Page 4 of Over the Edge

Axe half-rose, and Anna took advantage of the moment to claim a little more of the seat and slide a few inches away from Trevor. He threw her a sardonic, sidelong glance, but she studiously ignored it, picking up her shot glass and holding it out to Jojo. While she was at it, she grabbed one of the full shot glasses and slid it in front of Trevor.

He lifted the scotch, sniffed it appreciatively, and then tasted it. His eyes drifted closed in what looked like pure ecstasy. Wowsers. To make him do that in bed…to feel him lose herself in pleasure inside her—

—Colleagues. Friends. Off limits.

Jojo picked up his own shot glass. “A toast,” he announced. “To Sherri Tate for finishing Phase Two of BUD/S. Here’s to her finishing Phase Three.”

Anna joined in the enthusiastic chorus of hooyah’s. She was so darned proud of her sister-in-arms she could bust.

Lily commented, “Better her than me. I’ll take being trained by you meatheads over going through the formal BUD/S course any time.”

Anna chimed in, “I’ll drink to that.”

Both of them were being trained extremely off the books, in a classified program called Operation Valkyrie, to be Navy SEALs. Meanwhile, their teammate, Sherri Tate, was being extremely publicly trained to be one.

The idea was for Sherri to be a plainly visible, non-operational, poster child, and to draw all of the media attention away from Anna and Lily so the two of them could quietly become operational. They would be deployed without America’s adversaries being any the wiser to the presence of women in the actual SEAL community.

But in talking with Sherri when she came up for air—rarely—in her rigorous schedule, it sounded like the guys at Coronado were training her for real. Instead of getting two actual women SEALs and a fake cover story, it looked like Cal Kettering was going to get three women SEALs out of the Valkyrie Ops program.

Because of their exceptional professionalism and general maturity, the Reapers had been specifically chosen to train and work with the first women SEALs. Which the guys in the platoon seemed to see as both a blessing and a curse. Women, because of their unique skill sets, would open up operational opportunities for the Reapers that no other SEAL team had. But…working with women.

It had been a big adjustment for all of them.

Trevor had been outspoken in favor of women Special Forces operators, particularly when they’d first arrived and the other guys had been skeptical. He’d argued that women would be a hell of a force multiplier and able to infiltrate areas of operation unavailable to male soldiers. Not to mention nobody, nowhere, knew to look for women operators. The ladies could slip under the radar in ways men couldn’t.

Thankfully, Anna and the other women had proven him right so far. As they’d started running full combat simulations, she and Lily were surprising everyone.

Jojo refilled everyone’s glasses, and Lily lifted hers, saying soberly, “To Sam and Kenny.”

Trevor froze beside Anna. A wave of pain rolled off him so hard it slammed into her like a physical blow and was so intense it stole her breath away. Under the table, she touched his leg just above the knee, lightly, silently questioning if he was all right.

Sam Dorsey and Ken Singleton had been lost last winter on a mission in a Pakistani hellhole called the Swat Valley. They’d been set up. Ambushed by a terrorist named Abu Haddad. Sam had died, and Kenny had been injured. But when reinforcements arrived, Kenny had been gone without a trace. Nobody knew what had happened to him. Which was almost worse than knowing he was dead.

Trevor and Kenny had been close. The way she heard it, Ken had adopted the British exchange officer when he’d first arrived and had shown the new guy the ropes.

Below the table, callused fingers gave her hand a quick, hard squeeze. Trevor’s hand withdrew, coming up above the table to reach for his shot glass.

A somber mood enveloped everyone in the booth as they raised their glasses and clinked them together. Anna murmured, “To Sam’s puppy dog smile and Ken’s terrible country music lyrics.”

Trevor added, “As my Irish grannie used to say, ‘May they have been an hour in Heaven before the Devil knew they were dead’.”

The words were spoken lightly, but she heard the underlying grief. It was rare that he showed his real feelings, let alone ones as raw and painful as these. An urge to hug him washed over her. Not that she acted upon it, of course.

Leo leaned forward, his face grim. “To revenge.” He’d also been on the disastrous mission where their brothers had been lost. Since coming home, he’d been a changed man, silent and angry.

Jojo had been the fourth Reaper on the mission, but he’d never spoken a word about that night. He’d nearly died when a house collapsed on him, but had managed to crawl out of the rubble and egress with the surviving SEALs.

Anna echoed Leo’s toast along with the others. To revenge, indeed. Every one of them carried a mental bullet with Abu Haddad’s name on it.

Trevor tossed back his scotch, and she caught the odd expression that crossed his face. Over the past year, she’d made a private hobby of studying him when he wasn’t looking at her, or she probably wouldn’t have noticed the faint flicker of…something.

Did it have to do with the shouting match, earlier? She hadn’t told any of the Reapers about Trevor and Cal’s argument. Today was a liberty day, and she’d been the only team member on base this afternoon to hear it. She briefly debated bringing it up now, confident the rest of the team would bully him into ‘fessing up to what had gone on in Cal’s office.

But Trevor would not appreciate her airing his personal laundry in front of the others. Even if it was a known fact that SEAL teams had no secrets—both by operational necessity and by the stubborn, unrelenting meddling in one another’s lives.

As the level in the bottle of scotch dropped, the joviality and insults around the table increased. Trevor faked enjoying himself beside her, laughing at the jokes and throwing out a few token insults of his own. But she definitely sensed his mood darkening as the evening progressed.

Weird. Trevor wasn’t a mean drunk. He was the guy who always remained smoothly in control, charming and funny right up until the moment he passed out.

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