SEALs of Honor: Baylor Read online

  “Yes, and again I agree with you, but again there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Maybe,” she said quietly. “It’s just also very sad and so very useless. At the end of the day, what did the kidnappers get out of this?”

  “Well, they’ll have a death on their hands,” Baylor said, “but I’m not sure that’ll bother them too much.”

  “Not if you already found one of them dead,” she murmured. “It doesn’t seem to make a difference to anybody. Death is just one more thing they’re prepared to do for whatever this whole thing is about. This was just stupid governments playing against governments.”

  “What’s this about finding a man dead?” her mom asked curiously.

  Gizella looked at her in surprise. “That’s right. You don’t know.” She turned to Baylor and said, “Can you bring her up to speed?” And she listened, while he recounted finding the body of one of the men who had kidnapped them, likely the one trying to get Gizella.

  “Interesting,” her mom said. “I can’t say that I’m at all upset that he’s gone. He had eyes on my daughter right from the beginning.”

  “It wasn’t right, but you can see why it could happen,” he said. “She’s beautiful.”

  Her mom looked at him in surprise and then gave a delighted laugh. “She is, indeed, but she doesn’t believe it.”

  “She hasn’t been told enough then,” he said.

  “Maybe so, but, then again, she’s very much a realist,” she said, with a bright smile. “And she doesn’t take what other people say very easily.”

  “Well, I did at one time,” she said. “I was young and naive once, just like everybody else, but I grew up,” she said. But even saying that, it didn’t change anything. She had been young and naive, and she had grown up, and she had certainly appreciated all the changes that she had gone through, but it was such a strange state to even look back at that earlier stage of her life. It just seemed so long ago and also useless. She groaned, and she looked down at her father.

  Then she leaned over, kissed him gently on the cheek, and whispered, “Goodbye, Dad.” And dammit if there wasn’t an odd heavy rattling sound working up through his chest. She stared in shock as it exhaled through his lips, and he fell silent.

  *

  Baylor held her close against his chest. As soon as he saw what had happened, he pulled her back ever-so-slightly and just hung on. When the realization actually worked its way through, and she realized her father had just died while she was holding his hand, she turned and buried her face into Baylor’s shirt.

  Even now, he looked over at her mother to see her standing there, still holding her husband’s other hand and gently stroking the skin on his fingers. And he knew that she wouldn’t make the rest of that ninety days. They’d be lucky if they even got her home alive. It was such a sad state, as Gizella had said.

  He wrapped his arms a little tighter around her and just held her close. Obviously the two women were dealing with a very difficult emotional time, but he was more worried about the mother than he was the daughter. He was actually afraid she would collapse on the spot. He gave Gizella a gentle hug and whispered in her ear, “Better see to her. She’s about to drop.”

  Gizella pulled back slightly, looked up at him, then pivoted to look at her mother and raced to her side. “Mom,” she said, “come here. Come sit down.” Her mother let herself be placed in the seat beside her father’s bed.

  She stared at her husband, shook her head, and whispered, “I really didn’t expect him to go before me.” She looked over at her daughter, then gently reached up, stroked her cheek, and said, “But now I feel like I can go.”

  Gizella just shook her head, wordless, as Baylor looked on. He walked over, bent down beside the mother, and said, “Do you think you can you make it back to the US?”

  She gave him the briefest of smiles and shook her head. “I didn’t quite tell you all of it,” she said, casting a glance to her daughter. “I said the ninety days was given four weeks ago. I saw the doctor again, just before we left on the trip, and that’s why I really wanted you to come. He told me that I probably wouldn’t last the week.”

  Gizella just stared, her mouth dropping open. “A week?”

  Her mother said, “I likely won’t make it through the weekend.”

  “Can I get you anything?” Baylor asked.

  She sighed gently and said, “What I’d really like is a chance to say goodbye to him and to the world around me. I’m not saying I’m ready to die right this moment,” she said. “And I don’t know that it’ll be a week versus a month versus maybe even a year,” she said. “Doctors are not always right. But can you take my daughter outside, so I can just sit here alone with him for a moment?”

  At that, Gizella wanted to protest, and he saw it, but he held out a hand and said, “Come on. It’s your mother’s wish.” Gizella nodded slowly, then walked over and gave her father another kiss and whispered goodbye, then gave her mom a long hug and kissed her too. Gizella let Baylor lead her outside. He stood at the doorway, as he watched the old woman get up very slowly and move her way closer to stand beside the man she’d spent so much of her life with.

  Even as he watched, she lay down and placed her head against his chest. Gizella stepped up to look through the window, and he heard her catching her breath.

  “It’s amazing to see them like this, isn’t it?” he said. She nodded, overcome by tears. “It’s a good thing,” he said.

  “It’s a good thing for them,” she said. “But it’s damn hard for anybody left behind.”

  He held her for a long moment, then pulled out his phone and quickly sent a text to Hudson, letting him know the news and asking him to pass it on to the rest of the team.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, still resting against his chest, as both of them watched her mother.

  “Just telling the team about your father.”

  She nodded slowly. “Can we return him to the US?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, “we can take him by military plane.”

  “That would be good,” she whispered, “and I think my mother as well.” He looked at her, back at her mother, and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think she’s breathing.”

  Immediately he leaned forward to stare into the window. “We better go check.” Together, they pushed open the door, and she rushed to her mother’s side. She laid a hand gently on her throat and then looked back at Baylor, tears trickling down her face as she shook her head. “She’s gone.”

  She said it so simply and with such disbelief that he knew it would take her quite a while to get over the shock of losing not just one but both parents in a matter of minutes. But, as far as choosing the timing and the way to go, … it wasn’t all bad. He walked over and checked for a pulse himself and confirmed that she was right. He walked back out to the hallway and found one of the doctors and had him come in.

  After that, they gave Gizella a few more minutes to be with the two bodies. Then Baylor gently and carefully moved her out of the hospital room, so the staff could take care of things. He walked her back to the lobby area and sat her down.

  “I don’t even know what to do,” she said, staring blankly around. “I went for a holiday with my family and came back as an orphan.”

  “Well, first we’ll get you back to the safe house,” he said, looking at her worriedly.

  She looked at him, blinked several times, and then nodded. “Yes, please. I just want to be alone for a bit.”

  He nodded, and, within seconds it seemed, Hudson drove up to the front. He got out, opened the door for her, and helped her inside, then looked over at Baylor, who just shook his head at him. As he got inside the vehicle, Baylor whispered to Hudson, “Her mother is gone too.”

  Hudson looked at him in shock, and Baylor just shrugged. Back at the apartment, he helped her to her room and pulled the blankets back, as she kicked off her shoes and climbed in. He covered her up, and, because it seemed
like the thing to do, he leaned over, kissed her gently, and said, “Get some sleep.” She didn’t even respond, so he closed the door and walked out to Hudson. Quickly he explained what had happened.

  “Jesus,” Hudson said, staring at the door that was closed to them both. “That was a shocker.”

  “No kidding,” he said. “She wasn’t expecting that at all.”

  “And both of them knew about the mother’s condition,” Hudson said. “So, in many ways, she’s also feeling betrayed on multiple levels.”

  “She will get over those in time hopefully,” he said. “I’m actually more worried about the trauma she’s been through right now.” Hudson nodded. “She also asked for her parents to be shipped stateside.”

  “Which of course we can do,” Hudson said. “There’ll be some paperwork involved, but it’s the right thing to do for them, and it only makes sense for us to give her a hand with all that red tape.”

  Baylor took a long slow deep breath. “Okay, thanks, man.” Then he looked back at the bedroom doorway. “Do you think it’s safe to leave her alone?”

  “Since she’s grieving and in shock, I think so,” Hudson said.

  “But I’m not terribly comfortable with her state of mind,” Baylor added.

  “Are you thinking she’ll do something stupid?”

  “No, I don’t think that,” Baylor said. “It just seems that she’s very unsteady at the moment.”

  “With good reason, I’d say,” he said quietly.

  “Exactly.” He looked over at the table with their laptops and asked, “Any news?”

  “Well, we finally caught sight of the man who you met in the apartment—our suspected unpaid middleman,” he said. “And when we contacted the local law enforcement guys, we found that he is wanted by them as well.”

  “Great,” he said. “I should have had a longer talk with him.”

  “You probably wouldn’t have gotten away with it,” he said. “The guy on the ship looking too much at Gizella has a brother who supposedly also has an unsavory past. They’re actually looking at him for possibly taking out his brother.”

  “That sounds a little bit too convenient,” Baylor said.

  “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. But you just never know with people.”

  “I wonder if we should go back to that apartment,” he said thoughtfully.

  “If there wasn’t anything the first time, I doubt there’s anything now.”

  “No, you’re quite right there,” he said. “But I don’t want to just sit here and do nothing.”

  “Yeah, I hear that,” Hudson said. “But let’s find something constructive.”

  “I’d like to find our middleman guy and have another talk with him,” he said quietly.

  “What do you think you’ll ask him?”

  “I don’t know,” Baylor said. “I’m sure it’ll come to me.”

  Chapter 7

  Gizella woke up, just as the door opened. She sat up immediately and said, “Don’t go.”

  Baylor turned and looked at her in surprise, a frown creasing his forehead, as he slowly closed the door and walked back into the room where she sat up in bed. “Hey, you should be asleep right now.”

  “I may not sleep ever again. At least not deeply,” she said. “Every time I close my eyes, it’s now a mix of my father, my mother, and the asshole preying on me, while we were held captive,” she murmured, as she crashed back down on the pillow. She scrubbed at her face and stared at the ceiling. “So many deaths,” she murmured.

  He walked over and sat down on the side of the bed, nudging her a little farther to the center.

  She curled on her side, facing him. “You were going out to hunt,” she said.

  A surprised quirk came to his lips, but he nodded slowly. “Yes. The police are looking for the guy’s brother, who possibly killed the guy, but I want to have a talk with the middleman guy I saw and spoke to earlier.”

  “Why would he talk to you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’m hoping he’ll talk to me since he did before.”

  “Chances are, if you stay away, you’re safe,” she said. “But the minute you try to talk to him again, you bring up stuff that he doesn’t want to deal with because he thought you were long gone and out of the picture. Why not just stay away from him and stay safe?”

  He reached out a hand and gently stroked her cheek. “Not everybody around you will die, Gizella.”

  She stared at him in shock, as the truth of his words penetrated her brain. “I guess that’s part of it, isn’t it?” she whispered. “I really don’t want anybody else to die.”

  “And I get that,” he said, “and that’s how I also feel about you. I don’t want you to die, and the only way we can stop that is to ensure you’re not being targeted anymore.”

  “But he’s dead, so what’s the problem?”

  “I have a few questions I need answered first, before I can close that file.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, if his brother did kill him, why? And how close in appearance are the two brothers?”

  It didn’t take her long for that last one to come through her fuzzy brain. “Oh my,” she said, slowly sitting up and shifting up against the headboard, never letting her gaze waver from his face. “Are you thinking it might be the kidnapper’s brother who’s dead?”

  “These guys are pretty wily,” he murmured. “We can’t underestimate them.”

  She stared off into the distance, realizing that Hudson had come to stand in the doorway. “Do you agree with that?” she asked him.

  “I agree that we can’t take any chances,” he said quietly. “We don’t know if it is the kidnapper or his brother who was killed. I actually hadn’t even considered that,” he said. “But we do need to because, if they are close at all in appearance, that would be a hell of a way to walk away from a scenario that you can’t win anymore.”

  “Meaning that, if he thought he was in that much danger, he might do whatever he could to get out?”

  “Absolutely,” Baylor said. “And you don’t know for sure that they were close.”

  “It sucks to think that you’re just maybe not close enough,” she said.

  “It’s a common problem with many people,” he said. “You have to be close enough that you’re somebody they trust and you want to be with, but, if you’re not close enough, then you end up becoming somebody who’s disposable. Somebody who can be utilized for whatever purpose they need you for.”

  “But brothers?” she whispered. “He was a jerk, but surely he wouldn’t have killed his own brother.”

  “If it came down to his death or his brother’s, he might.”

  “Right. In that case he would.” She remembered the cold calculating look in his eyes, plus the heat that always seemed to be in the background as he studied her. “He definitely would kill to protect himself. Even his own brother.”

  “Exactly. But I still want to talk to the middleman guy, whom I spoke to earlier.”

  She nodded slowly. “I just don’t like it that you’ll go out there alone.”

  “Alone is actually better in a case like this,” Baylor said. “Think about it. If two of us are out there, he’ll feel threatened. He’ll also think that we came after him.”

  “Versus?” she challenged.

  “Versus me going back to take a look at the scenario and to see something else that might be different.”

  “What, so he’ll see you as just curious now?”

  “No way to tell what he’ll see,” he said. “But I would hope so.”

  She sighed, then nodded and said, “It doesn’t matter what I say anyway. You’ll go off and do it as you see best.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” he said, “and it’s what I do. I’m not a fool, and I take care of myself.”

  “I get that,” she said, “but three deaths around me right now are three too many.”

  “I know,” he said, “so just stay here. Sit tight, an
d I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She looked over at Hudson. “Will he?”

  Hudson gave a shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe.”

  “If I wasn’t here, would you go with him?”

  “If you weren’t here,” Baylor said, “we would be out there searching, but nobody would see me.”

  “Then both of you go,” she said urgently, sitting up straighter. “Stay in the shadows but go.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone,” Baylor said quietly.

  “But I can be locked in,” she said. “You two need to look after your backs. I mean, there’s an awful lot of some dark underbelly here. It was obvious long before we were kidnapped, but now a different element is here. My father, as a governor, is dead now, so it’s an international incident, not to mention if this is connected to any kind of foreign government, then heads are likely to roll because he died from their actions. They’ll need to cover that up, so somebody’ll get blamed. What I don’t want to see is you guys getting caught in the crossfire.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  But she wouldn’t listen. “No,” she snapped. “Like I said, I can be locked in. This is your safe house after all, so go.”

  Baylor turned to look at Hudson, who nodded slowly. “She has a point. We can bring other people in, and they can watch this apartment from the outside.”

  “Do it then,” she said. Baylor looked down at her and frowned. She shook her head. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I mean it. I don’t … I can’t have you go out there alone. Something is very wrong about it.”

  He settled back, not liking it.

  “Please,” she said, her voice quiet and desperate.

  He sighed, grasped her fingers in his, and gave a gentle squeeze. “Fine,” he said. “But you won’t get your way every time.”

  She relaxed back. “I don’t need to get my way every time,” she said, “but it’s important this time.”

  He nodded, then stood and walked into the living room.

  She watched as the two men discussed strategy. She didn’t care as long as they both went and looked after each other. She didn’t know why it was so much of an issue, but it was, and that’s all she could go by. Aside from anything else, it made her throat tighten with panic.