Outcast (SEAL Team: Disavowed Book 2)
Read Outcast (SEAL Team: Disavowed Book 2) Online
Authors: Laura Marie Altom
Tags: #SEAL Team: Disavowed, #Book 2
OUTCAST
SEAL Team: Disavowed
Book Two
Laura Marie Altom
SEAL Team: Disavowed
To become a United States Navy SEAL, a man must be physically forged in steel and able to mentally compute life or death situations with laser accuracy and speed. Our country trusts these men with the most sensitive military operations—many so covert that once they are successfully completed, they are never spoken of again.
This series celebrates one particularly fierce band of brothers who valiantly battled terrorists whose crimes against nature and humanity were far too great to chance escape. On a dark night, on foreign soil, SEAL Team Alpha witnessed acts so unspeakably cruel against women, infants and small children that their consciences would not allow anything other than their own brand of justice for the scum terrorist cell.
A trial would have been too good for these pigs, and so, one-by-one they were taken out, and the women and children they’d used were freed. By dawn, an entire region breathed easier. The men of Alpha found themselves heroes to those whose lives they had saved, but virtual criminals in the eyes of the organization they served. After a lengthy investigation, their elite, covert team was formally disbanded.
They now spend their lives deep undercover, still serving—no longer their country, but individuals who find themselves in need of not only their own personal warrior, but a particular brand of justice.
While honorably discharged, these men and their actions will forever be
disavowed
. . .
SEAL Team: Disavowed series
Rogue
, Book 1
Outcast
, Book 2
Shunned
, Book 3
1
“THEY’RE ALL DEAD . . .” English lit professor, Eden Marabella, dropped the satellite phone she’d been speaking into. It shattered against the rocks at her feet, but shock at the sight before her made the loss of their team’s primary outside communication tool a non-issue.
Her throat closed with emotion. Her eyes stung.
The more of the grisly scene she digested, the more her stomach roiled.
She retched at the sheer amount of blood spilled across the ice. It had frozen in pools beneath the majestic creatures, standing in stark contrast to the Orcas’ beautiful black and white markings.
Her father’s work partner and long-time family friend, Dane Northrup, a marine biologist from Stony Brook University in New York, slipped his arm around her shoulders, comforting her through her latest round of nausea. “Deep breaths,” he coached. “Ride it out.”
“W-what happened?” she asked, her voice shallow and dazed. “It looks like an entire pod.” Dozens of killer whales had washed up upon the snow and ice-crusted shore of their stretch of Antarctica’s Ross Sea. Her father, a marine biology professor from the University of Tampa had been coming here for years. He and his students had raised millions for conservation and research and now had a private station manned year-round with students and scientists pursuing independent studies.
Her poor father silently moved among the beached creatures as if under a dark spell. His shoulders slumped. Silent tears glistened on his ruddy cheeks in the bright November sun.
The day was a rare jewel with the temperature almost above freezing and the horizon clear. Tragedy didn’t happen on perfect afternoons like this, so why were they facing so much death now?
Earlier that morning, Eden and her dad had caught a ride from friends stationed at McMurdo. Dane followed with her father’s other business partner, Leo Adler, and two students who’d opted to stay in their rooms to get settled.
The walk to the beach had become an annual tradition for Eden, Dane, and her father. One typically highlighted by visiting an Adélie penguin colony on the rocky point. In her shock over the orcas, she’d forgotten them. She was now afraid to glance in that direction.
“Dane,” she turned to him, selfishly wishing he were Jasper, the sweetheart she’d been dating back in Denver. She’d been on the sat phone leaving a heartfelt message for him, trying to explain why she’d broken things off, when she’d crested the last rise on the shore trail to witness the carnage below. “Could you please check the penguins? I can’t . . .”
“Eden, I’m sorry, but—”
“How did this happen?” Her sob cut off his words. The instant she’d heard his apology, she’d made the mistake of looking for herself.
The penguins were dead, too.
Dane grasped her upper arms to keep her from collapsing onto her knees. “I promise we’ll get to the bottom of this. I won’t rest till we have an answer.”
She nodded.
When he wrapped his arms around her for a hug, it only reminded her how much she missed Jasper. Until now, she hadn’t realized how great a role he’d played in her life—not that it mattered.
She’d never see him again.
She wasn’t even sure why she’d called, other than that she loved this place more than any other in the world. On what would no doubt be her last visit, she’d wanted to share it with him.
That said, at the moment the man who needed her most was her grief-stricken father who wept over the lifeless penguin chick he cradled in his palms.
Eden had only taken two steps in his direction when the ground began to shake.
2
Four days later
. . .
WHAT HAD HE been thinking?
Disavowed Navy SEAL Jasper King jumped down from the snowcat he’d spent the past four hours riding on from McMurdo Station, then raised his gloved hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the glare of sun on snow. For as far as he could see—which, granted, wasn’t all that far with frigid wind swirling patches of white stuff into an otherworldly haze—was a whole lot of nothing. If not for the fact that he was currently jacked up on bad coffee and concern for his friend, the vast sea of white stretching in front of him would have sent him packing for that little slice of Bahamian heaven he was all the time dreaming about.
The thing was, the more he’d been around Eden, the more he realized he was no longer content with his usual daydream of chilling on the beach with a longneck
Kalik
. He wanted to do that chilling with the only woman who’d made him think twice about his vow to remain single—like his brother.
Sure, what happened to his brother’s wife, Mariah, had been an accident, but that hadn’t kept Jasper from becoming a pariah to his family. An outcast. Clearly, he couldn’t bring her back so his plan was to spend a lonely lifetime punishing himself in the same way he’d unwittingly punished Kyle—his older brother by five years.
Jasper wasn’t proud of the mistakes he’d made back then.
He’d been a rebellious punk, making one reckless, stupid decision after another until reaching the point that he could no longer trust his inner voice. If you couldn’t trust yourself, you had no one. Which was pretty much the emotional place where Jasper had been when joining the Navy.
Ten years later, his decision-making skills had been honed, yet every so often, doubts still crept in. Like the one dogging him about why he was even here.
He tried forcing a deep breath of the air that hovered in negative double digits, but it burned his lungs, so he jerked up the zipper on his government-issued red parka, slipped on mirrored Ray-Bans, and then followed his driver, Doug, toward the modular prefab research station where Eden and her dad supposedly worked.
“How long’s it been since you heard from them?” Jasper asked on the approach to the station’s outer door.
“Three days. I chatted with her father via email. Though comms are crashed down here more than they’re up, so it’s not all that unheard of. I’m sure they’re fine, and you wasted a damned long trip just to check on your girl.”
“She’s not mine,” Jasper bristled. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t want her to be, but this was strictly a cautionary mission. Even if he had been inclined to see whatever he and Eden shared through to a mutually satisfying conclusion, she’d ended things between them before he’d had the chance.
“Whatever.” Doug opened the door.
The sudden warmth screwed with Jasper’s sinuses.
Doug removed his coat and snow pants, hanging both on a long rack that held at least a dozen more.
Jasper followed suit. He was antsy to see for himself that Eden was okay, but played it cool. Doug already thought he was an idiot. Jasper didn’t want to look like one, too, by charging into the station like some half-cocked gedunk.
“Leave your boots, too.” Doug pointed to Jasper’s heavy black Sorels. “Quickest way to piss off a whole station is to track in snow.”
“Thanks. Good to know.”
Once both men stood in jeans, long-sleeved T-shirts and thick, white socks, Doug opened the station’s inner door.