Shadow’s all about being a SEAL. The one world he’s comfortable in. He knows what he can do, when to do it, and how to do it … until he sets off on a mission to rescue Arianna and her family, and his world goes from controlled action to chaos. Who knew women like her existed?

Arianna struggles to deal with the foreign world she’s been plunged into. Kidnappings, beatings, threats.
SEALs.
The only good thing is the darkest, most dangerous-looking saviour she’s ever met. And he doesn’t know what to do with her.

Well, she has a good idea, but will they get that chance? Not if the kidnappers have anything to say about it.

Arianna has been marked for extinction, and it’s up to Shadow to save her … before it’s too late and he loses something he had no idea he wanted in the first place … but now he can’t live without.

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Chapter 1

J
ames Morrow, Shadow
to his friends, watched the lake come into view below him. He leaned forward to peer through the cockpit of the small bush plane he’d been riding in for the last half hour. This wasn’t how he’d expected to be traveling. None of his team had. Mechanical trouble had brought their military helicopter to an emergency landing. Shitty timing. They were on a mission. To rescue a US senator and his family being held hostage in a remote Canadian cabin.

Instead they’d been the ones in need of assistance. They managed to land close to a small town, but without enough time to bring in a second military aircraft, and time being of an essence, they’d ended up in one of those small bush planes barely able to handle the weight of the four passengers fully geared. Dane and Swede were traveling with the Canadian unit in a different aircraft along with Markus and Evan, two other SEALs that were part of this mission. Good men. Shadow had worked with both before. Actually at this point, he’d been lucky enough to work with several dozen SEALs. It was just over time some were more memorable than others. Markus had lost his wife in his first year at Coronado. A loss that had hurt him deeply. It had been easy to empathize. That he’d kept his head down and his focus on his work, well, he’d earned everyone’s respect then.

Evan was a bit of a wild card. Divorced and possibly had a death wish with all his explosives training. Shadow was good, but Cooper and Evan rocked that world.

That didn’t mean he was giving up his position though. Shadow was in the passenger seat for once – where he could see for miles. The others were in the cargo hold. Interesting switch. Then as a SEAL, he was accustomed to change. And being prepared. And adapting. One had to.

Hopefully the senator’s family was holding up to the devastation in their life as well. There’d been no demands as yet. But the adult daughter had managed to transmit a blurry photo of one man to the senator’s aide in Washington after they’d arrived at the cabin, and that had been enough for both countries to jump into action. The man was a known terrorist. In fact, he sat at the top of the top Ten Most Wanted list.

Not that Shadow cared about the list.

Shadow cared about the job. The work he did. This was his life. He was a remote cabin in the woods kind of guy. Take the city out of his world and he was at peace. Living on the base was a necessity, but he got away every chance he could. His friend and SEAL brother, Hawk, jointly owned a ranch with his sister several hours out of Coronado. Something Shadow could see himself doing. Only he knew Hawk and his sister were involved in heavy discussions about their options as they both had long term relationships to make work and the living arrangements needed some rethinking. Hawk had partnered up with his sister’s best friend. And Shadow’s best friend Swede had partnered up with Hawk’s sister. Confusing, maybe, but it worked for them.

Then Shadow had seen that relationship coming. Hard not to. Only poor Swede, that big mountain hadn’t.

Talk about being blind.

The way Swede had looked at Eva all these years but knowing it was a place he couldn’t go…yeah painful. Still, they’d finally gotten there. Even if it had taken a rebel training camp and a mess of rescued horses to bring them together. Shadow grinned. It would take something like that for the big guy to make his move. But he was so damn happy now, it was ridiculous. That soured his mood instantly. Almost all his friends were happily paired up. It was almost sickening.

The small plane was buffeted by the heavy winds. Lightning cracked outside the window. He frowned, studying the thunderclouds around him. They should be close. The bush plane was rigged with floats, the plan to scoop down on the nearest lake and drop them as close to shore as Bob, the pilot, could get them to where the senator’s family was being held. The storm gave them wonderful coverage for the landing. The plane engine would be lost in the crackle of the lightning and thunder. No one should be out in this nasty weather.

They were also landing further away from the cabin than the family would have arrived. They couldn’t take the chance of alerting the kidnappers of their arrival.

Shadow looked at his SEAL team behind him, seeing that air of intense focus. That air of expectancy. That understanding of why they were here. That something could go wrong. Likely would go wrong. And they’d be ready. Whether it was Mother Nature about to unleash her worst on their small tin box in the sky or the terrorists holding the senator’s family down below in the darkness – they had a job to do and they loved it.

So did he.

Being a SEAL had given him purpose. He’d needed that. He hated to admit it but joining the navy, coming from a small town to the city of the military had been tough. But he’d bore down and survived – thrived actually.

Yet there’d been always a sense of separation inside. As if the only way he could manage to get through this was to keep himself detached. Lock off the inner part of himself that was held inviolate. Foolish he knew. Particularly as he’d watched his friends go through such upheavals in their lives. They each let someone special inside. He didn’t think he could. His walls were too strong. Too high. Too old.

The plane rocked wildly in the wind.

The pilot slowly descended, trying to bring the plane below the heavy cloud cover as visibility was nonexistent. And the plane wasn’t equipped with the latest or the best equipment. Shadow half suspected that the old geezer beside him could fly this thing blindfolded. He had a special gift. A rare connection to his “girl.”

Shadow understood.

He’d seen many an old-timer connect to a boat or car, or in this case a plane, in such a way that they seemed to have a surreal relationship. As Shadow watched, Bob coaxed the small plane down at a gentle descent. Shadow couldn’t see all the dials on the dashboard but the one he could see, the altimeter, was spinning like mad. So the instruments had been affected by the storm too. He wasn’t nervous. He was in life and death situations often. But not normally due to Mother Nature.

The clouds thinned enough to show the deep blue of a lake below, dancing in and out of their view as they descended. Good. This was the right lake. They’d be landing soon. He hoped the water was calmer than it looked.

It wasn’t. As they got almost to the water level he could see white caps whipping up below them.

“Gonna be close,” the pilot said with a huge tobacco stained toothy grin. “But you guys live for close, don’t you?” His grin widened, but his gaze never came off the water as he carefully brought the old girl in to as smooth a float landing as possible given the circumstances.

Shadow respected the casual skill with which Bob set the plane down on the angry waves. This man had seen a lot of years in this type of wilderness in all kinds of weather to do what he’d just done. With no pier or dock to tie up to, the plane bobbed to the far end and Bob shut down the engines. The small plane rocked gently. Shadow looked at the shoreline and realized they were only about thirty feet out. Nice.

He turned to the back of the plane in time to see a small inflatable raft being lowered to the water and the first of his team climbing down into it. The raft was large enough to hold all four of them, but only just.

At the shore, they disembarked and turned to watch as Bob’s winch rewound the rope still attached to the inflatable then he struggled to reload the boat in the cargo hold. Once done, he was quick to get back to the cockpit and turn on the engines.

The plane took off and disappeared into the storm clouds.

Good. They were alone.

Just the way they liked it.

Now to save the senator.

Chapter 2

BOOK: SEALs of Honor: Shadow

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