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  Jax

  The Mavericks, Book 3

  Dale Mayer

  Books in This Series:

  Kerrick, Book 1

  Griffin, Book 2

  Jax, Book 3

  Beau, Book 4

  Asher, Book 5

  Ryker, Book 6

  Miles, Book 7

  Nico, Book 8

  Keane, Book 9

  Lennox, Book 10

  Gavin, Book 11

  Shane, Book 12

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About This Book

  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

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  About Beau

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  What happens when the very men—trained to make the hard decisions—come up against the rules and regulations that hold them back from doing what needs to be done? They either stay and work within the constraints given to them or they walk away. Only now, for a select few, they have another option:

  The Mavericks. A covert black ops team that steps up and break all the rules … but gets the job done.

  Welcome to a new military romance series by USA Today best-selling author Dale Mayer. A series where you meet new friends and just might get to meet old ones too in this raw and compelling look at the men who keep us safe every day from the darkness where they operate—and live—in the shadows … until someone special helps them step into the light.

  No time to rest. The world is a mess …

  He’d barely made it home from helping Griffin only to find himself called to rescue a doctor on a cruise ship overtaken by pirates in their search for Abigail Dalton. The pirates had no trouble killing passengers until they found the right woman. With one man at his side, Jax sneaks onto the ship to rescue her.

  When she heard the gunfire, Abby hid in the venting on the ship. When a man susses out her hiding place, she’s sure her world is about to end. Only Jax is on her side; yet he came with just one man to help. Stunned, she stays close as Jax frees the ship and keeps her safe—until they find out the real reason for this nightmare, when she’s forced to England to face the two-legged monster of her nightmares …

  The safest place is at Jax’s side, but Abby knows all too well how slippery this monster really is and how easily he steps from the shadows to grab his victims …

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  Chapter 1

  Jax Darrum had seen it coming, but he wondered how they would make it work. As far as he understood, Kerrick and Amanda were doing just fine in Paris. But Lorelei and Griffin? … Well, they had hit it off right from the beginning and Jax couldn’t be happier for his friend. It was a lonely lifestyle these SEALs had chosen to lead, and each and every one of them had come to this point as a jumping off spot to something different, to making a choice to do something else.

  He hadn’t told Griffin but Jax’s agreement to come on this mission was so that he could take the lead on one op and one op only. He was leaving the military, and he was leaving everything to do with this type of life. The Mavericks team had asked Jax specifically to help Griffin as a warm-up to doing his one mission sometime later. He figured that it was the same for Kerrick and for Griffin. Jax wasn’t sure about joining the Mavericks unit for what would be his one big job, but the unit trained everybody before they took the lead on their one mission and then were done. But, as Jax thought about it, nobody in the Mavericks unit needed training.

  This was like the peak of their careers for them. Jax didn’t know if they would all be brought back to do something else. It was possible though, and Jax would consider it. He also knew that most of them were getting paid enough money that they wouldn’t have to work again. He’d never discussed that part either with Griffin or Kerrick. Jax didn’t even know if Griffin knew what Kerrick had gone through. What Jax did know was that the next job was his to head up. He hoped that he had a couple weeks or a month or two before then. Hell, he’d be happy to have a year or two in between these particular jobs.

  They were hard and intense, but once the op was done, so was he. He didn’t have friends or family to worry about, so he was in a much easier situation than Griffin and Kerrick. Although, now that they had met and been partnered up for these Mavericks operations, things had changed for those guys too. That didn’t mean that they, in any way, shape, or form, were ready to go out the same as Jax was. They’d all come to the point where, if this was the last mission for them, then that was the last mission, and they didn’t really care to go on any more missions.

  Neither did he. He was moving on to something different. He just didn’t know what. He had a hankering for travel, to see the world as a tourist for a change, instead of skulking through the night in the shadows of darkness, watching other shadows move as they tried to take over worlds and governments and individuals.

  Sitting on a beach and watching the sunrise would be a pretty decent way to spend his time, and sitting on the same damn beach and watching each new sunset would be a unique opportunity for him to just relax, maybe with a cold beer and with a friend or two. Now that would make his life pretty damn perfect.

  He was headed back home again. He had been on his phone, setting up arrangements for his apartment and making sure his landlady knew he would arrive soon. The silly things in life that you had to organize. As he landed in California and grabbed his single bag and headed outside the airport, his cell buzzed.

  He glanced down at the screen, groaned, and said, “Hell no. What?”

  “How tired out are you?”

  “Fucking tired,” he said. “It’s not like I got much sleep on the last job.”

  “That was two days ago,” the man said in exasperation.

  Jax heard something in that voice, and he asked, “Hell, Griffin, is that you?”

  Griffin chuckled. “Hell yeah, it’s me. Is that okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Jax said. “What do you want?”

  Immediately all the humor fled as Griffin said, “We need you.”

  “Are you coming with me?”

  “No. Somebody will though.”

  “Why is it always like that?” he asked. “Some of these jobs are getting pretty thin for just one or two of us.”

  “If it can be more, it’ll be more. I promise I won’t send you out without backup.”

  He snorted at that. “But it won’t be you though, right? You’ll be holed up somewhere nice and cozy with Lorelei.”

  “If I could join you, I would,” Griffin said regretfully. “Lorelei and I will see each other on a regular basis now, spending time with Amelia Rose too. We’re giving the child time to adapt before Lorelei leaves.”

  “I’m almost jealous,” Jax said. “Almost but not quite.”

  Griffin snorted. “Your time will come. You won’t even see it happening, and, before you know it, it’ll be right there in your face.”

  “I doubt it,” he said, “but whatever. So, what’s the job?”

  Griffin took a long, slow breath and said, “You won’t like it.”

  “I never liked any of ’em,” he said. “So what’s the deal?”

  “We’ve got a cruise ship that’s been taken over.”


  “Pirates? I’m one man. Remember that?”

  “It’s a one-man job. We need somebody who can go in and take them out, one by one.”

  “I still am not going alone. Someone has to watch my back.”

  “Do you remember Beau?”

  “Hell yeah, I remember Beau. That man could eat crawfish like nobody else I’ve ever seen,” Jax said. “Then again he’s huge. He can’t hide anywhere. He’s too damn big.”

  “Well, he won’t be eating crawfish this time. And he won’t need to hide for long. As a matter of fact, he’ll be shooting bullets at pirates. He always was a dang good sharpshooter. So he’ll meet you there.”

  “Meet me where?”

  Griffin snorted. “Off the Florida coast. You should be there right on time.”

  “No,” Jax said. “I just got off the goddamn plane in California.”

  “So you’re already packed, right? You hear your name on the PA system? Yeah, that’s to go pick up your tickets. You’re flying out now.”

  And, with that, Griffin hung up.

  Jax swore.

  Chapter 2

  Jax got off the plane and took several deep breaths, trying to acclimate to the humidity of the Florida air. He shook his head, picked up his duffel bag, and stormed toward the double doors of the airport. As soon as he exited the air-conditioned environment, he had to stop and take several more long, deep breaths. He didn’t get a chance to do anything else when a huge bear of a man walked up and gave him a hug. He hugged him back before stepping slightly away. Then he looked up at the man he knew as Beau.

  “You’re one of the few men who hug me,” Jax said.

  “More men should do it,” Beau said with a big grin. “You ready for this?”

  “Hell no,” Jax said. “This is all stupid. What the hell will two of us do against pirates who have already seized a cruise ship?”

  “Military is ready to send in a crew. We’re going in first, that’s all.”

  At that, Jax raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, that’s welcome news.”

  “I know. I thought the same when I heard,” Beau said. “Would prefer to see a team of six or eight with us.”

  “And how are we getting there?”

  “Well, I’d like to say that our transport is a fancy chopper to the destroyer so all our tactical gear will be coming with us, but I think we’re taking an underwater SEAL delivery vehicle as close as we can, then climb onto the cruise ship quietly. Thank God this is a smaller ship. Can you imagine if we were facing one of the mega ones? Of course it’s just us here, and that’s bad enough.”

  Jax rolled his eyes. “Just the two of us …”

  “Yes,” Beau said. “But, hey, we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “Why Florida?”

  “We’re flying military planes from here on in,” Beau said.

  “Did you have something to do with the arrangements?”

  “No, other than being handed them. My orders were to pick you up and to back you up.”

  “Well, thanks for coming,” Jax said. He ran a hand down his face and said, “I just finished being Griffin’s backup.”

  “I heard,” Beau said. “It’s almost as if the Mavericks are picking those of us who are ready for a change. One job to try it out and all that.”

  “And what if that one last job isn’t successful?” Jax asked.

  “Doesn’t bear thinking about,” Beau said. “Never has before.”

  Jax couldn’t argue with that. He followed Beau to the SUV, and very quickly they headed to the docks and then onto a military airplane. That started a very long and arduous trip across the ocean until they landed on the destroyer. Almost immediately they set about mapping out their route. “Where the hell is the cruise ship?”

  “Off the coast of Panama,” Beau said.

  “I didn’t realize pirates were an issue down there,” Jax said quietly.

  “Normally they’re not,” Beau said. “But apparently they’re looking for fresher waters.”

  “Well, hell, if they just stole the personal belongings off everybody on the cruise ship, that’s loads of stuff but not much cash money, I bet. Everything is credit cards and onboard credit and online payments nowadays,” Jax said.

  “I think they’re after a little more than that.”

  “Do we know what?”

  “A female passenger,” Beau said.

  Jax’s heart sank. “That’s bad news. Who is she? The daughter of some wealthy mogul somewhere in the world?”

  “No, she’s not. She’s a doctor. Apparently the pirates reached out for the cruise ship’s manifest and their passenger list. Her name is there, so they’re searching room by room for her.”

  “Do we know why they want her?”

  “She devised some new surgery that one of their doctors utilized, and the patient isn’t improving. In fact he’s dying.”

  Jax came to a dead halt, turned, and said, “What?”

  Beau shrugged those massive shoulders of his and said, “You know it takes very little to create a war.”

  “So, she’s in a different country, and she creates a new method that works for her but not for a bunch of other doctors? More specifically, for a doctor who’s working on some member of a highly valued family, and now she’s to fix his mistake?”

  “I think they want to take her back to heal this patient.”

  “In other words, they’ll hold her responsible but give her one chance to fix her mistake,” Jax said sarcastically.

  “Something like that.”

  “And how do we know this?”

  “One of the crew members got the word out. Then social media’s buzzing with most of this. Too many passengers to stop word from getting out. Fortunately the pirates are fairly low-tech and don’t realize how quickly all this information is traveling around the world now. It’s become a very high-profile case,” Beau said.

  “So you would think that, being an American cruise liner full of Americans, the American government would have sent in a couple teams,” Jax said. He still struggled to believe he was heading there with one backup.

  “They are. They’re coming in behind us. But they want you to find her first.”

  “Me?” Jax looked at Beau sideways. “What will you do in the meantime?”

  “I’ll help you find her,” he said cheerfully. “Hopefully before the pirates find us.”

  “Great,” Jax said. “The odds suck. Of course that’s the way we like it.”

  “Exactly. I have the ship’s blueprints, the passenger list, and some data on the doc; but we do not have any history on the players involved.”

  “We don’t know any of the pirates?”

  “No, and neither do we know the family with the sick patient.”

  “Interesting,” he said. He finished tucking his gear into his SEAL delivery vehicle, then turned to have Beau check the air tanks on Jax’s back and everything else he carried. Jax reciprocated. When they were given the go-ahead by the seaman on shore, the two of them hopped into their SDV’s and were dispatched into the ocean. They blasted out very quickly, and Jax estimated, from the time of launch depending on the speed they should have about a ten- to fifteen-minute swim max, to the base of the cruise liner. Then they’d get on board, strip off their gear, and get to work.

  It took twelve minutes. And for that, Jax blamed the currents that surged up from below. They were darn strong and pulled on him every bit of the way. When he finally clambered up to the loading level on the cruise liner and slipped inside—just as the sun rose on a pretty Saturday morning—he took a moment to take stock and to let his breathing return to normal. He quickly stripped off his scuba gear and dry suit, tucked it into a corner of the room in case they needed it, and waited for Beau to do the same. Then, dressed in night-ops attire, they readied themselves, weapons at their ankles. They split up, both with comms in shoulder harnesses to stay in touch with each other.

  While Beau went right and would work from the topside do
wn, Jax went left and worked his way to the bottom level where the mechanicals of the ship were. He didn’t figure how he’d find the missing woman, but maybe some of the employees on board would be a little more amiable to helping them out. Depends if the pirates had captured the engineer or even the captain. Then the rest of the crew would be rendered uncooperative. Jax pulled out his phone and uploaded the file on the woman, Abigail Dalton. He frowned at that. Two first names. How did that work?

  Each of the ship’s main departments had doors with windows inset in them. As Jax neared what should be the engine room, he listened first, then chose his moment to catch a sidelong glance from one edge of the door’s window. The engine room had two pirates standing watch, and everybody under guard was male. Jax didn’t go in and free the men but sent a message back to his contact at the Mavericks base and to Beau. Then Jax moved on.

  A gunshot had him freezing in his tracks. Bastards. Had they shot someone?

  He turned around and crept back. Both guards were walking around, laughing and joking. They had their rifles, but both were slung over their shoulders. Not that they couldn’t whip them up and shoot anybody quickly, but, as one pirate walked toward the engine room door, coming toward Jax, he realized his decision to let them be had been taken away from him. He needed to deal with this guy now or be seen.

  He crouched down low, and, as soon as the door opened, he came up underneath the first guard’s rifle, swung it around, and fired one shot, killing the other pirate guard. Then Jax wrapped the rifle’s sling around the first man’s neck and pulled it tight, snapping his neck. He walked inside, dragging the first pirate, and looked at the four men tied up on the floor. He pulled out his knife, quickly cut them loose, and asked them if they were okay.

  All the men nodded. They hopped up, jumped around, and said, “Who are you?”

  Jax quickly explained.

  “What are we supposed to do now?”

  “I want you to stay here,” he said. “I’ll locate and take down the other pirates, but I can’t have you moving around the ship. Do you hear me?”