Page 11 of Stranded with the SEAL

Matteo rolled his eyes. “Not this shit again.”

Cowboy turned to the window, a lighted palm tree whipping fiercely in the wind. He was getting to Matteo. He could feel it. One of these days he’d tell Cowboy everything he wanted to know. “Got to be something.”

“I was the best sniper in my class.”

Cowboy curled his lips and shook his head. “Has to be more than that.”

“And I’m a pilot. A good one.”

“Keep going.”

Matteo shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Jax. Maybe he likes my full, round ass.”

Matteo was holding out on him, but Cowboy couldn’t help but smile. The leader of HERO Force was notoriously attracted to women with large rear ends. “He is an ass man.”

Thunder rolled in the distance.

“Fucking Cabo San Lucas,” they chimed.

Cowboy stood up and the world banked left. Fuck it. He’d get the goods on Matteo sooner or later. “All right, you want to know what happened, I’ll tell you. We were doing surveillance on a guy named Steele, some badass billionaire with an import/export business. Trouble is, he imports and exports shit like drugs and human beings, with the occasional shipment of firearms.”

“Why hasn’t he been caught?”

“Because he’s got tens of thousands of shipments coming in and out of the country every year, and only a handful are illegal. He’s got hundreds of employees and an inner circle that covers his back. The feds haven’t been able to pin him with anything.” He reached for the cheese puffs, but pushed them away, then ran his hand over his forehead. “Ralph was getting close, really close. He and Hawk infiltrated Steele’s compound, Ralph in the lead, Hawk on his six. Only Hawk walked out of there that night.”

“He blames himself,” said Matteo.

“Steele’s men held him down while he watched Ralph die a slow and painful death. That’s not the kind of thing you just put out of your mind.”

Matteo made the sign of the cross, mumbling something under his breath.

Cowboy drained his beer. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world for this story. Never had been. If it were up to Cowboy, getting Ralph’s killer would be HERO Force mission number one, but Jax would never allow it.

He sniffed and shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, by the time the cops got there the body was gone. No evidence of any wrongdoing, that sort of thing. That’s what happens when you’ve got an army of minions just waiting to cover your tracks.”

“They find him?”

Cowboy was starting to get drunk. Real drunk, the kind that made you wish things were different at the same time you stopped caring at all. “No. And he’s got a wife and little kid who was born after he died.”

“No wonder Hawk’s obsessed.”

Another crack of thunder seemed to shake the world, and it crossed Cowboy’s mind that God didn’t like this story any more than he did.

“Fucking Cabo San Lucas,” they chimed.

7

Olivia wasaware of the headache long before she opened her eyes, the pain pulsing and seeming to fill her entire experience. When she shifted her position, a wave of nausea bubbled through her stomach and she squinted her eyes open a tiny crack.

That made it worse.

She closed them again.

I think I’m going to be sick.

She curled in on herself, wrapping her arms around her middle. She wanted this pain to go away, wanted the edges of her consciousness to be less sharp and aching. She licked her lips. Her mouth was so dry. She needed to find some painkillers and a glass of water, but she’d have to get up, and that was far more than she felt capable of doing.

An arm reached across her midsection and she gasped. It curled up her chest, the hand grazing her breast.