Page 2 of Her Wicked Hero

“Lesley, you really need to keep your focus on your family,” Kyle admonished.

She swallowed. She didn’t know why she had thought he was nicer. All of these men scared her to death, but she knew she couldn’t let it show. That was one of the things she had learned from Mr. B. She swallowed and said confidently, “We need more food and water,”

“Done. Was that so hard to ask for?” His pleasant voice made her skin crawl.

“How much longer are we going to be here?” Christie asked.

“Probably no more than a week, then you’ll have someplace lovely to stay,” Kyle smiled.

Harold was propped up against the wall of the hut, holding his twelve and thirteen-year-old daughters in his arms, his face ashen with pain.

Kyle left the small hut, and Marcia listened for the padlock to click into place. She crawled over to Harold, and he held out his hand for her and she took it.

“Did you get it done?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then help is on its way.”

“You coming?” Hunter Diaz asked.

“Just want to study this a bit longer. I won’t be late,” Zed assured him.

Hunter considered him before finally nodding and leaving the small briefing room. Dante ‘Zed’ Zaragoza sat back down in the seat that Lieutenant Gray Taylor had vacated and opened the file of the ten passengers and six crew members who had supposedly died. But Zed knew some of them were still alive. At least for now.

He looked around the gray room inside the USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered supercarrier. He was surrounded by the most advanced technology in the world and currently assisting one of the deadliest SEAL teams on the planet, and here he was knocked on his ass by the strongest feeling of his life. Not something normal people felt, but a gut-deep intuition, a knowing. Thirty-six years on this planet and not once had his instincts steered him wrong.

He leafed through the file again. Heavy hitters from around the world had been on this yacht. They had just lectured in Singapore and their next stop was Hong Kong. The poor bastards had thought it would be a cool mini-vacation for their families. Instead of five days in the lap of luxury, the world now thought they’d been blown to bits in the South China Sea.

Zed pulled out the two photos and a short write-up on the Brockman family. Harold Brockman was the key to this mess, he just knew it. Brockman was the former head of the NSA who had retired to write books. Zed liked his books, but a lot of people didn’t. He looked at the photo of his family that was two years old, his wife and three daughters. It had been taken a month before his wife had died of a brain embolism. In it, the girls were ten, eleven, and twenty-two.

Only the two youngest girls had gone on the trip, the oldest was in rehab. That was the reason for the second photo. Marcia Price, a girl who somewhat resembled the Brockman daughters, at least with her brown curly hair and dark eyes, but that was where the similarities ended. This girl’s spirit radiated off the photo. According to the intel, she had come along to keep the younger girls entertained while the father lectured and wrote.

Zed knew down to his toes Marcia was alive. So were some of the others, but absolutely, positively, Marcia was alive. Even more, he knew his fate was destined to be intertwined with this woman. The only other feeling that had been this strong and personal revolved around one of his best friends, Hunter Diaz.

Searches were being done all along their last known coordinates. Every nation involved, including China, had been called in to search for the dignitaries’ missing yacht. It was assumed it had capsized, but what few people knew was there had been a boat shadowing the yacht at all times. The South China Sea was known for pirates, and there wasn’t a chance in hell Brockman was going to be gallivanting off without proper precautions. As soon as the yacht hit international waters, the other boat, known as a floating armory started shadowing them. The armory was loaded for bear when it came to men and weapons. The men were some damned fine former American, British, and Australian military personnel, and their job was to follow the yacht all the way to Hong Kong.

The fact the armory went silent the same time the yacht had, raised all kinds of alarms in the U.S. This wasn’t some kind of boating accident, this was something else entirely.

Zed traced the line of Marcia’s jaw on her photo, then forced himself to stop. He arranged the file back together, headed out the door, and down the narrow hall.

“We’ve got something,” Gray said as he stuck his head out of the locker room. “Get a move on.”

Zed felt his lip curl upwards. It was about fucking time.

The Reagan had been positioned four-hundred miles from Borneo where the signal had originated. They had done aerial recon, but with no luck. The jungle was too dense, they were in the middle of the Pinangah Forest Reserve. Further investigation found the armory boat docked close to the Northern most tip of the island, near the nation of Brunei. Two men were spotted topside. Intel was imperative to determine what they would find in the jungle. It was decided to capture the men at the boat and question them.

The team landed in a small airfield an hour away from the harbor where the boat was docked. Transport was waiting for them in the form of two SUVs. It was a tight fit for the eight big men. Dex Evans, their communications and tech guru, had his computer open on this lap.

“Anything?” Zed asked.

“The beacon hasn’t moved from yesterday,” Dex told him, pointing to the same spot on the map. The yacht had gone missing ten days ago. The trek from the harbor to that spot in the middle of Borneo would have taken five days with the novices.

“One new thing,” Gray said as they sped down the highway to the harbor.

Zed raised an eyebrow.

“A Chinese cargo ship spotted the remains of the yacht. They’ve got everyone converging on the site to determine what happened and search for survivors.”