Protected in His Arms: An Elite SEAL Rescue (Texas Elite Seals Book 3)

by Holly Castillo

  Greg realized they were rapidly approaching the fence line from a direction he hadn’t expected. She would try to break through and get out on the highway. If she succeeded, it could make things for them ten times more difficult.

  “Knock her off the road,” he snapped into the walkie-talkie, and the first truck squeezed alongside her and slammed into the side of her truck. She cranked the wheel and slammed back into the first truck as she attempted to come back onto the road. But the muddy conditions made traction unpredictable, and her truck once again went flying off the road.

  Suddenly, without warning, her truck swerved violently, but not quickly enough. The large mesquite tree shuddered and cracked as her truck slammed into it, and at such a high rate of speed, Greg knew she would be stunned, if not worse, from the impact.

  They slammed on their brakes, and he watched John, who had taken over as the driver of the first truck, stepped out, holding a flashlight in one hand and a handgun in the other, both pointed at her driver’s side of the truck. Slowly, too slow for Greg’s taste, he advanced on the truck and yanked the driver’s door open. John looked over at Greg’s truck and gave the all-clear signal.

  Greg stepped out onto the muddy road, remiss that his new boots would get filthy walking around on the ranch land. But he wanted to be the one to watch her realize her attempt to flee them had been futile, at best.

  He nearly shouted out in anger as he watched John suddenly raise a knife and slash it downwards within the cab of the truck. He knew John was angry about the death of his friends, but he needed her alive.

  As he came upon the cab he realized John had simply been deflating the airbag that had gone off. Evie Gordon lay slumped forward over the steering wheel, a tiny trail of blood trickling from her forehead. He reached in quickly and pressed his fingers to her neck and let out a sigh of relief when he found her pulse. The airbag had saved her life, which meant he could still get the information from her he needed.

  Grabbing her by her arm, he pulled her from the truck, expecting her to rise from the pain, but her body remained limp. She must have hit her head harder than he had thought. He released her, watching her body fall onto the muddy road.

  “Get her in the truck. I want to get out of here before the other men get back. Leave your two friends here to deal with all of them. No one lives, understood?”

  “Don’t talk to me like one of your lackeys. I know what needs to be done.” John glared.

  “Good. You stay with me. In case your friends screw up, I need you to make sure no one finds us.”

  “My friends won’t screw up. We have the advantage.”

  “So did the men in Corpus and they didn’t grab a single one of those guys. They even knew they were coming. I expect this team to be more competent than them. Grab her. We’re too vulnerable standing out here.” Finally, he had the upper hand. Years of hard work were about to pay off.

  Chapter 34

  Santo wouldn’t have noticed the incoming call on his cell phone if he didn’t have it in his pocket and on vibrate. He yanked the phone out and recognized Buzz’s cell phone number. His heartbeat stuttered, then lurched forward. Did Buzz get everyone to safety? Or could the call be to notify him who had survived and who hadn’t?

  He hit the talk button and held his breath, trying to hear any noises in the background. He heard the sound of women crying softly, and his gut clenched. He braced himself for the bad news.

  “How bad is it, Buzz?” His voice trembled slightly, and he swallowed hard, trying to get his emotions under control.

  “Santo… Thank you for reminding us of the bunker. We made it.”

  Santo felt slightly dizzy with relief. “That is good news, brother. Do you have any systems in place in the bunker to check the status of the ranch?”

  “What is all that noise? I can barely hear you.”

  “My friend in Galveston owns a helicopter tourist service. He’s a retired SEAL—he mentored me many years ago. We’re less than fifteen mikes out. Do you have any idea what we’ll face when we reach the ranch?” He had to practically yell into the phone, knowing Buzz would struggle to hear him otherwise.

  “Stryker thought things through when he built this bunker. I can only view a few things so far, but we’re able to tell they busted onto the property about thirty minutes ago. I’m still trying to undo the coding that attacked our systems, and it’s taking longer than I’d like. From what I can tell someone entered the house about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “What took them so long to go from the perimeter to the house? Please tell me Stryker didn’t try to drive them away from all of you.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” Stryker said, and Santo realized Buzz had put him on speakerphone.

  “Good. Buzz, do you have satellite or any other imagery to tell us how many men we could be facing when we arrive?”

  “No. So it may be best for you to wait before you try to take the ranch back. He could have brought an entire army for all we know. And we know he is capable of getting his hands on some high-powered weapons, so you could be walking into another trap.”

  “How soon do you think you’ll be able to tap back into the satellite? We’re jumping from the helicopter about a mile away from the house so no one is suspicious of a copter hovering over the place. I need to know what we’re getting into once on the ground. Can you get the coms back up soon?”

  “It’s hard to say. The program used to disable us is obviously designed by David, which bothers me even more. They know where we are, now, and I don’t know how many people they’ve told. We could be completely compromised. I’m trying to code as fast as possible, but it’s taking far longer than I would like.”

  “Evie helped you with it the other day. Surely she can help you with it now.” Santo frowned into the phone, wondering why they weren’t utilizing Evie. Maybe she felt responsible for what had happened and cried with the other women. “Put her on the line. I want to reassure her that everything will be alright.”

  The line became silent for a moment and he thought the call may have been dropped. Then he heard Phantom clear his throat before he spoke. “She can’t help us with this, Santo.” His voice sounded remorseful.

  Santo rubbed at his eyes wearily and wished he could be with them at that moment, wished that he could be there to offer Evie some comfort. Then another thought struck him, and his grip on the phone tightened to the point he feared it might shatter in his hands. “She’s okay, right? She didn’t get hurt, did she?”

  “Santo… Evie isn’t with us.”

  Stryker’s words slammed into Santo’s gut and he swallowed hard. “What do you mean? Where the hell is she?”

  “I didn’t know she overheard our conversation until too late,” Stryker said.

  “What conversation?” Santo’s anxiety grew by the second.

  “She overheard Buzz explaining to me we had been compromised. She must have heard me telling Buzz I would draw them away long enough for the family to get to safety. She heard me talk about the bunker.”

  “So? That doesn’t explain why she isn’t with you.”

  “She got past all of us and took the keys to all of the trucks. She also took a couple of rifles and a shotgun. We heard the gun blasts as we rode our way out to the bunker. She knew they were after her. So she gave them what they wanted.”

  Santo suddenly felt violently ill. “You heard gunshots?”

  “She took your truck and headed to the gate. All I can assume is that she fired on them, making certain she had their attention. Then she lured them away from the ranch house to be sure we had enough time to get away. We dumped the horses over a mile back and have been on foot to the bunker. We couldn’t get back to her in enough time.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Santo felt bile rising in the back of his throat.

  “We all knew people were after her—especially Greg. I think that’s why she did what she did. She wanted to give herself as a sacrifice to him to protect us.” As Santo listened to Stryker’s
theory, he knew it had to be true. Evie would sacrifice herself before letting anyone get hurt for something she believed her fault.

  “Bingo,” Buzz said suddenly. “I have the satellite back up and running.”

  “Backtrack it,” Santo said, his voice tight. “See if you can see what happened to Evie.”

  “Already searching,” Buzz said softly. A handful of tense minutes passed, then Buzz let out a soft curse “I found her.”

  “Tell me,” Santo spoke through clenched teeth. He didn’t want to know everything that had happened to Evie. But, for some reason, he needed to know. He needed to know where he would find her body on the ranch. He would hold her, at least one last time.

  “She took your truck almost to the gate. Then she… Huh. She parked straddling the road and waited. Once Greg’s men showed up at the gate she… Shit! She shot one of them.”

  “She did what?”

  “Yeah. She shot one of them as he tried to open the gate. They started to advance and… Well, hell. She just kept on shooting. She shot another one of them as they came in. The driver of the first truck.”

  Santo couldn’t believe what Buzz described. He already knew her capable of doing incredibly brave things, and a sense of pride rose in him to be able to claim her as his woman.

  “Okay… Now she takes off. Hang on while I pull up the right satellite images so I can see where she went.” Santo could barely hear Buzz’s fingers flying across the keyboard. The helicopter made a tremendous amount of noise.

  Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Buzz’s voice continued. “She took off heading away from the house. She ended up on the road leading out to the gate at the side of the property where you brought her in when you came here with her.”

  Santo’s heart started to slam against his ribs. What if she had made it off the ranch? She could very well have gone to a densely populated area and waited for him. She could still be waiting for him. “Did she make it out?” His voice became frantic with hope and eagerness.

  “She’s getting close to the gate.” Buzz sucked in a deep breath. “The second truck hits her from the rear and she nearly loses control of the truck. Damn, she’s a good driver. Wait—oh, hell. The first truck side-swipes her. She’s driven off the road and—oh!”

  “What happened? Talk to me, Buzz, what just happened?”

  “She was driven into a tree. She must have been going at least fifty when she hit it.” Buzz’s voice suddenly lacked the energy from only a few seconds earlier, and Santo realized Buzz had hoped for the same thing he had.

  After a long moment of silence, Buzz finally spoke. “I can’t tell if Evie’s moving or not. A man from the second truck pulls Evie out of the truck. She isn’t moving. One of the other men grabs her and climbs into the bed of one of the trucks with her, and both trucks backtrack. Two of the men stay with one of the trucks at the ranch house, and Evie is… She’s tied up. That’s a good sign—she’s still alive, otherwise, they wouldn’t have tied her up. She’s put in the cab of the second truck with the same guy and one other man. He leaves while the other men breach the house. I’m sorry, Santo. Greg has her.”

  Santo swallowed hard. It seemed his worst nightmare had come true. “So there are two men at the ranch house now?”

  “Yeah. I’m advancing it to the current time… Both are still at the house. They’ve taken up various positions. They’re waiting for something. I can only assume they are waiting for you to return. It’s a trap.”

  “Good thing we have you, Buzz, and the eye in the sky.”

  “What are you thinking you’re about to do, Santo?” Stryker asked, his voice tight.

  Santo could hear Anya and Elena crying even harder after hearing everything Buzz had said, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “I’m taking our house back. Then we’re going to get Evie from that bastard.”

  Evie felt as if a jackhammer pounded against her skull. The intense pain made it difficult to open her eyes, and she struggled to remember what she had done for such a headache. Slowly, her memories returned, and she swallowed hard, forcing her eyes open.

  She expected to see the soulless eyes of whoever wanted to pull information from her and then kill her. Instead, she lay on the old wood floor of what appeared to be an abandoned farmhouse. The small room didn’t have any furniture in it, and the walls had started to deteriorate, leaving some of the pipes and supporting beams of the house visible.

  She tried to rub her eyes and gasped when sharp pain dug into her wrists at the movement. With only the small amount of moonlight coming through the broken glass of the window, she saw her wrists were wrapped tightly with old, rusted barb wire looped around one of the pipes. She tugged again, and the sharp barbs cut into her flesh.

  The sound of two men talking in another room made her heart race. Her last memory of crashing Santo’s truck left her with a time gap and she could only guess how she had ended up in her current position. She knew since she hadn’t been killed, whoever had her wanted her to manipulate the game and give them all the information they wanted. Which meant this person worked with David.

  She had to escape. As soon as they had the information, she’d be killed. She refused to give up without a fight. Gritting her teeth, she twisted her hands, trying to force the wire around her wrists to bend enough she could pull her hand through. The sharp barbs tore at her skin, but she’d prefer some cuts and a little blood compared to death.

  “You will get paid what we agreed to and not a cent more! Now is not the time to get greedy.”

  “Who’s being greedy, asshole? You’re the one who thinks you don’t have to pay as much anymore because those men are dead. The price stays the same as if all eight were still alive and not just three. You’re the one changing the terms of our agreement.”

  “I agreed to pay for eight highly skilled mercenaries. Two fools in that house in Corpus made amateur mistakes and a damn rancher killed them! Then the other man, the one who had the perfect opportunity to kill the rancher and grab her, stumbled back to us, shot three times, and bleeds out!”

  “You and I both know we aren’t dealing with ordinary ranchers. Those mercenaries were skilled, and my friends. You don’t know what happened. You weren’t there.”

  “Neither were you, John. Even the two idiots still alive waiting at their ranch lost them while following them in a fucking hurricane! Explain to me what kind of skills they have to be so completely incompetent. You’re lucky I’ll still pay for their work. But I won’t pay for the men who died in Corpus or the ones she killed tonight. You’ll get paid for the completion of the mission I hired you and your friends for and nothing more.”

  “You wouldn’t have even made it this far if it hadn’t been for us. You’ll pay the fee for all eight, or I’ll take every secret I have about you and share it with everyone who will listen.”

  Evie squeezed her eyes shut and tugged harder on the wire. She had wondered if the man who had shot her had been fatally wounded by Santo’s attempts to stop him. Now she knew.

  “I expected more from you, John. You’ve been a valuable part of my plans for the last couple of years. I never thought you would try to betray me.”

  The sound of a gunshot made her jump. She began to tug frantically against the wire and heard a loud thump, more than likely a body hitting the floor. If the man had just shot someone he had worked with for years, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her once he had what he wanted.

  She felt the wire move slightly, and hope blossomed in her chest. She barely felt the warm trickle of her blood around her wrists. Her hands were numb already. The wire moved a little more, and she began trying to pull her hand through. She wanted to shout in frustration when it didn’t work. She needed to twist the wire open more.

  The sound of footsteps coming closer to the door made her frantically tug harder. If she could get one hand free, she might be able to surprise the man and grab his gun. The wire opened a little more and once again she tried to slide her hand through.

 
The footsteps stopped just outside the door and she held her breath as the squeaky knob turned. Did she know the man? Something about his voice seemed familiar, but she couldn’t be sure.

  The door slammed open and she strained to see his face, but the light from the room behind him created a glow that prevented her from seeing anything clearly.

  “Hello, Evie.” He walked further into the room and kneeled beside her, reaching for the wire that kept her wrists trapped against the metal pipe. He made a tsking sound. “You shouldn’t have tried to get free. I made sure to twist the wire perfectly so you couldn’t get away.”

  With thick gloves to protect him from the sharp barbs, he unfastened the wire from around the pipe and stood. Evie had no choice but to scramble to her feet as he tugged on her wrists. He turned away before she could get a good look at his face. Leading her with the wire, he took her into the next room. It had clearly been the main living area of the old house originally, but any furniture or decorations had been replaced with dust, dirt, and cobwebs.

  In the far corner of the room, a folding table had been set up, with a laptop, wireless router, and bright lantern on top. Evie didn’t want to go near the laptop. He would force her to play the game to get the admin access, and then he would kill her. Fear began to pump through her veins and she wanted to dig in her heels and refuse to do anything he asked.

  She swallowed hard as he moved her around the table and forced her to sit in the only chair. In the light, her eyes shot up to his face and she gasped, nearly falling out of the chair with shock. “Fred… How-how are you… I don’t understand! You’re dead! Judge O’Connor saw your body with her own eyes. This isn’t real. You aren’t real.”

  The judge’s ex-husband smiled. “Oh, I’m very real, Evie. Francis saw what I wanted her to see. I’ve been alive and well all this time. But I did change my name. You can call me Greg.”

  Chapter 35