Texas SEAL (SEALs of Coronado Book 3) Read online

Clearly, she didn’t understand what that meant. But Trent did, and he didn’t like the sound of it.

  Dana shrugged. “It’s not something Marco ever talked about. He never wanted me around that part of his life. But over time he let slip enough for me to figure out someone powerful had been watching out for him while he was in McConnell, making sure no one bothered him.”

  “Any idea who that person is?” Trent asked.

  He wasn’t an expert on the criminal mind or how protection in a prison worked, but he was smart enough to realize if someone had taken care of Marco in the joint, they hadn’t done it out of the goodness of their heart. It was possible Marco’s disappearance had something to do with him owing a debt to that person and not wanting to pay.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” Dana said.

  “You do?” Lyla asked, clearly stunned. “Who?”

  Dana got up and walked over to one of the large filing cabinets in the corner. Opening the top drawer, she retrieved a folder then came back and sat down. She flipped through the folder, taking out a slip of paper and sliding it across the desk for Lyla and Trent to see.

  “I think it’s this man—Archie Cobb.” She pointed at what looked like a sales receipt with a really large dollar figure at the bottom. “He came to Marco’s first big showing and bought one of the pieces. Marco got upset, and it almost turned into a fight right here in the gallery. When I asked him later why it bothered him so much that Cobb had bought one of his pieces, he said something cryptic about already owing the man enough.”

  Trent glanced at Lyla to see her expressing the same interest he was. This definitely sounded like something they should check into.

  “Don’t suppose we’re lucky enough to have an address on this guy, Cobb, do you?” he asked Dana.

  “I’m afraid not. The man paid cash for the piece—a large lion with the horns of a bull and the tail of a dragon—and he had someone pick it up with a truck, so he never left an address.” Dana’s brow furrowed. “That’s not a problem, is it? You can find Cobb on your own, right?”

  Lyla looked doubtful, but Trent nodded. He actually had a good idea where he could turn for this kind of information. Granted, it was a longshot, but it might work.

  “I think I know someone who can help,” he said. “I’ll call him as soon as we’re done here.”

  Dana relaxed a little at that, but Lyla only eyed him curiously.

  They spent a little while longer talking to Dana about other occasions when Marco’s past had come calling. There was one guy in particular who’d shown up a lot.

  “You’re talking about Tim Price, right?” Lyla asked.

  Dana nodded.

  “Who’s Tim Price?” Trent asked.

  “The jerk who got Marco involved in drugs back in high school,” Lyla muttered. “He convinced Marco to smuggle drugs across the border, and they both ended up doing time together at McConnell. Tim Price is nothing but trouble.”

  “Tim acts like his friend,” Dana added. “But I get the feeling he has no interest in ever letting Marco get his life back together.”

  Trent scowled. “Any idea what all these people want with Marco, beyond the apparent desire to keep him down in the toilet with them?”

  Dana shook her head.

  After that, the conversation shifted into a discussion of how close Dana and Marco had become and how she was trying to help him move beyond the criminal events in his past.

  “There’s a lot of interest in Marco’s art in Europe.” Dana smiled. “We’re thinking of going to France and starting a second gallery over there once he’s fully off probation.”

  It all sounded very heartwarming and casual, as if Lyla and Dana had forgotten Marco had been missing for over a week and was probably in a crapload of trouble. But Trent wasn’t going to remind them. If they wanted to stay positive, he didn’t intend to point out the obvious.

  Before they left, Dana made them promise they’d keep her up to date on anything they learned, good or bad. Lyla nodded and promised she would, reminding Trent that neither she nor Dana was as naïve as the conversation moments ago had implied. They knew the situation was bad. They simply chose not to dwell on it.

  “Were you serious about knowing someone who can track down Archie Cobb, or were you saying that to make Dana feel better?” Lyla asked when they were back in her SUV.

  “I was serious. There are some people in San Diego who might be able to help. I’m just not sure if they will.”

  After digging his phone out of his pocket, Trent scrolled through the contacts, stopping when he reached Chasen Ward, the newly promoted chief petty officer of his platoon. He hit the button to call the man before he could think better of it.

  Chasen picked up on the second ring.

  “What’s up, Cowboy?” he asked before Trent could get a word out. “Nash told me you went to San Antonio to help out a friend who’s in trouble. Everything okay?”

  Well, that made things a little easier. The fact Chasen knew why he was in Texas meant he wouldn’t have to waste time explaining everything.

  “Everything’s fine, Chief,” Trent said. “I called because I could use some help.”

  There wasn’t even a second’s delay. “Shoot. Whatever you need.”

  “A little while ago, Logan and Nash mentioned you and Haley got involved with that hacktivist group—The People—and knew how to get in contact with them.”

  “Logan and Nash talk too much,” Chasen muttered. He didn’t sound very amused.

  “Yeah, probably,” Trent agreed. “Is it true? Can you contact them? If you can, I need a big favor.”

  “What kind of favor?” the chief asked, not necessarily saying he’d do it, but not shutting him down either.

  “I’m trying to find a guy named Archie Cobb. He’s some kind of criminal here in the San Antonio area, and we think he might be involved in the disappearance of my friend, Marco Torres. I was hoping you could talk to these hacker friends of yours and see if they can find out how to track down Cobb. If it helps, I’m almost certain he’s in the drug business. There’s also a man named Timothy Price who’s involved. The two names might be connected.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. “Are you about to get yourself into deep shit out there, Cowboy?”

  Trent opened his mouth, ready to lie in order to help his friend, but then changed his mind. “Possibly. But I don’t have a choice. Marco may be in serious trouble. If I don’t help him, nobody will.”

  More silence followed, and Trent held his breath.

  “Okay, thanks for being honest with me,” Chasen finally said. “I’ll get my friends to dig into Archie Cobb and see what they can find. I’ll ask them to look into Timothy Price, too. Give me an hour or two. These people can be difficult to reach.”

  Trent let out a sigh of relief. “I can do that.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I learn something,” Chasen promised. “Watch your back out there, okay, Cowboy? If things get out of hand, call me. I’ll get some of the guys out there to watch your back.”

  “Thanks, Chief. I will.”

  “Hackers?” Lyla asked. “Navy SEALs have hackers on speed dial?”

  Trent chuckled. “Something like that. They’ll see if they can find an address on this Cobb dude, but until then, you feel like grabbing some lunch?”

  Lyla didn’t have to think about it very long. “Lunch sounds good. If we’re going to check out bad guys who are involved in dealing drugs, I should probably have more on my stomach than a few spoonfuls of yogurt.

  Trent wasn’t sure of that logic since a full stomach rarely made much difference when it came to dealing with bad guys, but he nodded anyway. “Lunch it is.”

  * * * * *

  “San Diego has some great Mexican restaurants, but sometimes I seriously miss the Tex-Mex flavors you can only get in San Antonio.” Trent crunched into the big taco he’d ordered and chewed then let out a moan. “Oh man, that’s good.”

  Lyla
couldn’t help laughing. In some ways, Trent was like a really big kid. She absolutely loved that about him. A lot of guys would have been too worried about acting cool to moan over their food like Trent did. But the big, strong Navy SEAL she’d brought back from San Diego with her didn’t seemed to care about any of that. It was like he didn’t realize how gorgeous he was, which was hard to believe. She’d have thought a few hundred women would have pointed that out to him by now. Then again, maybe the women out in San Diego didn’t know how incredible he really was. If Trent lived in San Antonio, she had no doubt he’d have plenty of women interested in telling him exactly what they thought of him. And Lyla didn’t have a problem admitting she’d be one of them.

  She quickly refocused her attention on the burrito she’d gotten, digging into it with her fork and hoping she hadn’t been staring at him too blatantly. She’d done that a lot since showing up on his doorstep to beg for his help.

  She scooped some of the shredded chicken covered with onions and chilies into her mouth, almost moaning a little herself. Wow, this was really good. She’d never been to Maria’s Café on Nogalitos Street before, but it was nice place to eat. Casual, too. Kind of like having lunch at a friend’s house instead of a restaurant.

  “Since you’re so close to the border in San Diego, you must go to Mexico and eat real Mexican food all the time, right?” she asked in between bites.

  It was safer to engage him in polite conversation about food than to think too long about how much fun it was to stare at the guy on the other side of the table. This wasn’t a date. Trent was here to help find her brother. That was it.

  He was off to a good start, too. The conversation they’d had with Dana earlier had finally given her hope she might be able to get somewhere in her search for Marco. They had a name, and now that the hackers Trent’s SEAL buddies knew were trying to track down Cobb, they might actually learn something useful. She refused to let herself think too much about what a man like Cobb might have done with her brother. She and Trent were going to talk to Cobb, and that would lead her to Marco. She was sure of it.

  “Actually, I don’t get across the border all that often, maybe once a year at most,” Trent said in answer to her question. “I travel a lot with my job, and to tell the truth, I’m usually not in the mood to get out much when I’m home.”

  Lyla supposed she could understand that. After a hard week of teaching at her elementary school, there were times she was so exhausted she couldn’t bother to get off the couch for the entire weekend. She supposed Trent’s job could be like that, too.

  That was when she realized she didn’t have a clue what his job entailed. Yeah, she knew he was in the Navy SEALs, and of course she heard the news talking about SEALs going up against ISIS in Syria. But she really had no idea what SEALs actually did on a daily basis.

  “This is probably going to sound horrible since I’m a teacher and supposed to know everything about everything,” she said as she sipped her iced tea. “But what exactly do you do for a living? Besides traveling a lot, I mean.”

  Trent chuckled as he polished off his taco and started in on another. “Don’t feel bad about not knowing much about SEALs. When we do our job right, nobody is supposed to have a clue we’ve been there, much less what we’ve done. And most of the stuff you see in the news is wrong.”

  “Okay. So, what’s the real story, then?”

  He licked some sauce off his thumb. “SEALs are trained to conduct small team operations anywhere in the world. We’re able to move into and out of the objective area by sea, air, or land—hence the name SEAL. We do covert reconnaissance, hostage rescue, counterterrorism operations, direct action against small, high value targets. Stuff like that.”

  Lyla had a general idea what that stuff meant, but she got the feeling Trent was glossing over the details and purposely making light of what he did for a living. She was certain everything he’d described was dangerous as hell.

  “So, you’re like Army Rangers, right?” she asked.

  He reached for his iced tea. “We’re part of the larger special forces community, like the Army Special Forces and the Rangers, but also Marine Force Recon and Air Force Pararescue. We all work together under the same Special Operations Command, but we’re better than the rest of them.”

  Lyla laughed. “Not bragging are you?”

  He grinned. “It’s not bragging if it’s true.”

  She shook her head. Guys had to be competitive about everything, didn’t they? She waited for him to say something else about the kind of work he did in the SEALs, but when he didn’t, she realized she’d probably gotten as much out of him on the subject as she was going to.

  “You said that SEALs work in small teams,” she said. “How small? More than just Nash, right?”

  “We occasionally go out as two-man teams, but typically, it’s in groups of four to eight. SEAL platoons normally have sixteen people in them, but there aren’t many missions that require all of us at one time.”

  Sixteen sure as heck didn’t sound like a lot of people to her, not if they were doing some of the scary stuff Trent had mentioned. She’d want to have a couple of hundred people with her—or a couple of thousand. Safety in numbers was her motto.

  “Doesn’t it get scary?” she asked. “Going out there with so few people, I mean. What if something goes wrong?”

  “The people in my team are really well trained. Some of the best special operations warriors in the world.” He winked. “We don’t get into trouble. We cause trouble for other people.”

  She laughed. Like he’d just said, it wasn’t bragging if it was true. “After seeing you and Nash together, I get the feeling you’re really tight with your teammates.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. They’re like my second family. In some ways, they’re more family than my real family. I spend almost every waking moment with them, and we go through a lot, so we’re close.”

  “Is that why the guy you called agreed to help you track down Cobb?”

  “Pretty much,” he admitted, starting on his third taco. “Chasen got involved with a group of hackers a few months back, and I figured if anyone could help us out, it’d be them.”

  Lyla wanted to ask what the story was behind that, but then another thought struck her. “If Archie Cobb grabbed Marco, do you think there’s any chance he’s still alive?”

  She told herself not to go there, but she’d be lying if she didn’t admit the thought had been floating around in the back of her head from the moment she’d heard the man’s name.

  Trent set his taco down and wiped his fingers on his napkin then reached across the table to take one of her hands in his. “We’re not doing this, Lyla. I know it’s natural to worry about your brother, but the fact is, we simply don’t have enough information to do anything but make up stuff. And trust me when I say this: the human mind can come up with some pretty crazy stuff if you let it—far worse than reality will ever get. So we’re going to stop thinking about what might be, and instead focus on the one thing right in front of us—finding Cobb and seeing what he knows.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’ll take it from there, one step at a time. There’s no use worrying about the next step because it’s a waste of energy.”

  While that made sense, it was easier said than done. “I guess that’s your SEAL training coming out, huh?”

  Trent shook his head. “No. That’s a lesson everyday life taught me. Worry about what’s in front of you and let the other stuff take care of itself.”

  They fell silent while Lyla went back to eating her burrito and Trent finished his taco then turned his attention to the black beans and rice that had come with it. Trent was right. She had to stop thinking about the bad things that might happen to Marco and instead focus on talking to Cobb.

  “I never knew you wanted to be a teacher,” Trent said, loading his fork with more beans. “Back in high school, I mean. I swear I remember you taking all kinds of math and science classes because you
wanted to go to med school.”

  She smiled, knowing he’d purposely changed the subject so she’d stop worrying about Marco, and because she was thrilled beyond all reason Trent had actually paid enough attention to her in high school to remember the classes she’d taken, as well as what she’d wanted to do with her life back then.

  “I originally did go to the University of Texas at San Antonio for a microbiology and immunology degree,” she admitted. “But by the second semester, I realized I was making a huge mistake.”

  He frowned. “What convinced you?”

  She scooped up another forkful of burrito mixture, remembering the moment she’d decided to change majors like it was yesterday. “Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t anything monumental or dramatic. My roommate had family come in for the weekend, and her younger brother and sister—twins—were stuck in the common room doing their homework the entire time. They were in the fifth grade and totally bummed they couldn’t go out and have fun like everyone else. I ended up helping them do their homework instead of going out, too. My roommate felt terrible, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I’d never had that much fun in my biology classes, and it convinced me what I really wanted to do with my life was teach elementary school. I changed majors before the next semester and never looked back.”

  Trent regarded her thoughtfully. “Funny the way things work out sometimes, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” She sipped her tea. “Like who ever could have imagined you’d be back in San Antonio staying in my guest room after us not seeing each other for nearly eight years?”

  He chuckled. “That definitely goes in the category of a something I never would have imagined happening.”

  “Not that you mind though, right?” she asked, the words coming out a little faster and more frantic than she’d intended. Had that sounded just as pathetic to him as it had to her?

  Trent didn’t seem to notice. “I wish the situation that had brought me here was different, but I can’t say I’m upset about the opportunity to spend time with you.”

  She opened her mouth to thank him, but the words got stuck as she realized he was gazing at her with an expression on his face you didn’t normally see on your brother’s best friend. The funny thing was, this wasn’t the first time she’d seen that expression. Now that she thought about it, she realized he’d regarded her the same way when he’d opened the door of his apartment in San Diego, then again when she’d walked out the bathroom last night wearing nothing but her old college sleepshirt.