Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 9) Read Free

shift later today.
    “Hyland. Wait up.”
    Jack paused on his way out the door and slugged Miles on the arm as he made an off-color comment about a correlation between lockpicking and lady parts. “What’s up, boss?”
    Charlie rolled his eyes. “I’m not the boss. Stop calling me that.”
    “No can do.” There was nothing but pure respect in the other man’s eyes as he rejected the mandate. “You’ve saved my ass more times than I can count. Not the least of which happened when you asked if I wanted to do something crazy with you like move to the Bahamas and open a company together. You lead, I follow. Every time.”
    For some reason, despite having heard similar comments in the past from the others, Charlie’s throat tightened. His guys humbled him so much. “Easy to lead when you’ve got a great team backing you up.”
    “Whatever, man. You have a gift, or we wouldn’t be here.”
    Enough with the lovefest. He’d made mistake after mistake in pursuit of doing the right thing, as his nightmares liked to remind him. He’d landed so far off the mark so many times it was a wonder anyone still called him the Saint. That title was only worthy of a guy without so many sins to his name. “Stop or you’ll give me a complex. You going to Abaco?”
    Jack nodded. “Soon as I grab my wallet from home. You need a lift?”
    And that was the value of handpicking the best of the best from his former platoon when deciding who he wanted to go into business with. “You read my mind.”
    His team was his family, forged in the inferno of war, which had bonded them more closely together than blood ever could. He didn’t take any of them for granted one single day of his life. And he was going to fix this problem for them come hell or high water.

T hirty minutes later, Charlie and Jack took off from the Town dock and jetted to Abaco in one of Aqueous’s speedboats, a trip that usually took about ten or fifteen minutes, pending the traffic. As they flew over the crystal blue water, they yakked about the latest episodes of Walking Dead and Vikings , the only two TV shows either of them watched. It was nice to shift focus off of Audra for a few minutes.
    Jack pulled into the Lady of Saints Marina in Harbour Town and tied up in the slip the company rented, then snapped off a one-fingered salute as Charlie hopped a water taxi to Freeport. Such were the logistics of the Caribbean; everything was within boat or plane ride distance as long as you didn’t mind a journey of several legs.
    The sign for FARC came into view a half second before the building did. Freeport Aquatic Research Center overlooked a small park on one side and a marina on the other. Charlie paid the driver, clambered up the concrete steps from the dock, and entered.
    His pulse thumped in his temple as he walked into the hushed, air-conditioned building where Audra worked. He’d never been to FARC before, but of course he knew where she’d landed after getting her doctorate. The Caribbean was a small place.
    The lobby displayed photographs of marine life: dolphins, a hundred different kinds of fish, turtles, eels, shrimp, rays, you name it. If it swam in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, there was a picture of it on the wall. Charlie had viewed almost all of them up close and personal in the year since he’d left the Navy and settled on Duchess Island.
    A pretty receptionist smiled as Charlie approached, and he forced a return smile because this was only the first obstacle in what would likely be a long quest. The blackness inside rattled his box, threatening to spill out a whole slew of unpleasantness, which wasn’t helping. Mostly, he could keep his PTSD symptoms under control. Except in times of extreme duress. Like now.
    “I’m here to see Dr. Reed.” He almost didn’t choke on it. At this point, it would have been a lot more preferable to be hashing out a way to get in to see Anderson instead. He still might go for a fourth try later, but Audra