Don't Let Go by Marliss Melton Read Free Book Online Page B

room went briefly black. He staggered through his door past Veronica, the secretary, who all but cowered as he thundered on the CO’s closed door. “He—he’s in a meeting,” she hedged, wary of Solomon on a good day.
    Solomon could not have cared less. Hearing the call to enter, he shoved the door open and marched inside. “Sir, I need to request emergency leave effective immediately,” he stated, even as he came to belated attention before both men present, Commander Montgomery and Admiral Johansen, who appeared less than impressed by his abrupt entrance.
    Joe Montgomery sat back in his chair and just looked at him, his thoughts inscrutable behind a face that was badly scarred yet still managed to be appealing to the opposite sex. “What’s going on?” he asked.
    “I’ve found my son,” said Solomon, marveling at the words coming out of his own mouth. “He’s in Mantachie, Mississippi. I need to go get him.” He held up Ellie Stuart’s letter.
    The CO glanced at the admiral, then looked back at Solomon, and said, simply, “Take a week.”
    Solomon had never disliked Joe Montgomery. They were very different entities who, when paired, made a brutally effective team. But in that brief second that their eyes met and something warm and friendly flickered in the CO’s face, Solomon felt a sudden connection.
    “Thank you, sir!”
    “Dismissed,” the CO growled.
    “Yes, sir!” with a hundred-and-eighty degree swivel, he marched briskly towards the door and left the room. The grin of unadulterated joy that split his face as he headed for the door had Veronica staring at him like he’d grown two heads.
    On the west side of Atlanta, Georgia, Solomon forced himself to stop driving, to find a cheap motel, and to sleep.
    He was beset with disturbing dreams in which he found Silas mentally and emotionally crippled; found Silas gone when he got there. At dawn, Solomon got up, showered, and shaved, wanting to look presentable. He grabbed breakfast at a diner and drove eight more hours to Mantachie, Mississippi.
    The place wasn’t even marked on a map. He’d had to stop twice to ask for directions. At last, with the afternoon sun baking the cab of his Chevy Silverado, he arrived at 909 Hickory Road. One of the nines had fallen off the leaning mailbox.
    He turned down a dry, dirt road, one that was sparsely forested, with a lowlying swamp off to the right. It was little wonder no private detective had ever been able to find Silas. The boy had been dumped out here in the middle of nowhere. Anger whipped through him, but with Candace dead, he had nowhere to direct his ire.
    The dirt road climbed a brief hill, and there at the top stood a blue mobile home. Half its underpinning was missing, the siding was rusted, one window had been boarded up, and the saddest-looking Impala sedan was parked out front.
    Solomon scarcely took in the setting. His attention had been captured by the three boys playing under an immense hickory tree—two with light hair, one with dark. As he slowed his truck, the medium-sized boy shoved the dark-haired boy off his feet and wrested a toy from his hands. Pale gray eyes flashed on the smaller boy’s face.
Silas!
thought Solomon, braking abruptly.
    He watched with bemusement as his son rolled quick-as-a-cat to his feet and plowed his head into the blond boy’s belly, wresting the toy car back again.
    That’s my boy,
Solomon marveled, even as the three dust-covered children looked up at him and stilled, cautiously suspicious.
    The door of the mobile home flew open and out stepped a young woman with an infant in her arms. Solomon turned his engine off and eased out into the sultry heat to greet her. His first impression of Ellie Stuart as she made her way toward him was that she was amazingly young to be the mother of this brood.
    Worn but clean clothing hugged a body that was lean and strong, outlining full breasts that the little baby grasped possessively. Her hair was a light ginger brown,