Swift Strike (SEAL Team 14 Book 2) (20 page)

So when he had glimpsed her strolling down the street a few hours earlier, he’d thought that his sleep deprivation and grief had finally morphed into the hallucination stage.

At the time, he had been sitting in his overpriced, undersized, all-around crappy rental car outside of an equally shabby warehouse building belonging to Alfred Westlake. After camping outside for nearly a day, he hadn’t witnessed much traffic in or out of the facility. He had not seen Lena or anyone who’d matched Faizal Shariff or Mohammed Kareem’s descriptions.

But looks could be deceiving. Jesse knew that the lack of activity on the exterior did not mean that Lena wasn’t being detained somewhere inside of the building. One thing was for certain, Jesse hadn’t been about to go anywhere until he checked to make sure that Lena wasn’t being held inside. He’d decided to wait until nightfall to breach the property because the darkness would have provided the proper cover to breach the grounds.

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, she had appeared as if in a vision. She’d looked disheveled and frightened, but he had been positive that it was her even with the long garbasaar and hijab that covered her from top to bottom. He’d recognized her familiar gait at first, and then he saw the paleness of her face that remained visible from the openings in the hijab.

Upon spotting her, the first emotion that flooded his senses was sheer, unadulterated shock. The very next emotion that coursed through him was an overwhelming sense of relief that she appeared to be okay. He had felt like a dying man who’d been awarded a reprieve by the Grim Reaper.

But Jesse’s relief had been fleeting. AnSawar wouldn’t have just let her go. Not without a good reason. That meant that someone had to have been tailing her.

Ditching his car, he had tracked her on foot. Ever so vigilant, he made sure that he wasn’t spotted by Lena or anyone else who may have been watching her. Not being able to dash up to her and embrace her had been a unique kind of hellish torture in and of itself. All he’d wanted to do was to whisk her away to safety. But he didn’t. He couldn’t risk rushing her up right away and falling into a trap. If he was reckless, he could wind up getting them both killed. His life he wasn’t so concerned about, but Lena’s…well, that was a different story. So he had wrestled down his natural caveman instincts and had taken the time needed to scope out the situation. Only when he had been absolutely certain that no one was following them had he made his move.

As he gazed down at her now, her eyes watered. Her breathing a mixture of broken sobs and tiny gasps as she held on tightly to him. Doing his best to comfort her, Jesse stroked her back, murmuring soothing endearments in her ear.

She lifted her head then. His eyes pored over her from head to toe, checking for injuries. The fleeting daylight moved over her face at just the right angle where he finally noticed the damage that had been done to her. His hands tightened around her waist and he tried his damnedest to fight back the fury that threatened to eat him alive.

“Who did this to you?” he choked out, his anger dangerously close to the surface. Her right eye was still swollen and surrounded by a bluish-black ring. She jumped at the ferocity in his voice.

Jesus
. The last thing that he wanted to do was scare her. He never, ever wanted her to look at him with fear in her eyes—a fear that he had put there. He made sure he tempered his tenor when he asked his next question. “Did they hurt you anywhere else?”

“It was the same man who took me before. The one with the hazel eyes. He calls himself Faizal. He hit me in my face and stunned me with a stun gun in my chest.”

Motherfucker
. Even if it took Jesse the rest of his life to hunt this worthless piece of shit down, he was going to make sure that the bastard would pay, and pay dearly, for striking and terrorizing Lena.

He would kill for this woman. He had
already
killed for this woman. And he would do so again, gladly. Without hesitation. Without remorse. The burning intensity of what he felt for her scared the hell out of him. He wasn’t even sure how to classify their burgeoning relationship. They sure as hell hadn’t met under the best of circumstances. And he had only known her for a few weeks. But here he was, clinging to this woman with all of the desperate determination of a drowning man clinging to a life preserver. Filled with a blinding, murderous rage against the man who had dared to touch her.

Jesse didn’t do long-term. That had been his mantra for the past few years. He had never considered himself a player. And he hated the prospect of emotionally scarring a woman just because of his own FUBAR personal life. For that reason alone, he’d shied away from dating. But hell, he was a man after all and he had needs.

So whenever he’d gotten involved with a woman he made it a priority to be upfront with her about what he wanted before it even passed the flirting stage. He’d only wanted to keep things in the realm of physical pleasure—no emotions. And if his bed partner had still harbored some mistaken notion that he would somehow change his mind after spending the night with her, he’d always let her down easy.
Hey sugar, it has nothing to do with you. Someday you’ll meet the right guy
.

Since Rose, he’d never wanted to be the right guy for anyone. He hadn’t wanted to carry that extra burden. He liked things nice and simple. But things sure as hell weren’t simple with Lena. They’d never been simple with Lena. Things with Lena had been one hundred shades of unadulterated complication from day one. That fact alone should have sent him running in the opposite direction with all the speed of an Olympic gold medalist.

But no, here he stood. Holding on to her as if his life depended on it. Heaven help him, his life probably did depend on it. He wanted to be the right guy for Lena. He hoped that he could somehow manage to be the man she could count on. Be the man that she deserved. He prayed that he wouldn’t fail her again.

“How did you find me?” she asked on a reedy breath. She finally pulled away from him again, far enough back where she could peer up into his eyes.

“Later,” Jesse said as he placed a quick kiss on her forehead. Forcing himself to drag his eyes from hers, his sharp-eyed gaze scoured the nearly deserted roadway for threats. A few stragglers were still meandering about, but it didn’t appear that anyone was paying any attention to them. Jesse didn’t want to take any chances though. It was nearly dusk. He and Lena needed to move. “We have to move now, sweetheart. It’s not safe here.”

“No,” she yelped, shoving his chest so suddenly that he stumbled backwards, loosening his grip on her. Her beautiful brown eyes were two round saucers of fear and frustration. “I can’t...I can’t leave.”

“What?” he asked, restoring his footing and firmly grabbing ahold of her arm. “What do you mean you can’t leave?”

“I can’t leave here, not now,” she choked out. “They’ll kill my mother and brother if I go with you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Faizal! He’ll murder my family if I contact the authorities or anyone else for help.” Terror lit up her face once again, seconds before she gasped, “Oh God...if they find out that you are here, they won’t believe that I didn’t contact you and they’ll kill my mom and brother.”

“Hey, hey. Slow down before you have a panic attack. Take a deep breath, okay?” She was really freaked out. He had never seen her in such a frenzied state of anxiety. She struggled to relax her breathing, but her chocolate-brown eyes filled with panic when shallow, gasping breaths continued to escape her lips.

“Lena, calm down. Breathe in and out, slowly,” Jesse continued, slowing his own breathing in example. Her breathing still approached a fever pitch. A pained expression was etched across her face as her palm pressed down on her chest as if she were trying to keep her heart in. “Look at me,” he ordered her firmly. “Deep breath in, deep breath out.” At long last, her breathing eased down a notch. “Slow and steady. That’s it. Feeling better?”

He waited until she nodded her head before continuing. “I wasn’t followed. I’ve been watching you for the past five hours now. I made sure that you didn’t have a tail.”

“You were following me?”

“Yeah, surveillance is kind of one of my fortes. Now you have to put a little faith in me. I would not do anything to endanger you or your family, but you have got to tell me everything that is going on so that we can sort this out together. All right?”

Lena stood there for the longest time, not uttering a sound, simply staring past him at the brick wall of the opposing building.

“Listen to me, Lena,” he said, cupping her cheeks in the palm of his hands. “You have got to trust me. I know that you’re frightened. And I don’t blame you for that. Not one bit—you’ve been through hell. But this is my job, this is what I do. And I am damn good at my job. I
will
protect you.”

Lena gaped at him in silence, biting her lower lip.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, almost afraid to hear her answer. There was so much riding on her answer to those four words.

Finally, nodding her head, she said, “Yes.”

Jesse let out a breath he had not even realized he’d been holding in. The two of them had known each other for a short period of time, so he recognized that it must still be hard for her to trust him completely. From what he did know of her, he knew that she was a fiercely independent person. It had been a struggle for her to rely on anyone but herself for anything. But this time, whether she liked it or not, she was going to need some help. And Jesse was hoping that she would soon realize that she could count on him to come through for her.

“We’ve got to leave now, Lena,” he told her again.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe,” he said, grabbing on to her hand and tugging her away from the alley.

They reached his car after another thirty minute trek. He’d hidden it in some of the woody vegetation near the outskirts of the city.

“How did you get away?” he asked her once she was safely ensconced inside of the vehicle, disbelief that they were together again still present in his voice.

“They let me go.”

“They what? Why?”

“They want me to deliver a package to my father.”

He took his eyes off the road to look at her. “What package?” He watched as she took out a plain manila envelope that she had hidden underneath her clothing.

“What’s in it?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t opened it. He—Faizal—said not to. I’m supposed to deliver it directly to my father.”

“Why do they want
you
to deliver it?”

“He said that they were unable to find my father,” she said. He watched as her facial expression displayed a myriad of emotions in quick succession, all as she struggled to maintain her composure. That was his Lena, always the brave one. But still, he knew that with all she’d been through, the emotional crash was likely coming soon, and when it did, it’d be a rough one for her.

“He thinks that I know where he is,” Lena continued. “Faizal said that they’ve taken my mother and brother to a secure location. If I don’t deliver the letter personally to my father within the next four days, they will murder my mother and brother.”

Shit. Jesse wasn’t even aware that her mother and brother were missing. Squeezing her hand, he tried his best to reassure her that things would be okay. “We’ll figure this out, Lena. I promise you that. You’re not alone anymore.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you know where your father is?”

“I’m not positive, but I have a good idea. There’s a beach home on the coast of South Africa in Cape Vidal. He purchased the property a couple of years ago. It isn’t in his name though. He bought it for one of his girlfriends.”

“How do you know about it?”

“My brother, Phillip. He told me about it. Dad invited him down for a “guys’ weekend” a year or so ago. Apparently, it’s one of my dad’s new favorite hangout spots. He might not be there, but it’s the only place that I can think of where AnSawar wouldn’t know where to look for him.”

Jesse’s brain was turning over a mile a minute, all synapses firing at once as he struggled to form some sort of a cogent solution. As soon as he got her to the safe house, he was going to call his CO and formulate a plan. He was going to need backup on this one. He sure as hell didn’t plan to send Lena in the lion’s den. And for some reason, this little meeting with her father that AnSawar had planned smelled every bit like a trap to him.

“How did you find me?” Lena asked, her softly spoken words jutting into his thoughts. “I hoped that you would. I wanted to call you. You don’t know how badly I wanted to call you.”

“Why didn’t you? Didn’t you trust that I would help you?”

He felt her eyes boring into him as he concentrated on the road. He wasn’t mad at her, of course. He knew that she’d been in a terrible situation, he’d made a mess of things earlier by saying that he didn’t want to commit to her, but the idea that she didn’t trust him to keep her safe crushed him.

“Of course, I did. I trusted you Jesse. I still trust you. I was just scared for my family. I didn’t know what to do.” Jesse’s eyes darted from her and back to the road. Even though they appeared to be safe for the moment he wasn’t breathing any easier. The safe house was still about an hour away. He was on full alert until they got to the safe house. Hawk was the housekeeper at this location, and Jesse needed some answers that hopefully his friend could provide.