Page 29 of Her Forever SEAL

These were not women who were having a hard week. She had seen hard weeks. She had lived hard weeks. What she had just seen in Peggy Kowalski's face and Lettie Bowman's face was something different.

She had seen it before. Years ago, when she was being stalked.

She thought about the cups in their hands. She thought about Mary behind the counter, warm and smiling, knowing everyone's name.

She thought about Lettie's voice in the coffee shop. I told you I was trying.

She kept her pace steady, her eyes on Kayla, and her breathing even.

Then she took out her phone and sent a text to Angie.

Can you talk tonight?

The reply came before Kayla had passed the ball again.

Name the time.

8

Lydia's house smelled like coffee and something with garlic that had been cooking low all day. Sophia stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment and let herself just be glad to be somewhere familiar.

“Wine or coffee?” Lydia called from the counter.

“Coffee. Angie's not here yet?”

“Two minutes out. She texted from the car.” Lydia doctored up Sophia’s coffee just the way she liked it, after years of knowing each other's habits. She set the mug on the kitchen island and looked at Sophia with her direct, unhurried gaze. “You sounded weird in your text.”

“I didn't say anything in my text.”

“That's why you sounded weird.”

The front door opened and Angie came through it the way she always did, slightly too fast, already talking. “Sorry, Declan had a thing with his homework, Finn would've handled it but obviously—” She stopped. Looked at them both. “Okay, what's going on?”

Sophia wrapped both hands around her mug. “I don't know. That's the problem.”

She laid it out cleanly. The coffee shop, Mary behind the counter, Lettie's body language, the words “I told you I was trying” that had been sitting wrong in her chest ever since. The lacrosse game, Peggy's flash of fear when she'd walked toward them, both women holding paper cups from the same shop on a day when nobody carried paper cups to a field. Mary knowing her last name when she'd paid cash.

When she finished the kitchen was quiet for a moment.

“You paid cash?” Angie repeated.

“I always pay cash for coffee.”

“And she called your full name.”

“Sophia Gault. Clear as anything.”

Angie looked at Lydia. Something passed between them, fast and professional.

“The two women,” Lydia said carefully. “Are their husbands Navy?”

“Tom Bowman and Dan Kowalski. Both mechanics at North Island. Both have been on crazy hours. Some kind of classified project. Lettie mentioned it first, then Peggy said almost exactly the same thing, almost word for word, like they'd compared notes on what to say.”

Lydia was quiet for a moment. “Clint mentioned something before they deployed. An upgrade to helicopters. That was it.” She paused. “I assumed it was routine.”

“Is it?” Sophia asked.

Lydia didn't answer right away. Which was its own kind of answer.