Table Of ContentSECURING KALEE
SEAL of Protection: Legacy, Book 6
SUSAN STOKER
CONTENTS
Blurb
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
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Also by Susan Stoker
About the Author
BLURB
After her capture by rebels in the mountains of Timor-Leste, Kalee Solberg doesn’t think she’ll live to
see her father, friends, or hometown again. What started as an adventure with the Peace Corps until
she figured out what to do with her life has turned into a waking nightmare, every day a struggle to
survive. Beaten into submission, Kalee guesses she’s been presumed dead by now. And she has
been…by everyone but one man.
A childhood filled with abuse and neglect has turned Forest “Phantom” Dalton into the kind of man
who finishes what he starts. The failed mission to rescue Kalee Solberg is no exception. After
discovering she’s still alive, that he and his SEAL team left her to a fate worse than death, Phantom
will stop at nothing to bring her home, with or without permission…and no matter the cost to his
career.
Neither Phantom nor Kalee could ever guess another, equally grave threat awaits them back home.
** Securing Kalee is the 6th book in the SEAL of Protection: Legacy Series. Each book is a stand-
alone, with no cliffhanger endings.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Susan Stoker
No part of this work may be used, stored, reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the publisher except for brief
quotations for review purposes as permitted by law.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to
share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not
purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Edited by Kelli Collins
Cover Design by Chris Mackey, AURA Design Group
Manufactured in the United States
CHAPTER ONE
Phantom sat in his room in Casa Hinha, a hostel in Dili, the capital city of Timor-Leste. He and his
team had stayed here when they’d rescued Piper and her three little girls from the orphanage high up
in the hills.
He couldn’t help but agonize over the fact that while they’d been waiting for Piper’s passport and
for the adoption paperwork to be sent in, poor Kalee Solberg was probably going through a living
hell.
He shouldn’t have left her.
No matter what protocol dictated.
She’d been alive, and Phantom had abandoned her.
Staring off into space, flashbacks flew through his brain, and it felt as if he was back in time,
experiencing the moment again.
Bodies. At least two dozen. They were piled on top of each other in the hole. Thrown there as if
they were trash to be discarded. Flies were everywhere.
And the worst of it was…most of the dead were children. Little girls who’d been shot.
“Is that Kalee Solberg?” Rocco asked quietly.
Phantom didn’t say a word; his jaw flexed as he desperately tried to hold himself together.
“Pretty sure, yeah,” Rex answered just as quietly. “It’s kind of hard to tell, but the red hair
matches and her skin’s lighter than that of the locals.”
“We need to get her out of there,” Phantom said in the silence that followed Rex’s words. “We
promised to bring her home.”
All four of the other men nodded. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but their mission was to get Kalee
out of the country, and even though she’d been killed in the raid against the orphanage, they still
had a job to do.
“How do we want to do this?” Rocco asked.
Phantom opened his mouth to respond when a loud burst of gunfire echoed from the jungle
around them.
“Shit!” Rex swore at the same time Rocco flipped the safety off his weapon.
“There’s no time,” Ace said. “We have to get out of here.”
“We can’t leave her,” Phantom argued. “I’ll meet you guys back at the village.”
They could hear shouts nearby. The rebels were way too fucking close for comfort.
“We aren’t splitting up,” Rocco said, grabbing Phantom’s arm. “We need to go.”
“She’s our mission. We can’t leave her!” Phantom repeated, pulling against his friend.
“She’s gone, man,” Bubba reasoned urgently. “We can’t get down the mountain with her body
and get Piper and the kids out. We’ll come back and get her after the rebels are taken care of.”
Phantom wanted to protest further. He wanted to jump into the hole and grab Kalee’s dead
body right that second. But he was also a well-trained Navy SEAL. He knew when the odds were
against them.
He turned back to the hole and stared down at Kalee’s lifeless form once more. She was lying
face down on top of the pile of small bodies. Her feet were bare, and she wasn’t wearing a shirt.
A muscle in Phantom’s jaw ticked again, but just then, they heard the sound of men talking in
the distance. They were going to have company soon. There wasn’t any more time to discuss
whether or not they could get into the mass grave and get Kalee out to carry her home. The SEALs
were trained to fight. But they had no idea how many men were headed their way, what kind of
firepower they might have, and they had four innocent civilians to protect. They had to leave. Now.
Phantom blinked. He remembered that moment as clear as day. But it had taken him months to recall
the most important part of that scene. He’d been on the brink of death in a helicopter in Afghanistan.
Avery Nelson, Rex’s woman, had been trying to distract him from the pain in his leg. She’d ordered
him to think about anything other than what was currently happening, namely, that they were being shot
at by insurgents. And of course, Timor-Leste had popped into his head.
“Think of something else,” Avery ordered. “Anything else. Then tell me about it. Every little
detail.”
Phantom stared up at Avery. He wasn’t really aware of anything else around him. All he could
do was stare into her eyes.
“When we were in Timor-Leste, and I found that pit of bodies…I couldn’t look away,” Phantom
told her.
He didn’t think Avery knew what the hell he was talking about, but she didn’t miss a beat.
“How did it make you feel?” she asked.
“Pissed off,” Phantom said between clenched teeth. “All I could see was little legs and arms.
It wasn’t fair, there was no reason for the rebels to kill all those children.”
“Then what happened?” Avery asked when Phantom didn’t continue.
“We heard the rebels coming. They were laughing and shooting at who knows what as they
walked toward the orphanage. I was livid that they sounded so carefree, when the children in that
pit could no longer laugh at all.”
“Did you kill them?” Avery asked, leaning over so she was almost nose-to-nose with Phantom.
“No. We had to leave. Get Piper and the kids away. I looked back once more though and—
Holy shit!”
“What?” Avery asked. “What did you see?”
This time when Phantom answered, his gaze moved from Avery’s up to Rex’s, who was still
hovering behind him, holding his shoulders. “Kalee moved! Her foot wasn’t in the same place it
had been when I’d first seen her.”
Phantom saw Rex stiffen. He knew his teammate wanted to tell him that he was wrong. That the
Peace Corps volunteer they’d originally gone to Timor-Leste to rescue had been dead. But
whatever Rex saw in Phantom’s eyes kept him silent.
“Kalee was alive!” he said in an anguished tone. “That’s what’s been bugging me about the
mission. It wasn’t about failing, not entirely. Subconsciously, I saw proof she wasn’t dead yet—and
we still left her there!”
Now, Phantom was back in Timor-Leste. It was months too late, but he wasn’t going to leave the
country without her again.
After all this time, Tex had found proof that she was alive. He’d sent a thick file to Commander
North, who had in turn shared it with Phantom.
Everyone involved in the mission to save the Peace Corps volunteer felt some sort of guilt that
they’d left her to be captured by rebels. Phantom knew that was the only reason his commander had
allowed him to review the files.
While everyone felt badly about the situation, the United States Navy wasn’t authorized to go into
Timor-Leste to search for a woman who, if intel was correct, had joined forces with the rebels and
was terrorizing the native citizens.
The pictures Tex had somehow obtained were grainy and unfocused, but Phantom had known he
was looking at Kalee Solberg. Her beautiful auburn hair had been cut extremely short, she was
carrying a rifle, and was smack dab in the middle of a group of men who’d been identified as rebels
fighting against the Timor-Leste government.
Phantom had memorized as much information from the file as he could. He knew Kalee’s birthday,
her height and weight, her passport number, social security number, where she was last seen, and
numerous other details about her.
He also knew her father still thought she’d died all those months ago and was currently living like
a hermit, hardly ever leaving his large mansion.
He’d stopped taking his meds after Kalee had first been presumed dead, going off the rails and
kidnapping little Rani, thinking she was his daughter. Piper and Ace hadn’t pressed charges,
understanding that because he’d stopped taking his medicine, his schizophrenia had hijacked his mind.
He was doing much better, back on his meds, but he lived a solitary life, retiring from the company he
owned and keeping to himself.
Phantom’s superior officers had ordered him to stand down, to not do anything rash, like jetting
off to Timor-Leste by himself to try to save Kalee. He’d agreed, and had asked for a month’s leave.
His leg still gave him issues every now and then from where he’d been shot in Afghanistan while
rescuing Avery from insurgents.
Phantom had called a SEAL friend who was stationed in Hawaii, and he’d found a small beach
shack up at North Shore that Phantom could rent for a month.
Commander North had been wary, but after he’d spoken to Mustang, the other SEAL, and he’d
verified that Phantom really had contacted him and the arrangements for housing were made, the older
officer had relented.
Feeling a little guilty that he hadn’t spoken with Rocco or any of the other guys on the team,
Phantom had left late one night and flown to Hawaii. He knew his team was going to be furious with
him for what he was about to do, but he pushed that to the back of his mind. What was done was done.
