Page 110 of Her Defiant Warrior

Fuck, like the explosion itself, everything came roaring back to him. The party, the kids, the singing, and the goddamned rainstorm. And Brax. He slammed the back of his head against the pancake-thin pillow, wishing it was a brick. Wishing it would knock him out and he could go back in time.

“Yo, Mateo, you need to watch it. If your blood pressure goes up anymore, those machines will start going off and they’ll kick me out of here.”

“Braxton?”

Brax gripped Mateo’s hand. The one that wasn’t connected to an IV. “I’d turn on the light so you could see me, but you’ve got a severe concussion, my friend, so I’ll just say yes instead.”

“But how?”

“Heard you yell. Almost had that bomb disarmed but couldn’t get ‘er done. Knew I couldn’t go through the house, there wasn’t time. Yelled at Lucy to follow me to the back metal fence. I hoisted both our asses over and ran like hell. Lucy’s fine. I got hit by a brick on my thigh. I asked to be let out of tomorrow’s obstacle course. Kostya denied it, the bastard.”

Mateo’s laugh turned into a cough.

“So, everybody’s all right?”

“I wouldn’t say that. Right now, the team is pretty goddamned pissed. Those two bombs were set to blow when the kids would be in full birthday party mode. But Kostya, being the paranoid bastard he is, thinks that whoever did it, knew that our team members would still be at the pub watching the game.”

Mateo thought about what Brax was telling him. But he wasn’t connecting the dots. Instead, his head was pounding. He didn’t have a marching band in his head; he had Metallica playing with The Lord of the Dance stepdancing to it. It was a wonder his ears weren’t bleeding.

“I’m not tracking.”

“Between your injuries and the drugs, it’s not surprising. Kostya is thinking that whoever set the bombs planned to kill the women and children. Some of our women and some of our children, but keep us alive to grieve.”

“That’s pretty fucking stupid. Have a bunch of enraged SEALs on their ass?”

“Think it through, Mateo. Just how effective would some of us be?”

The idea of Nolan O’Rourke losing Maggie and his daughter Iris knotted his gut like a snake constricting around his throat. And Jase losing Bonnie and the twins? Jesus, the man would burn down the world.

“The Kraken,” he breathed out. “They’d do this.”

“Yeah, that’s what the rest of us have been thinking. They’ve gone to ground since Dubai. We might have killed off the latest head with Ely dead, but that soul sucker Amanda is still around.”

“I thought she was your new girlfriend,” Mateo tried to tease, but then coughed again.

“You know, I don’t give a shit if you cough so hard you break a rib, after that comment. That Aussie bitch is a stone-cold killer. I don’t know if she was really into Ely or not, not with her coming onto me the way she did. I can’t decide if she would be behind this kind of retribution or not.”

Mateo finally got his coughing under control and squinted so he could see Braxton clearly.

“According to Ryker, she was a psycho.”

“She was that, for sure. It made my skin crawl when she called Ely ‘Daddy.’”

Mateo cringed. “It would have made my skin crawl, too. Are you sure she wouldn’t want revenge for Kostya killing her sugar daddy?”

Brax slowly shook his head. “I really think she was in it for the money. And they were out over fifty million dollars.”

Mateo grinned, then so did Braxton. Everybody on the Omega Sky team grinned when they thought about one certain part of the mission: everybody but Landon, Tanner, and Keegan. Those were the three men assigned to stay in the basement of the Burj Khalifa tower where all the shit and sewage was gathered each day and then pumped into over a hundred trucks. Their job had been to check all the supposedly empty trucks that came back from the desert to see which ones contained the C-4.

The three SEALs found the C-4 and forced the driver to take them to Ephram Brady, who was going to use all the explosives to blow up the US Consulate and the British Embassy. Ephram was taken into custody by the United Arab Emirates. While discussions were going on between the US and the UAE about extraditing Ephram back to the US for trial, he was unfortunately killed in a prison fight in the UAE prison. It was curious, since he was supposed to be in solitary confinement. All in all, Mateo and the rest of his team were happy with that particular outcome.

“If you think she was in it for the money, what would be the point of coming after our families?” Mateo asked. “I mean us? Yeah. There are always bounties on Navy SEALs, but not the kind of money she’s used to.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Braxton muttered. “We haven’t heard word one about the Kraken since Dubai. That’s been five months. Absolutely nothing, and you know Gideon has had his ear to the ground. What if this is the way for the Snow Queen to prove that her organization is still relevant? What if showing that she is busy taking down an entire Navy SEAL team does that?”

“I go back to my last statement. She had the opportunity to set those bombs for when we would be there, not when only the women and kids would be there. How would that be a show of strength to potential customers?”

Braxton clenched his fists and his jaw tightened. “That’s the part that I haven’t been able to work out. The bitch is all about money, not retribution. I know it in my bones. But Gideon and Kostya keep saying that this has to be revenge, and for all intents and purposes, it looks like it.”