holding up to the devastation in their life as well. There’d been no demands as yet. But the adult daughter had managed to transmit a blurry photo of one man to the senator’s aide in Washington after they’d arrived at the cabin, and that had been enough for both countries to jump into action. The man was a known terrorist. In fact, he sat at the top of the top Ten Most Wanted list.
Not that Shadow cared about the list.
Shadow cared about the job. The work he did. This was his life. He was a remote cabin in the woods kind of guy. Take the city out of his world and he was at peace. Living on the base was a necessity, but he got away every chance he could. His friend and SEAL brother, Hawk, jointly owned a ranch with his sister several hours out of Coronado. Something Shadow could see himself doing. Only he knew Hawk and his sister were involved in heavy discussions about their options as they both had long term relationships to make work and the living arrangements needed some rethinking. Hawk had partnered up with his sister’s best friend. And Shadow’s best friend Swede had partnered up with Hawk’s sister. Confusing, maybe, but it worked for them.
Then Shadow had seen that relationship coming. Hard not to. Only poor Swede, that big mountain hadn’t.
Talk about being blind.
The way Swede had looked at Eva all these years but knowing it was a place he couldn’t go…yeah painful. Still, they’d finally gotten there. Even if it had taken a rebel training camp and a mess of rescued horses to bring them together. Shadow grinned. It would take something like that for the big guy to make his move. But he was so damn happy now, it was ridiculous. That soured his mood instantly. Almost all his friends were happily paired up. It was almost sickening.
The small plane was buffeted by the heavy winds. Lightning cracked outside the window. He frowned, studying the thunderclouds around him. They should be close. The bush plane was rigged with floats, the plan to scoop down on the nearest lake and drop them as close to shore as Bob, the pilot, could get them to where the senator’s family was being held. The storm gave them wonderful coverage for the landing. The plane engine would be lost in the crackle of the lightning and thunder. No one should be out in this nasty weather.
They were also landing further away from the cabin than the family would have arrived. They couldn’t take the chance of alerting the kidnappers of their arrival.
Shadow looked at his SEAL team behind him, seeing that air of intense focus. That air of expectancy. That understanding of why they were here. That something could go wrong. Likely would go wrong. And they’d be ready. Whether it was Mother Nature about to unleash her worst on their small tin box in the sky or the terrorists holding the senator’s family down below in the darkness – they had a job to do and they loved it.
So did he.
Being a SEAL had given him purpose. He’d needed that. He hated to admit it but joining the navy, coming from a small town to the city of the military had been tough. But he’d bore down and survived – thrived actually.
Yet there’d been always a sense of separation inside. As if the only way he could manage to get through this was to keep himself detached. Lock off the inner part of himself that was held inviolate. Foolish he knew. Particularly as he’d watched his friends go through such upheavals in their lives. They each let someone special inside. He didn’t think he could. His walls were too strong. T
oo high. Too old.
The plane rocked wildly in the wind.
The pilot slowly descended, trying to bring the plane below the heavy cloud cover as visibility was nonexistent. And the plane wasn’t equipped with the latest or the best equipment. Shadow half suspected that the old geezer beside him could fly this thing blindfolded. He had a special gift. A rare connection to his “girl.”
Shadow understood.
He’d seen many an old-timer connect to a boat or car, or in this case a plane, in such a way that they seemed to have a surreal relationship. As Shadow watched, Bob coaxed the small plane down at a gentle descent. Shadow couldn’t see all the dials on the dashboard but the one he could see, the altimeter, was spinning like mad. So the instruments had been affected by the storm too. He wasn’t nervous. He was in life and death situations often. But not normally due to Mother Nature.
The clouds thinned enough to show the deep blue of a lake below, dancing in and out of their view as they descended. Good. This was the right lake. They’d be landing soon. He hoped the water was calmer than it looked.
It wasn’t. As they got almost to the water level he could see white caps whipping up below them.
“Gonna be close,” the pilot said with a huge tobacco stained toothy grin. “But you guys live for close, don’t you?” His grin widened, but his gaze never came off the water as he carefully brought the old girl in to as smooth a float landing as possible given the circumstances.
Shadow respected the casual skill with which Bob set the plane down on the angry waves. This man had seen a lot of years in this type of wilderness in all kinds of weather to do what he’d just done. With no pier or dock to tie up to, the plane bobbed to the far end and Bob shut down the engines. The small plane rocked gently. Shadow looked at the shoreline and realized they were only about thirty feet out. Nice.
He turned to the back of the plane in time to see a small inflatable raft being lowered to the water and the first of his team climbing down into it. The raft was large enough to hold all four of them, but only just.
At the shore, they disembarked and turned to watch as Bob’s winch rewound the rope still attached to the inflatable then he struggled to reload the boat in the cargo hold. Once done, he was quick to get back to the cockpit and turn on the engines.
The plane took off and disappeared into the storm clouds.
Good. They were alone.
Just the way they liked it.
Now to save the senator.
Chapter 2
Arianna Stephenson huddled by the fire in the corner of the large cabin. Her baby brother had crawled half into her lap, his head nestled against her shoulder. At eight, he had just enough understanding of the world around them to know they were in big trouble. She’d always been fun and lighthearted with him, but there was no making light of this.
Her father, his head brightly colored after being battered by the kidnappers at the outset, sat on the couch, silent, his face pinched. But she didn’t know if that was from the pain or the situation. Her beautiful stepmother sat beside her father, fingers and lips trembling and tears constantly pouring into the Kleenex crumpled in her hand.
Arianna might have more sympathy if her stepmother didn’t look this way after most upsets, particularly when Arianna or Kevin refused to do her bidding. At his young age, Kevin had already taken more after his big sister’s temperament than his mother wanted.
Yet if there was ever going to be a situation where her stepmother’s reaction was appropriate – it was this one. And how stupid really. She’d been pulling that play for a decade now, and Arianna had come to the point of smiling sweetly and bringing her another box of Kleenex. Only this time it was for real, and Arianna didn’t know how to deal with her.
Her father had been a senator for eighteen years. They’d had some security issues in the middle of that reign, but things had settled down in these last few years, at least she thought so. She hadn’t lived at home for many years now so didn’t live under the constant pressure she had when living there.
When they’d boarded a small plane to come to her grandfather’s cabin in the Canadian wilderness, they’d had a very unpleasant reception waiting for them upon landing. They’d been marched from the dock to the cabin at gunpoint. As it was summer, and she wasn’t due back at her teaching job until September, Arianna and Kevin had big plans to enjoy the unusual holiday. If she hadn’t come, Kevin would be alone. Eight and having to listen to his mother bug their father every minute of the day. She was nothing if not contrary. Their father had done his best with Kevin when he’d been younger, but they’d grown apart years ago and now her father was always busy. She understood. The relationship followed the same pattern she’d gone through. She didn’t want that for Kevin. She had lots of great memories of the land around the cabin she wanted to show him.
But who knew they’d be taken hostage? She stared out at the trees blowing wildly across the windows. A hell of a storm raged outside. Even considering they were under armed guard she was glad to be inside. She loved the outdoors as much as anyone but in a storm like this, it would turn nasty very quickly.
Except a storm raged inside, too.
She hoped her message had gotten through. Her phone had been ripped from her hands as soon as she’d hit send and crushed on the floor in front of her. All phones had been confiscated. So they had no way to call for the plane to pick them up early. It was prearranged for the same pilot to return on Monday.
But that was a lifetime away.
Her cheek still stung from the blow she’d received for sending the image. But it was nothing compared to what it could be. The leader had seemed to think her attempts more hilarious than anything. The terrorists wanted something from her father. His vote on something to do with oil. She remembered vaguely that there was an even split on the decisions that had been announced so far. Her father had yet to announce his decision. She wasn’t even sure which side of the issue he was coming down on. Given his past views though, it was likely on the no side. He had no interest in oil pipelines anywhere across the country. Figured they weren’t worth the environmental damage should something happen. But it was an unpopular decision for many as it would create thousands of jobs and of course that was a hot issue.
That’s why she avoided politics like the plague. Her father had been approached with bribes, no…gifts, they called it, ever since his appointment had been announced. If he had been offered bribes for a vote in one direction or another then it made sense that someone would think he could be coerced one way or another as well. The old “if I can’t give you a kiss then I’ll give you a kick” sentiment. If she wasn’t being watched so closely, she’d have laughed at her twist on the old attention getting action.
Still, she hadn’t planned to spend her holiday facing guns. And what the hell kind were they anyway? Something like an assault rifle. They were mean looking firearms. And that was a whole different story. These guys were pros.
And she was stuck here waiting for a rescue.
Only she didn’t do the whole damsel in distress thing very well. In fact, she wasn’t sure she rocked the damsel thing at all. She was tall and lean and more athletically built than her women friends. As in missing the coveted junk in front and in the back. She was greyhound sleek, but her B cups didn’t look as bountiful as her friends’ chests. They’d been trying to convince her to get a boob job, but she’d laughed and said hell no. The men needed to take her the way she was or forget it. She didn’t need a guy to want her for the silicone in her chest. And the concept of a butt implant grossed her out. She was what she was. And damn it, apparently that wasn’t good enough.
Staring into the flames, stuck under guard, she realized how stupid it was to worry about her past lovers or physical failings – at least according to the men she’d dated – given her current situation. But it helped keep her mind off her worries. Another had wanted her to have curvy hips to shake on a dance floor, but he was out of luck there too. Why couldn’t sh
e attract marathon runners? After all that’s what she was. She had no desire to return after an exhilarating run to someone still sitting on the couch.
“Love you, honey, be back in couple of hours.” Then go run your heart out and feel the blood pumping through your veins like there wasn’t going to be any tomorrow and come home to find the honey still sitting and playing video games? So not her style. Then, she didn’t do video games either.
Kevin shifted in her arms. She smiled. She hadn’t played them growing up. Her mother hadn’t been a believer in any entertainment that required electronics. She’d learned to play video games for her kid brother. It was a great day when he could kick her butt on a game. He led a lonely life. And Arianna had done her best, but she couldn’t be there all the time for him. Her stepmother was overprotective. Always afraid Kevin would get hurt. Of course, he had a hearing problem and speech impediment, but he was neither deaf nor dumb. But it made him a target by other kids. It helped to develop a tough skin early on.
Then kids were cruel and nothing protected anyone all the time.
Arianna was of the opinion that small hurts weren’t a bad thing in the long run. Kevin’s small hand snuck into hers. She wrapped an arm around him and tugged him so he was sitting between her legs and leaning back against her. He nestled in close. She studied the guard on the left. Bored to hell and stuck on his cell phone like so many people today. Did he have cell reception? Would his phone work to send out a message or just to play the correct flavor of the month game that everyone glommed onto?
She nudged Kevin, a budding techie, toward the guard’s activities. She could see he didn’t understand what he was looking at until his gaze landed on the phone and the information processing behind his thick Coke bottle glasses made his eyes glisten. Now he was thinking.
She squeezed him reassuringly. With a casual glance around she studied her father’s grim demeanor and her stepmother’s distress. They didn’t look like they were going to be of any help. She worried about her father’s condition. He didn’t look well. He wasn’t a well man to begin with. He had his first heart attack seven years ago, another small one a couple of years ago. Another man stood at the back behind them all. He caught her looking at him and raised the gun barrel to point at her. She flipped back around. She had yet to see the terrorist she’d managed to photograph again.