Page 12 of Over the Edge

She explained impatiently, “I hate clowns. And groups of them creep me out. A clown posse was the craziest, scariest thing I could think of in the heat of the moment.” She paused, then burst out, “For real. Are you out of your mind?”

“No. I’m not. I understand the risk I’m undertaking. But we’ve left behind one of our own. My friend. Hell, mybrother. Ken won’t survive much longer. You and I both know Abu Haddad is a sadistic fuck. On a good day, Kenny’s likely being tortured half to death.”

She replied gently, “Kenny may not be alive, now. From what we saw of his body-cam footage, he was badly injured in the Swat ambush. Without proper medical care, the odds of him living through that night were slim.”

Trevor shrugged. “Then I’ll bring his body home. Either way, we don’t leave one of our own behind. Ever.”

The last fog of the scotch burned away in the face of her dismay. “Do you have some new intel on where he might be? Where will you go?”

Trevor shrugged. “I don’t know any more than the rest of you. I’ll go back to where he disappeared and start there. Try to pick up a trail.”

“That’s a year old? Good luck with that. Particularly in that part of the world.”

“It’s all we’ve got.”

“I’m still stuck on the part where you want to go alone to arguably the most dangerous place on earth by yourself and steal a terrorist’s prisoner. Do you have a death wish?”

He shrugged. “We have a duty to Kenny.”

“It’s suicide,” she declared forcefully.

“So be it.”

CHAPTERFOUR

Anna headed for the team’s mission planning room and the emergency briefing Cal had called for first thing this morning. Thankfully, she had consumed alcohol sensibly last night along with plenty of water, which translated to no hangover today. Well, not much of one. A headache nagged at the edges of her awareness, but it was entirely possible it stemmed from her frustration at Trevor for insisting on pursuing this mad plan of his to go get Ken.

Of course, her headache could just as easily be from the lousy night’s sleep she’d gotten last night. Every time she’d closed her eyes, images of Trevor danced on her eyelids. She relived the smell of him, the feel of him pressed against her, the reluctant flash of his smile, memory of his lips against hers.

In a word, last night had been heaven and hell.

Underlying all her memories and fantasies had been a creeping sense of humiliation. She’d thrown herself at him, and he’d walked away. Heck, he’d all but run away.

Just like they all did.

Maybe it was for the best that he’d walked away instead of taking her up on her pathetic pass at him.

Was she as bad as the woman she’d chased away from him in Mabel’s? Was that how he saw her? She squeezed her eyes shut while mortification rolled over her like a slow steamroller, crushing her one agonizing bone at a time.

She flopped into a chair at the conference table, averting her gaze from Trevor as he strolled in. She studied everything, anything, in the room but him.

Darn it. Last night’s Pandora box of feelings was still yawning wide open. When she looked at him this morning, she saw a man she’d love to know better, in a much more personal and intimate way. What she didn’t see was a fellow SEAL, or just another one of the guys.

She was. So. Screwed.

Most of the Reapers didn’t look too chipper as they fell into chairs around the big conference table. Axe and Jojo both sported sunglasses in the windowless briefing room.

Trevor looked as neat and self-contained as always, with no hint of a hangover. He made a point of taking a chair at the far end of the table from her, and she could forget him making eye contact with her. Apparently, his plan was to completely ignore what had happened between them last night and to ignore her.

Yet again, memory of their smoking hot kiss rolled through her, and her breath jerked in and out of her lungs. Parts of her body that pretty much never tingled were doing so now, and she pressed her thighs together tightly under the conference table.

She tried with all her might to force her emotions back into that stupid box they’d popped out of, but no go. Trevor was in the same room with her, breathing the same air, and no amount of self-discipline was going to contain her reaction to him.

For the love of God, Cal, start the briefing already.

Desperate to distract herself, she focused on the big digital map glowing, backlit, on the wall across the table from her. Today, it depicted northern India, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the tiny country of Zagistan sandwiched between them. Her birthplace. Her father had died when she was an infant, and her mother had come to America to begin a new life. A courageous and ambitious woman, her mother.

A green dot at the northern tip of Pakistan, deep in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, indicated where the Swat Ambush had taken place. It would be Trevor’s starting point in searching for Ken.

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