Interrogations that ran long enough for other Marines to step outside and light cigarettes they didn’t even want, just to avoid hearing what was happening in the room.
Other Marines called it excessive. Seth and Beau called it efficient.
Command called it a problem.
They were not discharged for incompetence. They were removed because mercy had never been their strength.
Beau checks his weapon without looking down and slides it back into place.
“We’ll get her, Seth. Those motherfuckers are in for a rude awakening.”
Seth stares out the windshield, the night reflecting faintly in his eyes. The panic that had nearly drowned him in the hospital has burned off. What remains is cold and focused.
His jaw tightens. “They have no idea what hell they just brought into their lives.”
It is not a threat. It is a promise already set in motion.
They had once been warned to rein it in. To remember optics. To consider consequences. They didn’t. They adapted.
Whoever has Brooke believes they are holding the leverage. Believes they have the upper hand. They don't understand what it means to corner men who no longer care about survival, reputation, or aftermath.
Restraint had been the only thing that ever kept Seth and Beau contained.
And restraint is gone.
Chapter 13
Seth
“Okay—okay—okay,” Travis mutters, shaking so hard the wheel rattles. “Now I’m officially a getaway driver. This is a felony, I can’t go to prison, man. I’m too good looking. They’ll take one look at me and—boom—I’m somebody’s bitch by breakfast.”
I press a hand against my chest where the stitches are already pulling apart. “Travis.”
He keeps rambling. “I swear to God, Seth, I’m not built for prison. They’ll pass me around like—”
“Travis!”
He snaps his mouth shut, breathing like he just ran a marathon.
I lean forward between the seats, gripping Travis’s headrest as the SUV tears down the road.
“Do you know where they took Brooke?” I ask.
His face crumples instantly. The panic that flashes across it is real, not the dramatic nonsense he usually throws around.
“No. By the time I crawled out of that freezer, both of you were gone. Hence”—he waves frantically toward Beau—“why I called him. I had no idea what the fuck was going on.”
I let my head hit the seat, exhaustion and rage scraping through me.
“As soon as you locked us in the fridge," Travis continues. "Some masked asshole in a goat mask showed up. Grabbed her. Locked me and Naomi inside. And turned the freezer all the way up.”
My hands clench.
“That man in the mask,” I say, “was Brooke's uncle.”
He whips around so fast the SUV swerves. “John? What the fuck? What the actual fuck? Why would her uncle try to kill her?”
“I don’t think he wants to kill her. He wants to kill me. But they didn’t finish the job because they wanted me to go down for the whole massacre.”
