Protector (Navy SEALS Romance Book 3) Read online

  Chapter 3

  “Knox, wake up! We got something on the radio!” Tanner shouted down the hall to where Knox was sleeping. He may be on shift that week, but each night a different member of S&R manned the phones.

  “Whaddya got?” Knox asked, still pulling his t-shirt over his torso as he came back to the radio station.

  “Missing surfer, sounds like. Parents called the cops when their son didn’t make it back from the beach with his friends. They didn’t call it in ‘til they’d made the rounds of the friends’ phones first, thinking maybe he was in somebody’s basement playing video games. I’ll get the team.” Tanner jumped up to relinquish the radio set to Knox, then started calling in the other members of S&R.

  “Is this a private duty assignment, or has the county called us in on it?”

  “The county. The friends all said he’d stayed behind to take on some more waves after last night’s storm, so they know he didn’t leave with his group. The cops and the water patrol have already been on it but haven’t found any sign of him.”

  “Copy that.” Knox immediately tapped the keys on his keyboard and four computer monitors sprung to life. One monitor was connected to NOAA’s current updates and water conditions, and he scanned the info to get an idea of what kind of riptide they could be dealing with. Another monitor had the emailed police report, complete with the surfer’s identifying info and history. The most telling information came from the largest monitor in the setup, the one displaying data from a computer that stayed connected to satellite imagery at all times. It was an expensive tool--more expensive than keeping up a small fleet of semi-armored vehicles and a helicopter on standby--since it actually gave them the ability to grab satellite images in real-time, but it was completely worth it when someone’s life was at stake.

  He pored over the satellite images of the coastline while the other guys raced back to the office. Within fifteen minutes, everyone was suiting up and getting ready for the briefing, while Knox continued comparing the incoming photos to the data from NOAA’s updated map of current activity. Assuming the surfer, Brian, had gotten caught in a riptide, there were about two hundred square miles of ocean that he could have already disappeared in.

  “Is that chopper ready to go, Mike?” Knox asked through his headset.

  “Roger that, chopper’s good to go,” Mike answered over the radio while stepping into his boots.

  “Tanner, is everyone on comm?” Knox zoomed in on one particular quadrant and buffered the image to clarify it. There was no answer. “Tanner? Is everyone on comm? Give me a copy.”

  “Sorry, had my earpiece out to get my shirt on,” Tanner answered with a weak laugh. “Yes sir, we’re all on comm. Now we are, I mean.”

  “Good. It’ll be tough without Ruiz, but I’ll stay here and guide you in based on the sat pics. Everyone on deck in five for a briefing. I’ve already sent the messages out to the girlies and let ‘em know we’re off the horn ‘til further notice, so don’t go shooting off a whiny text message about missing dinner. This is gonna be a long night.”

  Angel Ruiz had served as a SEAL for four years, completed dozens of covert missions, and personally watched countless people--both good guys and bad guys--die right in front of him. But this was the longest night of his life.

  He waited by his mother’s bedside through the night, refusing to close his eyes. There were monitors tracking the activity of practically every cell in her body, all of them wired to monitors at the nurses’ station, but he didn’t care. It was his job to watch over his mother, not theirs. They couldn’t possibly watch her as closely as he would, a fact that was argued with every time someone came in to check on her, to change an IV bag, to raise the foot of her bed or lower it. They urged him to get some rest, promising him that his mother was in “good hands,” but he couldn’t let himself trust these strangers with his mother’s life.

  “You can’t go to sleep,” Madison whispered to him during one of her checks. “It’s against the rules. If you fall asleep, you have to go to the waiting room, but you can stay here as long as you’re awake.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” he said without looking in her direction. She slipped out of the room without another word, leaving him to his guard duty.

  Strangely, there was never a time when Angel even thought of closing his eyes, not for a moment. Other than keeping all three of his sisters informed and checking in with the S&R team, there was never a moment when he wasn’t focused on his mom.

  “Here, I brought you her tray,” Madison said as she came in for her last vitals check before her shift ended. “I know she can’t eat it, so you can have it.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Angel growled.

  “You have to keep your strength up. The next few days are going to decide whether your mom makes it or not, and she needs you to be strong. Take it. And be sure to ask for her tray at breakfast if the nurse on duty doesn’t offer it.”

  She set it on the rolling table beside Gabriella’s bed, confident that the man she had known so many years ago would be smart and look after himself. She paused, an awkward silence filling the room, before she spoke again.

  “I’m getting off work now, but I’ll be back on at three tomorrow. I’m leaving you my cell phone number in case… in case you or your mom need anything.”

  Madison held out a folded slip of paper, but Angel didn’t take it. There was a time when he knew her number backwards and forwards, all because he called it or texted it all day long. But that was all before...

  “Look, we have a history, and somewhere along the way that history got torn apart,” she admitted angrily. “And sure, I was a big part of the reason why. But we have to both get over that for your mom’s sake. After she walks herself out of here on her own two feet and throws up the deuces at the door, then you can go back to hating me again. But for now, you have to man up and do what’s best for her.”

  “I don’t hate you,” he finally said in a quiet voice. He reached up and took the slip of paper, then tossed it on the table next to the tray. Madison knew that was the best she was going to get.

  “Goodnight. I’ll be praying for her, and… I’m sorry.”

  Chapter 4

  The chopper blades rotating over the swells made the visibility nearly impossible. Flying blind, Mike kept listening for the voice in his head that told him where to go.

  “Keep heading in the westerly direction,” Knox said in Mike’s ear.

  “Roger that, chief, heading due west out over the coordinates. Got both sets of eyes on the spots, but there’s nothing down there but water for now.”

  “Got it, chief. We’re on the watch. Chopper One out.” Mike signed off and banked around to cover the search area again. They kept their spotlights trained on the water below, but there was nothing below them for miles except choppy waves.

  “Anyone else starting to think this is one very wet needle in a haystack?” Jake asked idly, keeping his eyes on the ocean below.

  “Isn’t it always? If the missing person was easy to locate and recover, nobody would pay us to do it,” Tanner added with a half-hearted attempt at lightening the tense atmosphere. “Besides, it’s not like a loser like you has got anything going on tonight.”

  “Laugh it up, Tanner, but last I checked, you weren’t the only one in this chopper who’s spoken for.” Jake and Mike laughed over the headset, but within seconds the mood had shifted. The humor was gone once their focus reverted to their mission.

  Knox continued to send satellite images to overlay their coordinates, supplying them with better targets to investigate than they could establish on their own. When each one turned up nothing but unspecified debris, they continued on to the next one.

  “Sit back and take a load off, guys,” Mike announced after their final pass through the same coordinates. “We gotta head over to the point and refuel, then we’ll get back out there.”

  “You turning in, Chopper One?” Knox asked, a note of skepticism in his voice.

>   “Negative, chief. We’re taking on more fuel then we’ll be back at our posts.”

  “Roger that. Stay safe out there.”

  Angel was jolted out of his reverie at his mom’s bedside by the sight of Manuela in the doorway. He sat up, rubbed his face with both hands, and checked his watch.

  “Wow. I was just about to ask you what you were doing back here, but I didn’t realize what time it was. It’s morning already, huh?” He flicked the window blinds briefly and sat back a little at the sudden onslaught of sunlight.

  “Yeah, it’s a little after eight. Sorry, I’d have been here sooner, but I was more tired than I realized. And I stopped off to grab you some breakfast.” His sister held out a small brown sack and a cup of coffee before dropping the plastic grocery sack that had been hanging from her thin wrist. She brushed back some stray hairs that had escaped her long black ponytail, then added, “And here are some clothes you can change into. I don’t guess you’re gonna go back to the house, are you?”

  Angel shook his head after taking a swig of the coffee. “No, no need for that. I’ll just head out to the waiting room and catch some sleep. Do you have to go to work later?”

  “The boss gave me one more day off. She lost her mom less than a year ago, so I think this is hitting her as hard as it is me.”

  “Generous of her, I’ll say that,” he answered, his mind wandering to his own job for a second, wondering if his team had had any calls. If any of them were putting themselves in harm’s way and he wasn’t there to pull his weight, he’d never forgive himself.

  “Go on and get some sleep. I’ll come get you if there’s a need to. She kissed her brother’s cheek and took the seat he vacated, leaning back against the plastic headrest and getting comfortable.

  After washing up in the bathroom sink and changing into the clothes Manuela had brought, Angel wound his way through the maze of corridors to the family waiting room. A TV was on with the sound off and a few magazines were tossed around on the low table in front of the couches, but otherwise the room was empty. He thought about putting a note on his chest that said to wake him if anyone needed to sit, but decided they would let him know if he was in the way.

  He had just stretched out on one of the sofas and closed his eyes when he heard his name.

  “Angel? What are you doing in here?” Madison asked, peering into the room.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he replied gruffly without moving his forearm from over his eyes. “I thought you weren’t working til the afternoon shift.”

  “I’m working a double, covering for someone. How long have you been here?”

  “Just got here...and I’d just gotten to sleep,” he hinted, still refusing to look at her. Angel knew he wasn’t being kind, not a smart idea when this woman might mean life or death at some point for his mom, but getting over anger and jealousy had never been one of his carefully honed skills.

  “There’s gonna be people in and out of here all day long,” Madison explained. “Come on. I’ll put you in a room.”

  He didn’t move, and for a moment he thought she might have left him there. Instead, he felt the couch depress slightly when she came and sat near his hip.

  “Angel, we have to talk.”

  “Wow. Every great conversation starts out with those words. Next I bet you’ll say something cute like, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ Oh wait, I’ve already heard you say that line.”

  “That’s not fair,” Madison whispered, dropping her gaze. “That’s not exactly how things ended between us, if you remember.”

  “I remember it perfectly. It ended the day I went to the recruiter’s office. I enlisted to serve my country, and you dumped me because you didn’t want to be a soldier’s wife.”

  “You’re leaving out a lot of details, thank you very much!” she shot back angrily. “How about the part where you were going to be gone for three years after college, getting all your training? How about the part where you were going to deploy after that? Or the fact that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life wondering if you were late coming home because you’d been sent to kill someone on the other side of the world and you weren’t allowed to call me to tell me not to wait up?”

  Angel didn’t answer. The sting of betrayal he’d felt when Madison had ended things with him--after promising him for two years that she loved him--had burned even deeper than an ordinary breakup. Dumping him for serving his country wasn’t just heartbreaking, it was practically treason in his book.

  But everything she’d just said was true.

  “You broke my heart, Angel,” Madison continued. “We had it all planned out, our entire lives. Then you run off and join the military after watching some action movie or playing some video game--”

  “That’s not why I became a SEAL!” he fired back, sitting up and glaring at her as he spoke. “I did this so I could do something for the greater good! I did this to be somebody!”

  “You already were somebody! You were mine!” Madison shouted. She flinched when her voice echoed through the quiet hallway, then lowered her voice. “But being stuck married to a nurse and having a normal job and raising a family...those weren’t good enough for you. You had to go play Rambo, and I was supposed to just wait for news that you’d been killed in the line of duty. Well I’m sorry if that wasn’t the life I’d planned for myself...or for us.”

  Neither of them spoke for a long time.

  “I'm sorry too,” Angel finally grumbled begrudgingly. “I've kind of hated you all this time. I guess I never bothered to figure out why.”

  “That’s nice to hear, thanks for that,” she answered sarcastically, but she couldn’t help but smile. Angry half-apologies aside, at least they were speaking civilly.

  “Hey, I can’t help it if the truth hurts.” Angel gave her a weak smile before closing his eyes again, hoping she’d get the hint that he needed to sleep.

  “Well, I’ve got to go clock in and get to doing rounds. Let me know if you need anything.” Madison gave the door frame a small pat then turned to head down the hall. Angel opened one eye as she left.

  “Hey Maddie...where’s this empty room you got?”

  Chapter 5

  “Thanks for checking in, Ruiz, but there’s no new developments. Our missing surfer’s still AWOL, and I got Tanner and Jake scouting the wash zone while Mike mans the bus. How are things on your end? I mean...with your mom?” Knox cringed while he waited for an answer, silently praying that it was good news.

  “No news yet, but she’s hanging in there,” he said, mentally tacking on the words, for now. “It’d go better if I could get a particular ghost from the past outta my head.”

  “A ghost? Whaddya mean--oh god, not Maddie the Baddie? What’s she doing there? I thought she took off and got married or something!”

  “I thought so too, but she’s a nurse in the ICU, and my mom is one of her patients.”

  “Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

  “I don’t know…” His question gave Angel pause. He sure hadn’t been thrilled to see her, but if he had to pick someone to see his mom through something like this, even he had to admit that Madison--despite his personal feelings--was strong and smart and more than capable at her job. “I guess I’m glad she’s here. She loves my mom, but more than that, I know she’s not gonna bullshit me around. Good news or not, she’s not gonna sugar coat it or blow smoke, you know?”

  “Yeah, I totally get that. But it sounds like… no, never mind,” Knox said, stopping himself and changing course.

  “Don’t hold back now, man! You’ve already put it out there. What were you gonna say?”

  “Well, I was gonna say… it’s been a long time since you’ve cared about somebody, other than the team, I mean. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about any woman like you just talked about her.”

  “I didn’t talk any kind of way,” Angel protested, but there was no fight in his words.

  “No, ‘course not. Like I said, I didn’
t mean anything.” Knox cleared his throat, then changed the subject. “Hey man, I gotta get an update to the guys and check in on their twenty. Keep me posted about your mom, all right? And Ruiz? We’re, uh, we’re all praying for her.”

  “Thanks, man. I really do appreciate it. Keep me in the loop on your search, and I’ll be back just as soon as I can.”

  “You got it, buddy. Over and out.”

  Angel hung up his cellphone and stared at it in his hand for a few moments. Knox had some nerve, implying that he… no, it was too pointless to even analyze. He had nothing for Madison now, no feelings whatsoever. That door had been slammed shut years ago, back when she told him she could never be a soldier’s wife, much less a SEAL wife.

  But you're not a SEAL, remember? There's nothing stopping you from…

  No. Ruiz gripped his fist hard enough to notice the fragile phone in his hand. He turned it over and inspected its ballistics case for signs that he'd damaged it. No, Madison had made her choice to turn her back on him, and that was the kind of thing he couldn't just ignore.

  His phone rang again almost immediately.

  “Angel? How's Mama?” the oldest of his three sisters asked. “I hate to call Manuela, she's either got to be at work or catching up on her sleep.”

  “Hey Maria. There's no change,” he answered wearily, then launched into what he'd learned the last time he was updated. Blood pressure, blood volume, brain waves, EKGs and EEGs, he could spout off the numbers like he was playing the lottery. In some ways, it actually did feel like they were playing a lottery, one to see if his mother came through this okay. It was all getting so rote, leaving him feeling detached from it. Being detached was the best thing he could feel, under the circumstances.

  “So, Manna tells me you've got a special friend at the hospital,” Maria said, trailing off into a very leading hint at the end.