Page 12 of Tate (The Montana Marshalls #2)

“You work for me, Tate. You follow my orders. And you work the detail I assign you. Do you think you can manage that?”

Tate drew in a breath. And that means not making trouble for her…

“Yes, sir.”

He pointed to Tate’s rental. “The Senator is unavailable, and you can see Gloria if she decides to summon you. She, however, is not here at the moment. And we’ve been given directives to make sure you follow protocol.”

“Which is?”

“Which means you keep your distance.” He pointed away from the house. “You can park that out back, near the employee housing. We don’t stay in the big house.”

Tate was experiencing some sort of weird throwback to the pre–Civil War era.

“I…okay.” He drew in a breath. “I’m hoping to be on Glo’s detail.”

Sly shoved his hands into his pockets. “Oh, you’re on her detail. The Senator made sure of that. Get parked, and then we’ll give you an orientation and brief you on tomorrow’s event.”

Tomorrow’s event? His face must have betrayed his question because Sly added, “It’s a fundraiser at a nearby estate. Senator Jackson and Gloria will be attending. Mr. Beckett will be joining them, and I believe Gloria has a date.”

Tate just stared at him as Sly turned and walked back to the security building.

And a fine sweat started on the top of his spine and slid down his back.

Surrender is not a Ranger word.

Fine. Let the battle begin.

Scarlett loved her team. Which was the problem.

She could get every one of them killed, with just the wrong word.

Of course, she was safe and sound, usually tucked away in some stuffy office in the FOB, her eyes glued to a drone screen, relaying orders from Commander Hawkins, a short, powerfully built former SEAL who’d gone on to become one of SEAL Team Three’s best leaders.

Calm. Collected.

Not the kind to scream through a headset.

Yeah, that had raised an eyebrow.

But she’d seen, in a horrifying split second, Ford’s death played out right there on the green screen and?—

Well, she’d screamed.

And he’d lived.

But once again her emotions did an end run around her sanity and took her out at her knees.

She just had to stop caring so much.

Thankfully, her CO had said nothing, even after Ford landed safely on the chopper. Even after she’d slipped off the headset and left the command center, walking through the gangways to the nearest head.

And quietly, violently lost it. Braced her hands against the stall.

Oh, she was pitiful. Because she cared for them all—Nez, the brooding, dark Navajo Master Chief who had tossed his law degree to become a SEAL, following in the heroic military tradition of his great-grandfather Charlie Nez, a code talker.

Sonny, the Italian from Chicago whose real name was Roger or something ordinary.

But he’d earned the mafioso moniker with his dark looks and charming ways, and apparently, he’d done a tour in Sicily when he’d been a corpsman, before trying for the SEALs.

Which put him as one of the oldest tadpoles in BUD/S but earned him the respect of the team.

Sometimes it just took time to stir up the courage to reach for something else. Or maybe just stand up for what you wanted.

Like Leviticus. Levi. The Rabbi, although the guy didn’t have a hint of Jewish ancestry.

A blond Viking, he’d grown up in some religious pocket of conservative Minnesota.

But he knew what he believed and managed not to adopt the rather colorful language of the teams. Usually.

But maybe that didn’t matter as much as the fact he didn’t hang out at any of the hot spots to pick up frog hogs.

Although, as far as she knew, Ford also opted out of the late-night adventures of some of the other frogmen from the base, from Teams One, Five, and Seven. No, Ford was quiet and most likely to be found working out or competing in some iron man event or on a forty-mile bike ride.

And then there was Trini. As in Trinidad.

As in the big Trinidadian from east Texas who came from a family so large they’d taken up their own section of bleachers when he’d earned his Budweiser.

That kind of family love sent her into hives.

She’d politely declined the offer to attend their family celebration.

Kenny C was actually named Colton. He hailed from East Tennessee, and about a year after she’d attached to the team, she screwed up the courage to ask.

Kenny Chesney. Right. Because that made sense.

And finally Cruz, aka Fiesta, a name he rightly earned for his love of hosting all the post-deployment bashes, as well as every other team gig.

Like the one tonight, a week after they’d arrived home.

The one she was apparently going to miss because of her stupid rattletrap car, stuck with a flat tire in the driveway of her bungalow in sunny San Diego.

Scarlett stepped on the lug wrench, putting her entire weight on it, bouncing in hopes it would work the nut free.

The wrench jerked away from the nut, spinning out, and of course, she fell, stumbled back, and like the not-Navy-SEAL that she was, she landed in the grass.

Her stiff, dying grass, thanks to the water shortage. Even her palm tree in the front yard drooped, and it was only late April. Overhead, the blue sky was cloudless, and her American flag hung limp and listless.

She lay back in the grass of her tiny, almost ten-by-ten yard and shaded her eyes.

Maybe she should stay right here. It wasn’t like she was really on the team.

She was an Operations Specialist. Technically, an operations com technician, although she’d trained for her communications position and was one of the few women who was attached to CSST—a Combat Service Support Team.

But the Navy had opened up spec ops positions in the last year, and sure, women had failed BUD/S, but what if she didn’t try out to be a SEAL but Combat-SAR as a rescue swimmer?

She’d go in after the team if and when they ended up in the drink.

Then she wouldn’t have to sit two hundred or more miles away watching through a green screen as her team risked their lives.

She could be the one bringing them home. Actually be on their team.

She liked the sound of that.

Anything to stop herself from screaming through the radio.

Liked it so much, she’d put her package in to cross rate. Now she just had to take her PRT—Physical Readiness Test— and qualify.

Fifty push-ups, sixty sit-ups, five pull-ups, five-hundred-yard swim, four twenty-five-yard underwater swims, and a two-hundred-yard buddy tow.

She hadn’t quite figured out how to train for that one. Not without alerting the team to her aspirations.

Maybe she’d tell them after she passed her PRT next week.

But she wasn’t going anywhere anytime if she didn’t get the lug nut off.

She rolled over and got up, looked at her stupid car parked in the hot, cracked driveway, the ten-year-old Ford Escape she’d purchased for two grand.

She didn’t drive it often—mostly biked the 2.

3 miles to the San Diego naval base. But she needed it for days like this when she had to drive all the way out to Coronado.

Well, she didn’t have to. Probably, they wouldn’t even miss her.

Ford might, but he’d barely talked to her since arriving back to the San Antonio . He had a cracked rib from the force of the shot and spent a couple days in sick bay, vomiting up blood.

He’d slept nearly the entire flight home in the C-130. And at the base, while others had family waiting for them, he’d gotten on his motorcycle, still parked in the lot near the cage where the team stored their gear.

She knew because she took an Uber home, no one to greet her either.

In fact, she still hadn’t received a return call from her mother.

She glanced at the flattened tire of the Escape, squashed right down to the rim. And that wasn’t the only issue—when she’d tried to turn the car over, the battery didn’t even tick.

Dead battery, blown tire, and who knew if those were the last of the problems.

She opened up the back hatch and pulled out the taco salad she’d made—silly her. Cruz always had a spread that rivaled the best Mexican food joint, only his fajitas, chalupas, and especially the margaritas were authentic—and he even made her a virgin variety. The man was a Hispanic Gordon Ramsay.

She tucked the salad under her arm and headed toward the house, pulling out her cell phone. She let herself inside, thankful for the air conditioning. When she toed off her flip-flops, her feet cooled against the Saltillo tile flooring that covered the entire house.

Her house.

Tiny—a minuscule seven hundred fifty square foot, one bedroom—but she’d bought it at a steal and fixed it up with her own two hands.

She’d personally not only laid the tile but painted the ancient 1968 original-to-the-house cupboards, added hardware, and even remodeled the bathroom.

She could turn a wrench with the best of them.

Just not, apparently, unscrew a rusty lug nut to save her life.

The call rang once, twice, and she was about to hang up when someone—not her mother—picked up.

“What?”

“Why are you answering my mother’s phone?

” Oh, she didn’t mean it quite that way, it was just…

well, she’d never liked her mother’s current boyfriend, even if he had been around for nearly six years.

Or was Gunnar already seven? She should have brought her half brother something from her deployment, but what could she get from Bahrain for a little boy?

Yeah, nothing she could think of.

“Sorry, Axel,” she said quickly after he paused. The last thing she needed was him hanging up.

Maybe rounding on her mother.

“Is she around?”

“When did you get back?”

She could imagine him. Long, greasy hair, indistinguishable prison tats up his arms, the smell of beer on his breath. Yeah, her mother knew how to pick them. “A week ago.”

He made a noise she couldn’t interpret. “She’s not…uh…well, you talk to her.”

Scarlett frowned, but headed to the fridge to put the salad away, turning the call on speaker. “Mom?”

A sigh, then, “Scar? Is that you, baby?”