Page 28 of Harbored by the SEAL
She nodded. “You're right. Go ahead and worry. But I still get to decide my own fate.”
He copied and pasted a line of code to a login screen. “I'm in,” he said. The row of security monitors changed from blank screens to live feeds.
Charlotte looked at them, eerily dark images from a ship that had lost its main power. “I think we are in one of the only rooms that has full power right now.”
“It makes sense. It’s not a luxury to have power in the security room. It’s a necessity. I can see in the control settings where they turned off the main power. There is clearly no problem with the system itself. It's just a ruse. I wonder what they’re hoping to accomplish.”
One of the monitors glowed much brighter than the others, and Charlotte moved toward it, her eyes trying to make sense of what she saw. There was a man on the ground, windows along one whole wall, and what seemed to be a long console. Was that the ship’s bridge? “Logan, come here for a minute.”
He stood and joined her at the screen. “Holy shit,” he whispered. “That’s the captain.” He picked up his walkie-talkie and called for Cowboy. “The captain has been injured. He’s on the bridge. He may even be dead.”
25
Cowboy, Harrison, Red, and Hawk ran to the bridge. The ship’s halls were nearly empty, the announcement for the guests to stay in their rooms seeming to have made quite an impact.
Cowboy was the first to reach the captain. Blood soaked the captain’s upper right shoulder all the way down to the middle of his chest. He looked dead. Cowboy felt his neck for a pulse, surprised when he found one. “Captain!” he called. “Captain, can you hear me?”
The captain’s eyelids twitched for several moments before they opened, his eyes unfocused and glassy. “The disco,” he said. “He’s in the disco.”
Cowboy looked to Jax, then back to the captain. “Who is in the disco?”
“Beaudreau. My first mate.”
“Did he do this to you?” asked Jax.
“Yes.”
“We need to get you to the infirmary,” said Cowboy.
“No. You go. Tell them I’m here, but stop Beaudreau before he hurts somebody.”
They were moving again, racing to the infirmary and sending help to the captain before heading to the nightclub. Cowboy couldn’t help but wonder if their elusive enemy had been there while he danced with Charlotte.
If you hadn’t been distracted, you might’ve seen something. You never should’ve taken up with her in the first place.
Not on the job.
Hell, not at all.
Now that this mission had gone south and HERO Force was here in the cold light of day, Cowboy could see it had been a mistake to be with her. Logan had been a lot less than happy to find out Cowboy and Charlotte were sleeping together. That much had been painfully obvious from the look in his teammate’s eye.
Cowboy moved along the darkened hallway, leading the pack, as the evenly spaced emergency lights gave the corridor the look of some futuristic time machine. Cowboy wished he could go back in time. Change the decisions he had made that would cost him to lose his promotion with HERO Force.
Would you really erase the time you spent with Charlotte if you could?
No way in hell.
Even though he knew better, he couldn’t make himself wish it away. Even though Logan might never forgive him, and Jax was surely pissed, too. Their time together was worth it, even if that made him a self-centered prick. He liked her.
He liked her a lot.
And given the chance, he’d do everything again.
He rounded a corner, the disco coming into view. Its sign was dark, as was seemingly everything inside. He couldn’t help but remember the last time he’d been here as he paused to let his eyes adjust as much as possible. He reached for his cell phone.
“Could be one man, could be a hundred,” Hawk whispered next to him.
Harrison pushed in front of them both. “Let me go first. I know this place better than you do.”
