SEAL on a Mission Page 7

His buddies frowned. The dilemma was something they’d all dealt with. Women were more than ready to date a SEAL until they got a full understanding of what their jobs entailed. But after one or two deployments, most sane, rational women ran for the hills.

  Maybe Kyla was smart enough to bolt before it even got that far.

  “Don’t you think you might be putting the cart before the horse?” Holden asked. “You and Kyla have been out on a grand total of one official date and you’re already worried she might move out of San Diego to take a job somewhere else, or that she isn’t going to want to put up with the stress of being with a SEAL. I mean, hell, how do you even know anything is even going to develop between you and Kyla?”

  Wes had this same conversation with himself last night after making out on the couch in Kyla’s dorm room. Let’s say that leaving to go back to his place had been difficult.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “And I’d agree with you if it wasn’t for the fact that I fell for Kyla long before last night’s date. Finding out it probably can’t work out in the long run doesn’t change that.”

  Beside Holden, Sam let out a groan and dug his wallet out of his back pocket, then took out a twenty and handed it to Holden, who looked entirely too pleased with himself.

  “I bet Sam you’d be heads over heels into Kyla by the end of the week,” Holden said with a grin when Wes gave him a questioning look. “He thought it’d take longer than that.”

  Wes didn’t know what the hell to say to that, unsure if he was being dissed, and if so, by whom?

  “Don’t pay attention,” Noah said even as he grinned at Holden. “There’s nothing wrong for falling for someone. Kyla’s a great woman. Give it some time and see how things go with the two of you. If it works out, she’ll probably be willing to get a job in San Diego.”

  Wes had a hard time believing that. Thanks to the insane amount of work she’d done in college, Kyla was in a position where big companies were plying her with offers of monster paychecks and crazy benefit packages. What the hell could he offer to complete with that?

  “Even if it wasn’t for the job thing, there’s still the issue of her not able handle me being a SEAL,” he muttered. “She absolutely hates that I can’t tell her where I’m going and what I’m doing.”

  Noah sighed. “Look, no woman likes the life that comes with being with a SEAL, but some of them find a way to deal with it for the chance to be with the man they love. Kyla might be one of those women.”

  Wes opened his mouth to say he hoped so, but Joe, his SOG teammates, and a full entourage of CIA analysts chose that moment to walk into the conference room. Introductions were kept to the bare minimum since it wasn’t like they hadn’t already met half a dozen times already. After that, the lead analyst, some suit with blond hair and glasses named Keith Lucero, quickly got the briefing started, passing out thick folders to everyone at the table.

  “Nick Chapman was spotted in Brussels two days ago,” the man said.

  Turning on the overhead projector, Lucero pulled up a photo of a very familiar looking man in an expensive suit walking across a street. From the buildings in the background, it looked like he was near the NATO Headquarters, which probably should have been shocking, but wasn’t. Lots of questionable arms deals were negotiated by our allies in NATO. It was all part of the game.

  “Based on the people he’s suspected of meeting with while in Belgium, it appears Chapman is looking for new buyers for his drones,” Lucero continued, flipping to a close-up of Chapman’s face as he sat at a table drinking coffee.

  Wes couldn’t believe how much the international arms dealer resembled Nash Cantrell, another SEAL in their platoon. A coincidence the CIA had made use of in the past.

  “Any idea where he’s looking to sell them?” Holden asked.

  “We’re working through the possibilities,” Lucero said as he flipped through multiple shots of Chapman talking to people, looking at his phone, slipping into the backseat of a cab. “Right now, he appears to be in negotiations with at least twenty different terrorist and separatist organizations around the world, including several in Europe, Africa, South East Asia, and possibly North America.”

  “Wait a minute,” Wes said, holding up a hand. “Are you saying he might be looking to sell those armed drones here in the U.S.?”

  “That’s merely some chatter that we’ve picked up on the dark web,” one of the other analysts said sharply, throwing a glance at Lucero. “But there’s always chatter of one kind or another. It’s the opinion of most of the team that a shipment to North America is unlikely. The U.S. even more so. We’re trying to keep our focus on Africa and South East Asia.”

  Lucero quickly moved the briefing toward other subjects, including the explosive device used in the Nigeria bombing as well as the identity of the terrorist involved in that attack. The CIA didn’t seem to want to talk about how the bad guys had pulled off the ambush. Either because they didn’t want to stir up the issue again or because they still had no idea.

  Wes didn’t pay much attention to what the analysts had to say about Nigeria. As far as he was concerned, there was little to be gained by rehashing the situation. Instead, he directed most of his attention to the file folder, flipping through photos of the individuals Chapman had met with and wondering if one of the people might lead them to where the drones were being taken.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WE DON’T HAVE to look at that stuff now, you know,” Hayley Ward said softly from the other side of the kitchen table, blowing on the steaming mug she held before taking a slow sip of her coffee. “We could put it in the closet and come back to dig through it some other day.”

  Blond with blue-eyes, Hayley was an investigative journalist with the San Diego Daily News. When she and her husband, Wes’s boss, Chasen, had helped Kyla put Nesbitt behind bars all those months ago, she and Hayley had become close. Along with Wes, Owen, and Andrew, Hayley had been one of her rocks throughout Nesbitt’s trial. While having the guys there for her had been amazing, the truth was that sometimes it was nice to have another woman to lean on.

  That’s why Kyla had asked Hayley to come over to her mother’s place this morning to help her do something she wasn’t looking forward to, something her mom simply wouldn’t be able to do—go through Kyla’s father’s stuff.

  Kyla gazed sadly at the battered cardboard box sitting on the table between them. It was scary how much she wanted to take Hayley up on her suggestion to hide the box away somewhere and forget about it for a while. Or maybe forever. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do that. Someone from the prosecutor’s office had dropped off the box yesterday, saying it held all her dad’s personal effects plus the evidence the police had collected from his home office. It should have been the stuff used to put Nesbitt in jail for the rest of his life. Instead, some lackey had delivered it to her mother with a rather impersonal request to sign here, please.

  “As much as I’d like to do that, I can’t,” Kyla said, still staring at the box. “Mom is going to be out of the house this morning and I want to go through the box before she gets back.”

  She would have asked Wes to help, but he had to work. On a Saturday morning. She sighed.

  Hayley gave her a small smile. “I understand. I’ll help any way I can. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

  Kyla sipped her coffee, still not ready to open the box. The truth was, she had no idea what might be in there, so it was impossible to tell if there was something that would have her in tears. It had been a while since she’d totally lost it and would prefer to refrain from doing it again. Especially in front of Hayley.

  “I’m not really sure,” she finally said. “I guess just be here to pick me up off the floor if I open that lid and find something I’m not ready to deal with.”

  “I can definitely do that,” Hayley said with another smile.

  As Kyla sat there, silently drinking coffee, she thought maybe Hayley was right about waiting to do this another time.

  �
��How’d your date with Wes go?” Hayley asked out of the blue, snapping Kyla’s attention away from the box and whatever it might hold.

  “How’d you know about our date?” she asked, knowing exactly why her friend had changed the topic of conversation and loving her for it. “What, does SEAL Team 5 have a newsletter that goes out every morning with stuff like this?”

  Hayley laughed. “SEAL Teams are like a big family, which means there aren’t a lot of secrets. We’ve all been waiting for your guys to get together.”

  Casually picking up the butter knife Kyla had gotten to open the box, Hayley carefully sliced open the tape along the top.

  “It was amazing.” Kyla smiled, despite how nervous she was as Hayley pushed back the flaps of the box, revealing piles of file folders, loose papers, and rolled up engineering drawings. “It was the best date I’ve ever been on.”

  Hayley grinned. “Ha! I knew you two were perfect for each other.” Reaching into the box, she pulled out one of the drawings and handed it to Kyla. “When are you guys going out again?”

  Kyla unrolled the drawing enough to see that it was the pedestrian walkway that had collapsed in San Clemente. The one her dad had been investigating when he’d been killed…the reason he’d been killed. Unless she chose to believe Nesbitt’s incomprehensible ramblings before he was shot that there was another reason her father had been murdered.

  She pushed that thought aside and unrolled the drawing a little more. Tears filled the corners of her eyes as she saw the math equations doodled here and there around the outside of the drawing. Static load calculations, winds loads, concrete hardness ratings. Random thoughts her father would jot down on the paper anytime he worked. It was difficult seeing his familiar handwriting—so neat and perfect—without feeling a tightness in her chest that seemed to force all the air out of her lungs and prevent her from ever breathing again.

  She looked up to see Hayley regarding her with a patient, empathetic expression. Kyla wordlessly rolled up the drawing and handed it back to her.

  “We’re going to get together tonight at his place,” she said. Talking about Wes was better than thinking about her dad’s notes. “Order pizza and watch Netflix or something.”

  “Sounds fun.” Hayley took another rolled up drawing out of the box and held it out to her. “When you can do absolutely nothing with a guy and enjoy it, that’s when you know you have something special going with him.”

  Kyla set the drawing down on the table without looking at it. Hayley was right. After one official date with Wes, she already knew there was something special about him. That said, there were still a few nagging things hovering in the back of her mind since she’d seen that bruise on Wes’s back last night. That was another reason she’d asked Hayley to come over this morning. She needed to talk to someone.

  Harley held out a brown folder with a label along the top side in her dad’s handwriting. Kyla flipped it open and saw that it was the investigation report on the walkway collapse her father had been working on only hours before his death. She immediately closed the folder and set it on the table, unable to look at it.

  “How do you deal with Chasen being a SEAL?” she asked before she chickened out. Simply putting the words out there was enough to make her heart thump faster.

  Hayley set the folder she was holding on the table with a frown, not bothering to hand it to Kyla this time. “Where did that question come from? You’ve been hanging out with the team for months. You’re smart enough to know what they do for a living.”

  Kyla sighed and reached into the box to take out a small notebook full of field notes on what she assumed were failures within the city’s irrigation system. Random stuff her dad had dealt with every day at work.

  “We were at a shop in the Gaslamp Quarter,” she murmured, dragging out the last pile of paperwork and setting it all aside without looking at it. “Wes bent over to look at a pair of jeans on the bottom rack and his shirt slipped up. That’s when I saw a big bruise across his lower back.” She rooted around in the bottom of the box to find a set of keys. “I know he got it earlier in the week when he and some of the other guys on the Team disappeared for a few days, but he wouldn’t tell me what happened. He won’t even tell me where he was.”

  “You know he would if he could, but he can’t,” Hayley said softly. “If someone found out he’d revealed classified information to you, getting fired would be the least of his problems. He’d be looking at a court martial. Maybe even jail time.”

  Crap. She hadn’t considered there was a possibility Wes could go to prison for something like that.

  “I know Wes has a job that requires him to keep secrets and I never thought that would bother me, but it does,” Kyla said. “And it’s driving me crazy.”

  Hayley laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Kyla asked.

  “For someone who is so brilliant, I’m amazed you can’t see something so obvious.” Hayley sipped her coffee. “When you and Wes were merely friends, you didn’t think about what he was doing when he went on training or missions, but now that you’re falling for him, it’s different.”

  Kyla opened her mouth to deny it, to insist she couldn’t be falling for Wes after a single date, but that was crap and she knew it. Hayley had hit the nail on the head. She was acting like this because she was scared of something happening to Wes.

  “How do you put up with it?” she said quietly, going back to the few remaining contents of the box. “Aren’t you worried about Chasen getting hurt? Don’t you want to know where he goes, when he’ll get back, and what he’s doing?”

  Hayley took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I worry about him getting hurt all the time. And sure, there’s a part of me that’d like to know where he goes when he gets those calls, what he’s doing when he’s away, but in the end, I have to push all that aside and accept it’s the price I have to pay to be with the man I love. I know that sounds dramatic, but honestly, it’s not much different than it is for people who give their hearts to cops and firefighters or any other kind of dangerous job out there. You overlook the bad that comes with being with a SEAL so you can have the good.”

  That all sounded so reasonable, but Kyla wasn’t sure this was something she could logic your way through. Which was a scary thought for an engineering girl.

  She took her dad’s leather wallet out of the box. “What if I find out I can’t overlook the secrets and the worry and the waiting?”

  “Then you walk away from him.” Hayley shrugged. “Wes is a SEAL. If you can’t deal with it, do yourself and him a favor and break up before your heart gets any more attached.”

  Startled at the blunt words, Kyla looked up sharply to see Hayley’s expression soften. “I’m not trying to be harsh, but this is the same conversation I had with myself before deciding to be with Chasen. It’s the same conversation every woman has before getting serious with a SEAL. Or it should be. I’ve seen what happens when a woman isn’t honest with herself about the costs she’s been asked to pay when she falls for a SEAL. I’m not saying it would be the same for you, but I want to make sure you think before you leap.”

  So, it was a case of get in or get out. There’d be no middle ground in something like this.

  Kyla sighed. Hayley had definitely given her more than enough to think about.

  Her thoughts scattered, Kyla turned back to her father’s wallet, running her fingers over the beat-up old thing. Her dad had always been the type to stick with something if he liked it regardless of how old it was. He must have loved the wallet because he’d had the same one for as long as she could remember.

  She opened it and looked through it. There was a photo of her and her mother inside the little plastic-covered frame in the center of the tri-fold piece of leather. It had been taken right after Kyla graduated from high school. They both looked so happy. Kyla could picture her father gazing at the photo every time he opened the wallet.

  She carefully went through the rest of the wallet, s
earching for anything else that had been especially important to her dad. Surprisingly—or maybe not—there wasn’t much there. Twelve dollars in folded bills, a driver’s license, credit cards long since canceled, insurance cards that would never serve any purpose. Kyla was about to toss everything but the photo when she found a business card. It was so old and worn it had to have been in the wallet for a long time.

  Kyla frowned when she saw it was for a restaurant called Pizza Palace. The address and phone number were on the bottom of the card and while she recognized the street name, she didn’t remember ever seeing a place with that name. Flipping the card over, she found a phone number written in unfamiliar handwriting. It was an out-of-state number, which didn’t really fit with the local number on the front of the card. Curious, she grabbed her phone from the table and pulled up Google, then typed in the name of the place. The name and address matched what was on the card, but it had the most boring looking website she’d ever seen. There wasn’t a menu or any way to order a pie online. Another search on Yelp found two reviews, both more than ten years old.

  “What’s so interesting about that card?” Hayley asked. “You’ve been staring at it for five minutes.”

  Kyla held up the card so her friend could read it.

  “So? Your dad had a favorite pizza place. What’s the big deal?”

  “Dad couldn’t eat pizza. He was lactose intolerant and avoided it like the zombie apocalypse. He wouldn’t even kiss my mom after she’d eaten it.”

  “Maybe he grabbed the card so he could write down the number on it,” Hayley suggested.

  “That would make sense, I guess,” Kyla agreed. “Except for the part where he would never have met with someone at a pizza place. So, where’d the card come from?”

  Hayley had no answer to that.

  Picking up all the folders, files, and papers on the table, Kyla dumped it back in the box and closed the lid.

  “You up for a ride?” she asked. “I suddenly feel like pizza.”