Hot SEALs: Love & Lagers (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by Liz Crowe

  Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Cat Johnson. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Hot SEALs remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Cat Johnson, or their affiliates or licensors.

  For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds

  Love & Lagers

  Liz Crowe

  Contents

  Love & Lagers

  Introduction

  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

  Also by Liz Crowe

  About the Author

  Recommendations/endorsements:

  Love & Lagers

  A Hot SEALs Kindle World / Love Brothers Series Crossover Novel

  By Liz Crowe

  Introduction

  Owen Taylor lost everything in Iraq—his best friend, his faith in humanity, and his leg.

  Haunted by the past, unwilling to accept the future, he takes an IT job with the Guardian Angel Protections Services (GAPS).

  Former chef turned GAPS operations manager Lainey Jackson discovers a connection with Owen—a shared love of great food and beer. Terrified by his attraction to her, Owen shuts down, leaving Lainey wondering if she’ll ever have a normal relationship again.

  By the time he can admit his feelings, he must step in when the dangerous secret she’s been running from catches up with her.

  Chapter One

  Owen glared at the laptop screen, refusing to accept what it represented. Despite the fact that he’d seen Paul Norris vaporize into proverbial pink mist by the side of a godforsaken road in the even more godforsaken desert, he simply couldn’t process the reality of his lifelong friend’s memorial service back home in Kentucky.

  He leaned forward and pressed his aching forehead on the scarred-up table in front of the computer. He pressed so hard that, when he sat back up at the sound of a familiar voice coming from the speaker, he had a big, red mark above his eyes that didn’t fade for an hour.

  Another of his childhood friends stood at the podium. Antony Love was talking about Paul and Owen and their lives growing up together, running the streets of Lucasville, Kentucky, practically from their cradles. Owen narrowed his eyes at the sight of Antony’s sleep-deprived, gaunt visage.

  Random sobs could be heard through the crackly speaker. The images wobbled now and then when the internet service blipped. The distinct sound of a newborn baby’s wail sliced through Owen like a ten blade. He squeezed his eyes shut, reached over and turned the thing off.

  It should have been him.

  It would have been him if Paul hadn’t run past him that day on the road, joking around about keeping in shape so he could manage being a new father when he got home in a couple of weeks. Something like five seconds before his foot landed on the improvised explosive device.

  Owen groaned and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. The sounds of his platoon prepping for personnel changeover filled his ears, replacing the horrific crying of Paul’s baby, born a few weeks after his evaporation. The baby Paul would never see, or hold, or play with. The baby Rosalee—Paul’s high school sweetheart—would now raise alone.

  Owen leaned back in the chair, ignoring all the other grunts around him engaged in their own video chats with loved ones. The ever-present anger flared in his chest, crawled into his throat, and filled his sinuses with acid. His aching brain sent ‘get some sleep, already’ signals he ignored as he watched half his platoon board a plane headed stateside. He could have gone. They were willing to send him in time for Paul’s memorial service, but the thought of experiencing that live and in person made him want to puke.

  With a sigh, he hit the power button on the computer and dialed back into Antony’s Skype feed. It was the least he could do now for one of his oldest friends, considering the fact that it would have been him, Owen, floating in the dessert ether in microscopic bits of blood, bone, and muscle. It should have been him. If Paul had only stayed behind him in formation.

  Owen gnawed on the inside of his cheek when he caught sight of Rosalee standing at the podium, tears pouring down her face, her lips moving with words his ears refused to hear. Rosie had been one of the cool chicks in high school, the kind who liked to flirt and giggle about boys but who could also hunt, fish, camp and hike as well as anyone. She and Paul had been perfect together.

  When she got shaky and had to grip the edges of the lectern to keep from falling over, Owen reached out as if he could grab her and prop her up. Antony appeared at her side and put his arm around her. She turned into his chest and sobbed while he led her back to her seat. Owen flicked off the sound so he couldn’t hear the baby cry again.

  Paul’s baby. The son he’d never know and who would never experience the pleasure of having Paul Norris as a father.

  “Motherfuckers,” he muttered as he clenched his fingers together and watched with the sound off as people stood in a line and placed flowers in front of Paul’s enlistment photo and his and Rosie’s wedding picture.

  There hadn’t even been a scrap of his uniform to send home.

  Pink mist was just that. Pink. Fucking. Mist.

  Owen leapt up and started to pace, ignoring the stares of his fellow Marines engaged in happier visits with loved ones back home. When he saw Antony’s face filling the screen, he turned up the sound and stuck earbuds in his ears.

  “Hey,” he said in a rough voice. “You all right?”

  “What do you think?” Antony Love was a tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed man with a square jaw and chiseled face. He’d endured his own fair share of tragedy, losing his young wife in a car accident when their daughter was only a toddler. But he had a huge family to rely on, the lucky bastard.

  Owen knew the Love family well. They’d practically raised him since his own parents were boozehound, meth-head losers. “Jesus, that sucked.” Owen watched his friend run a shaking hand across his lips and look around.

  Other faces filled the screen, saying hi to Owen long distance with the same haunted expression on their faces. Lindsay Love, Antony’s mother, dabbed her face with a tissue as she approached. “Is that Owen? There? On the computer?”

  “Yeah, Mama. Here, say hello to him.” Antony turned the computer. At the sight of one of his childhood surrogate mothers—Paul’s mother had been his other one—Owen had to consciously quash the urge to scream, or cry, or punch his fist through the fucking laptop screen.

  “Hey, hon,” Lindsay said. Her red hair had a few strands of gray in it, but her green eyes were the same as he remembered. Her freckled face and hands exactly the ones he recalled fixing him dinners, tucking him in on the cot between Antony and Kieran in a matter-of-fact, what’s-one-more-boy-in-the-house-anyway fashion. He’d been damn lucky to have her and Janice Norris around to raise him, and he knew it.

  “I’m so, so sorry, Mrs. Love,” he croaked out. His hands were balled into fists on either side of the laptop. “It should have been me. It was me. But Paul ran ahead of me, actin’ a fool, and I—”

  “You stop that nonsense right now.” Lindsay’s face was set, her lips pressed together in a thin line. “Stop it this instant. And if you call me ‘Missus L
ove’ one more time, I’m gonna reach through this screen and snatch you bald headed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, feeling like he’d been transported straight back to his pre-teen self and was standing beside Antony and Paul in Lindsay’s kitchen, receiving a piece of her mind regarding their latest ill-considered escapade. They got in a lot of trouble. That much was true. But Lindsay never seemed to hold it against him, mainly because she knew her own son was likely the instigator—which he had been ninety-five percent of the time.

  Lindsay closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, they were bright and tear-free. “This is a horrible day for a lot of folks, Owen. I wish you could have been here so you’d know that no one blames you. Not one person.”

  “I blame me, Missus Love—I mean, Mama. That’s plenty of blame right there.” The brutal headache was back and had his entire skull in its evil grip. “I’m sorry I didn’t come home. I need to stay here. I have to … to …” He stopped, unwilling to tell this lovely, polite, hard-as-nails mother of four rowdy boys and a daughter, who equaled all four of the Love brothers in the trouble department, that he wanted to frack some mother fuckers. That he was staying behind to slay some goddamned, heathen jackasses. As many of them as he could manage, in any way, shape or form he could concoct. It was all he knew to do so he could somehow avenge his friend Paul.

  “Mama,” Antony said off camera. “Daddy’s waiting for you at the car. Go on. I’ll meet y’all at the Norris’s in a few minutes.”

  Lindsay’s eyes filled with tears. She touched the screen. “Please be safe, Owen. I won’t be able to take it if something happens to you, too.”

  Owen nodded stiffly and pressed his fingertips to the image of hers before balling his hand into a fist again. Antony turned the screen back so only his face could be seen.

  “How’s …” Owen’s throat closed up around Rosie’s name.

  “About like you’d imagine, considering. The baby came early, but not too early. Thank the Lord. I … uh, I was there. It was shitty.”

  “Well, I’m glad she had you. I’m sure it helped.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Antony said, wiping his lips again. “Listen, dude, don’t take chances over there. Do this tour and get your ass home in one piece. Do ya hear me? Daddy says he’ll hire you back at the brewery, no problem.” His friend’s dark eyes flashed in a familiar way. Owen had been on the receiving end of Antony Love’s anger plenty in his life. Some said that he, Owen, was the only real match for Antony in the temper department.

  He managed a smile, but he knew it must look weak and fake. “I’ll be fine. I’m gonna go now. I have assholes to kill.”

  “Owen,” Antony began. Then he stopped. “Take care of yourself.”

  “Yeah, I plan on it. Tell Rosie … tell her I’m … I’m sorry.” His throat was closing up again. His eyes burned hot with tears he refused to shed. Crying wasted energy. Energy he was going to need if he were going to fulfill his stated goal—kill every towel-headed unfriendly he came across.

  Shoot first. Ask questions eventually. His new motto.

  “I’ll see you soon, okay? Two years, right?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” he muttered, unwilling to admit that he’d doubled that and wouldn’t be home again for a solid four years. “Thanks.”

  “For what?” Antony said.

  “For being my family.”

  He ended the chat. He was done chatting for a while.

  Chapter Two

  Four Years Later

  “Taylor!” The sound of his name barked across the open expanse of boiling hot air brought him to a wide-awake and ready position. He jumped to his feet.

  “Sir?”

  His platoon leader was headed his way with a look that would have withered most men on the spot. Owen smiled and saluted. The man glared and brought him to parade rest. “Something tells me I already know the answer, but do you know anything about this?” He shoved a computer tablet at Owen’s face.

  He took it and read the Al Jazeera report about a night raid on an enclave of supposed terrorists, complete with a computer lab that had been obliterated, along with ten men who’d been holed up there. He handed it back over, keeping his face blank.

  “No, sir.”

  The other man raised a dark eyebrow. His bald head shimmered with sweat as he tucked the tablet under one arm. “You know, I had my doubts about you, Taylor.”

  “Sir,” Owen said, standing completely still, his hands clasped behind his back. The picture-perfect, order-taking Marine.

  “And I still do. But I’ll be damned if you didn’t find that place on your own, using that computer of yours.”

  “Yes, sir.” Owen kept his gaze steady, fixed at a spot just over his platoon leader’s shoulder.

  “But you went rogue. And I just got a second asshole chewed to match my existing one, thanks to that and to you.” The man wiped his bald pate with the towel around his neck. “You have to stop this. Channels exist for a fucking reason. We’re the goddamned good guys in his hellhole, Taylor. You could have killed friendlies.”

  “But we didn’t. Sir,” he added when the man shot him another of his patented, withering glares.

  “No, not this time. Or the four times before this. But by all that’s fuckable in the universe, Taylor, you are not a goddamned Green Beret, or a SEAL, or some kind of whacked out special-ops secret agent. You’re a goddamned grunt. You’re my grunt, got me? And all this showboating, risk-taking bullshit stops now.” He held a dark finger close to Owen’s nose. Owen didn’t even blink.

  “Sir, yes sir.” He snapped another salute. The picture-perfect Marine.

  The man sighed, saluted, and stomped away. Owen waited until he was out of sight then turned and shot two thumbs-up to the men around him. They all raised their water bottles in silent salute. Before he could sit, some boot scurried up to him, his eyes wide and shocked looking.

  “What?” Owen said, easing into the seat. He’d pulled his hamstring and sustained pretty serious burns at that last firefight. But his reputation was preceding him lately, so the nurse had soothed the burns then eased him even more with a quickie before she shooed him out the back door of the hospital tent the night before.

  “Sir, I was told to give you this.” He handed over a ratty piece of notebook paper, saluted, and scurried away. Owen studied it, crumpled it in his fist, and raised three fingers, then five to the men behind him, indicating he’d need five of them at three in the morning. They’d gather at the usual place. He didn’t look at the men to confirm they’d gotten his message. He simply assumed they had.

  He dropped onto one of the hammocks strung between two steel poles and forced himself to sleep. He was going to need it.

  They gathered at the usual spot behind the line of shit-stinking latrines at three a.m. sharp. Owen eyed the men, gave the SITREP in thirty seconds, and assigned positions. All his hours spent on the computer were paying off nicely, he acknowledged as they donned their purloined night vision goggles and set off into the desert. He’d forced himself to get close to the IT geeks for a solid year post-Paul’s memorial service, and he’d picked up how to use their various hacker tricks within months. That, along with the computer tricks he already knew had allowed him to gain access to some top level intel.

  He had a couple of the IT guys and one gal—a real tiger in the sack as a side bonus—feeding him what he needed now that he’d garnered his rep as the guy afraid of nothing when it came to extracting his particular form of hellhole justice.

  He kept a Jeep parked with a full tank hidden, thanks to a grunt in the transport pool who was in his inner circle. They pushed the thing for a solid mile and then hopped in so Owen could pop the clutch and head toward this week’s nest of soon-to-be-dead terrorists.

  As usual, the small cluster of raggedy tents was badly illuminated. But he could make out the main tent—the one his intel had indicated was home to some super badass leader. Owen had every intention of sending said b
adass leader straight back to Allah this fine, early morning in the desert. He signaled that the men should begin advancing in formation. As they made their quick, silent way past the outer ring of tents, he registered random snores, farts, and a few groans along the way. This gave him a moment’s pause, reminding him that these were, indeed, simply men, such as himself. Men who’d been handed a gun, trained how to use it, and then pointed at the enemy. Nothing more or less.

  Owen squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to picture the pink mist that had once been his friend Paul, some of which had landed on his face like a warm, wet powder as he stood frozen and horrified. Then he made himself recall Rosie breaking down at her husband’s memorial service. And the sound of Paul’s baby son crying in the background. He shouldered his weapon and gave the signals for his men to surround the largest tent.

  A different sound floated out from it. Not snores or farts, but loud grunts and a distinct, unmistakable slap-slapping sound of flesh on flesh. Owen grinned and put his finger on the trigger. He was gonna blow this shithead’s brains out while he was fucking some poor, likely unwilling girl. Even better.

  He lowered the weapon then, acknowledging his vow to keep as many innocents safe as he could. In the five seconds between lowering his gun and deciding she could meet Allah too—she’d be better off since these fuckers treated women like dog shit scraped off their sandals anyway—he heard a noise behind him.

  “Taylor,” someone whispered.

  “Look out!” someone else yelled.

  Owen whipped around, already shooting. He took out two men directly behind him as more of them ran into the big tent and started dragging out an old dude with a long gray beard. The girl he’d been fucking screamed until someone’s abrupt blat of gunfire ended that.