Page 67 of Her Forever SEAL

“He’s getting set up,” Drake assured him.

“Good.”

They discussed a few more logistics, then hung up.

Mason then looked out the window at the dark over the ocean and thought about the text message. Tell your SEAL this is just the beginning. He thought about the word beginning. What it meant. What it implied about timing. About planning. About a man who had decided that the most efficient way to come after Mason Gault's family was to first ensure that Mason Gault was thousands of miles away when it started.

The wheels touched down at North Island at 1312.

The rush of relief Mason felt was unlike anything he had ever felt before. The American tarmac, Coronado's salt air already working through the seals of the fuselage.

Home. He was home.

He hit the release on his seatbelt the first moment he could.

Mason's phone connected to the network.

He had four missed calls from Sophia.

All within the last forty minutes.

The calls were wrong. The number of them was wrong. The window was wrong. Sophia did not call four times in forty minutes unless⁠—

His phone rang in his hand.

Sophia.

He answered before the first ring finished. “I'm on the ground. I'm here. Talk to me.”

Her voice came through, and something in it stopped his blood cold.

“Mason.” One word. The way she said his name when the world had tilted off its axis. “They took Kayla.”

The word landed and Mason stopped breathing for one full second.

Not long, a second. But this one seemed to last an eternity.

Then he was moving.

“Where are you.” Not a question. His voice was already operational, the way it got when emotion was something he couldn't afford yet.

“The corner of Harbor and—” He heard someone speak behind her and she corrected herself. “FBI field office downtown. Mason, there are⁠—”

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“They're not going to just let you⁠—”

“Fifteen minutes.” He was already at the door of the aircraft.

He moved fast through the terminal, through the checkpoint, through the side door where the cars were, where he got in his truck without slowing down and was out of North Island in less than four minutes. He drove with his hands on the wheel and his jaw locked and the clock in his head ticking.

They took Kayla.

He ran what he knew, which wasn't much. He'd been on a government aircraft for nine hours, the kind that had no wi-fi and no way to reach home or know what had been building on the other side of an ocean while he sat thousands of miles away doing nothing.

First ensure that Mason Gault was thousands of miles away when it started.

He hit the freeway.