Read Online Rogue (SEAL Team: Disavowed Book 1) by Laura Marie Altom - Free Book Online

soccer at recess with the older kids. Their moms were friends, and he walked Maisey to and from school every day. He was really tall and cute—but she never told him that!
    “Give Maisey her turn,” he said to Dillon.
    “Screw you!” Dillon kept right on swinging.
    While Maisey sat on the ground gaping over Dillon’s naughty words, Nash grabbed the swing’s chains and jerked Dillon to a stop. “You going to get off?”
    “Screw you! You’re not the boss of me!”
    Nash had a funny smile—not happy. Maybe more scary.
    He started pushing Dillon. Higher and higher he pushed until she thought he was going to flip over. She’d heard of kids doing that, but never actually seen it happen. The faster and higher Dillon flew, the louder he screamed until he was crying and begging for Nash to stop.
    Nash did.
    Once Dillon planted his feet on the ground, Nash whispered something to him and the kid scrammed.
    “What’d you say?” Maisey asked Nash.
    “Doesn’t matter.” The smile he gave her was the cute one that made her tummy feel funny. “Wanna swing?”
    She nodded.
    He helped her up, brushed her knees and hands, then got her settled in the black rubber seat.
    “Thank you.”
    He shrugged. “No biggie.”
    She leapt from the seat to give him a hug.
    Once she’d returned to the swing, Maisey noticed his cheeks had turned pink and though he was smiling again, he was also doing a lot of looking around. “You okay if I leave?”
    “Uh huh, but do you have to?”
    He nodded. “I got stuff to do.”
    “Okay. Well, thanks.” She smiled up at him, but he was already gone.
    Grinning, Maisey swang like forty whole, wonderful times before the bell rang for her class to go inside. Dillon never bothered her again. But Nash’s smile sure did. Every time she thought about him, her tummy felt like butterflies were trapped inside, but then another sharper feeling took hold — like a dull squeeze that hurt.
    Maisey had dozed off again, and woke to not only painful cramping, but black water sloshing and swirling around her ankles.
    Was the boat sinking?
     
     

13

     
     
    NASH FIGURED THEY would have found civilization by now.
    He killed the engine again to bail. This was the third time he’d followed the routine and though it was getting old, it sure beat the hell out of traversing the swamp on foot.
    Maisey had been asleep for hours, and he was glad. She’d been through hell and no doubt needed the rest. For a while, he’d bunked with her, but it was impossible to fully relax with one hand on his Glock and both eyes on the water.
    Kicking himself for dumping that GPS, he’d gone old school and followed the North Star whenever the tree canopy broke enough to see it. Of course, he’d had swamp survival training, but this closed-in shit was no bueno . He’d spent the last decade either training at Little Creek in Virginia or using that training in a desert.
    Leaving all that gear and food had been stupid. Why had he done it?
    Sheer panic over the welfare of the girl who’d always held a special place in his heart. Practically their whole childhood, she’d been getting into messes that he’d helped her out of. The thought of her being held captive by Vicente was bad enough, but toss in that other set of random thugs and he’d been out of his freakin’ mind with worry—which he didn’t do.
    Had never done before losing his wife and baby.
    Which is part of what prompted the beginning of the end of his military career, and even his split with Trident, Inc.
    He bailed faster and faster while trying to make peace with the fact that somewhere along the way, his feelings for his family had robbed him of the ability to detach. He no longer saw events unfold with clinical precision. Kill or be killed. Not only had his own mortality come into play—fear for how Hope and his future son would manage without him—but fear for how he’d manage without them. When that worst case scenario had come true, the bottom of his