Page 83 of Her Forever SEAL

Lazu barked once. It was a friendly bark. Then she heard Angie coming through the front door. “Beth says the kids are good. Declan built some kind of fort. Nora's pretending she's too old for it and then apparently sneaking in when she thinks nobody's watching.” She dropped into a chair and looked at the screens. “What did I miss?”

“Defunct winery in Temecula,” Rylie said. “Tied to Sula through about six layers of corporate structure.”

“I'll take it,” Angie said, which was exactly what Mason had said, and Sophia felt something in her chest loosen just slightly at the familiarity of it.

“We need blueprints,” Mason said to Lydia.

“Working on it. I’m going through old building inspection filings. I need a little more time.”

“How much time do we have?” Angie asked.

“He'll make contact again,” Mason said. “He's not done. The text was the opening move. He wants engagement.” His jaw tightened. “After all,” he looked at Sophia, “he wants a trade.”

She looked into his eyes. “No he doesn’t,” she whispered.

The room went quiet.

Mason stared at her.

“That’s what he said. The text said, Trade. You for her.”

“That was a lie,” she whispered. “You know it, Mason.”

“Soph—”

“Mason.” She kept her voice level. She didn’t know how, but she did. “He doesn’t want to trade you for Kayla. He wants to kill her in front of you.”

He broke. Right there. In front of her “Baby⁠—”

“I know you didn’t want to tell me. But you have to. I have to know. I need to know. You can’t shield me from this. I have to know the mission. I have to.”

He grabbed her into his arms. So tight.

Their hearts beat together. Then she pulled away and looked up at him.

“What do we do when he contacts you?”

Mason pulled back and looked at her. Whatever had broken a moment ago had been put back, not hidden, just held. She could see both things at once, the father who had just heard the worst possible truth spoken out loud, and the operator who was already moving past it because moving past it was the only way to get their daughter home.

“We give him what he expects,” Mason said. “He expects a father who got that text and is desperate, scared, and making bad decisions.” He looked around the room. “So that's what he gets.”

“Proof of life,” Rylie said from her laptop. “Not a photo. You want a video. It stalls him, and we have a better chance of seeing if we’re right. If it’s the winery.”

“Or something that tells us we're wrong about the winery,” Lydia said. She didn't look up from her screen. “Better to know.”

“We're not wrong,” Mason said.

“No. We’re not wrong.” Lydia agreed.

“Blueprints?” Mason asked.

“Something resembling blueprints,” was Lydia’s frustrated response. “County records are a mess. The original construction was in 1987, there've been four permit applications since then, two of them were approved and one of those was never completed. What I’ve got might not match what's actually there.”

“What about personnel?” Angie asked. She was looking at the aerial image on Rylie's screen. “Seventy acres. Two main structures. We have no idea how many people he brought.”

“Minimum two at the site,” Mason said. “And he'll have eyes on the road.”

“Could be four, could be ten,” Rylie said.