by Dale Mayer
Instantly the men frowned.
“She opened the door to a stranger?”
He shot Laszlo a hard look. “Yes. And you know that we’ll have something to say about that when we get there. But for the moment, the message he left was How is Mouse?”
The men all stiffened.
“Son of a bitch,” Laszlo said. He turned the laptop around. “I’m in.”
There in front of Cade was a photo of his sister. She sat in the vehicle, blood on her forehead, the door open, nobody else around. He turned to look at the hired gunman and slammed his fist into the man’s face.
Without a word, the hired gun toppled over sideways, unconscious.
Cade stared at the picture of his sister again, his heart breaking. “He really did kill her.” Cade forced himself to walk to the door. He was so frustrated and angry and so full of grief that he wanted to smash open the hired gun’s head against something hard. But he knew it wouldn’t be just his grief. If this asshole had done what they suspected he’d done, that meant he was also involved in so much more.
Erick patted Cade’s shoulder. “Remember, it’s not just you.”
“There are also confirmations of his flights to Norway.” Laszlo twisted the laptop around to show pictures of his father on the side of the road just seconds after the car had hit him.
“Laszlo, keep going through his laptop to see how many other hits he’s been involved in,” Cade said, “but it’s obvious the money came from doing these jobs.”
“Do we hand him over to the police?” Talon asked.
Laszlo shook his head. “I wouldn’t. But I think we should take him out of here to one of our places and hold him until we’ve asked him whatever questions we need to ask.”
“And we need to put a rush on it,” Erick said. “Because, if the boss man who hired this guy was just at Faith’s apartment, he also knows this guy is here. He’ll do everything he can to stop us from talking to him.”
At the knock on the door, the men instantly went quiet. Cade checked the peephole, opened the door. Michael walked in and introduced the two men beside him as Brandon and Liam. “Well, you got him. Has he got any information for you?”
Talon said, “He’s not talking.”
“Not while he’s unconscious, he’s not,” Michael quipped.
“Where’s Geir, by the way?” Cade looked around. “I thought he’d be here.”
“He’s staying outside, said he didn’t trust himself not to beat the shit out of him for what happened to everyone.”
“I won’t find the answers I need right away,” Laszlo said. “The laptop is full of information. I can only back up so much, and I don’t really want to do it here. We don’t know what else this guy’s got planned.”
“And for how long.”
“Then we move him. We pick one of our places, and we move him.”
The men quickly discussed options for the next two minutes before coming to a solution. Although it wasn’t the best idea, it was a workable one. There was a motel between Faith’s place and Badger’s. It was on the city side of town, but, for this purpose, it would work. All they had to do was get the hired gunman over there and get him conscious. The chances were, they could keep the prisoner for a couple days while they figured this out. And somebody would have to talk to the cops, bring them in on it, but they wanted to make sure they got the information they needed off the laptop first.
As the hired gun woke up and saw Michael in front of him, his features twisted in anger. “I knew you were too good to be true,” he snarled.
The atmosphere of the hotel room was intense. There was just so much anger, so much rage surging through the room. Cade knew it was dangerous. He stepped back and pointed at the hired gun. “You need to start talking, and you need to start talking now.”
He snorted, gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I can’t talk.”
Cade knew exactly what he would say next. “Why not?”
“He’ll kill me.”
“Well, if he doesn’t, we will,” Erick said smoothly. “I doubt there’s anything you can say to us that’ll stop our anger.”
Cade knew there were tears that needed to be shed. But, at the same time, he couldn’t break down now. He looked around the room.
Michael stepped before the hired gun. “You’re the asshole who took out my friends’ family members and the one who arranged for a land mine to blow up their truck, injuring all these men and killing Mouse.”
The man’s face froze, and he stared at them. “Whoa! I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
Michael raised an eyebrow, crossed his arms over his chest. “Prove it.” He nodded to each of the men. “Every one of them went through two years of hell because of you.”
Cade interjected, “And you killed one of our unit.”
The man held up his hands. “I had nothing to do with that. Nothing to do with a military operation. That was the other guy.”
Everyone froze.
“The other guy?” Laszlo asked, his voice soft, deadly.
“The guy who hired me. He gave me three specific jobs. I figured the targets had to be related somehow. After I asked him about it, he told me to shut the hell up and that he was working on a bigger plan.”
“And if you didn’t shut up?”
The hit man’s face twisted. “Why the hell do you think I was getting the money out of the country? I needed to leave. This last job and the boss …” He shook his head. “When he told me, I knew it was over. I would be next on his list. And then you guys nabbed me. If he finds out—”
Crack.
The glass balcony door shattered. The men scattered. Cade hit the floor. There was almost no room. There were bodies on top of bodies. But it had been a single shot. And he knew. As he stood, he knew. He looked over at the hired gunman.
The bullet had gone right through his head.
“God damn it,” Cade said, pulling on his hair. “At least now we know.”
“Now we know what?” Talon cried. “We know there’s still one more asshole. When does this end?”
“There’s at least one more. If we can’t prove this hired gun orchestrated all seven accidents, there’s somebody else. And it could be the boss, or it could be another hired gun.”
“Well, we know for sure we’ll have the cops involved now. So we need everything off that laptop that we can get.”
“And the money?”
The men stared at the money with distaste.
“I have no idea,” Erick said. “We’ll put in a claim with the cops. Maybe we can give it to a charity. It was blood money. And we all paid the price.”
The men scrambled.
Cade turned to Michael and his two cohorts. “I suggest you leave this mess to us.”
Michael nodded. “But tell the cops who I am. And they’re welcome to contact me about my role.”
With that Michael and his friends left.
Cade turned to look at the others. “Somebody will have to handle this.”
Erick exhaled a long-drawn-out sigh. “I will. We already have a detective involved in the Norway matter. I’ll bring him in on this one too.” He looked at Laszlo. “Laszlo, take the laptop. Leave the money, and let’s go through the briefcase before you leave, so we take photos of any information we need. I’ll stay here and handle this.” He turned to Cade. “Cade, go home. Obviously, Faith needs a stronger warning next time. And you also might want to consider the fact that now she can’t be left alone ever. He not only knows who she is, he knows where she is. And she can identify him.”
Cade gave him a quick nod. “I’ll be moving her into my place today.”
“Good luck with that.” He took one last look at the dead hired gunman. “Laszlo, I want to see that laptop too. Later.”
“I’m coming with you now,” Laszlo told Cade. And they left.
As they walked outside, Laszlo said, “I have my wheels. Want me to drop you off at Faith’s?”
Cade nodded. “Yes, I left my
truck at her place.”
“Don’t be too hard on her.”
Cade sighed. “No, I won’t. She doesn’t live in the world we live in. And she was so excited because Elizabeth woke up and called her.”
Laszlo looked at him in surprise. “That’s excellent news. Does that mean you’re heading back to Norway?”
Cade laughed. “I have no idea. My head’s still spinning in high speed with everything happening now. I don’t know where she and I are at.”
Laszlo smiled as they got into the vehicle and headed toward Faith’s apartment. “Don’t rush it. You have time. This beginning stage is special. Make it last.”
Chapter 16
When the doorbell rang, she checked out the peephole and saw Cade, a very tired Cade, standing on the other side. She opened the door, and he opened his arms. She stepped in wordlessly. He just held her.
After a moment he gently pushed her inside and closed the door.
She asked, “Is it over?”
He winced and whispered, “Some of it is over. I’ll explain later. But, for the moment, I just want to hold you.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “I’m so sorry.”
“What for?”
“For opening the door to that man, for your sister, for all of it.” And she just held him.
He smiled, kissed the top of her head and said, “You know what I’m not sorry about?”
She tilted her head to look up at him, and he smiled down at her.
“For you. I’m so grateful you’ve come into my life.”
She smiled mistily. “I don’t know what happened to you, with that mess today, but I have to admit, with Elizabeth waking up and you saying that, it’s been one of the best days of my life.”
He leaned forward and kissed her again. “The first of many to come.”
She smiled and snuggled in close, and he realized that they had made a huge stride forward. Even though the bearded hired gunman was dead, Cade would never have wanted this murdering asshole to go to trial. He wouldn’t have wanted his sister’s case to be all over the media. In many ways this was the best answer ever. But he was so damn frustrated to know they still had been kept from the boss man at the top.
But Laszlo was a genius with computers, and they had a lot of information to handle right now. And they could find out so much more. Like Faith said, it was a good day. And he’d stand by that anytime.
As he cuddled the woman in his arms, he realized it was better than a good day. It really was one of the best days. He tilted her head back and kissed her, so damn grateful to have her in his arms again.
Epilogue
Twenty minutes after leaving the craziness at the hotel, Talon Lore knocked at the front door but didn’t wait to walk into Laszlo’s small Santa Fe rented house.
Laszlo was already there, working on the dead hired gun’s laptop. Laszlo waved to Talon and said, “Put on your own coffee.”
Talon snorted. “We walked out and left Erick to deal with the cops.”
“That’s all right,” Geir said as he walked inside from the back door without so much as knocking. “If there was ever anybody who could handle it, it’d be Erick.”
Talon studied his friend. “How are you holding up?”
Geir extended both hands, still shaking with fury. “I didn’t dare go in that room.”
Talon nodded. “I understand. It’s all okay though. We’re working our way through this. One new fact at a time.”
“And faster than I would have thought,” Laszlo said. “It’s just these hiccups are pretty damn ugly.”
“I’m also pissed you guys didn’t tell me right away what you were doing,” Geir said. “I had to hear after the fact.”
“Hey,” Talon said, “you went silent. We’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Besides,” Laszlo added, “we all heard after the fact, in a way. Badger wouldn’t ever let it go. It’s been bugging him for the last two years. He caught the first lead, and we carried on down the rabbit hole from there.”
Geir nodded. “Just so long as I’m in the loop from here on in.”
“You’re in,” Talon said. “But remember, you may not want to be.”
“Like you guys,” Geir said, “my life hasn’t moved forward. It always felt so wrong, and I couldn’t find a way to get back on track.”
“Well, we might have something to help you get there.” Laszlo lifted his gaze from the laptop. “Because there’s a lot of stuff here. It looks like we have more than enough information to confirm this John Smith asshole was a very busy boy. Not just with our cases but others. The police will still want to see this laptop. But I want to get all the information I need off it first.”
“Does it say who he did business with?”
“A couple people could be in here. It’s in code, and it’ll take us some time. Do we have any specialists we can bring in?”
Geir snorted. “If Levi doesn’t have them, you know Mason will.”
Talon nodded. “And what about my friend Chad? Is there any sign this hired gun had anything to do with Chad’s accident?”
Laszlo nodded. “Yes.” He looked up. “I don’t know how well you know the family. Do you want to say anything to them about it or let it lie in peace after all this time?”
Talon winced. “His sister and I were a thing for a long time, and Chad was my best friend. I feel like I owe her the truth for the sake of both of them.”
“Clary?” Geir asked. “I remember you mentioning her a couple times. Why did you break it off?”
Talon shrugged. “Because I couldn’t leave the military at the time. And she wanted me home every night,” he admitted. “And I let her go because she wanted so much more than I could give her.”
“How do you feel about her now?” Laszlo looked up from the laptop again, his gaze piercing, even in the darkly lit room.
“I’ve never forgotten her,” Talon said. “But she married soon after we broke up. I figured she was more than ready for the change.”
“Well, maybe it’s time to renew that acquaintance.”
He shook his head. “No, she’s happily married. I don’t want to burst that bubble.”
Laszlo snorted, his fingers busy on the keyboard. “No, she’s not. She got divorced last year.”
Talon straightened ever-so-slightly. “Really?”
Laszlo nodded. “Really. And I think she deserves to know the truth. At least what we know of the truth. Chad was walking in a parking lot and was struck by a hit-and-run driver.”
“Another vehicular accident,” Geir said softly. “Son of a bitch.”
Laszlo snorted. “Talon, looks like you’re up next.”
Talon nodded. “Maybe I am at that.”
This concludes Book 3 of SEALs of Steel: Cade.
Read about Talon: SEALs of Steel, Book 4
SEALs of Steel: Talon (Book #4)
When an eight-man unit hit a landmine, all were injured but one died. The remaining seven aim to see his death avenged.
Talon’s best friend’s murder ties in with the landmine incident. Talon walked away from Clary a year ago. She was his best friend’s sister, and he vows to keep her safe.
Clary regrets losing Talon, but love—not trouble—needs to be his reason for staying…even if sending him away jeopardizes her life.
Book 4 is available now!
To find out more visit Dale Mayer’s website.
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Cade: SEALs of Steel, Book 3! If you enjoyed the book, please take a moment and leave a short review here.
Dear reader,
I love to hear from readers, and you can contact me at my website: www.dalemayer.com or at my Facebook author page. To be informed of new releases and special offers, sign up for my newsletter or follow me on BookBub. And if you are interested in joining Dale Mayer’s Fan Club, here is the Facebook sign up page.
Cheers,
Dale Mayer
Your Free Book Awaits!
Part of an elite SEAL team, Mason takes on the dangerous jobs no one else wants to do – or can do. When he’s on a mission, he’s focused and dedicated. When he’s not, he plays as hard as he fights.
Until he meets a woman he can’t have but can’t forget. Software developer, Tesla lost her brother in combat and has no intention of getting close to someone else in the military. Determined to save other US soldiers from a similar fate, she’s created a program that could save lives. But other countries know about the program, and they won’t stop until they get it – and get her.
Time is running out … For her … For him … For them …
DOWNLOAD a complimentary copy of MASON? Just tell me where to send it!
About the Author
Dale Mayer is a USA Today bestselling author best known for her Psychic Visions and Family Blood Ties series. Her contemporary romances are raw and full of passion and emotion (Second Chances, SKIN), her thrillers will keep you guessing (By Death series), and her romantic comedies will keep you giggling (It’s a Dog’s Life and Charmin Marvin Romantic Comedy series).
She honors the stories that come to her – and some of them are crazy and break all the rules and cross multiple genres!
To go with her fiction, she also writes nonfiction in many different fields with books available on resume writing, companion gardening and the US mortgage system. She has recently published her Career Essentials Series. All her books are available in print and ebook format.
Connect with Dale Mayer Online
Dale’s Website – www.dalemayer.com
Twitter – @DaleMayer
Facebook – facebook.com/DaleMayer.author
BookBub – bookbub.com/authors/dale-mayer
CADE: SEALS OF STEEL, BOOK 3