SEAL at Sunrise (Silver SEALs Book 12) Read online

  SEAL at Sunrise

  Silver SEALs Series Book 12

  Caitlyn O’Leary

  Suspense Sisters

  Contents

  Synopsis

  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

  Epilogue

  Other Books in the Silver SEALs Series

  About the Author

  Also by Caitlyn O’Leary

  © Copyright 2019 Caitlyn O’Leary

  All rights reserved.

  All cover art and logo © Copyright 2018

  By Passionately Kind Publishing Inc.

  Cover by Lori Jackson Design

  Edited by Rebecca Hodgkins

  Content Edited by Trenda Lundin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and places portrayed in this book are entirely products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  If you find any eBooks being sold or shared illegally, please contact the author at [email protected].

  Dad, You’re My Silver Hero

  Synopsis

  This Time, More Than Their Love Is On The Line

  Former Navy SEAL Commander, Liam McAllister, was neck deep in the Mexican jungle on a contract assignment for a highly classified sub-set of Department of Homeland Security. When Liam discovers a conspiracy that goes deep and spans decades it makes him sick. He asks his mentor at the DHS to provide him an intelligence liaison with Naval experience to help him ensure justice is served.

  Liam was stunned when Addison Sanders walks through the door. She is a blast from the past and a punch to the gut, a woman he’d loved and lost. But this buttoned up Addison is a shadow of her former self. He hardly recognizes her, but nothing could disguise her intelligence and heart, and Liam quickly finds old flames reignited.

  With her help, Liam and his team start to close in on the dirty forces who are intent on covering up decades of crimes. They soon realize the corruption reaches farther than anyone could’ve imagined, and it isn’t over. Now Addison is a target. When the clock starts ticking, Liam risks everything to make sure that Addison is protected. Will they finally have a chance on the future they lost out on before?

  1

  Fuck. Something stinks!

  Liam McAllister had gotten used to the myriad smells of the jungle. Hell, he’d even tramped under a community of spider monkeys and gotten pelted by shit, so to think that it smelled putrid in this cabin was really saying something.

  “My God, what is that stench?” Laird Campbell whispered almost soundlessly as they quietly pulled another board from the base of the shack. Liam glowered at his old friend who rolled his eyes but nodded at the admonishment. Liam and his three comrades had crept up to the two cabins, and even though they were both padlocked from the outside, and likely didn’t have any bad guys inside, they still weren’t taking any chances. The four of them were entering, in stealth mode.

  The wood was soft and rotten where it met the jungle floor, so it almost disintegrated in their hands as they removed it from the base of the back wall. Hell, they didn’t even need to use their knives. Both men kept at it—they just needed a big enough hole for them to crawl through with their weapons at the ready. Hopefully, in one of these two cabins they would find the missing girl—a cache of guns would be nice too—but rescuing Heather Reading was most important.

  Two weeks ago, Liam had been approached by the Department of Homeland Security to put together a team to track down a notorious arms dealer. He’d said no. It didn’t matter how hard Silas Branson had twisted his arm, Liam had put in his time working for Uncle Sam, and he was through. But then everything had changed.

  Three days ago, one of Liam’s oldest friends approached him. He was desperate. Laird needed help finding a young woman who had just been abducted from a resort in Cancun. Her mother and Laird had grown up together, and he had promised to find her. When the big Scotsman had come to Liam with information that Eduardo Riaz was trafficking in young women, and was likely behind the abduction, Liam was all-in. The fact that this was the same man who was suspected of running guns was just a happy accident. Heather Reading was the fourth college girl to have been abducted in two years and none of the others had ever been found.

  Liam called Silas Branson and told him that he’d help put a stop to Riaz’s operation with a couple of conditions. Si gladly capitulated. He gave him all the information and support he could. Two days later, Liam and four others were dropped in twenty miles from Eduardo’s hacienda. They’d infiltrated the big house two hours ago, just before dawn. Caught off-guard, it wasn’t much of a fight—still, some of Riaz’s men lost their lives. They’d finally found Eduardo passed-out drunk and useless in the wine cellar as they searched the big house for Heather. They came up empty. They left Brannon Dodge to watch Riaz and the one guard who was still alive and went searching for Heather.

  It was Hudson who found two barely-there tracks that led to these two shacks.

  The two cabins were within spitting distance of one another. Hudson Wells and Cooper Laughlin were entering the second one.

  “Report,” Liam ordered softly as he spoke into his headset.

  “We’re prying the planks off. This cabin is solid.” Cooper said.

  Interesting.

  Liam wondered why the difference. But then his focus shifted as the hole in the wall became big enough to get through. The smell blasted him and he reared back. Ah God, it was the smell of a decaying corpse. He’d only smelled it once before, but it was burned into his memory.

  “Jesus,” Laird breathed. He shoved Liam out of the way and crawled forward.

  “Goddammit, be smart,” Liam whispered harshly into his mic. Laird didn’t bother to answer.

  Liam hoped the smell didn’t belong to Heather. She had only been missing for four days, but still, the jungle could be pretty harsh to a dead body.

  Laird stilled in front of Liam. Good, it meant he was surveying the cabin before just charging in. He heard his muffled gag. Liam was close to throwing up, too. He started breathing through his mouth.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. There might not have been any windows, but the shack wasn’t well-built so there were feeble glimmers of light coming through the ceiling. That’s when Liam saw them. Two bodies, dangling from meat hooks in different stages of decomposition.

  He’d seen a lot of things in his life. He really thought he was immune.

  He wasn’t.

  This got him.

  Women.

  Fierce rage.

  Gut-wrenching sorrow.

  When they’d scanned the room, it looked empty of any human life.

  “Liam, Heath
er has to be here. She has to be,” Laird’s voice was hoarse with pain, the smell forgotten.

  Laird’s flashlight scanned every nook and cranny of the shack, but nothing moved. There was actually a corduroy recliner.

  A fucking puke-green recliner!

  Then there was a stained mattress and two folding chairs, one upright and one overturned, a tarp in the corner, a dresser, a cooler, and a pile of beer cans.

  Laird leaped across the room to the tarp. He flung it aside. There was nothing underneath. Liam went to the dresser. One of the drawers was on the floor. Empty. The two others hung open. In the middle one, he found the remnants of white powder. He didn’t need to do a taste test to know it was either cocaine or heroin.

  “Heather!” Laird’s despairing whisper carried throughout the hovel. Liam knew why he wasn’t bellowing because they didn’t know who might be outside or what Coop and Hudson were going to find in the next cabin over.

  “She might be in the other cabin,” Liam tried to reassure his friend. “Hell, it’d be better if she was.”

  Laird gave him an anguished glance, then looked up at the ceiling. “We have to help these two girls.”

  “That has to wait.”

  “No!” Laird’s voice was harsh. “We have to take them down. Now!” The big Scotsman was shaking out the tarp and gently wrapping it around one of the women as he lifted her bound hands off the hook. Slowly he rested her body onto the dirt floor. Not once did he flinch at the level of decay but treated her with the utmost tenderness. This was the reason Laird was one of Liam’s best friends.

  “Let me take care of the next woman,” Liam said as he moved toward Laird. It was then that the hair on the back of his neck stood up. They’d searched the room, but something wasn’t right. Liam felt a presence. He swung his head around. All he saw was the cooler and the dresser. The cooler had nothing but a nasty slime in it, and the dresser he’d searched.

  Liam took three long steps over to the dilapidated piece of furniture and yanked it away from the wall, his gun drawn. Brown eyes stared up at him.

  “Heather!”

  Laird hip-checked Liam out of the way as he skidded to his knees in front of the frightened girl. She was wearing a piece of cloth around her head that covered her nose and mouth, obviously to block out the noxious smell.

  “Lamb, are you all right?” Laird’s hand cupped the back of her head. “Your mum sent me.”

  The young woman stared at him with no reaction, her eyes were wide and glassy.

  “Heather, your mom is Clarissa and your dad is Tom. They’re worried sick about you. I’m getting you out of here and taking you home. Do you understand me?”

  Nothing.

  Laird pulled her into his chest and rocked her close. He looked over his head at Liam. “Get the other lass down and cover them both up.”

  Liam turned away, knowing Heather was where she needed to be at the moment. As he carefully took down the next body and laid her beside the other one, he whispered into his mic.

  “Did you hear all of that?”

  “Yes,” Hudson responded. “That’s good news. We’re in. No bad guys. No bodies. But we have a situation.”

  “What?” Liam demanded. He didn’t have time for Hudson to be coy.

  “We’ve got guns and drugs. Millions of dollars’ worth of guns and drugs.”

  “They’re American-made, right?”

  “The weapons, yeah.”

  “Okay, it’s what we thought, so what the fuck is your problem? So, we’re done. Laird delivers Heather to her mother. We go back to the Hacienda where Brannon’s watching Riaz. Get the information we need from that piece-of-shit about who in America is delivering the weapons, we have the federales handle the drugs, and I tell Silas who the bad guys are in the States and I’m done contracting with him. Game over.”

  “We’re not telling the federales shit, and the game’s just beginning,” Hudson said.

  “What do you mean? Why aren’t we done?” Liam demanded.

  “Because locked up in the desk is a tin box filled with trinkets,” Cooper responded. “The necklaces, rings, rosaries, and shit weren’t a problem for me. The pinkie finger was a little fucked up, but the real problem are the dog tags.”

  Liam went cold. “Repeat that.”

  “Dog tags. There are eighteen. Looking at the chains, I’d say some of these are pretty damned old. All are Navy. All are women.”

  Fuck. The stench just got worse.

  “Who were you with in the jungle?” Silas Branson demanded.

  “My men,” Liam answered.

  “I want names.” Silas wasn’t known for being patient, especially when he was pissed-off. Liam really didn’t care if Silas was mad, this was part of the deal. Liam was tasked to get things done, and to do it off the books. He did. End of story.

  “Do you want me to pay these men of yours or not?” Silas growled.

  “It’d be nice,” Liam said. “But on this mission, they’ve volunteered.”

  “Dammit! I don’t want a bunch of people I don’t know running around on one of my ops.”

  Liam sat back in his chair and fought back a grin. The Assistant Director of Homeland Security saw it and scowled. “McAllister, I’ll pull you off this mission, don’t think I won’t. I’ve got about eleven other men I could hand it to.”

  “I suppose you could, but none of those men have the dog tags, now do they?”

  He could practically see the steam coming from Silas’s ears. “This isn’t a game,” he growled.

  Liam sat up and set his coffee on his temporary boss’s desk. “I didn’t think it was. You’re the one who shanghaied me to begin with on that little adventure down to Mexico. I flat-out told you I didn’t want to have anything to do with DHS, but you sicced Josiah on me. So, I did that job for a friend.”

  “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” Silas leaned back in his chair. “You turned that whole mission into a rescue for Heather Reading. This wasn’t about Captain Josiah Hale, this suited your purposes to help Laird Campbell. So, I know one of the men you were down there with.”

  “But that’s the only one you know of. You don’t know the rest of the team, they’re shadows.”

  “I can’t prove it, but I would say that your nephew is involved since he and Laird have a history,” Silas said as he picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers.

  “Prove it.”

  “You know damn well I can’t. Unfortunately, the one person who might have helped to identify any of you met with an unfortunate shaving accident and died.”

  “I keep telling you, he didn’t die from the knife wounds,” Liam said, thinking about Eduardo Riaz’s whimpers. “If it hadn’t been for his heart giving out, we would have found out more than just his weapons supplier, we would have found out about the dog tags.” Liam was still pissed about the asshole dying on him.

  Silas sighed. “I know, I know. At least we’ve put a stop to that.” He looked Liam dead in the eye. “So, you’re telling me I won’t have to pay for anybody except you?”

  “I’m going to be expensive. What’s more, I’m going to need someone in intelligence who knows their way around the Navy.”

  “You’re saying you don’t want someone currently in the Navy?”

  “I don’t. My gut’s telling me that if I have somebody who has to report up through the ranks they’ll be compromised.”

  “Ah, shit,” Silas threw his pen down on his desk. “You think we have a killer in the Navy?”

  “Si, is the murderer currently serving? I sure as hell hope not. But do I think they have a background in the Navy? You can take that to the bank.”

  “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I’ll get you what you need ASAP. Now spill it. Is Declan working with you?”

  “Yeah. He and some of his men are going to be on my team.”

  “They’re wildcards, Liam.”

  “Hell, Si, I thought I was a wildcard.”

  “Hell, no. I agreed with every damn thing you did i
n Oman. You saved your men’s asses. Those assholes in command had no right to ask you to turn your back on them. I was damned impressed by what your captain told me. You got a raw deal and I would have retired, too.”

  “Even though I left under a cloud?” Liam asked. In his gut, he knew that he’d done the right thing, but it still struck a nerve that after twenty-eight years of service he’d left under less than exemplary circumstances. Not that he wouldn’t do the same thing over again. Fuck yeah, he would.

  “It’s an honor to have you working for Bone Frog Command, Liam.” Silas got up and shook Liam’s hand.

  2

  Liam looked around the elegant reception area and snorted—he really wasn’t all that surprised that his nephew would have some over-the-top set-up like this. Okay, he relented, it had been a crapshoot, he could just have easily had been meeting at a seedy waterfront warehouse. You just never knew with that kid.

  No one was at the reception desk, but he could see the camera tucked away in the corner. How in the hell did Laird put up with this shit? Hudson he could see fitting in just fine, that man was born to charm a roomful of people, but Laird?

  He saw a couple of magazines on the table beside his chair. Men’s Health? What was the world coming to? Then he spied one about cars. That, he approved of. It even showed the new Corvette that was coming out, but when he flipped to the article on the NSX he sat back and smiled. It was one of the few things that really gave him pleasure. Now that he was free from the Navy he was seriously considering moving back to the West Coast—yeah Josiah was back in Virginia but driving on the Pacific Coast Highway in his baby was a huge draw. It was almost time for a new transmission and he only trusted Ramon, so it was probably time to move.