Читать книгу The SEAL's Special Mission - Rogenna Brewer - Страница 9

PROLOGUE

Coronado, California

“FREEZE!” HER VOICE shook almost as badly as the SIG Sauer in her hand. After twenty weeks of G-man U in Quantico, Virginia, twenty-three-year-old rookie FBI Agent Mallory Ward never imagined facing down her first perp in her sister’s kitchen. “Freeze, Nash. I mean it, damn it!”

Her false bravado lost all conviction as she tried to comprehend the bizarre scene playing out in front of her. Her brother-in-law, covered in her sister’s blood, cradled a blue bundle in the palms of his hands.

“Dear Lord, Nash, what have you done?”

Mallory shook her head to clear it. She’d stepped outside for just a moment.

One minute Nash was giving her sister mouth-to-mouth. The next he was ordering Mallory to grab his cell phone from the pack he said he’d left outside the back door. When she couldn’t find his phone, she’d taken those precious extra seconds to grab hers from her rental car parked out front at the curb.

Mallory kicked past an overturned chair and stepped over the cordless phone unit that had been ripped from the wall. Her sister’s still-warm body lay lifeless on the cold tile floor where her brother-in-law had been performing CPR.

Mallory couldn’t remember if she’d punched 911 before dropping her cell phone to reach for her gun. Though only seconds, it seemed like a lifetime ago. She’d initially been willing to give Nash the benefit of the doubt when she stumbled upon him at the center of an obvious crime scene....

Until she watched the Navy SEAL slice the swell of her sister’s belly.

“She’s gone, Mal.” His voice never wavered.

“You have the right to remain silent...”

“There was nothing more I could do for her, except save our son.” Nash dropped his KA-BAR in the puddle of blood.

Sidestepping the slick pool, Mallory still managed to leave the imprint of her sole behind. Biting back the copper tang of panic, she continued to read him his Miranda rights—Article 31 in the military. “Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law....”

Nash ignored her, concentrated on the little bundle in his arms. He covered the teeny nose and mouth with his own mouth. The tiny concave chest expanded and then contracted with each puff.

“Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you...?”

She couldn’t afford to make another rookie mistake.

Sirens blared in the distance—emergency responders, too late to save her sister. Mallory’s world spun out of control.

The tile floor rushed up to meet her.