Page 92 of SEAL of Valor

My cheeks heat.

“I asked if she said anything to you before you were brought in to treat Weston?” Zane asks, the ghost of a grin on his face.

Great. So he did catch me staring.

My embarrassment is short-lived, though, as that horrific memory plays out in my head in real-time. My interaction with Brenda will be forever branded into my mind, though not nearly as deeply as the image of Weston chained in a room, his blood dripping to the floor.

“Uhh, she didn’t say much. I asked her what she wanted with us, and she told me that she didn’t want anything from me. She referred to me as a carrot on the end of a stick, a toy that she gets to take away from him when he misbehaves, and a chain around his neck.” Bile burns the back of my throat at even repeating the words.

Beside me, Weston lets out a deep growl, then releases my hand to get to his feet.

“So you were a control mechanism,” Garrison says.

I look down at my hands briefly, trying so hard not to imagine what our present would look like if we hadn’t gotten away when we did. “It would seem that way.”

“She sure does have an affinity for digging into your pasts, doesn’t she?” Sawyer crosses his arms. “First with Tessa, then with Reese.”

“She knows it’s the only way to get to us,” Zane replies.

“We need to find her and put her down,” Ryker offers. “Before she goes after anyone else. The rest of us didn’t have families, but⁠—”

“We do now,” Garrison says.

“Which means she has even more leverage.” Sawyer shakes his head, fury etched into his expression.

“Why Weston?” I ask. All attention turns to me, and I shift nervously in my seat. “I just mean, she seemed so fixated on him. If you all were on the same team and did the same missions, then why did she choose him?”

The gazes of every man at the table shift to Weston, so I turn to face him, too. He’s leaning against the wall behind me, arms crossed.

“Because I’m the wild card,” he explains. “It’s why my code name is Cowboy.”

“We all have our specialties, and we’re competent in other areas, too,” Sawyer explains, “But Weston is the only one of us you can drop into any situation, and he will succeed. Demolitions, communications, hand-to-hand, planning, and execution—Cowboy here can do it all.”

“On our team, he mainly operated as a sniper—” Zane starts.

“A sniper?” I ask, shock pushing through my system. Self-defense, sure. But can I really picture Weston as the guy behind the scope? The one pulling a trigger when the person on the other end has no idea what’s coming?

“Some threats were best handled from a distance,” Weston replies, tone sharp. The warmth that had been spreading through him since we got back is gone, leaving behind the ice-cold façade he wore before.

Is it his shield?

“The bottom line is, Weston is the jack-of-all-trades. The guy you send in when you need something handled quickly and discreetly,” Ryker says.

“A one-man operation,” Sawyer adds.

I bottle all of that away to process later. “Which means whatever she needs him for is something she wants handled quietly.”

Sawyer snorts. “A big change from the bomb she tried to use last time.”

“Bomb?” I ask.

“Long story,” Zane offers. “We need to make a list of any black sites she might be using. Any safe houses we know about. Sawyer, can you see what you can do to narrow down the search?”

“Already on it. I have a program running as we speak. She’s good, though, so I’m not overly confident we’ll find her until she wants us to.”

“Which is why we need to be ready here, too,” Garrison says. I can see the strain on his face. The pain. Is he thinking about his young family? About being separated from them and being unable to protect them, should this fight find them anyway?

“Agreed.” Zane stands. “We need to be prepared, but we also need to know what she’s planning so we can stop it.”