by Paige Tyler
“We need to tell someone about this,” Andrew said.
Owen snorted. “And clue them in on the fact that we’ve been sniffing around in here, too? Not a good plan, dude.”
Kyla started to agree when she stumbled across the folder for the SEAL Team’s mission reports and she stopped giving a crap about the Navy’s shoddy cybersecurity and what they should do about it.
There were thousands of reports in the folder and for a moment, all she could do was stare. SEAL Team 5 was really busy. Luckily, each subfolder was titled and organized by date. Her breath caught when she saw one for a week ago when Wes had disappeared for a few days. Heart in her throat, she clicked on the folder and started reading about the mission to Nigeria to recover a bunch of armed drones being sold by a guy named Nick Chapman and the subsequent ambush.
“Crap,” she whispered. “Someone tried to blow them up.”
Beside her, Andrew frowned when he saw the date. “I thought you were worried about where Wes is now, not last week.”
“I am.”
Kyla backed out of the folder, looking for something that lined up with Wes’s sudden departure last night. It wasn’t difficult to find. There were less documents in this folder, and the reports there had titles like Initial SITREP and Quicklook Summary. She stopped halfway through the first one.
“There was another ambush in Guatemala this time,” she squeaked out, barely able to form the words. She’d been right. Wes was out there right now, hurt and bloody.
“Calm down, Kyla,” Owen said. “Read the rest of the report. It says that all of the SEALs got out with minor injuries. Wes is okay. They’re all okay.”
Kyla forced herself to read the rest of the report, noting multiple references to that same Chapman guy and his damn drones.
“Guatemala isn’t that far away,” Andrew pointed out. “Maybe Wes and the others are already on their way back.”
Kyla prayed that was true. But Owen was shaking his head before she even had a chance to figure out how long it would take him to get back if he’d already left.
“The note at the bottom of the report mentions the aircrew waiting on standby at the airfield was told to leave immediately so they wouldn’t get caught up in the local investigation. Wes and the CIA operatives that took part in the mission are in a series of small hotels outside the city, posing as tourists. They’ll be there until the Navy can find another way to get them out.”
Kyla didn’t know if she should be relieved or pissed off. She was glad Wes and the other guys were okay, but there was also the part of the report where he was dealing with minor injuries. And she still didn’t have any idea when he was getting back.
Owen checked his watch. “If we don’t leave now, we’re going to be late for class. You okay here?”
“What?” She gave herself a mental shake. “Yeah. I’m good. Thank again for the help.”
Andrew slung his backpack onto his shoulder. “Don’t do anything else crazy, huh?”
After they left, Kyla read through a few more of SEAL Team 5’s mission reports, trying to find out anything she could on Chapman. There wasn’t a lot there, but it was enough to confirm he was a certifiable douche canoe. Leaning forward, she focused on the missions Wes had been on. That turned out to be a really bad idea. She couldn’t believe how man times he and his Teammates had nearly been killed. The way he tried to play off the danger when he talked to her was pure crap. He was doing insanely dangerous stuff nearly every time he went out.
She thought about the ambush in Guatemala he’d just survived and wondered what constituted minor injuries in the SEAL world. Hell, Wes could have lost a body part and they’d just tell him to duct tape it back on and keep going. The notion both terrified and infuriated her.
Knowing she was making a mistake, she began looking up hotels in the Puerto Quetzal area. There were more than she’d thought there’d be, but it still wasn’t that difficult tracking him down. Most people don’t book their rooms from outside the country only to show up at the front desk twenty minutes later.
She hesitated, fingers hovering over the keyboard for a long time before she finally hit the right combination that would route the call through one of her dad’s software programs that would bounce the call all over the world before connecting it with a particular room in a cheap motel on the outskirts of town on a road that didn’t even have a name.
If she did this, Wes would be furious.
But then the need to talk to him overwhelmed what was left of her good sense and she pushed the ENTER key.
CHAPTER TEN
YOU FEELING UP to some food, man?” Sam asked as he and Holden stepped into Wes’s hotel room. He held up a few plastic takeout bags. “We figured you were too sore to come with us to get something to eat.”
Wes’s mouth watered at the spicy aroma coming from the bag. “Yeah, come on in.”
The motel room was barely big enough for two beds and the beat-up dresser, but it was even smaller when his buddies walked in. Holden and Sam sat on one of the beds while Wes slowly hobbled over to the other. He winced as he sank down onto the rock-hard mattress, a spike of pain running up his back. He’d gotten out of the ambush without getting shot, which he definitely wasn’t complaining about, but when one of those white vans had made a run for it, Wes had been caught between the fleeing vehicle and a packing crate and almost gotten crushed.
He’d avoided any major damage, but he was sore as hell. As the last of the adrenaline surge from the mission faded, he was sure the pain and stiffness was only going to get worse, even with the muscle relaxers and pain meds one of the SOG medics had given him. Hopefully everything would loosen up before they went home. Kyla would freak if she saw him walking around like a zombie.
Opening the bag Sam gave him, he pulled out a burrito and a bottle of lukewarm yellow soda called Tiky. His nose hadn’t lied. The burrito was definitely spicy, but leaned more toward Latin favors than Mexican, and was seriously good.
He, Holden, and Sam ate in silence for a while. Actually, Wes pretty much inhaled the burrito in between sips of the pineapple favored soda. He watched in amusement as Sam gazed around the room, taking in the overly bright neon orange walls and the somewhat threadbare blankets. The room wasn’t horrible—he’d definitely slept in worse places—but to say it was a value resort would be an understatement.
“Do you think they purposely put us in the cheapest place they could find?” Sam asked, picking up his bottle of soda. “Because I noticed none of the SOG guys are staying here.”
“They think we leaked the operation again,” Holden said in between bites of food. “This is their passive aggressive way of sticking it to us. I’m surprised they didn’t stick us in a tent in the middle of the jungle.”
Wes snorted. Holden wasn’t wrong. The SOG crew had given them more than a few disgusted looks suggesting they never wanted to work with him or any other SEAL again. Which was stupid, considering Wes, Holden, and Sam had been in at risk during the ambush, too, and were probably the only reason anyone had made out of the ambush alive in the first place. But the CIA didn’t care about any of that at the moment. Some of their guys had gotten seriously hurt and they were lashing out at the only people available to blame right then.
While it wasn’t SEAL Team 5, someone was responsible for the ambush today. Chapman had known they were going to be in that warehouse before they even entered the building. Unfortunately, they still didn’t know where the intel leak had come from, where Chapman was taking those weapons, or when they were heading home.
“Does Kyla know you had to go wheels up?” Holden asked as he finished the last of his burrito. “Kendall was on a stakeout when I got the call so all I could do was write her a quick note and leave it on the kitchen table.”
Kendall was Holden’s girlfriend. The two of them had been seeing each other for a few months and seemed solid. Holden had to leave her a note instead of calling her because HQ had recently come out with an operational security rule t
hat said no one could call or text anyone if they got called in for a mission. Wes realized they were worried about someone monitoring their phones, but that stupid rule hadn’t done anything to prevent the latest ambush.
“Yeah,” Wes said. “Kyla and I were together when the call came in, so she knew it was something work related. Not that it helped much.”
Holden gave him a sympathetic look. “She still having a hard time dealing with all the things you’re not able to tell her?”
Wes nodded, finally allowing himself to think about those moments right after he’d gotten the call. The moments he’d pushed to the back of his mind until now. “She didn’t say anything, but I’m pretty sure she was on the verge of tears when I left. I don’t think she’s going to want to keep seeing me.”
Sam winced. “Damn. I thought there was something solid with you and her.”
“I thought there was, too,” Wes agreed. “But can you blame her if she walks away? I mean, we made love for the first time and not five minutes later, I’m running out the door. The timing of this mission really sucked.”
Holden did his best to change the subject after that, asking Wes for more details about the ambush they’d just survived, focusing on what he’d seen from his perspective. Chapman came up a lot, with the general consensus being that the man must hate SEAL Team 5 if he was willing to use himself as bait merely for a chance to see some of them killed.
Unfortunately, thinking about Chapman and when he might try and kill them again wasn’t nearly enough to distract Wes from thoughts of Kyla—and what he might be doing at that very second. Holden and Sam must have realized that, too, because a few minutes later they took off.
“Try to get some sleep,” Holden said before they left. “I’ll call the second I hear anything about when we’re leaving.”
Wes sat on the edge of the bed for a long time eyeing the motel phone on the tiny night table. He wanted to pick the thing up and call Kyla, but it wasn’t something SEALs were allowed to do on missions. Besides, who knew if the thing was even capable of getting a call through to the States. So he laid back with a sigh, not bothering to take off his clothes or peel back the blankets. He wasn’t too sure he trusted the pedigree of the sheets. He hadn’t seen a cleaning cart or a maid since they’d gotten here.
He was drifting off to sleep when the phone rang. Groaning, he reached out to answer it, hoping it wasn’t Holden calling to say they were leaving already. The thought of getting into a small car for a ride to the airport was more than he wanted to think about.
“Yeah.”
Silence filled the line, and for a moment, Wes thought there wasn’t anyone on the other end. But then he heard what sounded like someone taking a deep breath, then letting it out in a rush.
“Wes?” Kyla’s voice was soft, nervous. “Are you okay?”
Shit. He bolted upright, the phone nearly falling out of his hand.
“Kyla?” he whispered. “Why are you calling me in the middle of a mission? More importantly, how are you calling me? How did you even know where I am?”
“I was worried about you, so I snooped around until I figured out where you were.”
“Snooped?” He ground his jaw. “You mean you hacked into some classified computer network somewhere, don’t you?”
The words came out sharper than he intended, but he couldn’t frigging help it. This was pure insanity. The kind of places Kyla would have needed to dig to find him were the kind of places that’d land her in a federal prison for a long time.
“I was worried about you.”
The pain in her voice was enough to tear a hole in Wes’s chest, draining the anger right out of him.
“I’m okay,” he said, his tone softer now. “The mission didn’t go well, but I’m fine. So are the other guys.”
“Thank God,” she breathed and Wes could practically hear her relax, even through the phone line. “Are you coming home soon or do you have to go after Chapman and those drones?”
Wes opened his mouth to tell her he’d be home as soon as possible, but the second part of her question ripped that right out of his head. “Chapman? Seriously, you dug that up, too? What the hell? Do you want to be in a federal supermax prison until you’re a hundred?”
He was expecting some kind of passionate defense or maybe a denial. Instead, all he got was a snort and short laugh. “Please, like that’s ever going to happen. With cybersecurity as bad as it is on Coronado, it’s not like they’ll ever know I hacked in. And even if they did, they’d never be able to trace it back to me.”
“Maybe not. But what if they trace this phone call back to you?” He was so damn frustrated he could frigging scream. “With the leaks we’ve been dealing with lately, there’s a good chance the CIA is monitoring anything coming in or going out of this hotel.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, either,” Kyla said casually. Like she was discussing the weather. “I’m calling through a program that’ll bounce it all over the planet without leaving a trace. In fact, no one will even know your room got a phone call.”
That was good, Wes supposed, but he was still irritated she was taking this so lightly. “Kyla, honey, you can’t keep doing this. I know you’re really good at hacking and stuff, but sooner or later, someone will catch you. And when they do, you’ll be looking at a lot of trouble—the kind of trouble I won’t be able to help you with.”
She started to interrupt him—probably to tell him she wouldn’t get caught—but he wouldn’t let her do it. “I’ll be home in a day or two, three at the most. I promise. But that won’t matter if you’ve gotten yourself locked up by then. So, I’m begging you, please don’t do anything stupid that’ll take you away from me, okay. You know, like you did when you went after Nesbitt?”
There was silence on the other end of the line again followed by a sigh. “Okay. I’ll stop cyberstalking you. But you have to promise to be careful and come home as fast as you can.”
He was a little suspicious about how quickly she’d given in, but with half a dozen countries in between them right then, he’d take what he could get. “I’ll be careful, I promise. And I’ll be back before you know it.”
They talked for a few more minutes, Kyla trying to weasel out more details concerning Chapman, the mission, and if Wes had gotten hurt worse than on the previous one. Fortunately, she let the stuff go when he told her that he needed to get some rest.
“Come home soon,” she said softly before they hung up.
Wes had to admit, he’d never wished a mission would hurry up and end like he did now.
He ran his hand through his hair with a curse. Damn, he was falling hard.
* * * * *
KYLA WOKE TO the sound of someone knocking politely on the door of her dorm room. It seemed to echo in the small space even through the blanket she’d pulled over her head to keep out the late day sun streaming in through the window. She burrowed into the pillow, completely ready to ignore the doorbell and pray whoever it was went away. But then the knocking came again, and it was much more insistent this time.
“Okay, I’m coming,” she called out, shoving the blanket down and squinting at the bright light flooding the room. “Give me a second.”
She sat up and shoved her feet into a pair of fuzzy pink rabbit slippers, glancing at the clock on the bedside table. It was a little after five PM, less than four hours since she’d talked to Wes, locked up her dad’s Bat Cave, and driven back to her dorm to crash. Running a hand through her hair, she took a few seconds to make the shorts and T-shirt she’d been napping in were on straight before walking over to the door to peek out the peephole. Good looking with short blond hair, she might have mistaken the guy on the other side of it for a fellow grad student if he weren’t wearing a suit.
“Ms. Wells, could you please open the door?” the man said. “We need to talk.”
Alarm bells went of before he even pulled a black leather case out of his inner pocket and flipped it open in front of the peephole.
Charlie Shaw.
Central Intelligence Agency.
Crap.
She was so screwed.
“The door, Ms. Wells,” he said calmly, putting his identification away. “Open it.”
She hesitated, considering climbing out the window, but quickly decided against it. The last time she’d jumped from anything higher than curb height, it’d nearly killed her.
Sighing, Kyla opened the door and pasted on the most innocent smile she could manage. “I’m Kyla Wells. Can I help you?”
“It might be better if we talk inside,” Shaw said, pointedly looking down the hallway left then right. “I doubt you want anyone overhearing this conversation.”
She reluctantly stepped aside so he could enter the room, then closed the door. He casually looked around before meeting her gaze. “What do you know about your father’s connection to the CIA?”
Kyla had to work hard to keep her jaw from dropping to the floor even as she resisted the urge to do a Snoopy Dance in front of the federal agent. She’d been so sure he was there because he knew she’d hacked into the Imperial Beach facility. But this was about the call she made to that mysterious number on the card she’d found in her dad’s wallet.
“I didn’t know there was a connection between my father and the CIA.” She gave Shaw another I’m-not-a-criminal smile. “But since you’re here, I guess that means he worked for you.”
Shaw studied her intently, making Kyla think he knew a whole hell of a lot more about her than he was letting on.
“You really didn’t know?” he finally asked, expression a mix of curiosity and remorse. “As close as you two were, if there was anyone he’d told, I thought for sure it’d be you.”
Kyla felt a stab of grief as she realized Shaw knew things about her father that she didn’t. “Apparently my dad and I weren’t as close as everyone thought, because no, I didn’t realize he worked for the CIA.”