Outcast (SEAL Team: Disavowed Book 2) Read Free

“Unless you have an arsenal stashed on your ride, once this guy’s friends show up, we might be in a world of hurt.” He jogged for the hall, brushed past Doug, then shouted, “ Eden ! Babe, where are you?”
    Doug chased after him. “Have you considered the possibility that he killed her?”
    “No.” Through room after room, Jasper searched. “ Eden !”
    “You should have asked why Leo had a gun.”
    “ Eden ! Answer me!” In the two-story dormitory pod, Jasper kicked in door after door. If something had happened to her. . .
    He didn’t like thinking of the violence he was capable of doing, but if he discovered that bastard had hurt Eden, he’d annihilate him.
    “Think about it,” Doug persisted. “Why would a world-renowned scientist who’s been studying in Antarctica practically longer than I’ve been alive be waving a gun around? And what did he mean about all those team members not feeling anything? You don’t think he killed them, do you? I mean, you hear about people going off the deep end down here, but that usually just means too much booze or sleeping around. I’ve never encountered anything like this.”
    “ Eden !” His companion talked too damned much.
    Jasper tried the next door on the right and found it locked, so he kicked it in, only to freeze.
    Eden lay stretched across a twin bed with her neck crooked at an unnatural angle. Her wrists and ankles had been bound with zip ties. He felt like he was going to puke.
    Am I already too late?
     

3

     
     
    “TALK TO ME, babe . . .”
    Eden was vaguely aware of Jasper’s take-charge tone, but it drifted to her on a foggy dream.
    “You still have that sat phone in your cat?”
    “Yeah . . .”
    “Then don’t just stand there—get outside and call McMurdo. She needs medical help, and God only knows what that sicko did with the rest of the crew.”
    “Right. Sure.”
    Who belonged to the second, unsure voice? She couldn’t place him.
    “Eden, talk to me. Did Leo do this to you?”
    Tugs at her feet and wrists told her the restraints that had forced her muscles to seize had finally been removed. She groaned in relief, only to wince when her limbs painfully tingled at the sudden movement.
    Her eyelids fluttered open, and she licked her dry lips. She took in her surroundings and then it all rushed back—screams. Chaos. Painful silence and uncertainty as she struggled to decide if she were dead or alive. “Jasper? W-what are you doing here?”
    “Isn’t that obvious?” He perched on the edge of the bed, cupping his hand to her cheek. “I’m here to rescue you, and from looks of it, not a moment too soon. What the hell happened? When your message ended so abruptly, I figured something had gone wrong, but this . . .” He whistled.
    He offered her a freshly opened bottled water. She drank it all.
    “Leo—he lost it.” Her breakup with Jasper had been hard enough, but what had happened since didn’t seem possible. Like she’d wake to realize it had all been a nightmare. “He’s been one of my father’s closest friends and coworkers forever. The day I called you, I’d wanted to explain why I broke things off, but then . . .” Crushing memories returned. “W-we found an entire pod of dead Orcas washed ashore. Penguins, too. My father was inconsolable. He wouldn’t eat or sleep for two days. Then he and Leo and Dane—his other partner—locked themselves in Leo’s lab, and there was arguing, but none of us could make out much of what they were saying.”
    “You said, ‘us’, as in you weren’t alone. How many people were you with, and where are they now? Leo mentioned something about them doing research on a nearby beach. Do they need help?”
    She shook her head, and then squeezed her stinging eyes closed. Blood. So much blood. As long as she lived, she’d never erase their screams from her heart.
    “Once my dad and Dane left the lab, the energy between them was tense. It was lunchtime, and everyone but them either