SEAL Hard Read online

  SEAL Hard

  J.M. Madden

  Copyright © 2019 by J.M. Madden

  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, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Editing by Megedits.com

  Cover By Cover Me Photography and Design

  Created with Vellum

  I have to dedicate this to the unseen, unspoken about heroes. Thank you!

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you Suspense Sisters for letting me be in on the fun! It’s been a pleasure, as always.

  Readers, Thank you for following along and reading everything I put out. I truly appreciate every sale, every email, every review.

  Sandie- you’re awesome. Thank you for the input! And the stress relief! Lol

  Meg- Good job, as always!

  Foreword

  This will be a surprise to some of my people, probably. Months ago I ran a contest to come up with the name of my hero. I wanted something strong but not frilly, if you know what I mean, and I had a bunch of fabulous entries. I settled on the hero’s name being Jack Arcadius Bishop, and the name was suggested by several people.

  Courtney Weaver Tenisci -Jack Robinson aka Smokey

  Bishop

  Sue McIsaac John (Jack) Robinson after my dad, retired as a master chief after 30 years. His navy buddies knew him as Robbie, but I think the call sign Faster would be good especially since he might be a step slower now.

  Jodi Statucki Jay Jack Danielson

  Jackie Edwards Arcadius - a king from Greek mythology who was turned into a bear

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  A Note From the Author

  Also by J.M. Madden

  Next up in Silver SEALs

  SILVER SEALS Reading Order

  Prologue

  Andrea paused at the bottom of the steps, loaded trash bags swinging from her hands. She glanced up and down the alley, trying to see what had spooked her, but nothing stood out. It was after eleven o’clock. Most of the rest of the businesses on this street had closed down already, but she found that business picked up around eight or nine, after the college kids had eaten some kind of dinner and wanted to settle in to study for a while. Mary Washington University and Germana Community College were three blocks down the street and brought in the bulk of her business. College kids. During the day she also got a lot of traffic from the businesses in the opposite direction. The location of her coffee shop was in a magical area that catered to all types and never seemed to run out of customers, even though she didn’t have a drive-thru like the more prolific chains.

  Since she’d started The Daily Grind three years ago, it had been going like gangbusters. But her help, mostly college kids working their way through school, was spotty at times. Which was why she was carrying trash outside. This was normally a job she delegated, but there had been no one to delegate to tonight.

  It was fine. She’d done it before and she would do it many more times, probably. The Daily Grind was her baby, her empty nest career change that would carry her into retirement and keep her from turning into a crazy cat lady as she waited for her kids to have babies. After they’d left the house for college, she’d needed something to occupy her time. She’d seen the storefront on a walk and decided to take a chance.

  She heard the thump again and looked down the alley. Oh, there was just a trash can rolling against the side of a dumpster. Nothing sinister in that. She crossed the alley and threw the bags up into her own dumpster, then turned back to the shop. As she let herself in, she flicked the lights in the store, indicating that the midnight closing time was only fifteen minutes away. There were a few people inside and they started gathering up their belongings, getting ready to go.

  Ashlynn was cleaning the counter and restocking, making sure that the busy morning shift had everything they needed to get going. Mornings were always hard and fast moving and they didn’t have time to chop fruit or condense bottles, so the graveyard shift took care of it.

  As she stopped at Ashlynn’s side, the girl looked up with a grin, white teeth flashing in her oval face. “We’re about done, ma’am.”

  “Yes, we are dear. Thank you so much for staying over. Tristan is usually so much more reliable than he has been recently.”

  Ashlynn’s face fell a little. “Well, he’s having problems with his girlfriend. I think she’s a little jealous of his job.”

  Hm. Yes, she’d heard that before actually, and she could only shake her head at the notions of young people. Times had changed and if she was a twenty-two year old who’d found a job she loved, there was nothing that was going to stop her from being there. But then, twenty-two had been a long time ago for her, and the generations had changed.

  Andrea looked at Ashlynn more closely. Something about the girl’s expression suggested that there was more to the story. “Is it just the job the girlfriend is jealous of?”

  Ashlynn shot her a guilty glance. “Well, not exactly. She thinks Tristan and I are too friendly, so she’s been riding him about changing shifts and stuff.”

  Andrea sighed, wondering if her day manager Luke had already been dealing with this. “Well, if Tristan doesn’t man up and grow a pair, he’s never going to get anywhere in life.”

  Ashlynn giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. She nodded. “That’s pretty much what I told him the other day.”

  “Then that’s all you can do,” Andrea told her.

  They finished breaking down the coffee shop, refrigerating everything they could. The last three customers departed with waves and Andrea locked up the shop behind Ashlynn as she left. She walked to the back of the shop, made sure the dead bolt was latched and the alarm set. She flicked the lights off, leaving just a few on as nightlights. Then she headed to the locked stairway door on the far side of the storage room. Keying in the code on the deadbolt, Andrea let herself into the stairway, latching the door behind her.

  When she’d found this location, she thought she would be getting the coffee shop and that would be enough. But when she realized that there was a roomy apartment above the shop, it had seemed ridiculous not to take advantage of it. Both kids had just started college at the time and they were a little traumatized at the thought of not having somewhere to go on breaks and holidays. Happily, that worry had faded, due in large part to the fact that they would still have the beach house to get away to. Andrea sold the suburban house they’d lived in for the past few years and moved the equity into this building; she had more than enough room for them to come visit. She opened the door to her apartment and sighed, glad to be home.

  It had taken some renovation, but the place suited her perfectly now. The main living area was a long, open room with hardwood floors and huge windows. One end of the room was her kitchen, with white cupboards, gleaming white quartz countertops, and industrial copper fittings. It was a take on the kitchen Dorian had built her years ago, when he’d been invested in their marriage.

  She smiled when she thought of her late husband. He would have appreciated this place. The girly touches would have made him wrinkle his nose, but he would have shaken his head a
nd leaned down to kiss her. As clear as a bell, she could hear, ‘whatever you want, sweets’, echoing through her head. It was what he’d always told her when he’d given in to her wishes.

  Before.

  She tried not to think about the after part. She wasn’t even sure what the line between before and after was, other than a deployment to Afghanistan back in twenty-ten. Before the deployment, their marriage had been solid, she’d thought. After, though, it was like some switch had been flipped in Dorian’s personality. He’d returned a bitter, suspicious man and it had soured their relationship. Looking back with twenty-twenty vision, she’d realized later that had been when the affair had started.

  Not what she wanted to think about right now.

  Andrea moved through the apartment, restless, absorbing the bite of the dark night. She’d been feeling unsettled, and she wasn’t sure exactly why, other than something had been bothering her in the shop recently. She’d caught a couple of hints of conversations, nothing concrete enough to pinpoint. Just…whispers. Words she didn’t like. There was a spot in the hallway where a person could stand and it acted almost like a wind tunnel, pulling the draft coming in the front door all the way through to the back, catching up bits of conversation as it went. In that one spot you could hear things from across the room clear as a bell. Too many people in the room muddled the reception though, and that had been the only time when she’d heard the whispers of danger, when it was crowded and hard to distinguish who had said the treacherous words.

  She’d watched for the past couple of weeks, looking for faces that came in regularly. There were a lot of regular customers, though; far too many to remember them all. The security footage showed the same. Too many threads to untangle.

  Andrea stayed vigilant, though. There was something going on in her shop, something off. She had a gut feeling that whatever it was, it was something dangerous and she would figure it out.

  Two days later, it happened. Andrea was helping out on the short-handed morning shift. She was in the hallway, rolling silverware at the drinks station, when she heard a distinct threat, and she heard it clearly. “The Americans will never know what hit them,” a man’s voiced hissed.

  Trying not to be obvious, she looked up and through the shop, trying to identify the speaker. It was packed, of course. Midday lunch rush. There were a couple of small groups, but most of the patrons were singles, with earbuds in their ears and laptops open in front of them. She looked at the groups. Most were college kids she recognized, regulars who came in when they had free time between classes. And none of them had the same intensity as what she’d heard in the voice.

  There was one man toward the front corner, wearing a black hat. Was he the one? Was his position in the corner the reason why the acoustics were working the way they were?

  He glanced up surreptitiously but didn’t seem to notice her watching him. She got a good view of him, though. Mid-twenties, thick dark hair curling from beneath the bill of the cap, olive complexion, large, hooked nose. His eyes seemed to be a pale color, not the dark brown she would expect. The man looked like anyone of the multitude of international students that came into her shop to take advantage of the free WiFi.

  His demeanor was different though. There was a studied casualness to his posture, like he was really trying not to yell at whoever was on the other end of the line. At one point he hunched down and she could see the anger in every line of his body as he hissed into the phone. “…not enough. We need more…”

  His mouth continued to move but she lost the sound of his voice as a new group entered the shop, talking and laughing. Andrea gritted her teeth in frustration. She watched as the man turned to his computer again, typing as angrily as he’d been speaking. She didn’t know how the keys didn’t rattle off the board, he was striking them so hard. Why hadn’t she ever noticed this guy before?

  “We don’t have time,” the man said, voice low.

  Andrea watched him swipe a hand through his dark hair, dislodging the hat. Then he seemed to realize what he’d done, because he jerked the hat back onto his head, hunching closer to the computer, whispering fiercely into the phone. Now she couldn’t hear anything.

  In desperation she grabbed a rag from the clean-up cart and started wiping tables. Her concentration was totally on the man in the corner, though she started at a table a distance away from him. Once she thought she felt him looking at her, so she forced herself to focus on the table beneath her hands, wiping hard like something had dried on the surface. Slowly, cautiously, she worked her way to the table next to his. He was still hunched over the table, but she distinctly heard, ‘I know it’s a lot of money but kids need food. We’re going to keep them alive for a while.’

  A chill rolled through her and it took everything in her to continue swiping the table like she’d heard nothing. Deliberately she straightened and turned to the next table, a little to the left of him along the wall.

  “Hey, you,” a man’s voice called.

  It took Andrea a moment to realize she was being called. She turned and looked at the man in the hat, fear slicing through her. Had he spotted her watching him? For a solid heartbeat she was paralyzed with fear, then she thought of her own kids. Digging deep, she firmed her spine and turned, determined to gather as much information as she could about the man.

  His eyes were cold as he looked at her. “I see you here a lot.”

  Andrea nodded. “Yes. I work every day.” She didn’t want to tell him that she owned the place. Not that it would be hard to figure out. “Was your coffee good?”

  He glanced at the cup beside the computer, then back to her. “Average.”

  The guy was blunt. “Was there something wrong with it? We’ll replace it with a new one if it was made incorrectly.”

  He shook his head and waved his hand at her in a shooing motion. “Leave.”

  No, he wasn’t blunt. He was just a dick. It took everything in her to turn away without a sharp retort to put the man in his place. She’d been a Navy wife for twenty years and raised two kids as mouthy as their father. She didn’t tolerate rudeness in her shop from anyone, but she couldn’t risk scaring this guy off. So, biting her tongue until she tasted blood, she turned back to the table she’d been cleaning and continued. The man didn’t say anything else so he was either waiting for her to leave or he’d hung up on whoever he’d been speaking to.

  Andrea finished with that table and stopped to chat with the couple at the next, asking about their coffee. They were the antidote to the man’s rudeness, going on about the coffee and the homemade scones she offered. She only listened with half an ear, though, because the man began murmuring behind her again. Thanking the couple for coming in, she moved to the drinks station to rinse out her rag.

  Luke, the daytime manager, was looking at her a little oddly but he didn’t say anything. Andrea lingered at the drink station, hoping that she could hear more of what the man was saying, but he seemed to be done. The phone was gone and he worked on his computer like the rest of the college kids in there.

  Had she actually heard what she thought she heard? She was almost positive she had. Abandoning the cleanup cart she headed into her office. With the click of a few buttons she had the security footage up on the screen. The man was in the corner of the screen on camera two, the one that looked at the front door. She zoomed in to watch him speak into the phone and she found the exact point when he said the words running through her head.

  We’re going to keep them alive for a while.

  Fuck… Her heart raced and she had no idea what to do.

  Who did she call? There was no way this couldn’t be reported. Children were in danger. Dorian and Jack had been the ones with the connections…

  Jack would know where to report it.

  Drawing her phone from her pocket she paged through until she found his name, then she hesitated. As much as she wanted to talk to him again, or even see him, things had been strained and awkward when they’d parted last. She scrol
led on down the list looking for someone else she could call. Local police would have no idea what to do with this probably.

  Roger Mann! She could picture his kind face perfectly. He’d been with the CIA a few years ago. Was he still?

  Before she could change her mind she pressed the call button. It took half a ring before Roger picked up. “Mann.”

  “Roger, it’s Andrea Winters. I’m not sure if you remember me,” she started.

  “Of course, Mrs. Winters. It’s been a while though. How have you been?”

  “Good, thank you,” she answered automatically. “Roger, I’m calling because something potentially dangerous is about to happen and I wasn’t sure who else to call. This kind of seems right up your alley.”

  Andrea related where she was and explained about the acoustics of the shop, then about the bad feelings she’d had over the past couple of weeks and the man in the ball cap. She could tell Mann was taking notes because he had her repeat a couple of things.

  “And you have this on video?”

  Andrea winced, though he couldn’t see it. “Kind of. I looked through my security footage and I see exactly where he said the part about keeping the kids alive for a while, but there’s no audio.”

  “Can you send me a clip of that footage?” He read her off an email address. “Let me look at this and talk to a few people and I’ll get back to you.”

  “You have permission to wiretap my place or do whatever you need to do,” she laughed, though it sounded a little forced. “I really hope I’m completely misreading the situation but I wanted someone to know just in case.”