Laszlo

  LASZLO

  SEALs of Steel, Book 5

  Dale Mayer

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Complimentary Download

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  About Geir

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  When an eight-man unit hit a landmine, all were injured but one died. The remaining seven aim to see Mouse’s death avenged.

  As a child, Minx’s best friend was Mouse. She hasn’t heard from him in years, but she’s never forgotten him.

  Laszlo wonders if the whole unit was targeted, or just their youngest, newest member? Minx may be the only person who knew the boy that later became a dangerous, hunted man…

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  KILL OR BE KILLED

  Part of an elite SEAL team, Mason takes on the dangerous jobs no one else wants to do – or can do. When he’s on a mission, he’s focused and dedicated. When he’s not, he plays as hard as he fights.

  Until he meets a woman he can’t have but can’t forget. Software developer, Tesla lost her brother in combat and has no intention of getting close to someone else in the military. Determined to save other US soldiers from a similar fate, she’s created a program that could save lives. But other countries know about the program, and they won’t stop until they get it – and get her.

  Time is running out … For her … For him … For them …

  DOWNLOAD a complimentary copy of MASON? Just tell me where to send it!

  Prologue

  Laszlo Jensen watched as Talon, his good arm bandaged, and Clary, her face a colorful mix of bruises, walked into Badger’s house. Clary was shy, standing almost as if a part of Talon. Like everybody already knew and judged her for their tortured past. Badger stepped forward on his crutches, Dotty the coonhound on his heels with her tail wagging, and said, “There you are.”

  Clary smiled and reached up and gave Badger a hug. He hugged her back gently. Talon hadn’t shared much about Clary’s past with Badger, but he didn’t need those details to understand how hard it was to heal what she’d been through. But since she’d moved into Talon’s, the two of them had had lots of time to work through their differences and to get comfortable being in the same space again. And now it was as if they’d never been apart.

  With everyone seated in the living room of Badger’s house, Laszlo settled back, loving the feeling of having his friends grow and become a bigger, stronger family than even what they were before. Badger was moving, though slowly. It would be a long time before he would get a prosthetic back. Kat, at his side always, doted on him.

  Laszlo knew they would have some badass prosthetics coming their way when the time was right. And he couldn’t wait. Laszlo glanced around at the group and said, “It’s good to see everybody here again.”

  “Except not everybody’s here,” Erick said. “Jager’s missing. He’s still dark.”

  “Do we know for sure he’s even alive?”

  Erick nodded. “I got another message. But it was simple. He’s still hunting.”

  “He always was a bit of a loner,” Laszlo said. “If he’d at least check in with us, we’d have a chance to tell him what information we have.”

  Geir sat on the far side of the room. “He’s a good man. And when he’s hunting, there’s no one else like him. But I wish to hell I was out there hunting with him.”

  Erick nodded. “And what we have to figure out is, what’s happening next. The meeting’s here for Badger’s sake. As he’s not supposed to be moving as much as he is right now.”

  Badger waved his arm. “I’m fine.”

  Kat reached over and laced her fingers with his.

  Laszlo smiled. “With Kat at your side, it’s no wonder you’re fine.”

  There was some good-humored ribbing, which Badger accepted with a smile. “She’s the best thing that’s happened to me.” His gaze locked on Laszlo. “Did you ever notice the similarity between our group and Mason’s and Levi’s?”

  Laszlo winced. “Hell no.”

  Erick and Talon chuckled. “Well, you should. Because you’re next.”

  Cade had stayed quiet in the corner, Faith at his side, a couple beers opened between the two of them. “It’s all right, Laszlo. When you’re ready, it’ll happen.”

  Laszlo shook his head. “What I’m ready for is to find this asshole.”

  “We’re doing a full workup on Mouse,” Erick said, returning to the business at hand. “We’re tracking down anyone he was in contact with. And, I have to admit, it’s not much. So I suggest what we do right now is everybody tell me everything they might have heard or knew about Mouse. I thought I knew him pretty well. But honestly, when I tried to dredge up some memories, it was a lot of ribbing and teasing and bugging. I thought his family was from Texas. As far as I knew, he only had a mother.”

  Cade leaned forward, a frown on his face. “That can’t be right. I swear to God he was from California and that he lived with his parents before hitting the military.”

  Badger looked at the two of them. “Really?”

  Erick glanced over at him. “What do you remember?”

  Badger frowned. “I was closer to him than all of you. I thought he had only an uncle in Texas. But I don’t remember Mouse being very willing to talk about him.”

  “Do you remember why?” Laszlo asked.

  “No, but he was pretty adamant. I just can’t remember if he gave me a specific reason or not. The thing about Mouse was, he always made up stories. It was pretty hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t,” Badger admitted. “But he was young. He was trying hard to be one of us, though weaker than we were. He would turn into a hell of a man and be a great member of the unit, but we all knew he wasn’t quite there yet.”

  The men nodded.

  “That’s true,” Geir said. “We covered for him a lot, and we helped him to make the grade as many times as we could. But he always knew he wasn’t as good as the rest of us.”

  “But we never bugged him about it,” Cade said.

  And again the men nodded in agreement.

  Erick wondered about that. “Do you think he wrote to his uncle, or whoever in his world who’s trying to get back at us, that we were less than supportive?”

  That topic brought up silence all around.

  “He might have,” Talon admitted. “Any teasing we did was in the same vein as teasing we always did. It was lighthearted, and we never meant any of the insults. It was the way of the world—our world particularly,” Talon said. “He always was pale. Remember that?” he added with a crooked grin. “We used to tease him about spending more time in the sun to gain a bit of color.”

  “I remember that, and he hated coffee. He’s the only one of us who didn’t drink coffee.” Erick smiled with the memories. The others all pitched him with bits and pieces they knew as Erick wrote it all down. He realized it was all disjointed, and nobody had a clear sense of Mouse’s early beginnings. “Do you think he did that on purpose?”

  “Did what?” Laszlo asked.

  “Deliberately shrouded his history. Or maybe c
reated different histories in order to make himself feel better about his life?”

  “He didn’t have an easy childhood, I know that,” Badger said suddenly. “His body was quite scarred.”

  The men frowned, thinking about that.

  “Did he go into the navy to escape, do you think?” Kat asked.

  Badger shrugged. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

  “And then the question becomes, get away from what?” Kat asked.

  Badger said quietly, “Every time I rack my brain to think of someone Mouse might have mentioned on his leaves, my mind draws a blank.”

  “What about girlfriends?” Clary asked. Her question landed in the middle of the group like a stone in a pond. Almost as if ripples of shock moved outward continuously.

  Laszlo studied her for a long moment. “Mouse was gay.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “That could not have been easy in the military.”

  He shook his head. “Not only was it not easy, he took a lot of razzing because of it. Not from us,” he assured her hurriedly. “But from a lot of the other guys.”

  “So maybe you guys weren’t all targeted,” she said quietly.

  “Maybe Mouse was,” Kat interjected. “How bad was it for somebody like Mouse?”

  The men exchanged glances.

  “Hard to say,” Erick stated. “Likely bad. The navy isn’t known to be easy on those who are different …”

  “Suicidally bad?” asked Honey, her voice soft, gentle. “I’m sure the comments and actions would have hurt him inside, even if he didn’t let anyone see his reaction.”

  Erick shrugged. “We never asked him about his sexuality, that I know of.” He glanced around the room. “At least I didn’t. Did anyone here?”

  All the men shook their heads.

  “No, we never did,” Badger said.

  “So, if he didn’t have any girlfriends, what do you know about his boyfriends?” Clary asked. “Because, if it wasn’t a family member, we already know it’s somebody who feels very strongly about Mouse. And that means, it’s usually a lover. Do you guys know who loved Mouse? Did he have anybody in his life? Did he have a permanent relationship, even an off-and-on relationship?” She turned to stare at them. “Surely, if you were all best friends and you know so much about each other, you’d know as much about Mouse?”

  One by one they all turned toward each other, then cast their gazes downward.

  “He didn’t talk to us,” Badger said quietly. “I don’t think he was ashamed as much as he was afraid of being humiliated or embarrassed, like he always had been.”

  “How long was he with you before the accident?”

  Laszlo sighed. “One year. And in that year we couldn’t convince him that he was safe with us.”

  “But obviously he wasn’t safe,” Talon said quietly. “Not when he’s the only one dead.”

  Laszlo asked, “So where do I go next?”

  “You?” Talon asked. “Why you?”

  “Because you’re laid up. Plus Erick remains command central. And Badger is on sick leave for months to come to save what’s left of his leg. So I’m the one who’ll lead this next mission,” he snapped. “And I’m totally okay if Geir comes along. But where are we going?”

  “Texas,” Erick said. “If that’s where Mouse is from.”

  “Done,” Laszlo said. “I’ll head to Texas and find out for sure.”

  “And then what?” Clary asked.

  “And then we’ll start tearing poor Mouse’s life apart,” Laszlo said. “Way deeper than we have done so far.”

  She nodded. “When you find whoever loves him, go easy. It’s hard to lose someone you care about.”

  Laszlo’s smile was diamond hard. “So very true. But it’s also no excuse to go around killing others who loved him too.”

  Chapter 1

  Laszlo pulled his truck off the highway and took another look at the GPS. Erick and Badger had finally tracked down a potential childhood home address for Mouse. “Dallas is forty-five minutes away, and we’re heading to the far side of the city.”

  “We didn’t have to drive all this way. We could have done all of it online,” Geir said quietly beside him.

  “We could have, but I thought a road trip would be nice. I was getting a little hemmed in. All that inactivity was starting to bite.”

  “Oh, I agree with you. But you’ve been shifting in the driver’s seat all this time.”

  “Yeah, I am,” Laszlo said. “Out of all the injuries I sustained, the damn back is the worst. It doesn’t like me sitting too long.”

  “You had several surgeries to correct the alignment, didn’t you?”

  “And several rods put in.” Laszlo nodded. “Most of the time it’s fine. Long drives, not so much.”

  “So why did we drive again?”

  “Because the doctor said I need to build up that muscle tone. Not sure he meant this long of a drive, but it hasn’t been too bad.” Turning off the motor, Laszlo hopped out and walked around to Geir’s side, shaking out his legs. “I just have to take things a bit at a time.”

  Geir snorted and remained in his seat, waiting until Laszlo got back in again. “We finally found an address for Mouse’s family,” he said, looking at his notes, “but we don’t have a last-known residence from two years ago. I find that odd.”

  “Me too. The navy should have had that when he first signed up. Hence the road trip. Let’s get to the bottom of who Mouse was. He didn’t deserve what he got, but, at this point, it seems like he’s got to be the center of all this.”

  “I don’t think we can narrow our thinking to just that,” Geir said. “We have to keep in mind that, although Mouse died, all of us could have from the land mine, either immediately or before any help arrived. Any of us could have died in the aftermath through our manifold surgeries. Maybe Mouse was the one who was supposed to be saved. Maybe nobody was supposed to be safe. What we don’t want to do is block off our thinking to such a narrow focus that we never find the truth by asking the wrong questions or looking in only one direction.”

  “That’s not happening,” Laszlo said. “The truth is way too important.” Laszlo returned, sat behind the wheel of the vehicle, leaving the door open and his legs hanging out for a minute while he rolled his neck and shoulders. With some of the tension easing, he twisted around until he faced forward again. “You need lunch?”

  “I will soon,” Geir said. “But food doesn’t taste the same.”

  “Stomach problems?”

  “All of it.”

  Laszlo nodded but didn’t push the issue. Geir had ruptured his stomach and several feet of small intestine and his spleen. His liver had been badly damaged but had finally recuperated. He had a lot of internal scarring, his healing below the surface.

  Whereas Laszlo’s left hand had been badly burned. The scars were so disfiguring that he usually wore a glove to avoid drawing undue attention. And that was just part of his injuries. “You lost a kidney too, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  No self-pity, no emotion at all. Just a fact. And again Laszlo understood. They were the walking wounded. Survivors of something they weren’t meant to survive. But it showed the vitality of the human spirit and the ability of the human body to heal against all odds.

  Laszlo pulled back into traffic, following the GPS markers. “According to the GPS, we’re about thirty minutes away from Mouse’s home now. Shall we do a drive-by, do a recon, take a close look around, snap some pictures to see what kind of an area we’re looking at, then go find food while we discuss what we found?”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea. We did check Google maps. It’s not a great area of town, and that might be enough for somebody who’s not doing the in-depth work we’re doing. But, if I get a chance, I always want to see the locations first.”

  “Exactly.”

  They drove through the city, weaving in and out of traffic, following the voice on the GPS. Laszlo laughed at the sexy female ton
e. Most of the time it was right, but sometimes it was so far off it was ridiculous. He might be out of active duty, but he certainly wasn’t out of active life. And right now they needed to combine all their skills—past, present and the ones they had yet to learn—to bring this case to a close. It was the only way they could all move forward.

  “I still have trouble believing it’s Mouse,” Geir stated. “Like you said, there are a lot of other reasons for somebody to hate us. But, after discussing it with everyone, I think it’s odd that none of us really knew who Mouse was. Not on the inside. He was always telling stories, making up facts to suit his version of the truth.”

  “True enough,” Laszlo admitted. “It’s a little hard to understand why. I mean, I was born in one house, raised in another house, and they can both be confirmed. I never dreamed of making up stories about my family or about where I went to school and did my training.”

  “Because you were okay with all that. Mouse wasn’t. I think the only reason somebody makes up stories is so they can ignore the truth or because they think it’s not exciting enough, and they’re desperate to be somebody they aren’t.”

  “And maybe Mouse was doing that. So why did he join the navy? Why did he end up a SEAL, like us? The fact that he passed is huge. And yet being a US Navy SEAL doesn’t seem to be who he was.”

  “Honestly I often wondered if he just did it to prove he was capable. That he was strong enough, male enough.”

  “As in, maybe not having completely accepted his sexuality?”

  “Or didn’t want the sexuality to change the fact he was male. He was never somebody with a gender-identity issue, I don’t think. It was more a case of, he preferred men for his romantic liaisons, but he also preferred men as strictly friends.”

  “Interesting. Do you think he was a woman-hater?” Laszlo asked, rolling that concept around in his mind. “I never considered that.”

  “I think it’s something we shouldn’t dismiss. Yet we never saw any evidence of that. He was never rude or ugly to women. His language was joking but polite.”