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  TALON

  SEALs of Steel, Book 4

  Dale Mayer

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Complimentary Download

  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

  Epilogue

  About Laszlo

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  When an eight-man unit hit a landmine, all were injured but one died. The remaining seven aim to see his death avenged.

  Talon’s best friend’s murder ties in with the landmine incident. Talon walked away from Clary a year ago. She was his best friend’s sister, and he vows to keep her safe.

  Clary regrets losing Talon, but love—not trouble—needs to be his reason for staying…even if sending him away jeopardizes her life.

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  KILL OR BE KILLED

  Part of an elite SEAL team, Mason takes on the dangerous jobs no one else wants to do – or can do. When he’s on a mission, he’s focused and dedicated. When he’s not, he plays as hard as he fights.

  Until he meets a woman he can’t have but can’t forget. Software developer, Tesla lost her brother in combat and has no intention of getting close to someone else in the military. Determined to save other US soldiers from a similar fate, she’s created a program that could save lives. But other countries know about the program, and they won’t stop until they get it – and get her.

  Time is running out … For her … For him … For them …

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  Prologue

  Twenty minutes after leaving the craziness at the hotel, Talon Lore knocked at the front door but didn’t wait to walk into Laszlo’s small Santa Fe rented house.

  Laszlo was already there, working on the dead hired gun’s laptop. Laszlo waved to Talon and said, “Put on your own coffee.”

  Talon snorted. “We walked out and left Erick to deal with the cops.”

  “That’s all right,” Geir said as he walked inside from the back door without so much as knocking. “If there was ever anybody who could handle it, it’d be Erick.”

  Talon studied his friend. “How are you holding up?”

  Geir extended both hands, still shaking with fury. “I didn’t dare go in that room.”

  Talon nodded. “I understand. It’s all okay though. We’re working our way through this. One new fact at a time.”

  “And faster than I would have thought,” Laszlo said. “It’s just these hiccups are pretty damn ugly.”

  “I’m also pissed you guys didn’t tell me right away what you were doing,” Geir said. “I had to hear after the fact.”

  “Hey,” Talon said, “you went silent. We’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “Besides,” Laszlo added, “we all heard after the fact, in a way. Badger wouldn’t ever let it go. It’s been bugging him for the last two years. He caught the first lead, and we carried on down the rabbit hole from there.”

  Geir nodded. “Just so long as I’m in the loop from here on in.”

  “You’re in,” Talon said. “But remember, you may not want to be.”

  “Like you guys,” Geir said, “my life hasn’t moved forward. It always felt so wrong, and I couldn’t find a way to get back on track.”

  “Well, we might have something to help you get there.” Laszlo lifted his gaze from the laptop. “Because there’s a lot of stuff here. It looks like we have more than enough information to confirm this John Smith asshole was a very busy boy. Not just with our cases but others. The police will still want to see this laptop. But I want to get all the information I need off it first.”

  “Does it say who he did business with?”

  “A couple people could be in here. It’s in code, and it’ll take us some time. Do we have any specialists we can bring in?”

  Geir snorted. “If Levi doesn’t have them, you know Mason will.”

  Talon nodded. “And what about my friend Chad? Is there any sign this hired gun had anything to do with Chad’s accident?”

  Laszlo nodded. “Yes.” He looked up. “I don’t know how well you know the family. Do you want to say anything to them about it or let it lie in peace after all this time?”

  Talon winced. “His sister and I were a thing for a long time, and Chad was my best friend. I feel like I owe her the truth for the sake of both of them.”

  “Clary?” Geir asked. “I remember you mentioning her a couple times. Why did you break it off?”

  Talon shrugged. “Because I couldn’t leave the military at the time. And she wanted me home every night,” he admitted. “And I let her go because she wanted so much more than I could give her.”

  “How do you feel about her now?” Laszlo looked up from the laptop again, his gaze piercing, even in the darkly lit room.

  “I’ve never forgotten her,” Talon said. “But she married soon after we broke up. I figured she was more than ready for the change.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time to renew that acquaintance.”

  He shook his head. “No, she’s happily married. I don’t want to burst that bubble.”

  Laszlo snorted, his fingers busy on the keyboard. “No, she’s not. She got divorced last year.”

  Talon straightened ever-so-slightly. “Really?”

  Laszlo nodded. “Really. And I think she deserves to know the truth. At least what we know of the truth. Chad was walking in a parking lot and was struck by a hit-and-run driver.”

  “Another vehicular accident,” Geir said softly. “Son of a bitch.”

  Laszlo snorted. “Talon, looks like you’re up next.”

  Talon nodded. “Maybe I am at that.”

  Chapter 1

  Deplaning in San Diego, Talon grabbed his bag off the luggage cart and hefted it over his shoulder. He knew exactly where he was going. It had been almost eleven months ago since he’d been here. Almost another year of additional pain, another year of additional growth, another year of additional physical struggles. But he had survived. He had been here before, after his best friend had died a year ago. At the time Talon had considered it a senseless accident, one of those things that cut down the good people without care, without worry, striking without thinking about who the person was, individually and to others.

  And now Talon had recently found out that Chad, his best friend, had been murdered. The news hadn’t settled easily. Talon thought potentially this was just another bad joke in the Life isn’t fair context. Instead it was yet one more horrible puzzle piece in a game someone else was playing to systematically take out family members and friends of the remaining members of his former SEALs unit.

  Talon didn’t have any close family. He knew his birth parents must be out there somewhere, but he had no idea who they even were. He had never had any inclination to seek them out. And they had never sought him out either. As far as Talon was concerned, that was fine by him.

  Consequently Talon had been in and out of the foster care system and had joined the navy as soon as he could. It had been straight upward for him after that. But, while in high school, he’d met Chad. And that had been a relationship that he had managed to keep ever since. Until Chad’s murder a year ago. Talon
hadn’t made it for the funeral, having been in and out of the hospital from his own traumatic experience. He’d tried hard, but the doctors had refused, stating that any long-distance travel like that would set back what little progress Talon had made after yet another surgery. He was not doing well at all. The news of Chad’s death had sent Talon into a tailspin. So the doctors had returned Talon to intensive care to block out the wider world until he recovered, knowing that any more bad news would potentially put him in a permanent downward spiral.

  Still, he should have contacted Clary after Chad’s death. When he had finally been released from the hospital weeks later, he’d made the trek alone to Chad’s grave site. Against doctors’ orders. But to hell with that. Chad had been the best buddy Talon had ever had. In fact, Chad had been family to Talon. Chad and Clary both. It stung like hell to have Chad ripped out of Talon’s life when Talon had been at his lowest ebb yet. Even lower than when he and Clary had broken up. Or maybe it was as low as that, just doubled. Regardless the total tally of those three huge stressors in his life was more than Talon could take, one on top of the other on top of yet more. If not for the remaining members of his unit, he’d feel very alone.

  Talon had stood there at the grave, hating the waste of it all. For someone like Chad—healthy and vibrant, with such a great sense of humor, always pulling jokes on everyone, a ladies’ man, and yet, at the core, a good man—to have died like that, in a senseless accident, was a maddening event in and of itself. Chad was a fireman. He lived, ate, talked, slept that job. Talon laughed at the memory of Chad saying that all he had to do to get the ladies’ attentions was tell them he could cook or that he wore a uniform or to just show them the firemen’s calendar, sporting Chad as the Favored Fireman for February. Chad was one of the good guys—a hero.

  Talon knew the two siblings had a hard time understanding their vagabond researching parents. To Talon, who had never had the stable home life that those two had, he thought their parents were great, idiosyncrasies and all. Those two didn’t know how good they had it. Yeah, their mom and dad had wanted both kids to attend college, to become botanists like them, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

  Talon shook his head. What was it about families? They could be your greatest supporters or your worst critics. Sometimes both. Kind of like we can do to ourselves, what with the negative and positive self-talk going on in my own mind at times.

  And there Talon was, after the land mine explosion he had miraculously lived through, thinking for the longest time that his own survival wasn’t worth all this pain and effort and expense. Missing an arm, missing a leg, he was so much less than he’d been before. Plus he felt a special responsibility that his other team members didn’t.

  Talon had been driving the military transport truck with his unit all aboard and had driven over the buried antitank land mine.

  He’d gone through the depths of depression, self-pity, and had come out on the other side, mended but still broken inside. Still dealing with nightmares. Still dealing with the trauma of so much he’d been through. Some things in life you just didn’t recover from overnight. Luckily he had had his unit around him, telling him to buck up and to get well soon. That they were waiting on him, slowly gathering in Santa Fe to be closer to the prosthetics designer. They encouraged Talon, goaded Talon, whatever it took to keep that flame of survival lit within him. Even while in excruciating pain themselves.

  Even while the other six members of his unit were also going through their own trials by fire, their own personal hells with hospitals, surgeries, rehab—another word for torture—and more hospitals, surgeries, rehab, they had still been there for Talon. They took turns visiting his bedside, depending on who was feeling the best at the time and could travel between the various hospitals where some of their unit remained hospitalized.

  Talon’s team members were his light at the end of a very long and very dark and very hazardous tunnel. No telling how many times each of them had died on the operating table. But Talon didn’t ask. He didn’t want to know. He was just happy they were still here with him. Then Talon had met Kat, and she had dangled the possibility of specially designed prosthetics to replace his arm and his lower leg. That became his goal. Get better so he could wear two of Kat’s incredible designs.

  Talon had to wonder how his birth parents would have handled such an event. Hell, how would Chad and Clary’s parents have handled it? Not well, I suppose. He was again damn thankful for his unit. They were his true family.

  And then his SEALs unit had realized that their military accident had been no accident. That their truck had been deliberately diverted to a new route, by a fake Corporal Shipley, based on falsified intel, where Talon’s team would drive over an antitank land mine buried just for them. Seven men horribly disfigured and maimed. And one of their own dead.

  Talon knew evil existed. He couldn’t be in the military or experience any war and not see evil. But he also knew there was a lot of good in the world too. He wanted to believe there was good in everyone, but it was hard to see it in some people. And in the murderers, drug dealers, human traffickers … well, it was almost impossible.

  To have Chad’s life cut short was just denying the world the other lives that Chad would have rescued from future fires. Just like cutting down Talon’s unit with that explosion would cost other people their lives down the road.

  Talon was fighting to look ahead, to look forward. Yet, so far, life kept turning him around, pointing him to the past. Talon had wondered about that explosion himself over the last couple years, but he had shoved it off to the side. Yet it kept nagging him. After all, three military trucks were headed to one destination. So why did just the one truck—the one with Talon and his unit—get pulled off to another route because of last-minute intel?

  Dealing with his own injuries, his own recovery, had been enough. Too much, in fact. Unlike his friend Badger, Talon hadn’t used the need for revenge to get himself back on his feet. But once he understood what Badger was doing, and the amount of thought he’d put into it, his reasoning and logic behind it, Talon hadn’t taken long getting on board.

  That Norway trip with Cade and Laszlo had been a wake-up call in so many ways.

  Cade had been blessed enough to meet somebody, a pilot who’d been in Norway dealing with her own trauma as her best friend had been in a car accident as well. But her friend was now out of a coma, and Faith and Cade were working their way through a relationship that held such promise. Talon was happy for his friend.

  He’d pushed back on all steady relationships for many years. Long before the land mine incident, the love of his life had wanted more than Talon could give, so he’d walked away to let her have exactly what she said she wanted. She’d married, and he’d only recently learned she’d also divorced.

  A hard hand slapped his shoulder. He turned and smiled at Laszlo who was accompanying him on this trip, telling him, “You never did give me an update on your father.”

  Laszlo beamed. “The old man is pretty tough. He’s back home again with Jair. The two of them are living a quiet life at the moment.”

  “Did you tell him the hit-and-run wasn’t an accident?”

  “Yes, and he took it well, considering. One of Mason’s friends is a bodyguard in Norway. He’s moving in with my father and brother for a while, replacing the temporary help we had for them in the interim. The fact that Mason’s guy happens to love cooking is a big bonus. At least I can see both men eating now.”

  “That will help.”

  Talon had been one of the trio of men who had flown to Norway to Laszlo’s father’s home to sort out what exactly had happened after that hit-and-run. It had seemed like a bad accident perpetrated on a dark road at dusk with an old man who had left his hearing aid at home and who couldn’t have evaded the vehicle fast enough anyway. Only, in the light of day, it had been found to be a hit-and-run to hurt Laszlo. The now deceased John Smith had been hired to use an SUV and run down Laszlo’s father. But not the man who
had hired Smith for this job and others. Therefore, everybody who could be on this unknown killer’s list, those still alive, needed security.

  Which meant the family members and closest friends of the remaining seven former SEALs involved in the original land mine incident.

  “What would we do without Mason and Levi?” Talon asked.

  “We’d find someone. We’ve already got several of Bullard’s men pulled into play as well.”

  Talon nodded. “It helps restore my faith in humanity. People aren’t all assholes, like this John Smith guy was.”

  “At least we have his laptop and access to the hired gun’s emails and contacts. It could be much worse. It’s up to us to stay safe until we find another line to tug.”

  “I’m still not sure I should be here in San Diego,” Talon said. “I know I owe it to Chad, but his case has already been closed. The police won’t reopen it just to confirm our latest findings, and I don’t know what benefit there is to letting Clary know what happened to him.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  “Yes, but look who we are. She doesn’t live in our world. She’s a paralegal and probably sees a lot of the negative side of life. But do we have to bring it any closer to home?”

  Laszlo shrugged. “When we discussed this before, you thought it was a good idea.”

  “At the time I wasn’t standing less than ten minutes away from the woman I loved,” he admitted.

  Laszlo chuckled. “Yeah, I can see how cold feet would get to you. Do you realize we’ve been standing here for at least ten minutes, and people are walking around us because we’re in the way?”

  Startled, Talon twisted to look around, and, indeed, they were like an island with waves of water parting to wrap around them. He shrugged. “Let’s grab a vehicle.”

  They headed to the airport rental office. Talon had ordered a Jeep Wrangler. It was pretty hard not to drive that vehicle, as it was, by far, his favorite. The day was warm and sunny. With Laszlo’s help, Talon took off the top. He hopped in with the paperwork in hand, turned on the engine, and slowly settled in to drive. They headed toward the center of town.