Rogue (SEAL Team: Disavowed Book 1) (21 page)

“You’re sick,” Maisey said. “How can you talk about your wife, knowing what you’ve done to me?”

“Oh, darling, everything we did was with my wife’s approval. In fact, she helped me pick you, and even suggested ways to best woo you. Since she is not able to carry my child, she decided a surrogate was the next best thing. But now that our son is safely in the world, she’d prefer you exit . . .” He grasped her forearm, guiding her toward his car.

“Slow down,” Nash grasped Maisey’s free arm. “She’s not going anywhere with you. Neither is her son.”

“Gentlemen . . .” He nodded to his goon squad who had slowly circled. “Since we may have an audience, please dispose of them in a discreet manner.”

Before Nash could even reach for his Glock, two meatheads with faces only a bulldog’s mom could love surged toward him, while another grabbed his wrists from behind.

Jasper wasn’t faring much better.

“Nash?” Maisey struggled against Vicente’s hold, but could only do so much while still holding her baby.

“I’ve got this. Just don’t get into his car.” For an instant, Nash went limp in his attacker’s arms, then grabbed his wrist to position himself behind him, jerking back on his arm with enough force to hear a satisfying crunch of bone against tendon.

Maisey screamed.

Vicente stepped back to allow another of his men to cover her mouth, and yet another to manhandle her into the now running limo.

Nash fought his way past his current attacker with a well-placed fist to his ugly face.

“You good?” he shouted to Jasper.

“Yeah! Go after your girl!”

“Roger, that.” Nash reached the limo just as the driver pulled away. He lunged for the back door’s handle, but was too late.

Not caring who saw—in fact, the more witnesses, the better, he took his Glock from his holster, spread his legs to give himself a more stable shot, then
bam
,
bam
,
bam
, blew out both rear tires.

The vehicle fishtailed on the gravel lot, raising a dust cloud through which Nash could hardly see. When the dust settled, and the vehicle was still moving, he shot again, taking out the driver’s side front tire, as well.

The thug behind the wheel was good, but not good enough to keep forward momentum on his side with three shredded tires and rims sinking into soft gravel.

From inside the car came the sound of the baby crying.

Behind Nash, a plaid-wearing good ol’ boy emerged from the store with a few hefty friends. “We don’t want trouble. Y’all best be on your way.”

“That guy in the limo . . .” Nash never took his eyes from the rear window. “He’s got my wife and child.” Up until that very second, Nash had been determined to hold tight to Hope’s memory, but sadly, he realized that’s all she now was. That didn’t mean he loved her any less, but that Maisey and Joe needed—
deserved
—all of him, all the time. Not only the parts he felt emotionally equipped to handle. If they all made it through the next few minutes alive, they’d have the rest of their lives to figure out a happy ending—assuming this time when he proposed, Maisey accepted.

“Wait a minute . . .” the store clerk said from behind him. “Are you the folks we’ve been seeing on the news? If so, don’t that mean there’s five million reasons for me to believe you do intend to do that little woman and her baby harm?”

“LET ME AND my baby go, Vicente.
Please
. It’s over. I’m sure police are on their way. You can’t win.”

His leering smile made Maisey nauseous. “When are you going to learn, my pet, I
always
win.”

“Come on out of there.” There was a rap on the window. “Give me my five million, and I’ll give you your man.”

A satisfied groan spilled from Vicente’s lips. “I do so love this country. People will do anything for a quick buck.” He nodded to the grim-faced member of his security detail. “Off them all, then find a set of keys to match any vehicle. I’m excited to present our son to my wife. Ready the jet to leave within the hour.”

“Vicente, no! Those men have done nothing to you. What if they have families?”

He rolled his eyes before trailing his associate, and leaving her alone in the car.

With each bullet’s pop, Maisey died inside, fearing one targeted Nash. She needed to go to him, but she also needed to keep her son safe. What should she do? Her limbs had turned cold and sluggish with fear. She couldn’t focus her eyes. Her gaze narrowed and her peripheral vision blurred. Terror lodged in the back of her throat, making it impossible to speak or scream or do anything other than grasp her wailing son.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, lurching with each new shot.

There were masculine shouts and obscenities and more shots fired than she could count.

Eyes closed, she wished herself anywhere but here—back to a time when she and Nash had been one. Why had she been foolish enough to throw him away?

The trapped air grew stifling in the heat.

With bullets flying, the last thing Maisey wanted to do was open the door, but unless she wanted her son or herself to pass from heatstroke, she needed to escape.

Holding tight to Joe, she opened the door facing the two-lane road, breathing deeply of the somewhat cooler air.

Cradling her son, she swung around to find Nash and Jasper both engaged in fist fights. She counted at least six dead men that the pair of SEALs must have eliminated. The men working the convenience store were gone, too, but their blood was on Vicente. Bile rose in the back of her throat. She struggled not to retch.

Vicente tried running for the limo, but Nash gave chase.

The two men exchanged more blows until Vicente drew a gun from a previously hidden chest holster.

Nash kicked the gun from his hand.

Nash and Vicente exchanged blow after blow. Nash’s nose bled, and one eye had nearly swollen shut. Still, he kept pounding her ex like a machine.

Vicente got in a left hook, but then eventually sunk to his knees.

Jasper finished off his man, and pulled his cell phone from a side pocket of his desert-camo cargo pants.

“I so want to finish you here,” Nash said to Vicente from between gritted teeth.

Maisey wanted the same, but not potentially at the risk of Nash’s freedom. He was hurt bad enough and needed rest. Even Vicente couldn’t escape what he’d now done.

“You don’t have the spine to do the job.” Barely upright, Vicente took a swing at Nash, but hit only air.

“Funny . . .” Nash spit out a mouthful of blood. “But it seems to me you’re the one on the ground. Maybe you should try being a little nicer?”

“Nash, leave him alone!” Maisey pleaded. “He’s like poking a snake. Let the police handle it from here.”

“What I’ll be,” her ex said, “is the man who sends you to hell.”

“Screw you.” Nash drew his gun, pointing the business end at Vicente’s head.

“Cavalry’s on the way,” Jasper said. “Want me to zip-tie him all nice and pretty for the cops?”

“Sure.” Nash used his forearm to wipe blood from his nose and chin. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

Maisey wasn’t sure whether to run to Nash or wait for him to come to her. Had the danger finally passed? Was it safe to breathe?

Poor little Joe hadn’t gotten the memo. He cried all the harder.

“Shh . . .” She gave him a light jiggle. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“
Perra
!” Vicente shouted. “If my wife and I can’t have my son, no one will.”

In fractions of a second, Maisey helplessly watched as Vicente leapt up to take Jasper’s gun. Before she could scream, he aimed it at Joe and fired, only her baby wasn’t hit.

Nash had flung himself in front of her and Joe, and now, he shot Vicente in his chest before collapsing to the sun-bleached gravel in a pool of his own deep, red blood.

Maisey cried out, running to Nash, who’d been shot.

Jasper was back on his phone.

Everything slowed. She tried getting to Nash, but her limbs felt as weak as if she were made of pudding. She was conscious that she was screaming, but couldn’t make out her own words.

Why was this happening? Hadn’t what Vicente already put both of them through been enough? Why was she now having to face losing Nash for a second, agonizingly more permanent time?

“Don’t you leave me,” she said on the heels of a sob. She’d crumpled alongside him, holding her son in the crook of her arm, pulling Nash’s head onto her lap, pressing Joe’s blanket to his chest wound, whispering words of love.

He was eerily still. His breaths were shallow.

“Nash, I love you. Please stay with me—however you want. If you can only be friends, that’s enough. But I don’t ever want to be separated from you again.”

Jasper grasped Nash’s wrist, checking his pulse.

“Strong. He’ll fight through.” Nash’s friend cupped his hand to her shoulder for a reassuring squeeze. “Plus, Harding’s got a medical helicopter already headed this way.”

“Thank you,” Maisey said. “For everything. We wouldn’t have made it without you.”

Jasper shrugged. “You’re welcome, but it was no biggie. All in a day’s work.”

“Yeah, well, you’re both crazy.”

“True . . .” Jasper grinned. “But at least we’re also damned good looking.”

How he could joke at a time like this was beyond her, but she cast him a faint smile and nodded, but kept pressing the blanket to Nash’s wound.

Ten feet away, Vicente’s corpse gazed at her with a blank stare.

Maisey thought she’d be happy when he was finally gone, but seeing him dead brought no joy, only a strong sense of resolve to do something special with the rest of her life.

HOURS LATER, MAISEY woke from a light sleep to find Nash still resting comfortably in a Jacksonville hospital. He’d lost a lot of blood, but the bullet had miraculously missed vital organs and lodged itself in a rib. Doctors removed it, and he was expected to make a full recovery.

Harding and Jasper were handling the mountain of police paperwork, leaving Nash free to heal.

With the threat of danger behind them, Maisey had left Joe with her mom, so she could be with Nash when he woke. Her son had been so distraught by the gunfire that it had taken most of the afternoon to calm him. Her mom’s last report was that he’d finally succumbed to sleep.

Aside from the oxygen’s faint gurgle, the room was tomb silent.

Which made her nervous.

She rose, standing at Nash’s bedside to make sure he was well and truly okay. His chest regularly rose and fell, and his eye was already looking better. In the heat of this war—and that’s what her ultimate escape from Vicente had been—she’d dreamed of spending the rest of her life with Nash. But now that the crisis had passed, she feared that dream could never be a reality.

It still didn’t seem real—that Vicente was gone. That she and her son’s lives were now forever worry free. But she would worry—not about herself, but for this man who carried a burden so heavy he might never rest.