The Lone Warriors: Intro to Navy SEALS Romances 2.0 Read online

  Amy was different. Strong and confident. Comfortable in her own skin. The kind of woman that would let a man be who he wanted to be. Was it possible she was still single after all this time? Perhaps that very hope could quiet the hurting spot in his heart. And give him something to look forward to as well.

  Forget it, Jace. There was no sense in fantasizing about the future. Tomorrow was no guarantee. May as well focus on today. Mindy was already in the past where she couldn’t divide his attention.

  The SEALs might die on this one—it was obvious they were all feeling the weight of the mission—but it would not be because Jace’s head wasn’t in the game. He didn’t fear the mission, he didn’t fear death, and he didn’t fear going home to no girl waiting for him.

  He shook his head. The guys were going to laugh so hard when they found out about Mindy—not as hard as Jace would be laughing when he told them, but they would still crack up. The pain he felt was intense, but thinking about how funny his platoon would find the timing of the letter eased it a little bit. As soon as they got back from this infiltration mission, he’d pull out the letter and they’d all have some fun with it. Or Baron and Blaine might be ticked that he’d jumped on the train with no risk, but he’d deal with that when the time came. No sense in borrowing trouble.

  Dear Jace, said the letter, but each time he looked at it, he expected it to say Dear John.

  It went on to describe how amazing he was, what a great person she thought he was, and how much fun she’d had with him. Blah, blah, blah. The second paragraph was the meat.

  This deployment has been really hard on me. Every time you leave, I can’t stop imagining you running into battle like you ran off the rooftop and into the pool without a second thought. Or picturing you disarming a bomb, like when you picked up that rattlesnake on the trail. I’m a mess, Jace. I love you and I have so much respect and appreciation for you, but I just can’t deal with your taste for danger.

  His first response had been to call Mindy immediately and tell her he would never do anything dangerous again. As soon as he had that thought, it felt like his soul had died. It was impossible to give up that part of himself, a part that was so closely tied to his mission in life of going into danger to keep other people safe.

  Jace zoned out for a minute, staring at the last three words. With Love, Mindy.

  The Dear Jane train conversation had helped him see that it could never work out with Mindy anyway. Jace couldn’t change who he was deep down, not in a significant way like learning to experience fear in the common sense of the word. And Mindy couldn’t be expected to put up with fearing for the life of the man she loved.

  “Got yours done?” Maddox reached over Jace’s shoulder and grabbed the letter. “Lemme proofread it for you.”

  “No!” shouted Jace. He was over the back of the chair in a flash, reaching for the letter.

  Maddox picked up on Jace’s anger immediately and dodged out of his grasp.

  “I’m not done,” said Jace.

  “I’ll help with your writer’s block,” said Maddox, his eyes dipping to the letter.

  Jace didn’t take the time to consider possible outcomes. He reached for the closest item and chucked it at Maddox’s face. The bag of popcorn exploded, sending white puffs into the air like a thick dust cloud.

  The other four guys stayed where they were at, but looked over to see what the deal was. Jace was in for it now. He’d made too big a deal over the letter and it might be too late to recover. His mind raced for a way to get the letter back without showing how badly he wanted it, and to do so before any of them read it.

  Maddox stared at Jace, white cheddar dust on his nose and an unreadable expression on his face. Then a smile cracked, followed by laughter. He scooped up the stack of napkins on the table and instead of hurling them straight at Jace, he tossed them into the ceiling fan by the handful. The napkins hit the ceiling and expanded into dozens of white doves flying around the room.

  “Hey,” said Logan.

  Blaine let out a warning whistle.

  “Easton!”

  Maddox froze, ready to release another handful of napkins. Dawkins, the Commanding Officer was standing in the doorway. Just as Jace’s brain lacked the ability to process fear, Dawkins’ brain was incapable of processing humor.

  Dawkins looked around the room, then settled on Jace and Maddox. “Get this cleaned up. Mission’s on. Wheels up at 0600.” After giving the room one more disgusted look, he turned and left.

  Jace was alert and ready. This was what he lived for. The clock on the wall said 2100. In nine hours, he’d be off doing what he was born to do. He already felt the sweet adrenaline coursing through his veins.

  However, before he could worry about mission prep, he had to get his hands on that letter. The floor was a blanket of napkins and popcorn and Jace started peeling up layers near Maddox, searching for the evidence.

  “Jace,” said Maddox.

  He looked up and saw Maddox extending his folded letter.

  As if it was nothing, Jace took the letter back. “Thanks.”

  “Dawkins,” said Baron. “He’ll mail the letters.”

  “He’s perfect,” agreed Logan and everyone else nodded. Straight-shooting, no-humor, ultra-reliable Dawkins was the perfect choice.

  While Jace and Maddox cleaned up the mess, the other four finished their letters. Two guys opted for email, and wrote down passwords for Dawkins to access their accounts. Two guys ripped paper off of notepads. Baron was the first to slap an addressed envelope onto the table. Of course he’d keep his short. That guy could probably break up with a girl in three words or less. Logan was next, followed by Creed and finally Blaine.

  Then all eyes turned to Jace.

  Oh shoot! He needed to produce a letter.

  “I’ve got four words left to write,” he said, darting back to the recliner where he’d been sitting. Maddox didn’t say anything as Jace stuffed the disputed letter into his pocket and picked up the notepad and pen.

  Jace wrote Mindy’s name on top, his own name on the bottom, and in the middle: I’ll adapt and overcome.

  With a grin that no one else would know the meaning of for a couple of weeks, he stuffed the paper into an envelope, addressed it, then slammed it onto the table with the other letters.

  The time would come for finding that special someone. For now, the mission called to him like a siren. The glimmer of returning and revealing the joke was a bright spot on the horizon.

  Maddox — The Diehard Warrior

  Maddox Easton leaned against the bars of his cell. It was the seventh place they’d been held since being taken captive. This one reminded him a little of an Old West jail cell—a row of cells with bars at the front. Instead of more bars separating each cell, this one had propped-up concrete walls. The floors, of course, were dirt. No windows. The only light came from the front door, and since Maddox was at the far end of the line of cells, he saw very little of it.

  What it lacks in creature comforts, it makes up for in companionship by actual creatures: mice, fleas, and scorpions.

  Writing creative reviews for their accommodations kept him occupied at times. Before his SEAL days, he’d gone around the world multiple times visiting exotic places, collecting their culture and urban legends, and writing about and photographing them.

  “Exotic,” he murmured to himself. “That’s how I need to think about a cell with no bed, sink, or toilet.”

  Three months with no shower wasn’t worth mentioning. The constant itching from bugs bites and overall poor hygiene was worse. The hunger, though. Other than the “questioning” sessions, the hunger was the worst.

  He always sat on the ground behind the cell door because he knew that in Syria the superstition said that sitting behind a door would result in your soul being taken by the devils. He could see in his captors’ eyes that the superstition held true. Some looked at him with shock, others laughed and made comments like he was stupid. Maddox didn’t understand any of it
. Baron caught almost everything they said, but didn’t let on that he spoke anything but English and Arabic. That made their tongues loose around the SEALs.

  The important thing he’d discovered was that the sitting behind the door superstition was true. And hopefully that meant the other superstitions he’d learned about this region were true, because their escape may very well depend on it.

  On another occasion, Maddox had taken off his shoes and left them by the door of his cell, with one of the soles pointing heavenward to see if it truly insulted their deity as Maddox had learned.

  During the evening flatbread delivery, the guard was so shocked to see it, he dropped the bread he hadn’t handed out yet, and dove for the shoe like it was a bomb about to go off. Swearing at Maddox with words Maddox couldn’t understand, he stormed off, carrying the shoe. The bread sat there out of reach all night until another guard removed it the following morning, and Maddox had lived with one shoe ever since.

  Blaine, their negotiations expert, had tried all the negotiation tactics months ago. It was quickly obvious that their captors were low level minions, not anyone who could make decisions. Quasimodo, a guard they’d nicknamed because of his limp, hadn’t received the memo about his own lack of importance. At the slightest instigation, and often at no instigation at all, Quazi would prove his power over the prisoners in cruel and sadistic ways. Blaine’s negotiations had gotten nowhere with him or any of the other captors.

  After examining their situation from every angle and applying his probability method, Jace had declared the chance of release as, “Nil” and the probability of rescue as “Not worth mentioning.” So it was up to them to free themselves, or at the very least, get a message to the world that they were still alive.

  The door to the jail opened and one of the terrorists came in. He spoke to the guard by the entrance for a minute, then left.

  The six SEALs went quiet, waiting for the sign from Baron that he had intel to share. Baron coughed, then cleared his throat, then coughed again. Perfect, that was the sign that he needed some chatter so he could spread the intel without the guard catching on.

  “How many days has it been?” asked Maddox.

  “Ninety,” answered Logan.

  “Ask him how he knows that,” said Jace.

  Maddox couldn’t see Baron and Creed but he knew they would be speaking in low voices through one of the corners of the cell, out of sight and sound range from the guard. As far as they knew none of the guards spoke English, but the guards could be trying to trick them, just as Baron was hiding his ability to speak Syriac.

  “How do you know?” asked Maddox. They all already knew how Logan tracked the days, but for conversation’s sake, he kept talking.

  “My haircut is 69 days overdue. Twenty-one plus 69 is 90.”

  A couple of the SEALs laughed half-heartedly. It was the only kind of laughter Maddox heard these days.

  Three months, and no communication from the outside world. They all had families, of course—Maddox’s parents and four siblings included—but none of them had girlfriends back home, not since the Dear Jane letters would be long sent by now. As far as Maddox knew, everyone in the world presumed the six SEALs dead.

  He wondered what Addie’s reaction had been when she got the news. A pang stabbed through his gut as he thought about his feisty ex-girlfriend. Maybe his missing or presumed dead status was confirmation that she’d made the right decision by calling things off with him. Addie hated how he was always leaving her on deployment. She said she couldn’t stand living in constant fear that he’d never return. Well, now she was off the hook. He swallowed back the self-pity, knowing it would do nothing to help the situation.

  The other SEALs didn’t talk about it a whole lot, but from what Maddox gathered, they were glad they’d had the foresight to write the breakup letters and emails. Dawkins would have sent them with enough time to arrive before word about being missing in action would reach them. Hopefully it had spared the girls some pain, according to the plan.

  Jace spoke up again. “Hey, Logan. Now that your hair is down to your lower back, when are you going to go all Samson and tear down these prison walls?”

  “Not yet,” said Logan. “But if I have to wear this beard much longer, I’ll probably go crazy enough to chew through the bars.”

  The conversation died down for a minute. Maddox had read somewhere that hair grew about half an inch a month. Logan’s hair might be covering the tip of his ears, but leave it to this group to take it to ridiculous lengths.

  Baron repeated the signal to keep up the chatter.

  Jace spoke up. “I gotta confess something, guys.”

  “Lay it on us.” Creed joined the conversation from cell one. That meant Baron, cell two, was done passing on info to him and had moved on to telling Logan in cell three what he knew.

  Maddox, cell six would be the last to hear it. He had a feeling he knew what Jace was about to confess.

  “I was planning on telling you guys this when we got back to base,” said Jace. “Thought we’d have a good laugh about it.”

  Yep. Maddox knew where he was going, but he wasn’t going to ruin it.

  “We could use a good laugh now,” said Blaine.

  Jace chuckled, but it was humorless. “I doubt you’ll laugh.”

  They all waited, figuring if they kept prying it would only make Jace hold on to the information longer.

  “I didn’t break up with my girlfriend that night,” blurted Jace.

  Yep. Maddox had known all along. He’d seen a few words of the letter in a glimpse and somehow had a feeling that Mindy had dumped Jace the night the rest of the guys jumped on the Dear Jane train. A weight lifted off his shoulders, now that he no longer had to keep the suspected secret.

  “You dog,” said Blaine to Jace. Maddox could hear the anger simmering under his controlled tone. “You let all of us do it, but you held back?”

  “Wow,” said Creed. “That is cold-hearted, son. Did anyone else lie about sending the Dear Jane?”

  Blaine piped up, saying he’d sent his. Baron and Logan took a break from the secret conversation to add that they’d sent theirs.

  Maddox said, “I didn’t send one.” That night had hurt, being the odd man out, not having a girl back home to break up with. Three months later, now that they weren’t sure if they’d ever step foot in America again, it seemed silly to regret something so petty. But anytime he was an outsider to this group that was as close as a family, it was painful.

  “Wait,” said Blaine. “I saw you send a letter.”

  “I sent a letter,” said Jace. “But not to my girlfriend.”

  “You addressed it to her,” said Creed.

  Jace chuckled. It was nice to hear the sound. “Maddox, you’re quiet over there.”

  Maddox stayed quiet.

  “You already knew,” said Jace.

  “I plead the Fifth,” said Maddox.

  “Dude,” said Blaine. “You gonna play games or tell us something.”

  “Okay,” said Jace. “I didn’t address that letter to my girlfriend. I addressed it to my ex-girlfriend.”

  “She dumped you first!” Creed’s tone was a mix of sympathy and mocking. “Ah, son, that’s harsh!”

  “The letter Maddox stole from you before the big popcorn fight.” Blaine laughed. “She Dear Johned you!” His laugh grew, and it sucked in the other guys. All six were laughing like idiots, feeding off each other.

  Maddox was laughing as hard as any of them, so glad that what he’d known for three months was finally out in the open. He said, “Baron doesn’t even talk and he would have spilled that secret, Jace. I don’t know how you kept it so long.”

  “She Dear Johned you!” repeated Blaine, cackling. “Oh that is so perfect.”

  “Karma,” said Baron.

  If Baron was talking to the group it meant he was done updating Logan and now Logan would be giving the details to Jace in cell four.

  “My letter went out,” said Bl
aine, his tone growing serious. “But I know she’ll be there when I get back.” They never used names when talking out loud about family or friends back home. No sense in giving terrorists information that could conceivably be used to harm loved ones. “I couldn’t have written that letter if I hadn’t known deep down that she’d still be there when we get home. And after what happened with the mission, and the uncertainty they all must be going through, I think you guys were right to start the whole thing.”

  “I’m with you,” said Creed. “I still think I did the right thing, breaking it off with … her, but I still feel like we’re together. Like there’s still a chance between us.” Maddox could hear him slap his thumb against his thigh. “But I might be shooting up my own hopes. Not sure she’ll forgive me for writing her off.”

  Logan spoke next, which meant it hadn’t taken long to pass the news on to him. “I don’t know what or who the future holds for me, but we are not dying here.”

  “No we are not,” said Blaine.

  “What about you, Baron?” asked Maddox. “Think you’ll get back with your girl?”

  “No, he won’t,” answered Jace, already done passing the info torch to Blaine.

  “He didn’t ask you,” said Creed.

  “I know,” said Jace, “but I’ve been studying all of you and I believe Creed and Blaine. They have a shot. But Baron’s path is different.”

  Baron, true to his reserved self, didn’t speak up. He’d only gotten more quiet as the imprisonment had gone on. As the best speaker of Arabic in the group, he’d had more than his share of “questioning” sessions with Quazi. Maddox had been through the “questioning” himself and had to wonder if Quazi really was looking for secrets or if he just enjoyed hurting the Americans.

  “The transfer is tonight.” The whisper came from Blaine.