Hot SEALs: SEALed Fate (Kindle Worlds) (Deep Six Security #0)

by Becky McGraw

The last thing they needed was to be followed to their safe house, a place that Rick assured him was better fortified than Fort Knox with surveillance cameras, a high-tech alarm system and enough locks to make it a vault. According to Rick, Jon was obsessive about security, went way overboard, but in Jax’s mind there was no overboard on security. Knowing the measures Jon had taken to secure his place put Jax’s mind at ease that they might be able to sleep there tonight.

  He glanced over at Fallon, who seemed to be in a daze watching the highway roll by out the side window. She might need a little help from a drink or sleeping pills to find any rest tonight.

  Jax was immune, because danger was something he’d dealt with daily in the teams—not so much now that he was out, but the effects remained. Fallon, however, was not used to it and she’d been through a lot of it today. He reached over to squeeze her knee.

  “You doing okay?” he asked, and she whimpered.

  She looked at him, her lip quivered and the damned tears started again. Right then, Jax realized that sympathy, or empathy, was not the right approach with her. He put his hands back on the wheel. “If you’re not doing okay, you need to get okay,” he said gruffly. “We’ve got a long road to travel before this is over. If you fall apart now when it’s just started, it’s not going to be a smooth ride for either of us.”

  Still no response from her.

  Fallon had been stewing in her grief, wallowing in it, the entire drive from Washington to Virginia and Jax had let her. It was time for her to buck up and toughen up. Jax needed her strong in case something else did go down. The only way to accomplish that was with a little distraction and diversion.

  “I didn’t take advantage of your sister, or invite her out into the woods that night in Cancun.” That should do it, he thought, fighting to keep his expression and words neutral, even though the old anger curled in his gut.

  Fallon’s gasp told Jax he’d struck a nerve and that pleased him. At least she wasn’t sniveling anymore. He imagined her outrage had evaporated the tears, and that was good too. Her outrage couldn’t be any hotter than his, but he was using this as a tool to distract her, not start an argument, he reminded himself, as he saw her spin in the seat to pin him with an angry glare.

  “You bring that up now?” she asked angrily.

  “Why not now?” Jax replied with a shrug. “It’s a huge elephant we need to shoot, so we can work as a team to keep you alive. Until it’s gone, you won’t trust me any more than I trust you. Let’s just get it out of the way before we get to the condo.”

  With a huffed breath, Fallon leaned back against the seat and folded her arms across her middle. “I know you didn’t.” Jax’s hands jerked on the wheel, and the car swerved as the words rang loudly inside his skull.

  “Why the fuck did you tell your father I did then?” he asked, his voice constricted by the rage building at his vocal chords.

  “It was too late when Hannah finally fessed up. You had been discharged, and my father swore us to secrecy since he’d made such a big deal of it and he’d have been embarrassed.”

  “He would have been embarrassed?!?” Jax screeched, barely able to keep the car on the road. He could barely breathe, he was so mad. “Holy shit, lady—do you have any clue how fucking mortified I was? I had an honorable service record—no a distinguished record. I planned to be a lifer in the teams—eventually an instructor! That was my career! Do you know how hard I worked to become a SEAL? How fucking much money the U.S. government spent to train me to be a SEAL?” Jax’s eyes were on fire, as he fought to keep the emotion dammed in his throat from rushing upward. When he finally succeeded, he finished, “Your father’s mission to drum me from the teams cost me every scrap of dignity I had, every ounce of respect I’d earned from the men I served with and my commanders. I hope saving your father a little embarrassment was worth that to you, Ms. Morality.”

  “I deserve that and a lot more,” Fallon replied, her arms tightening even more. “I’m sorry just doesn’t seem adequate.”

  Jax’s whole body vibrated with anger, as he looked back to the road. How could the explanation and apology he’d waited five years to hear make him angrier, make him hate the woman beside him more? Hate her father ten times worse?

  “Adequate? Hell no, that’s not adequate. If you said those words to me every day for the rest of my life it wouldn’t be adequate to fix the damage you’ve done.”

  “I never thought I’d see you again to be able to apologize. I tried to find out where you’d gone after you were discharged and Hannah came clean, but they wouldn’t tell me.”

  Shock rocked him when his body suddenly slingshotted forward toward the windshield and his seatbelt locked. He slammed back against the seat, a flash of black caught his eye and the black van appeared beside the car. The passenger window rolled down quickly and a man with dark hair and olive skin pointed a foreign machine pistol with a long suppressor on the end directly at him. Jax hit the brakes hard and the van zoomed past them with the guy hanging out the window to line up a shot.

  The unmarked exit seemed like divine intervention when Jax twisted the wheel to get off the interstate. The back window shattered, Fallon screamed and Jax hit the gas, launching them over a bump on the exit ramp. His teeth rattled when they landed, but he didn’t let up on the accelerator, even when he ran the red light at the intersection to make a two-wheeled right turn and the sexy British woman on his GPS began telling him she was recalculating.

  Jax slammed his foot to the floorboard to put as much space between them and the van as he could. He knew they’d be following. The look of determination on that hitman’s face, the coldness in his flat, black eyes, told Jax he wasn’t giving up.

  That was a professional hitman, he thought.

  Jax focused, went into ops mode to assess the situation, and decide what his options were while he had a few minutes to do that. Thank God, before they left he’d transferred his weapons bag from the trunk to the back seat.

  “Get into the back seat, hand me the weapons in that duffle bag, then lay down on the floorboard and cover yourself with it,” Jax growled.

  Fallon’s hands shook as she fumbled for the seatbelt release. She scrambled through the space between the seats and Jax watched in the mirror as she quickly unzipped his weapons bag and pulled out his assault rifle, before she carefully laid the muzzle on the console beside him. Jax pulled it through to prop it on the passenger seat. She handed him the three other smaller weapons and he stacked them on the seat.

  “Now the ammo in the outside pockets.” He took inventory as she piled the magazines and boxes of bullets and shells on the console. When he knew she had it all, he met her eyes in the rearview. “Get down and cover yourself.”

  Her eyes filled and pressure built in his chest when she stuck her hand through the seat and he saw what she held. His desert-digital-camo field cap with his trident pinned on it. The only thing he had left from his time in the teams, because on his way out of the base for the last time, Jax had tossed his entire bag of uniforms into the trash.

  He hadn’t been able to throw the hat that had been with him to hell and back into that dumpster, or the pin he’d gone through hell to get, so he kept it. He’d forgotten it was stashed in the pocket of his weapons bag.

  “Please put it on,” she said, her voice husky. “You deserve to wear this, and maybe it’ll bring us luck.”

  “I’m a SEAL, I don’t need luck,” Jax replied gruffly, dragging his eyes back to the road. No, he wasn’t a SEAL—he was a former SEAL, thanks to her, he thought, his anger building again. He refused to use the term ex-SEAL, even though that more aptly described his sit.

  “Please, Jaxson—it’ll make me feel better.”

  Jax didn’t want to make her feel better about what she’d done. But when it became obvious she wasn’t going to lay on that floorboard until he did, he snatched the cap from her and slapped it on his head. A strange sense of peace and calm worked through him to take the edge off of the adre
naline pumping through his heart. He adjusted the fit a little, then met her eyes in the mirror.

  “Happy now?” Her lips wobbled up at the corners, and Jax dragged his eyes back to the road. “Lay down back there and don’t you dare pop your head up for anything, or I’ll shoot you myself.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Fallon had never been more afraid in her life—ever. Even when she was held hostage for millions of dollars her father didn’t have for ransom in that dank, dark room with the dirt floor in the cartel compound in Mexico. The man beside her had saved her life, and her father that money and in turn they’d ruined his career—his life, because she’d created a mountain out of mole hill with the situation with her sister. Guilt weighed on her more heavily than the thick canvas bag she pulled over herself as she laid on the floorboard.

  Although Fallon had always appreciated military men and their service to the country immensely, she had never really understood the whole military process or mentality. Probably because she’d never been exposed to it. None of her or her father’s friends had served, most were politicians, bankers and lawyers. In her naivety, and inexperience she believed that men who enlisted only did it because they had no other options for college, or life. It was a respectable out for those poor unfortunate souls and she often felt sorry for their life of forced servitude.

  Jaxson Thomas had just convinced her she was dead wrong.

  He had purposely devoted his life to serving the country, had spent years of hard work molding himself into an ultimate warrior for that purpose, and she had taken that all away from him with her outrage, and she admitted it now, jealousy, over finding her sister naked in the woods with him. Fallon felt about two inches tall. Bile pushed up to choke her, as she flattened her body more against the floorboard, because that’s just how low she felt at that moment, before she pulled the bag over her head.

  What Fallon had done to Jaxson amounted to the same thing East Coast Willie was trying to do to her. Willie’s methods were different, but he was trying to take her out of her chosen career, one she’d worked over a decade to achieve too.

  When she received the first death threat four days ago, a bloody handwritten letter with a headless rat in a box, at the FBI’s request, Fallon had cleared her docket through the end of the month to take leave. The one hearing she hadn’t cleared though, was Peter Crifaso’s. Fallon was determined those mobsters were not going to intimidate her or keep her from dealing out the justice they deserved. She had every intention of being in that courtroom on the last day of the month just to prove that to them. If she could manage to stay alive until then.

  Fallon knew what the gangsters wanted—her to be so scared she recused the case to her father’s courtroom. That wasn’t happening, because she knew the other Judge Sharpe would either declare a mistrial, or hand out probation. He’d done that five times now when mob-related cases appeared in his courtroom for charges ranging from racketeering and wire fraud, to money laundering. All dismissed, and Fallon was beginning to wonder why. She didn’t want to think her father was taking mob payoffs, or bowing to intimidation, but she was really starting to wonder.

  Heat enveloped Fallon as her breathing recycled under the thick heavy cloth making it cloying under there, but she refused to give Jaxson Thomas one more minute of trouble. He was saving her again even after everything she’d done to him. Her eyelids became heavy with the monotonous drone of the tires rolling on the pavement, so she closed them, deciding the best favor she could do Jaxson and herself right then was to go to sleep.

  The last four days of her life had been absolute hell, but could in no way compare to the last five years of Jaxson’s, because of her. For a woman who prided herself on fairness and honesty, above-average intelligence because she’d graduated magna cum laude from an ivy league college and first in her law class, Fallon had been a stupid idiot in this instance.

  A whoosh of cool air swept her strangely wet body and Fallon took a deep shuddering breath of fresh air as she tried to open her eyes. They were too damned heavy, and she was so tired she snuggled her face against her hands and went back to sleep.

  “Fallon wake up!” a deep masculine voice growled near her ear, while the owner of that sexy, growly voice shook her shoulder violently. “I’ve got to get these weapons inside before someone sees them.”

  The word weapons speared through the fog in her brain and Fallon dragged her eyes open to push up. The dull throb in her head became louder until it pounded. Pressing a hand to her temple, she groaned.

  “You probably have a damned headache from the carbon monoxide,” Jax informed as he knelt down to open the duffle bag she’d been using as a cover. Her expensive brightly flowered, soft-sided tote bag sat beside the green canvas bag in stark contrast.

  “Carbon monoxide?” she repeated groggily.

  “I told you to hide, not asphyxiate yourself. Take some deep breaths.” Jaxson’s body shook as he rearranged the guns in the duffle bag then stuffed ammunition into the pockets.

  Fallon sat on the seat and sucked in deep breaths while she watched him, noticing how much he looked like he had in Cancun. Purposeful, intent, and capable—and lethal with that gun, or weapon as he kept calling it, the big one, strapped across his chest. Whether on purpose or just because he forgot it was there, he also still wore the cap and her heart jerked. The narrow bill shaded his blue eyes making him look mysterious. The low profile shape made his jaw squarer, and the beard growth on that square jaw made her want to run her fingers over it.

  “You look pretty deadly with that gun strapped on your chest.” And so damned handsome, I can barely stand to look at you.

  “I don’t just look that way—I am deadly,” he replied cockily as he zipped up the bag and stood to heft it up to his shoulder.

  That bag had to weigh a ton with all those weapons and bullets in it, yet Jax lifted it like it was a bag of cotton. With this strong, capable and confident man protecting her, maybe she would be able to stay alive for the next two weeks to see Peter get his just desserts. And maybe after this was over, she’d get to know Jaxson a lot better than she did right now. Perhaps he’d give her a chance to make up to him for what she’d done.

  But that was fantasy.

  Jaxson Thomas hated her and had every right to hate her. Besides, despite all outward appearances and her successes in the legal field, Fallon was still the nerdy bookworm she’d been all her life deep inside where it counted. Yeah, the image consultant she hired to give her a makeover before she took the bench was good, so was the surgeon who corrected her eyesight so she could lose the glasses. But not good enough to change that.

  This man was alpha cool. He probably had his choice of sexy women who were just as cool as he was. To think he would ever find her attractive was absurd. That she was thinking about that at this moment when she was in grave danger was more absurd though.

  “Let’s get inside in case those goons did somehow manage to follow us.” He stepped back to give her room to exit, and pulled the door wider.

  All of the warmth her thoughts created fled as Fallon’s blood froze. “Do you think they followed?” she squeaked her heart shooting up to her throat.

  “No—I zigzagged through backroads for two hours, so probably not. I didn’t see them behind us again, but we need to stay vigilant. Watch our six.”

  “Our six?” Her brow knotted. “Why not our seven, eight, nine and ten?”

  His face spread into an easy smile, the first she’d ever seen from him, and Fallon’s eyes clicked over every perfectly straight, white tooth, before gliding back up to his eyes.

  “Military term for our backs,” he clarified with a laugh.

  “I definitely want you watching my six then,” Fallon replied, returning his smile as she slid her legs out of the car to stand. “And all those other numbers too.” Watching, touching, or whatever else he wanted to do with them. Sixty-nine would be a good number, or the author made it look very good in the book she’d read in her early twentie
s. She’d fantasized about it often enough.

  What in the heck was wrong with her, Fallon wondered in disgust, as she brushed her jeans when pebbled shards of glass from the shattered window scattered at her feet.

  Jaxson’s hand shot out to grab her wrist but not soon enough. She pulled her hands away to see she had several nicks on her palms beading with blood. Clumsy, nerdy bookworm, she amended, as he grabbed her wrist to pull her into the light and inspect her hands.

  “I’ll find Jon’s first aid kit, but none of the cuts look too deep.” He sighed as he dropped her hand to turn toward the townhouse type condos. “Let’s get inside.”

  It was obvious he wasn’t waiting for her, and Fallon wasn’t staying out in the dark parking lot alone, so she took double-steps to keep up with his long strides to the door of the condo at the far end of the row of six. She looked up at the big bright full moon and the million stars in the sky, while Jaxson punched a code into the keypad beside the door. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key then inserted it into the three locks on the door, before swinging it open.

  “Stay right here for a second,” he said, leaving the door open as he walked inside flipping on lights. Fallon looked around the parking lot, expecting to see a black vehicle zoom into the lot, but none came before he reached out and grabbed her arm to pull her inside.

  “Did you see how pretty the moon is tonight?” Fallon asked, as she walked inside and glanced at the very masculine décor of the condo.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” Jaxson replied looking none too happy, as he walked to set his bag down beside the sofa. Sitting, he removed the weapons he’d just loaded into the bag outside and checked each one, before laying it on the coffee table.

  Why was he grumpy all of a sudden? Maybe he was as worried and edgy as she was right then, so she decided to try to start a conversation with him that didn’t involve guns or goons…or Cancun. They could both probably use a little distraction, and she would like to get to know her protector a little better.