Page 9 of Her Forever SEAL

He held her gaze. “You're right. I can't.”

She considered this with a seriousness that made him realize, not for the first time, that she was more her mother's daughter than she would ever fully know. “Then be smart.”

He grinned. “That I can promise.”

She gave him a small grin back, the one that had a little bit of relief in it. She let go and stepped back. “Love you, Dad.”

“Love you more, baby girl.”

He pulled her door shut behind him and stood in the hallway for a moment. The house was quiet. His wife was in their room not sleeping. His daughters were in their rooms; one dead to the world, one holding herself very still reading a paperback like it was armor.

He picked up his go-bag and headed for the garage, then got into his truck.

He had fifty-five minutes.

He called Clint Archer, the man who was in charge of communications for his Midnight Delta SEAL team, as he backed out of the driveway, the night air cool through the cracked window. Clint picked up on the second ring, which meant Clint's phone had already been in his hand, which meant Clint had already gotten a heads-up from someone.

“I know,” Clint said before Mason could speak. “I'm already moving.”

“Gather the team. Briefing room, oh-two-ten. Captain Hale.”

“Copy that.” A pause. “Last one, Mase.”

Mason didn't answer that. He pulled onto the empty street and headed toward the base.

He was the second to arrive.

Jack was already there when Mason walked into the briefing room, which made sense. Jack lived closest to the base. He was sitting in his usual chair with a cup of coffee that smelled like it came from the machine in the hallway, which meant he was either very tired or very motivated, because nobody drank from that machine by choice.

Clint came in two minutes later, then Drake, then Aiden, then Dare. Finn was last, cutting it with two minutes to spare. Mason clocked this. Finn Crandall was many things but he was not a man who ran late. Not that he was technically late, but he’d cut it close. In eleven years of working together, Mason could count on one hand the number of times Finn had been anything other than early.

He let the others settle and moved to where Finn was standing, slightly apart from the group.

“Everything all right?” Mason kept his voice low.

Finn looked at him. Something moved behind his eyes, not evasion exactly, but deferral. “I'll fill you in later.”

Which meant everything was not all right.

Mason filed this, the way he filed everything that matters, in the part of his mind he would return to when he had time for it. He nodded and moved back to the front of the room as Captain Hale walked in and he didn’t waste time.

He never did. He moved to the front of the room with the particular economy of a man who had delivered briefings in rooms exactly like this one for thirty years, and he laid it out, the situation in West Africa, the American aid worker taken by a Boko Haram splinter cell in a region where American military presence was politically sensitive. The extraction had to be clean. Quiet. No footprint.

Twelve days estimated, given the terrain and the positioning requirements. They needed positive ID before they moved, and positive ID took time.

The team listened. Not passive, but active, running calculations and contingencies in real time behind still faces.

Dare raised his hand. “Medical resources available at the extraction point?”

Hale answered.

Clint asked about communications infrastructure in the region. Aiden followed with a question about air support parameters. Jack asked about the intelligence source and its reliability rating. Drake asked a question that was technically about logistics but was actually about what would happen if the twelve days became twenty, and Hale heard the real question and answered it directly.

Four minutes. Five questions. Everything necessary.

Hale gathered his materials and looked at the room. “You gentlemen have done this before. I have no doubt about the outcome.” He paused at the door. “Wheels up at oh-four-hundred.”

Then he was gone.