Page 82 of Her Forever SEAL

“Anything?” he asked as he strode towards her.

“Nothing yet,” Sophia said.

He pulled her into his arms. She shut her eyes tight, breathing him in. Pretending, for just a moment, that everything was right in their world.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They walked back to the home office, his arm around her shoulders, her arm around his waist. One unit.

Rylie looked up from her laptop, and Lydia spun around on her chair, both of them concentrating on Mason and Sophia.

“Where’s Angie?” Lydia asked.

“She’ll be here in a second. She’s checking in with Beth on Declan and Nora.”

Lydia nodded.

Sophia understood. She and Rylie had already talked to their children who were at Beth’s house. They needed the connection.

“Mason,” Rylie started, “we think we have something. It was buried down through a hell of a lot of corporations and LLCs, but it’s a defunct winery in Temecula. It was owned by a man who did business with an American who did business with Ibrahim Sula back in 2022. He died. Ibrahim had a small stake in the winery. It’s a longshot, but it’s an empty property in Temecula. That, and,” she brought up the photo of Kayla, “this looks like a stone floor.”

“Like in a fermentation room.” Sophia felt real hope spread through her, and Mason’s grip tightened on her shoulders.

“I’ll take it. What else have you got?” he asked Rylie.

“It used to be a big operation. It was hit hard by Covid. Nobody’s bought it, so it’s sitting out there, unoccupied.”

“Do you have blueprints?” Mason asked.

“Not yet,” Lydia answered. “Still working on that. I’ve got aerial from Google Maps. I was able to pull up their archived website, so we’ve got an idea of what it looked like. We’ve got interior and exterior shots.”

“It’s seventy acres of vines,” Rylie said. “There are two main buildings, and the picture of Kayla is an interior shot.”

“Which building?” Mason asked.

Lydia pulled up the archived website on her screen and turned it toward him. “The main building is the tasting room and event space. Big windows, high ceilings. Not where you put someone you don't want found.” She scrolled. “The second building is the production facility. Stone construction, built into a hillside for temperature control. Barrel storage underneath.”

“The stone floors,” Sophia said. “Just like the picture.”

Rylie looked at her. “Yeah.”

Nobody said anything for a moment. They didn't need to.

Mason leaned over Lydia's screen, studying the exterior shots. “One road in?”

“One paved road. There may be service tracks through the vines but I can't confirm from what I've got.”

“Sight lines?”

“The production building sits lower than the main building. If you're coming in on the road, you'd be visible from the upper structure for about a quarter mile.”

“So he'd see us coming,” Mason said.

“If he's watching,” Rylie said. “If he's even there.”

“He's there.” Mason straightened up. “He wants to be close. Clint said it. He's been in the country for months. He didn't come all this way to watch from a hotel in Beverly Hills.” He looked at the Google aerial image. “He's there.”

Sophia watched him work through it. It was familiar. The way his eyes went quiet and specific when he was mapping an approach, calculating distances, reading terrain from a photograph the way other men read a room. She had always found it reassuring. She found it more reassuring now than she ever had.