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I shrugged. “Probably until you realize that you put yourself in a bad position.”

“I know that,” she said flatly. “I got caught up in the moment, which is unusual for me. I’m usually a lot more cautious. I made a mistake because I got excited about a monumental event. Happy?”

She sounded so forlorn that I stifled any further comments about her safety.

I knew she’d gotten caught up in the moment. She was a scientist who specialized in meteors and meteorites.

I knew the subject was a passion for her.

Something momentous had happened, and Jenna had just…reacted.

Truthfully, she should have been fine with her plan of visiting for the day. In her eyes, it had looked like a minimal risk for a significant gain.

Her biggest mistake had been venturing outside of the major tourist areas, but once she’d arrived there, it would have been a big ask for her not to find the strewn site. It hadn’t been that far away from the downtown area.

“I understand why you did it,” I said honestly. “I just don’t like it. If we’d arrived one day later, you would have been gone.”

“What would have happened then?” she asked pensively.

I cocked a brow at her. “We would have found you. Make no mistake about that. We don’t give up on victims, and Marshall is a damn good tracker. But your experience probably would have been a lot more traumatic. It would have taken time, and time was something you didn’t have on your side if that asshole was turning you over to a high-level cartel member in South America.”

Jenna’s expression was stoic, but her almost imperceptible shudder was a subtle tell that she knew damn well what could have happened to her.

“I knew what was going to happen,” she admitted. “That’s why I tried to escape. I had to at least try to avoid my fate. I’m grateful that you got there before I was sent to South America.”

“Me, too,” I said huskily as I closed my eyes briefly to block out the images of what could have happened to her if we’d arrived just mere hours later. “Me, too.”

Chapter 7

Jenna

“This house is incredible,” I told Brock honestly as I opened a beer he’d requested and set it in front of him at the kitchen table. “I know that your career probably pays well, but this place is really extraordinary. And I’m only giving you alcohol because you decided to switch to over-the-counter painkillers.”

I thought he could probably use the narcotic version for a little longer, but I understood his desire to start clearing his head.

It was dark, so I couldn’t see the water from the large, floor-to-ceiling windows in his family room, but Brock had already told me that he had a great view of the water from his elevated position at the top of a hill.

His home was big, and he’d given me a basic tour as soon as we’d arrived here two hours earlier.

The main floor of the house was the living space, complete with an incredible kitchen, Brock’s office, and spacious living and family rooms. The master bedroom and the sizeable guest bedrooms were upstairs. I’d been given the bedroom next to Brock’s, with an en suite bathroom. The lower level was finished with a gym and a conference room, something that all four of his team had for Last Hope operations.

He’d explained that his entire team had homes in this general area, each one with an equally dramatic view of Lake Michigan.

They’d each built their own homes when they’d gotten out of the military.

I had to wonder if all those homes were as impressive as Brock’s.

Strangely, even though the home was large and obviously expensive, the place was decorated with furnishings meant for comfort and spaces that were cozy rather than showy.

He shot me an amused glance. “Are you planning on monitoring everything I eat and drink? If you do, you’re going to be sadly disappointed when you go through my cupboards. I’m a single guy and I don’t always eat as healthy as I should. And my home wasn’t completely paid for by my career. Wyatt Durand, one of the billionaire members of Last Hope who works with Marshall in San Diego, was part of my Delta team for a lot of years. He made damn sure we learned how to invest our money early. We got good retention bonuses, and we rarely spent any of our pay. Over the years, that money grew, and Wyatt kept adding stock gifts for all of us to our portfolios. The stocks he bought were brilliant early investments. We were set by the time we left the army. We had to force Wyatt to stop contributing after we left the military. He’d taught us to be savvy investors by then, and we didn’t need his help anymore.”

I tilted my head as I surveyed him. “Wyatt must be just as nice as the rest of your team,” I observed.

“None of us are nice,” he answered drily before he took a slug of his beer. “But he’s a very decent guy. All the billionaire partners are previous special forces and they’re all good men. There aren’t that many billionaires who donate a lot of their time, money, and effort to an organization like Last Hope. I know Wyatt a lot better than the others because he’s been a friend for a long time.”

Honestly, the amount of dedication it took from so many people to run a volunteer rescue like Last Hope was mind-boggling to me.

I started to open Brock’s cupboards to see what I was going to need at the market.