SEAL’s Code
Bad Boys of Team 3 (SEAL Brotherhood #10)
By Sharon Hamilton
Danny Begay has tried to drive out the voices of his ancestors, but his Navajo roots will not die. Summoned back to Arizona to visit his dying grandfather, a former Navajo Code Talker, he knows he has disappointed his hero grandfather. He buries himself one more time in the arms of a stranger before going back to Northern California.
Luci Tohe teaches at a reservation school, safeguarding the health of her ailing mother and little sister’s future, her own life on hold. She doesn’t expect the young Dine warrior she meets to be anything but a distraction from her loneliness.
Danny decides to join the Navy, as a SEAL, becoming the man he knew he was destined to be. Before deployment, he goes back to visit the girl he cannot get out of his mind. A dangerous human trafficking element threatens Luci and her family. Danny vows to protect them all.
Enjoy this NOT PG excerpt from SEAL’s Code narrated by J.D. Hart
The two ignored one another until somehow they wound up waiting to use the only restroom in the house.
“Your mom says you’re ready to go home,” Wilson said to his cowboy boots.
“That’s right.”
“I honestly don’t know why you came in the first place, Danny.”
Danny’s right eye squinted a little. “We never liked these things, Wilson. You know that.”
“You’ve been gone, what, eight years or more?”
“Ten.”
“Okay, then. Ten. And you can’t spend an afternoon giving these people the time of day?”
“I don’t belong here, Wilson.”
Wilson nodded his head. “Oh yeah. Forgot. You’re the one that got away. You trying to rub my nose in it, huh?.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t want to be here. I’ve done my farewells, and now it’s time for me to adios.”
“You might consider the feelings of your mother.” Danny drilled him with a look that picked a scab.
“You hear the voices? Does the chanting get to you, Wilson?”
He could see his cousin was thinking about this carefully. It surprised him that Wilson didn’t give a quick answer no, which meant he heard the voices, too.
“Holy fucking shit, Wilson. You hear them, too. Just like I do.”
Emma Barnowl opened the bathroom door and their nostrils were hit with room deodorizer, which did a poor job of masking the smell she’d left behind.
“Fuck me,” Wilson said under his breath. “I’m going out back.”
Danny followed his cousin, and within thirty seconds, was standing next to him, pissing on his aunt’s tomato plants, just like they used to do when they were boys of five. To this day, Danny hated tomatoes, especially home grown ones.
After they were done, they sat in metal lawn chairs. Wilson offered Danny a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke, and neither do you, or you didn’t,” Danny corrected himself.
“That’s funny,” Wilson said as he casually lit up and put his lighter and cigarettes back in his rear pocket.
“How come you didn’t wear your uniform?”
“It’s my choice. I didn’t think he’d like it.” Wilson took a long drag on his cigarette and blew it right at Danny’s face, but the wind carried it away.
“Thought you were proud of being a Navy boat guy.”
“I am. Got nothing to do with it. Kind of felt like it would be bragging or something, you know?”
Danny wondered about Luci, halfway expecting she’d drop by the gathering. Was he disappointed she’d stayed away? He couldn’t get the touch of her body against his out of his mind. That might be a reason to stay an extra day or two, but that would be a dangerous road, full of emotional potholes and entanglements. None of his liaisons ever turned out to last, so he figured it was better to remember her the way he’d left her. He saw her proud straight shoulders and those tight jeans encase thighs and a world-class ass as she walked toward her car and didn’t look back once. He knew the only good ones were the ones who didn’t look back.
“Look, Danny, I’m going to say this once, and then let you go. I’m sorry we got off to a bad start after so many years.”
“I was surprised you were around. Didn’t expect it.”
“So I was right, you’re not happy to see even me.”
“Again, putting words in my mouth.”
Wilson looked down, eyes landing on the scuffed cowboy boots, which were a mismatch to the clean suit pants and white shirt he wore. “I left this place with a lot of demons. I think I got just as many, maybe more than you, cuz.” Wilson took a final drag, stomped it out on the patio, and then threw the pieces into his mother’s vegetable garden.
A slight breeze shivered its way down Danny’s spine. A little group laughed from inside the house. He heard the tinkling of glasses and silverware, the sounds of cars arriving on the crushed rock roadway in front of his Aunt’s house, a doorbell ring, and the buzzing of a small plane overhead. The place looked and smelled and felt dangerously normal.
“I learned to tame those demons in the Navy, Danny. I’m not going to lie to you, but serving in the armed forces is giving me skills I can take out there in the real world.”
Danny found himself chuckling in spite of the fact that it was going to piss Wilson off. “Yeah, don’t see many rubber boats around the res, cuz. You training to be a white water rafting guide in the Canyon? Shit, you coulda done that in high school.”
“Except I was getting stoned in high school, Danny. So were you. I heard you were a real mess.”
“Rumors of my demise have been over exaggerated. I look like a mess to you?”
Wilson abruptly stood. “No, Danny, you look like a fuckin’ hero just like your grandfather.”
His cousin left and joined the gathering inside the house.
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