Page 38 of Defended By the SEAL
“I can’t believe this,” said Charlotte, her mouth open in astonishment. “I never knew that was there.”
“Is someone in there?” Austin bellowed, then knocked on the door.
Silence.
He tried the handle, but it seemed to be locked. He stepped back, motioning for Champion to help him. Champion turned to Charlotte. “Get back.”
She did as he asked, her heart pounding. Anything could be in there, or nothing at all. There were no other people on this island right now, were there? And if there were, how the hell was that even possible? But Cowboy hasn’t returned, and that was even more unlikely than the last possibility.
Fear was a living presence in her gut as she watched the men work, their muscles straining against the task, and it occurred to her that whatever had happened to Cowboy might well happen to them to. And she’d left Tom with her grandmother!
Suddenly, the door flew open with a loud crack, the wood near the door jamb splintering with a distinctive clap. Charlotte’s flashlight illuminated a narrow staircase heading deep underground. “Holy shit,” she said, suddenly torn between exploring the mysterious depths and staying firmly on solid, familiar ground.
The men showed no such hesitation, and she followed them into the subterranean passageway. The air grew colder and heavier as they descended and her hands trembled, every instinct screaming at her to turnback. But she pressed on, thinking about Cowboy, her grip tightening on the flashlight as if she really could use it to defend herself should the need arise.
The staircase ended in a hidden storage room of sorts. The acrid smell was stronger here, and Charlotte’s light swept over shelves lined with chemical canisters, wires, and what looked like timers. She would have thought her sense of foreboding wasn’t capable of intensifying, yet her stomach dropped even further than before.
“What the hell is this?” Austin muttered, his voice tight.
Champion shrugged. “Looks like chemicals of some sort.”
Charlotte wasn’t paying much attention to the men. Her hand shook as she moved the flashlight toward the far corner of the room—and froze.
A group of people huddled behind a metal shelving unit, their faces gaunt, their eyes wide with fear. Broken glass lay on the dirt floor beside the shelves. She saw a woman with a baby clenched close to her chest, wrapped in a blanket, her eyes connecting with the mother’s on some visceral level. “Guys…” she said.
The men’s flashlight beams turned toward her, then to the people beyond. “Don’t move,” yelled Austin. “Let me see your hands.”
“Who are they?” Charlotte asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Slowly, the man next to the woman stood. “Please. We mean you no harm.”
“What are you doing here?” barked Austin.
“We’re refugees.”
“Refugees,” repeated Champion with a tone of disbelief. “How did you get here?”
The man shook his head. “Please, we’ve done nothingwrong. The owner said we could stay here until the storm passed.”
Charlotte stepped forward from the background. “Who said that? Describe the owner—what they look like.”
He looked back to the woman, who nodded almost imperceptibly, before answering. “There are two. A man and a woman. Both older. She has short white hair and he has no hair, but a gray beard.”
For a minute there, he’d actually had her believing Grams had given him permission to be here, and her delirious comments about hungry people in the lighthouse suddenly made sense. But his description of Tom was way off—he had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and no beard at all.
Austin was looking at her for confirmation, and she shook her head. “That’s not right.”
She watched as Austin and Champion easily overpowered the man, locking zip-cuffs on his wrists as the woman with the baby rose to her feet and began hysterically screaming. Their reaction was so authentic, so raw, that Charlotte questioned her own beliefs, mentally scanning all that she knew. “Wait.”
The men froze, the woman’s sobs the only noise in the underground room as Charlotte took her phone out of her back pocket. Her battery was nearly dead, and she knew it would shutoff at any moment. “Come on,” she said quietly, opening her mail app and scrolling to the one she’d received from her mother. “Don’t die on me,” she whispered. Hopefully, she’d downloaded the video, though she couldn’t remember if she had. A link wouldn’t do her any good now. Her cell phone hadn’t had a signal for some time.
The email’s subject line read, “WATCH THIS - IMPORTANT” all in caps. Charlotte’s mother forwarded her tons ofemail, ninety-nine percent of which was useless and at least a few that had similar taglines. She only hoped now she’d been smart enough to download the video and had not simply scrolled past.
Clicking on the email, a preview of the video came up on the screen. Even from the thumbnail, she suspected the truth. She hit play on theCute Old Couple Proposalvideo, and there was her grandmother, screaming with joy, a beautiful, smiling man who was definitely NOT the Tom Vanderhoffen she knew kneeling down on one knee before her.
“Jesus,” she breathed, watching as a handsome older man stood and embracing Grams, then swung her out onto an impromptu dancefloor in a snow-covered park, her phone suddenly going dead mid-twirl. “Oh my God, Grams!” She made a dash for the stairs. “The man in the house is an imposter. He isn’t Vanderhoffen.”
A rich baritone voice behind her gave her pause. “Wait!” called the handcuffed man. “This imposter, does he have a scar on his face? Like a big line?”
