SEAL for Her Protection (SEALs of Coronado Book 1) (16 page)

“Stop poking your nose into other people’s business or someone might put a bullet in that pretty head of yours,” the man warned in heavily accented English.

Nestor Stavros.

Every instinct she had told her to call his bluff, to tell him she knew who he was. But self-preservation—as well as Chasen’s and Brad’s warnings—finally won out and she kept her mouth shut.

But instead of leaving, Stavros kept her pressed against the car. Real panic set in and she was suddenly back that damn room in Nigeria waiting for those terrorists to come in and do anything to her they wanted.

One second, she was gasping for air, the next she elbowed the man in the gut then spun around and punched him with everything she had. She wasn’t going to let him put her back in that room, wasn’t going to let him do whatever he wanted to her.

Stavros backpedaled as if shocked by the frenzy of her attack, but then he lifted the gun he was holding and pointed it at her.

Hayley stared at the barrel, immobilized by fear.
Oh God.
He was going to kill her. All she could think about was how devastated Chasen was going to be when he came home and found out she was dead.

But then she heard the squeal of fast-moving tires on concrete and the roar of a big engine.

Stavros cursed and turned to dart between two parked cars, disappearing from sight as a bright blue Mustang raced through the garage and kept right on going.

Hayley didn’t waste time, getting into her car and cranking it up as fast as her shaking hands would allow. She backed out of her space fast then punched it, her tires squealing like the Mustang’s had a few seconds earlier.

She didn’t slow down until she was halfway to her apartment. Her heart was still racing a mile a minute and she was breathing so fast it almost made her dizzy. She’d escaped death for the second time in a month.

She shuddered. Something told her she wouldn’t be so lucky the next time.

Chapter Eleven

“
I
F THEY HAVE us run anywhere else, I’m seriously going to shoot someone,” Logan growled as they jogged into the main compound of the La Posta Mountain Warfare Training Facility.

Chasen was more than ready to put a bullet into the next person who sent them on a wild goose chase to the far side of the training center too—just so they could turn around and run back to this side of the damn place. They’d run so far since this mission had started the heels of his boots were about to fall off.

The training exercise had taken a hell of lot longer to get through than any of them had thought it would. Chasen and the guys had been dropped into the La Posta Mountain Warfare Training Facility at midnight on Saturday and they were still going over forty-eight hours later. Chasen was beyond frigging exhausted.

The HALO drop had gone fine, and he and the other guys had all hit the landing zone within a couple of hundred feet of each other. Then they’d humped through the mountainous terrain of the training center for a couple of miles until they’d arrived at the “foreign village” where the surface-to-air missiles were supposedly being stored.

The raid on the village had gone off without a hitch as well, with Chasen leading the four-man team that went in to photograph and then destroy the missiles while Kurt’s team grabbed up the arms dealer and headed to the extraction point.

Then things had gotten stupid when the helicopter supposed to be waiting for them had suffered “mechanical” issues and had to turn back without them. That meant moving to an alternate pickup location on foot while “bad guys” chased them the whole time trying to get the arms dealer back. When they finally got to the location after a ten-mile grind through the mountains with heavy packs, they discovered the extraction aircraft couldn’t reach them there either. Some crap about “too much ground fire” putting the aircraft at risk. Their only option was to hump fifteen more miles in a different direction so some “friendly locals” could get them out by truck.

That’s when Chasen realized the exercise had nothing to do with evaluating their technical or tactical abilities. The people in charge of this op only wanted to see how far the SEAL team could push themselves physically by running them nonstop.

When they ran through the gate of the main compound, he and the other guys saw the captain from SOCOM who’d briefed them on the plane. In a few short, choppy sentences, the man informed them they’d completed the evaluation exercise and there would be a van to drive them back to San Diego in an hour. A support team from the group would also be coming by shortly to collect up their gear and weapons.

Chasen wasn’t sure what he appreciated more—that the exercise was over, that there would be a van to get them back home, or that someone else would take care of their gear. While he was glad this goat-rope operation was over, he ultimately decided the last part was the best. If they had to clean up and inspect all the gear they’d been humping around for the last couple of days, he wouldn’t get off base for another four hours. He wasn’t sure his eyelids would be able to stay open that much longer.

After unloading his weapons and dumping his pack along with everyone else, Chasen dug out his cell phone and powered it back on. He glanced at his watch while he waited for it to boot up. It was almost noon, so Hayley was probably at work.

She answered the phone on the second ring, saying his name in such an excited rush he couldn’t help but smile.

“Are you coming back already?” she asked before he could get a word out.

He chuckled, the sound of her voice making him forget how exhausted he was. “Yeah, I’ll be home in a couple of hours. You at work?”

“No. I’ve been doing a lot on the Nesbitt story and thought I’d take a day to relax. I’m just hanging around the house.”

“You haven’t been doing anything dangerous, have you?”

When she didn’t answer, his radar immediately went nuts.

“What did you do?” he asked.

More silence. Then, “I went to see Nesbitt and accused him of murdering Kyla’s father to see how he’d react. As you can imagine, he didn’t appreciate that.”

Chasen cursed silently. “What did that bastard do? Did he threaten you?”

She hesitated again. “He made a few veiled threats, but he didn’t actually do anything.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” Chasen demanded.

Hayley sighed. “I was over at Jillian’s place last night and as I was going back to my car, some guy in a ski mask shoved a gun in my back and threatened to kill me if I didn’t stop poking my nose into other people’s business. I think it was Stavros.”

Chasen’s heart beat faster than it had during all the running he’d been doing the last two nights. If Nesbitt were here right now, he’d beat the shit out of him.

“Did you call the police?”

“Yes,” Hayley said.

That was good, he supposed. But he was still pissed off at Hayley for being so foolish. And at Nesbitt for daring to go after her. Chasen had no doubt the man in the ski mask had been Stavros. The man was a fucking killer, and Nesbitt had sent him as a way of intimidating her into backing off.

“Promise me you’ll stay at your place until I get there,” he said. “And don’t open the door for anyone but me.”

Hayley promised she would. Then again, she’d promised to be careful before he’d left and look how that turned out.

“I’ll be home soon,” he told her. “I’m glad you’re okay…and I miss the hell out of you.”

Thumbing the red button to end the call, Chasen tossed his phone back in his bag with a curse.

“What’s wrong?” Nash asked. “Is Hayley okay?”

Chasen told the guys about the story Hayley had been investigating, what they’d learned from
The People
, and how she’d been attacked last night.

“What are you going to do?” Dalton asked.

Chasen clenched his jaw. “I’m going to go see Nesbitt and make sure he realizes if he ever comes within a hundred miles of Hayley again, they’ll be fishing parts of him out of San Diego Bay for the next week.”

Anyone else would probably tell Chasen doing that would probably get his ass court martialed, but his teammates grinned.

“Need help?” Logan asked.

* * * * *

Hayley was thrilled Chasen was coming home. He’d only been gone a few days, but she’d missed him like crazy. She wished they hadn’t spent most of the time on the phone talking about Nesbitt and Stavros, though. Now Chasen would worry over nothing, especially since her editor had officially put the Nesbitt story on hold for a while. But if they were going to make this relationship work, they had to be honest and open with each other. And while she hated dropping the investigation into Nesbitt, on the upside, her calendar was wide open now. She and Chasen could go up to San Francisco whenever he was able to take leave.

She tossed her cell phone on the couch beside her just as the doorbell rang. She jumped up and was hallway across the room when she remembered her promise to Chasen about not opening the door to anyone.

She cautiously looked through the peephole to see Brad standing there and reached for the doorknob. When she’d told Chasen she wouldn’t open it to anyone, that didn’t include Brad, so her promise didn’t count.

“Hey. Sorry I haven’t been around,” Brad said as he walked in. “I’ve been working through some stuff, things I should have told you about a while ago. I just had to work up the courage to do it.”

Hayley had been so caught up in what happened last night after she’d left Jillian’s she’d completely forgotten their conversation about Brad. But looking at the anxious expression on his face, she was beginning to think Jillian might be right. She’d never seen Brad show the least bit of interest in another woman since they started working together. It bothered her she’d never noticed, but it bothered her even more he thought he couldn’t tell her.

She motioned him to the couch then sat down beside him. “You know you can talk to me about anything.”

Brad opened his mouth then closed it again as if he was figuring out how to start. After trying a few times, he finally asked where Chasen was then wondered out loud if he’d missed anything with the Nesbitt story.

She’d thought for sure Brad had heard about what happened last night, but he clearly didn’t have a clue about Stavros threatening her. She quickly filled him in then told him her editor was putting the story on hold for a while.

“It’s just as well since Chasen and I are going up to San Francisco for a few days.”

Brad’s eyes widened. “You can’t!”

“What are you talking about? Of course I can.” She frowned. “I’d thought you’d be thrilled I was finally taking some time off to get away from it all and deal with everything that happened in Nigeria.”

Brad shook his head. “You can’t go with him because I love you.”

Hayley’s mouth fell open.
Wait, what?
She couldn’t have heard him right. But Brad was talking again, the words pouring out faster and faster, none of it making any sense.

“I love you,” he repeated. “I’ve always loved you, since the first day we met at the paper. You’re the reason I never tried to do any other job for the paper even though we both know I could have easily been a better journalist than half the hacks at that place.”

Hayley opened her mouth to tell him to stop, that this was crazy, but her friend kept talking like he didn’t even know she was there.

“I put my whole life on hold for you,” he said brokenly. “I travelled to all those horrible places to be with you and keep you safe. I think I actually would have died if something had happened to you in Nigeria.”

He caught her hands in his, holding them tightly. “I’m sorry I never told you earlier, but I deluded myself into thinking you already knew, that I was the reason you never went out with any of the guys you dated for very long. Now I know I was too scared to tell someone as amazing and beautiful as you exactly how I felt. But I’m telling you now because I can’t let you walk away with someone else.”

Hayley’s heart felt like it was slowly being crushed in her chest. How the hell could she have missed all this? She and Brad had been friends for a long time. They’d worked a thousand stories together, lived in mud-and-stick huts in a hundred different places together. How could she have not realized he liked her that way?

“Brad, I’m so sorry.” She didn’t want to lose her best friend, but she couldn’t let him think there was something between them when there wasn’t. “I don’t feel that way about you. You’ve always been, and hopefully always will be, my very best friend.”

He shook his head, going on about how much he loved her like he didn’t even hear her.

“Stop it, Brad!” she said sharply, hating herself for being so blunt but not knowing what else to do. “This thing you want to be between us can never be. You’re my best friend and I’d go anywhere with you, but I don’t love you. Not like that.”

Brad stared at her, his eyes going unfocused for a moment before his face twisted in a way she’d never seen before. There was a rage there she didn’t even know was inside her friend.

“It’s Chasen, isn’t it?” Brad demanded. “He changed everything.”

“Chasen has nothing to do with how I feel about you, Brad.”

He snorted. “Right. You’re honestly trying to tell me having sex with him like you did right here on this couch and in your bed didn’t change everything?”

The words stopped her cold. A horrible feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. “How do you know where Chasen and I made love?”

Brad’s lip curled. “I put cameras around your apartment after we got back from Nigeria so I could keep an eye on you and make sure you were safe.”

Hayley swallowed hard, feeling ill. She’d felt like someone was watching all these weeks because someone was. She’d given Brad a key to her apartment years ago because he spent so much time there dropping off photos and story material, picking up computer files, even packing bags for her for short-notice trips. She had a key to his place too, but had never gone there without letting him know. What he’d done went beyond caring about her. She felt violated.