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  “Twenty minutes?”

  A knock sounded at Kel’s door.

  “Come in,” Kel called out, and both men turned to see an enlisted man standing in the hallway.

  “I guess he’s early.” Kel waved him in.

  The man was at least seven or eight inches shorter than Seth, around five foot ten, and Seth guessed from his build and light hair that his family originated from somewhere in Scandinavia or Western Europe.

  Seth continued to study the man as he came to attention. He carried himself well enough, and his gaze was direct, something he appreciated in a man. When Damian introduced himself, Seth was surprised to hear a noticeable Hispanic accent. It was subtle enough that he couldn’t quite place it, but there was no doubt this man had spent a significant amount of time south of the border.

  Seth glanced at Kel, not sure what he was supposed to do now. There was a reason he was content to remain second in command of the squad. He didn’t like to deal with the headaches and politics that came with being in charge.

  Kel completed the introductions by motioning to Seth. “This is Lieutenant Seth Johnson. He’ll be serving as your CO until Lieutenant Commander Miller returns from leave next week. I believe you have weapons training in an hour, so I suggest you settle in and then report to the firing range at ten hundred.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Damian said and then disappeared back the way he had come.

  As soon as he left the room, Seth turned to Kel once more and renewed his plea. “Seriously, Kel. Why the Saint Squad?”

  “Because you’re the best.”

  “I already told you, flattery isn’t going to work.”

  Kel waved toward the door. “You’d better round up the rest of your men for weapons training.”

  When Seth started to leave, Kel added, “And, Seth, do me a favor and don’t let Damian shoot anyone.”

  Seth held both hands out in surrender. “I’ll do what I can.”

  * * *

  Damian stood at the edge of the shooting range, a gun in his hand. The rest of his new squad wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes, and he took this rare quiet moment to enjoy the view. In the forefront, functional buildings and snow-covered fields dominated the landscape. He had already seen the community of base housing, the airfield, and the various aircraft that utilized it.

  He couldn’t see the ocean from here, but the scent of salt and sea carried on the light breeze. He had dropped his gear at the temporary housing he’d been assigned, but he hoped he could find an apartment within running distance of the water.

  He loved the ocean in a way few men understood. His entire life had been spent within minutes of the water, first in Venezuela and then in Houston. Not that he and his brothers had ever known what it was like to live in the high-rise condos or the beautiful homes along those coastlines. His family had always been on the outskirts of the community, using bicycles or their father’s ancient pickup truck to bridge the distance between home and the beach.

  A Humvee pulled up, and Damian recognized the big black man who climbed out of the driver’s seat as the lieutenant he had met in the commander’s office. The dark-haired man who climbed out of the seat behind Lieutenant Johnson was nearly as tall but lankier in build and a bit younger than the others.

  The two men on the other side looked at him with differing expressions. The taller of the two had sandy hair, just a shade or two darker than his own, and he studied him with a look that crossed between simple curiosity and acceptance. As he followed the lieutenant toward Damian, his gait was long and easy.

  The final member of the group stood around six feet tall, and his skepticism was obvious in his dark eyes and rigid posture.

  Damian holstered his weapon and came to attention. He watched the men approach, flanking out in a V formation as though preparing to go to battle. They looked so connected, so unified. He wondered briefly if these men considered him the enemy.

  He had been excited to get this assignment and have the opportunity to work with a squad that was so well respected, yet, now that the moment was here, he wondered if he would ever be accepted. Would he ever be good enough to be one of them? And if so, would these men ever open their ranks to let him in?

  “At ease,” Lieutenant Johnson said with a trace of impatience. “Damian Schmitt, meet the rest of the squad.” He pointed to the serious one first. “This is Quinn Lambert. Next to him is Tristan Crowther.”

  Quinn offered a cursory nod, while Tristan stepped forward and offered a hand. Texas sounded in his words. “Good to meet you.”

  “You too.”

  “And the tall guy over there is Jay Wellman.”

  Jay also stepped forward and shook Damian’s hand. “Welcome to the squad.” His eyes lit with humor when he added, “It’ll be nice not to be the new guy.”

  “How long have you been with this unit?” Damian asked, eager to find someone who could help him navigate these unfamiliar dynamics.

  “Two years.”

  “Two years?” Damian repeated.

  “You can get acquainted later. Everyone gather round. Whose turn is it to pray?” Seth asked.

  Of all the things Damian had expected to come out of his commanding officer’s mouth, “Whose turn is it to pray?” was definitely not on the list. Apparently, Seth noticed his confusion. “We use every tool available in our jobs. That includes asking for the Lord’s guidance. You never know when it will come in handy.”

  “I’ll say it,” Tristan offered.

  Everyone folded their arms, and Damian followed suit. Tristan’s prayer was short and simple, asking for the Lord to watch over and protect them and to give them the inspiration necessary to perform to the best of their abilities.

  As soon as the prayer ended, Seth resumed business as usual. “Go line up. It’s time for some target practice.” Seth motioned Damian to the shooting station on the end. “Start with your sidearm, and then we’ll shift to assault rifles.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You don’t have to ‘sir’ me. Call me Seth.”

  “Yes, sir,” Damian said automatically. He quickly corrected himself. “Yes, Seth.”

  Seth waited for Damian to settle in and start shooting. Damian felt like he was going through evaluations all over again. After several rounds, Seth said, “Not bad. Go ahead and work on assault rifles. I’ll be at the next station over.”

  Damian cleaned his sidearm and holstered it. He took a moment to look down the line at the rest of the squad before switching weapons. He had thought this would be like shooting practice at BUD/S, but he found it odd to no longer have an instructor standing by watching everyone’s performance.

  When he glanced out at the target Seth had just started shooting at, he felt a new sense of admiration. The man definitely knew how to abuse a target.

  Determined to maintain a comparable level of competency, he picked up his rifle and fell in line.

  Chapter 3

  It wasn’t the middle of the night when Paige’s phone rang, but it was close. Four o’clock. In the morning.

  Paige cleared the sleep out of her throat before she answered.

  “It’s Vanessa. I hope I didn’t wake you, but I need you in the office in an hour.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there.” Paige took a moment to wonder why Vanessa hadn’t told her to plan on coming into the office so early when they had spoken last night. Then she recognized this for what it was. A test.

  She hurried across her hotel room to shower. She hoped to use her lunch hour to start searching for an apartment, but somehow, she doubted she would have a traditional lunch hour working for Vanessa.

  She walked into the office at ten minutes to five to find her new boss already at her desk, her computer humming and a stack of files at her elbow.

  “Oh, good. You’re on time.”

  Paige made a mental note that Vanessa considered ten minutes early to be on time and dropped her purse on the desk in the corner of the room, the one Vanessa had assigned to her
the day before.

  “What do you want me to start with this morning?”

  “Housing assignments.” Vanessa picked up three files off her desk and held them out to Paige. “I have a new class showing up tomorrow morning.”

  Paige looked down at the files. “Any particular rules I need to know about?”

  “Just make sure the men are in men’s quarters and women are in women’s quarters.”

  “I think I can handle that.”

  “The top file has all of the contact information for the housing office and some key phone numbers. You’ll need to get the assignments to housing and arrange for the class members to get their keys.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Great.” Vanessa secured her computer and stood. “I have a training exercise I had to push up this morning because of some bad weather that’s moving in this afternoon. I should be back around lunchtime.”

  “Is there anything else you want me to work on once I get the housing assignments done?”

  “I doubt you’ll finish those before I get back, but if you do, talk to security about getting your new passwords and computer access. Also, be prepared to attend my next class. You need to be familiar with what I’m teaching so you can field questions.” Vanessa grabbed her coat and gloves. “See you later.”

  Paige watched her disappear through the door, wondering why exactly she needed to be in the office at 5:00 a.m. and what she should expect in Vanessa’s class. Pushing those thoughts aside, she dropped down at her desk and began flipping through the files.

  Experience told her that security would need some lead time to set up her computer access. She called the security office, not surprised when she got voice mail instead of a real person. She left a message and then moved on to the housing assignments.

  One file held a class roster of only twenty names. The second file included housing diagrams of the men’s and women’s housing units.

  Seeing the work as a big puzzle, Paige grabbed a few sheets of paper from the printer on Vanessa’s desk and started making notes.

  * * *

  Damian stood on the edge of the rappelling wall and wondered exactly what he was doing there. When he’d graduated from SEAL training, he had thought he was ready for whatever the navy wanted to throw at him. That was before he had worked alongside the Saint Squad.

  The stories he’d heard led him to expect a bunch of hardened warriors in this squad; instead, he discovered these were five family men of faith. They prayed every morning before beginning whatever activities they had planned, and they all had a noticeable respect for their wives. Even with that difference, when they went through their training exercises, they were all business.

  He had trained beside them for nearly a week now. Every exercise, every obstacle was another opportunity for him to see how much he still had to learn. He didn’t enjoy feeling like the weak link.

  Quinn was a better shot, Tristan and Jay better swimmers. Seth was a whiz with electronics, everything from communications to explosives. Throughout each training exercise, Damian was faced with the stark reality that he was no longer the best in the class.

  He had become so accustomed to being the person everyone looked to for help that he had forgotten he was far from being an expert. A gust of wind whooshed across the outdoor platform, sending the surrounding trees swaying and making the already frigid air feel colder.

  “Who wants to go first?” Seth asked when he approached.

  “Tristan and I can show the rookie how it’s done.” Quinn jerked a thumb at Tristan.

  “All right,” Seth said in his lazy Southern drawl. “Double-check your gear before you start your climb down.”

  “Already did,” Quinn responded. He hooked the rappelling line to the D-ring on his harness, Tristan mirroring the action.

  Moving as one, the two men positioned their feet on the edge of the wall. Trusting the lines to hold their weight, they began their backward descent.

  Damian watched them use their legs to control their climbs, the two men staying even as they lowered themselves down their ropes until their feet touched the ground.

  Jay stepped forward. “I’ll go next.”

  “Damian, you go beside him. I’ll be right here in case you have any trouble.”

  Damian nodded. This wasn’t his first time rappelling, but it was odd having Jay clip in beside him instead of Nick, his old swim buddy.

  The two men got into position, and Seth checked Damian’s gear before giving them the okay to start.

  Damian felt that familiar pitch in his stomach when he stepped off the edge and his rappelling ropes went taut. He glanced over at Jay, who gave him a slight nod to signal him to begin. Together they pushed off, catching air before swinging back against the thick wood of the wall, their boots thudding against it almost in unison.

  Adrenaline rushed through him, his hands working the lines efficiently. A third of the way down the sixty-foot wall, he found himself a little ahead of Jay. They weren’t as unified as Tristan and Quinn, but Damian felt a surge of accomplishment to see he was relatively in sync with his teammate.

  An eerie creak above him sent a shaft of trepidation through him, and his already rapid heartbeat picked up speed. He glanced up to see his line and anchors securely intact. Then his gaze shifted slightly, and he saw Jay’s anchor sag, the wood around it splintering dangerously. “Jay!” Damian shouted out, using his feet to push off the wall to swing himself closer to his teammate. He wasn’t sure what he intended to do, but when a loud crack sounded, he instinctively reached out for the other man’s arm.

  The lines supporting Jay’s weight snapped free, and he must have felt himself start to fall because he reached out too, his right hand grasping Damian’s left forearm. Jay’s fingers dug into Damian as the failed anchor and shards of wood hurled through the air and the ropes rained down over them.

  For a moment, time stood still. A million thoughts raced through Damian’s mind: the knowledge that the two lines holding him in place now had the added strain of Jay’s weight, the awareness that they were both dangling more than forty feet above the ground, the sound of men’s voices filled with urgency.

  One voice cut through the air, drowning out the others. Seth shouted at Tristan to come to the top of the tower and told Quinn to go for help.

  Quinn’s response was immediate and clear. “There isn’t time.”

  Quinn was right. Already, Damian could feel his grip on his lines faltering. He willed his mind to calm, telling himself to work through the problem. His voice was breathless when he managed to say, “I’m going to try to lower us together.”

  “Wait. My leg is caught in your lines.” The tension in Jay’s voice was obvious, but Damian sensed he was trying to logically work through this impossible scenario.

  “Can you kick it free?” Damian gripped Jay’s arm tighter with his left hand, the two men both struggling to maintain a solid bond.

  Jay’s weight shifted as he tried to free himself, and immediately, Damian’s grip on his lines faltered, and they both dropped several feet. “Whoa!” Jay lifted his left hand to grab Damian’s arm with both of his hands.

  Damian looked down, now able to see the way his two rappelling lines had twisted and caught around Jay’s leg just below the knee. When they had slipped the extra few feet toward the ground, the ropes had tangled further and tightened around Jay, preventing them from being able to slide past the obstruction.

  They were trapped. If Damian tried to lower himself to the ground, he would get tangled in the line where Jay’s leg was caught. He contemplated climbing up rather than trying to descend, even with the difficulty of shifting Jay so he could climb with him simultaneously. They didn’t have another viable option.

  “See if you can reach the line with your left hand. Maybe we can climb up instead of going down,” Damian said.

  Seth shouted from above. “Just hold on. I’m coming to you.”

  A sense of hope surfaced. Help was co
ming. Then logic caught up with Seth’s words. Damian and Jay were dangling from the only secure anchor above. How was Seth possibly going to reach them?

  He could hear Tristan pounding up the ladder toward the top of the tower, but one man wouldn’t be able to secure a line for Seth to climb down. Not to mention, where would they find rope to use? Jay’s lines had already fallen to the ground, and they were in a secluded part of the woods several miles from the nearest building.

  Damian tried to push the negative thoughts aside, concentrating solely on holding on to Jay with one hand and the rope with his other. A minute ticked by and stretched into two, his fingers cramping, the muscles in his arms burning with the continued strain.

  The rope vibrated in his hand, and he looked up at his own anchor. Was it his imagination, or was it beginning to pull free?

  Doom and despair clouded over him, and he fought them back. How could this be happening? The Saint Squad was renowned for being the best, for coming up with creative solutions when faced with unbeatable odds. Now, as soon as he joined them, they would have their first tragedy? Perhaps it hadn’t been a blessing for him to be assigned to the Saint Squad. Maybe, just maybe, it had been a curse.

  Chapter 4

  Paige heard the tech curse under his breath as he connected her new computer and phone. Apparently he and his tools weren’t getting along, and he was being rather colorful in his language as he explained to several inanimate objects exactly what he thought of them.

  Ignoring the tech’s current rant at a Phillips screwdriver that had the audacity to be the wrong size, Paige sat cross-legged in front of the large dry-erase board she had secured from a supply closet down the hall. She would go out tonight and pick up some magnetic tape, but for now, sticky notes were doing the job just as well.

  Using the phone on Vanessa’s desk, she had already talked to housing and identified which rooms were available for the course participants. She had then used a dry-erase marker to draw a rough sketch of the floor plans of the men’s and women’s housing units and numbered the rooms, cross-referencing them to the current roster.