Pleasing Her SEAL

Now that he had the first nonthreat zip-tied and down on the ground, the rest followed. He hated making little kids show their hands, but he’d seen good men shot by making assumptions. Who knew what Santiago and Diego had taught these little guys? Maddie’s face flashed through his head, and he knew what she’d think. This was the part of the job that sucked.

Across the room, Levi barked out more Spanish and then, when Santiago failed to comply, cursed. “You’ve got five seconds to drop the gun.”

Naturally, the guy raised the gun.

“Hooyah,” Levi said, sounding downright pleasant. “Rules of engagement say I get to plug your ass with my bullet, seeing as how I feel threatened. I’ll take Spanish lessons later and explain my feelings to you when you’re in US custody.”

Right. Time to take care of business. Turning his M4 toward Santiago, Mason squeezed off a round with surgical precision. The bullet smashed into the other man’s wrist.

“You took my turn.” Levi stepped over and kicked the gun away as Santiago alternated between cursing and bellowing in pain.

“You were taking too long,” Mason bit out. “Get him up.”

“You’re a lucky bastard.” Levi hauled Santiago to his feet, clipping his wrists behind him with a pair of plastic cuffs. “We brought our very own medic with us. Ask nicely, and he’ll share the Band-Aids with you.”

Mason swept the room one more time, but the nonthreats had wisely decided to stand down and leave this to Santiago. He flicked on the lights and eyeballed the man Levi frog-marched over to him. Damn it.

“This isn’t Santiago,” he said. “I wish I could tell you we’ve got our target, but we’ve got the wrong guy. Looks like him, and I’d lay money on a shared family tree, but we just struck out.”

Levi cursed and barked commands into his headset, pushing Not Santiago toward the door. Two minutes later, they were back in the front hallway playing show-and-tell with the rest of the team.

“Bloody hell,” Gray roared, before launching into a volley of Spanish. Their prisoner shook his head violently, firing back a few answers of his own.

“Santiago left an hour ago,” Gray said. “This one claims to be the cousin. Since he’s parked in Santiago’s bedroom, cozied up with Santiago’s wife and kids, he’s either the decoy or a good liar.”

Levi’s fingers tightened on the man’s collar. “Then, we’ll take him along with us, just in case we’re looking at option B and a surgery job.”

Gray nodded. It wasn’t unheard of for the drug traffickers to pay a visit to a plastic surgeon and get themselves a new face. It certainly made Mason’s job harder, because how did you ID someone who looked nothing like his photos anymore? He suspected that wasn’t the case here, but they’d take the presumably fake Santiago along with them and let someone else check him out.

Sam popped his head out of a side room. “House is clear, but you all might want to take a look at this.”

Gray turned to the imposter and barked a question. For a moment, Mason thought the guy might not talk, but then he shrugged as if the answer wasn’t a state secret. “Es la oficina del jefe.”

After turning the perp over to two SEALs from the other unit for transport, Mason, Gray and Levi followed Sam. The dude was generally Mr. Levelheaded—maybe it was all that medical training—and unfortunately, he hadn’t been wrong. Nope. What was wrong was the contents of the small study. Not only had someone been watching everything that transpired on Fantasy Island through two video feeds of the main beach and the pier, but that someone had also been diligently surfing the internet and reading Maddie’s blog. And blowing up pictures of her.

Mason fought to keep his emotions under control. Right now it didn’t matter that he wanted to rip the watcher’s throat out for stalking Maddie. What mattered was finding the guy—fast—and making sure he was in no condition to do it again.

“You think this stuff belongs to Santiago or Diego?” Gray asked, grabbing the computer tower.

Good plan. What they were looking at was probably the tip of the iceberg, and maybe one of the computer techs could learn more.

Mason rifled through a stack of printouts on the desktop. The dates on the bottom were from yesterday and today. “Diego was already in custody when these were run,” he pointed out. “Makes it more likely to be Santiago’s work.”

“Whoever it is, he’s sick, you got me?” Levi shook his head, taking in the monitors and then the pictures briefly, before he started yanking cords and separating the stuff into four piles. “He’s got a real thing for your Maddie.”