SEAL Next Door

by Paige Tyler

  So, Sam simply lay there in the dirt under the hut, nursing the aches from the recent fight, watching as the occasional spider or snake passed by on the way to who knew where. And the whole time they waited, praying some curious dog didn’t crawl under the hut with them, Sam couldn’t help but think about what Dalton had told him. As much as he knew the stripper stuff was all bullshit, he couldn’t get past the part about Dalton having slept with the woman he’d been falling for. Sam knew it shouldn’t matter, that Poppy was an adult who’d obviously slept with other men before him, but the fact that it was Dalton bothered him more than he would have ever imagined.

  The sun was well above the horizon when the Alatas brothers showed and immediately headed for the main building. Sam and Dalton had no access to the surveillance feed from that location, so they were forced to wait for what seemed like forever until Chasen announced they had what they needed. The time and place with the weapon exchange had been set, and they had it all.

  Unfortunately, everyone was forced to stay in hiding all day, until the gathering darkness gave them enough cover to escape, which sucked.

  Sam would have liked to say he used the time to come up with something intelligent to say to Poppy, but as they boarded another unmarked cargo plane back to the States a few hours later, he still had no idea what he was going to say when he saw her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sam must have stood in the hallway outside Poppy’s apartment for at least ten minutes, trying to figure out if he wanted to knock on her door. But every time he worked up the courage to do it, doubts would creep into his head, and he’d change his mind.

  “Maybe I should talk to her tomorrow,” he murmured out loud. “After I get some sleep.”

  That would probably be the best idea. The flight back from Madura—with the time change and dateline thrown in—had been murder. Between his concerns about Poppy and the lecture from hell he’d gotten from Chasen, he hadn’t slept a wink. He’d been running on fumes for nearly forty hours with nothing more than a few cat naps while he’d been stuck under that damn hut.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do,” he said to the empty hallway. “I’m going to go to bed and talk to Poppy tomorrow. Maybe by then, I’ll know what to say.”

  Satisfied with that plan, Sam turned for his apartment only to spin around when he heard Poppy’s door open. Poppy stood there, looking tired but beautiful, wearing nothing but a ribbed tank top and a pair of skimpy sleep shorts. She probably just woke up, but damn, did she look good or what?

  “Were you out here talking to yourself?” Poppy asked, looking up and down the hallway, like she was searching for confirmation to her question before he even answered.

  It seemed like a simple question, and yet, Sam had no idea how to answer it. If he said yes, he’d come off like a whack job. If he said no, she’d want to know who he’d been talking to. Which would ultimately lead to the whack job conclusion.

  Before he had a chance to reply one way or another, Poppy suddenly let out a gasp and took several quick steps toward him.

  “What happened to your face?” she asked, her eyes wide with alarm as she tentatively reached out to gently cup his jaw. “You look like you got hit by a truck.”

  Sam prayed that Dalton never heard those words. His Teammate’s blows had left bruises and abrasions all along his chin and the left side of his face, but Sam would never admit Dalton had gotten the best of him.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, trying to sound casual. “These things happen sometimes during a mission. It’s nothing I can talk about, and more importantly, it’s not the reason I was standing in the hallway.”

  From the look Poppy gave him, Sam was sure she was about to argue the issue, but after a few seconds, she stepped back, holding the door of her apartment open for him. Sam released the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. After the whole SEAL thing, he hadn’t been sure she’d let him back into her life, much less her apartment.

  Poppy closed the door behind him but didn’t invite him further into her place. He guessed they’d talk here then.

  “Why were you standing out in the hallway?” she asked, and Sam started a little, realizing he’d been standing there for several long heartbeats not saying a thing.

  He blanked for a second, not sure what he wanted to say. Should he apologize about keeping the SEAL stuff from Poppy or ask her whether she’d slept with one of his Teammates? Apologies first. Accusations later.

  “You and Dalton, huh?” he asked, cursing himself for asking even as the words came out of his mouth.

  Sam started to retract the statement—if that was even possible—but he bit his tongue. It was too late for that.

  Poppy stared at him, her expression unreadable. Finally, a defeated look crossed her face and she let out a long sigh, shoulders slumping. “You know about that?”

  Whatever he expected her to say, it wasn’t that. For some reason, the way she said the words—like she was more upset about being found out than anything else—sparked something inside him. He was exhausted mentally and physically, so it took him a few seconds to recognize the sensation roiling in his gut. But when it hit, he was shocked.

  Jealousy.

  Sam couldn’t handle the fact that the woman he cared about had slept with one of his Teammates. He was jealous. It might be petty, juvenile, and ugly, but there it was all the same.

  “Yeah, I know about that.” He told himself to turn and walk out of her apartment before he said something he regretted, but instead, he kept talking. “Were you ever going to tell me that you’d slept with Dalton or did you want me to hear about it from him?”

  Dammit.

  It was like he was standing on the side of the road watching someone drive off a cliff. When had he become such a prick?

  “And why exactly would I have ever brought up the time I dated some random SEAL?” Poppy demanded, her voice low and her eyes flashing dangerously. “When you went out of your way to convince me you were a machinist mate? It makes me wonder if we hadn’t gone to your parents’ house, would you still be lying to me about that?”

  “This isn’t about me telling you I’m a SEAL,” he snapped. “This is about you sleeping with Dalton.”

  “Yeah, I slept with Dalton—a year before I ever met you.” She sighed and ran her hand through her hair. “Look, I made a bet with a friend that if I acted like a bimbo stripper, any guy in the club we were in would pick me up in a hot minute. And Dalton picked me up.”

  Sam ground his jaw. “Dammit, I don’t care why you pretended you were a stripper. I care that you slept with my Teammate.”

  She folded her arms and glared at him. “I’ve never asked who you slept with before you met me, and I can’t go back and change who I slept with. If that’s something you can’t get past, then I don’t think there’s anything more to say.”

  “I guess there isn’t,” he said, the words coming out as if they were being spoken by someone Sam didn’t even know.

  Poppy walked into the kitchen and grabbed something from the counter. A moment later, she was back, holding out the keys to his truck. She dropped them in his hand, then moved over to the door, pulling it open and standing there without saying a word.

  Sam stood there, a part of him demanding he say something—anything—that would fix this before it was too late. But after a few seconds, he realized there was nothing he could say that would make any of this better. He’d caught the bridge between him and Poppy on fire, then blew it up for good measure.

  Cursing silently, he walked out.

  The door slamming behind him put an exclamation point on what Sam knew was the end of everything he’d had with Poppy. He stood there for a long time in the hallway, replaying their horrible conversation over and over again in his head. Not ten minutes ago, he’d been working up the courage to knock on her door planning to apologize so they could straighten everything out. Now, he was stuck trying to figure out how things had gone so wrong. He still couldn’t believe
half the things he’d said to Poppy.

  Walking over to his apartment, he unlocked the door, then stopped and looked back across the hall, wondering how he was supposed to live here now. To say running into Poppy in the stairwell was going to be awkward as hell was an understatement.

  Inside his apartment, he took stock of all the boxes he’d yet to unpack, wondering if he should even bother when he might end up moving again.

  Damn, what a mess.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “You ready to give the briefing this morning?” Nyla asked, sounding all bright and cheerful as she walked into the break room, catching Poppy pouring a cup of coffee.

  “Uh-huh,” she murmured, slowly turning around to face her friend.

  In truth, she had absolutely no desire to stand around for the next couple of hours talking to a bunch of CIA field agents about North Korean nuclear weapons. But that’s what was on the agenda for this morning, so that’s what she’d do.

  “You look like you didn’t sleep a wink last night,” Nyla said with a frown that quickly turned into a knowing smile. “Never mind. Your hunky sailor came home last night, didn’t he? No wonder you look so exhausted!”

  Poppy sighed. She definitely hadn’t gotten any sleep last night, but it wasn’t because she was getting busy with anyone, that’s for sure. “Yeah, Sam came home last night. But unfortunately, we ended up getting into a huge argument and broke up. I look like crap because I spent the whole night lying in bed staring at the ceiling trying to figure how everything fell apart so fast.”

  “What?!” Nyla’s jaw dropped. “I thought everything was going great with you guys. I mean, besides the part about him not telling you that he’s a SEAL. You told me the other day that you couldn’t wait for him to get back so you could talk it all out.”

  “Yeah, that was the plan.” She stared down at her coffee mug. It had always felt good to have a friend she could talk to about everything, but she never dreamed she’d have to tell Nyla something like this. “But it turns out all Sam wanted to talk about was the fact that I’d slept with one of his Teammates.”

  Nyla’s eyes widened. “Dalton told him?”

  Poppy nodded. “And Sam is fixated on the fact that I slept with the guy. He implied that I purposefully tried to hide it from him. Like it was some big conspiracy.”

  “Wait a second,” Nyla said, a baffled look on her face. “He’s pissed at you for a previous relationship you had with a SEAL when he’s the one who lied to you about being one? Where the hell does he get off with that crap?”

  “I don’t know.” Poppy sipped her coffee. “I never expected Sam to act like this. After we showed up at the cookout, I knew he’d find out about Dalton and me sooner or later, but I thought he’d handle it like an adult. When I realized he wasn’t going to be able to get over it, I broke up with him.”

  Nyla took Poppy’s mug out of her hand and set it on the counter, then pulled her in for a hug. “I’m sorry. I know you were hoping this time it would be different and that Sam wouldn’t be like all the other jerks you’ve gone out with. I promise that it will work out with someone someday. You’re going to find the right person.”

  Poppy returned her friend’s hug and fought back tears. There’d been enough of those last night and again this morning before coming to work. She refused to cry over Sam anymore. He wasn’t worth it. Or at least that’s what she kept telling herself.

  “But I thought Sam was the right person,” she admitted softly. “Maybe it’s time I accept that I don’t know a damn thing about men. In which case, maybe I should just stop looking.”

  Nyla pulled back and gave her a stern look. “Don’t you dare. Mr. Right is out there and you’re going to find him.”

  Poppy was about to tease Nyla about her optimistic outlook on the world, when someone behind her cleared their throat. She turned to see Roy standing there.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but your field operatives are here,” he said. “I put them in briefing room two.”

  “Thanks, Roy,” she said, then looked at Nyla as she picked up her coffee mug. “You’re coming in for this right?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Nyla said with a smile. “It’s not every day that I get to be part of a mission to swipe a foreign nuclear weapon out from under a bunch of scary bad guys. And who knows, maybe one of those CIA agents will catch your eye and make you forget all about Sam and his crap.”

  Poppy shook her head but didn’t say anything as they headed down the hallway. Something told her it was going to take a long time to get over Sam.

  Mug in hand, Poppy opened the door of the classified briefing room and led the way inside. CIA agent Keith Lucero was up front near the projection screen, waiting for her.

  “Okay, everyone,” Lucero said as Poppy walked to the front of the room. “I’d like to introduce the subject matter expert who will be briefing you on the objective for your next mission—Dr. Poppy McCoy.”

  Setting her mug on a table, Poppy turned to face her audience. When she saw the eight Navy SEALs seating at the conference table, all the air left her lungs.

  Sam must have been as stunned to see her as she was to see him because he stared at her like he’d seen a ghost.

  Out the corner of her eye, she saw an image appear on the large screen on the front wall. She didn’t need to look at it to know it was the drawing of the North Korean nuke she’d put together by cutting and pasting half a dozen different photos taken during the earlier surveillance mission to Kepulauan Nenusa. Pictures she now knew Sam and his SEAL Teammates had taken.

  Her head spun. The idea that Sam had been on that island risking himself to get this information did horrible things to her insides.

  “Dr. McCoy, if you could cover the weapon aspect of the mission, I’ll go over the location and the rest of the plan,” Lucero prompted, yanking Poppy out of her stupor.

  She dragged her gaze away from Sam to look at the CIA agent. “Of course.” Taking a deep breath, she picked up the remote for the projector and focused on the screen. “The image we’re looking at is the warhead for a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile—an ICBM.” She flipped to the next slide, trying to forget who was sitting at the table a mere few feet away. “If the surveillance evidence is to be believed, this is the weapon that Colonel Kam is going to be selling to the Alatas brothers. Based on my review of the drawings and schematics, the warhead is a Teller-Ulam type device with a traditional primary/secondary design and a weight of approximately three hundred twenty kilograms. If that weight holds true, then the North Koreans have achieved warhead miniaturization to a degree that would allow their ICBM reentry vehicles to reach American soil.”

  There was a murmur of conversation around the table as Sam and his Teammates discussed that possibility.

  “More concerning than the weight of the warhead is the appearance of certain components such as the deuterium/tritium containment bottle that you see in this picture here,” she added, flipping to the next slide. “That confirms we’re dealing with a thermonuclear bomb, also known as a hydrogen bomb. That puts the yield at two hundred fifty kilotons best case, possibly even in the megaton range.”

  Poppy went through a few more slides, adding details she thought might be critical to their mission, such as safety concerns, background radiation levels, and how large and heavy the warhead shipping container might be. Several of the SEALs asked questions, including Chasen, Wes, and Lane, but fortunately, Sam didn’t say a word. Poppy was thankful for that.

  Lucero took over after she was done, and Poppy slipped off to the side of the room where she sat down with Nyla. From the look on her friend’s face, it was obvious Nyla had figured out that Sam was one of the SEALs in attendance. Poppy shook her head, whispering, “Later.”

  “We don’t have a firm answer on when the weapon exchange is going down,” Lucero said, taking over the briefing and motioning to a slide that popped up on the screen. The image showed some rocky terrain, heavily overgrown with bru
sh in places that bare rock was showing through. “But based on the audible intel your Team was able to collect, we’ve confirmed the deal will go down on Morotai Island, which is part of the North Maluku chain in Indonesia.”

  Lucero spent some time going over photos of the village where the exchange was supposed to take place, as well as the road network leading through the mountains around the town that would get them back to the coast.

  Chasen frowned. “Why are we spending so much time covering the island’s road network?”

  “Because your mission has changed,” Lucero said. “While keeping the Alatas brothers from getting their hands on the weapon is clearly key, national leadership has decided that gaining possession of the nuke for exploitation is a priority. And since it weighs in excess of seven hundred pounds, carrying it out of there is obviously out of the question. Those roads through the mountains will be your only escape route. Memorizing them will be critical to mission success.”

  The meeting wrapped up shortly after that since nothing could be done until they had a better idea of when the deal on Morotai would be happening. Lucero said they had people working on it, warning Sam and his Teammates to stay on alert.

  Poppy and Nyla nearly made it to the door when she heard Sam call her name. She stopped in her tracks, letting out a sigh.

  “Want me to stay?” Nyla asked softly.

  She shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

  Nyla hesitated, but then nodded and left the room, but not before giving Sam a glare.

  “So, you’re an expert on foreign nuclear weapons now?” Sam asked when they were alone. “Are you even a professor at all or was that a lie, too?”

  “I actually do teach math and physics at the college,” she said, her voice as emotionless as Sam’s even though her stomach was churning like a washing machine. “It’s a necessary part of my cover here, which is okay, because I happen to enjoy it as well. The fact that I’m also an expert in foreign nuclear weapon design is no more a lie than the fact that you never mentioned you’d been on Kepulauan Nenusa conducting surveillance for the CIA, or the follow-up mission to Madura.”