Scotty, Spencer and Kyle were all there, along with two laptops. The place looked bachelor-pad minimalist: no decorations on the walls, sparse furniture, a mountain bike parked in the kitchen.
Kyle stood. “Gage, you’ll want to have a look at this.” He nodded to the laptop.
Scotty grinned at Anna and asked, “Who’s hungry?”
“I’m starving,” Anna confessed. Scotty handed her a burger. Gage raised his eyebrows, and Scotty remembered he might have plates.
Once Anna was seated and eating, Gage focused on the computer screen. As Kyle had mentioned the night before, he saw a list of names—presumably pulled out of coded passages from the manuscript. Gage looked at each of his teammates in turn. “My preference is to have Anna stay with her mother for a while, get her out of the line of fire. Any reason you disagree with that plan?”
Anna sat up straighter. “Do I get a say in this?”
Kyle stood. “I don’t want to butt into what’s between you two, but…Gage, we may need Anna. She’s our best link to Coran Williams’s company.”
“So you need me?” Anna seemed to perk up at the thought, but then her smile faded and red flowed up her neck and into her face. “I mean…you, as in you guys.”
Kyle smiled. “We do. Gage—well, we like to let him figure things out on his own.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Gage said, glaring. Finally, he threw up a hand. “Okay, but before this goes any farther, Anna needs to know what’s going on.”
Kyle hesitated only a moment before nodding. “It was my mission. I’ll fill her in.”
* * *
Anna looked from one hard face to the next. She hadn’t known any of these men for long, but somehow she felt safe with them. She didn’t want to lose that. And she didn’t want to lose Gage.
Kyle sat down facing her, his hands dangling between his knees. Anna swallowed a dry chunk of burger, and Kyle said, “The four of us, we’re part of a SEAL team based out of Virginia Beach. I don’t know what you know about SEALs, but we’re the guys who go out to deal with rescues, bomb disposal, and basically scary stuff. Each mission is led by a different team member, depending on what skills are required.”
Kyle took a deep breath before continuing. “The last mission were we on—I was CO. It should have been a piece of cake. We found the location, the area didn’t seem to be guarded, and all I had to do was make sure we all got in and out safely. I fucked up.”
“Kyle.” Scotty said the word like a warning, but Kyle held up his hand. Anna glanced from one man to the other. Kyle looked tired and older than his years, while frustration just about shimmered off Scotty. She glanced at Gage and saw his lips pressed tight—he was keeping his thoughts to himself.
Looking back at her, Kyle resumed his story, his voice flat. “Out of nowhere, our teammate Nick went down. Sniper on our six. He was dead before he hit the ground.”
The burger sat like rock in her stomach. Quietly, Spencer said, “Nick was Kyle’s big bro.” Anna bit her lower lip.
Kyle nodded and stared at his hands. “Navy doesn’t like putting siblings on the same unit. They hate for a family to lose big if a mission goes south and a unit gets wiped out. But Nick was filling in for another teammate who was out on family leave—his wife had just had a baby. For all we know, Nick may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or…” He looked away.
Gage finished the thought. “Or someone wanted Nick dead, and they knew where they’d be able to make that happen.”
Looking at Anna, Kyle nodded. “That’s what’s eating at all of us. Why Nick? Why then? It had to be a targeted hit—there was only one shot fired. I…I’ve been shit-faced for weeks. I…” He stood and walked away, heading into the kitchen.
Gage took up the story. “After Nick’s wake, we found out we were all under suspicion.”
“For what?” Anna demanded. She sat straighter, the burger clenched in her hand. “Not for…Surely they don’t think you had anything to do with the death of your own team member?”
“Standard operating procedure,” Scotty said. “The brass has to check out the rest of the team when one guy doesn’t come home. But…we were set up.”
Gage nodded. “Military ordnance was used. US milspec stuff—meaning friendly fire took Nick out. It looks bad for us. Our CO didn’t believe the accusations, and he told us…”
“To get lost,” Spencer said. He gave a tight smile. “Or words to that effect. Ever since we got back, we’ve been trying to find the truth about what happened. It’s the only way we’ll be able to clear our names—and bring down the scumbags who killed our teammate.”
Gage nodded again. “We got hold of Nick’s personal effects, but they weren’t particularly helpful. His awards and honors—a wedding photo, a wrapped present for his wife, a flash drive, and a book. A romance novel.”
Kyle came back in from the kitchen, a steaming coffee mug in his hands. “Know how many SEALs read romances? That’d be about none. It had to mean something. We could only hope it was a clue. At the very least, we decided it was worth following up on.”
“We published it, didn’t we?” Anna asked. “Coran Williams, I mean.”
“Yeah, you did.” Standing, Scotty headed into another room and came back with a photo and a book. “That’s the book. And that’s Nick’s wife—Natalie.”