Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(86)

She stared down at her shaking fingers and forced them to stillness.

She couldn’t let that happen.

“Hey,” Rawls said in a low voice from beside her, nudging her with his shoulder. “You okay? You’re awfully quiet over there.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Faith said. Giving up on the appearance of eating, she pushed the plate aside. “You’re going after them, aren’t you? After Gilbert and the rest of my team?”

Rawls cast a cautious look down the long steel cafeteria table their group had taken over. Beth and Zane sat hip to hip, their heads tilted toward each other, quietly talking. Cosky and Kait sat across from Marion Simcosky, laughing at something she was saying. The women were upbeat and relieved.

Did they know what their men had planned? Or that they were acting off information provided by a ghost? She doubted Wolf or Rawls had explained the circumstances behind this sudden opportunity.

“How about we talk about this when we get back to the clinic?” Rawls said, bending toward her so his request was spoken directly into her ear. “The doc’s doing the stress test in two hours, right? We can talk then.”

She quivered as his warm breath caressed the side of her neck and tickled the inside of her ear. She wasn’t sure exactly where things were headed between them, which was one more thing they needed to talk about. There was definitely a sense of building intimacy in their interactions. He wasn’t pulling away any longer. But what that meant, she didn’t know.

The only thing she knew for absolute certainty, at this moment, was that her information couldn’t wait until after her stress test.

“When are you meeting again to discuss their rescue?” she asked in an equally quiet but persistent voice.

“Faith.” He turned a censoring look on her. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“No.” She half twisted on her seat to look at him. “We’ll talk about this now. I want to be in on this meeting.”

He smiled at her, a patient, maybe even affectionate smile. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen, darlin’.”

It had to happen. It would happen.

She couldn’t let them attack the building where her team was re-creating the technology she’d been instrumental in creating—not without warning them of what they were walking into. It was true they were military. It was true there was a possibility that once they realized the prototype’s potential, they would move to weaponize it. But she couldn’t let them walk into a possible ambush.

She simply couldn’t.

If the prototype was working at capacity, they’d be massacred.

“Look, there are things you don’t know about the research we were doing. Things that will get you killed.”

He studied her face intently, and in some indefinable way, his gaze seemed to sharpen. “What things?”

She released a frustrated breath. “I’ll tell you at the meeting!”

“What meeting?”

It was Cosky’s flat voice. Faith glanced down the table to find everyone’s gaze locked on her. The argument had finally caught the attention of the rest of the table.

“Our nineteen hundred,” Rawls said after a moment, still studying Faith’s face. A faint frown furrowed his brow.

“That’s classified.” Mac’s tone was clipped and abrupt—like the subject was closed.

“She has critical information to share about her research,” Rawls said, shooting Mac a flat look.

“Sure she does,” Mac snorted.

“Information,” Rawls continued, his voice cold and challenging, “that is essential to any rescue attempt.”

Faith’s stomach tightened and churned. For a moment it felt like the small amount of chicken and bread she’d managed to force down was about to come up. She glanced down the table at Beth and Kait, wondering how the two women were handling the news that their men were about to throw themselves into harm’s way. Neither woman looked surprised. And if they were worried, they had locked the fear behind calm faces.

A wave of shame washed over her at their courage and her lack thereof. She was barely involved with Rawls and the thought of him in danger left her crumbling inside.

“If you have vital information, then tell us now, and we’ll pass it on,” Mac said impatiently.

Rawls ran a hand over his hair and shook his head. “We’re not runnin’ this show. Wolf and his team are. And somethin’ tells me they’re gonna want to hear the information directly from the horse’s mouth.”





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Chapter Seventeen




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RAWLS HAD NO luck hunting Wolf down before their 1900 strategy session, so when the two men sent to escort Rawls to the meeting showed up in the clinic after Faith’s stress test, Rawls took them aside and explained the situation to them. After a moment of conferring with each other, Faith was motioned forward. They were both escorted outside the clinic to where another golf cart waited, but this one had rows of seats for extra passengers.

Cosky, Zane, and Mac were already seated in the back row of the vehicle. Rawls helped Faith into the cart and took the seat beside hers. Once they were settled, the driver took off in the opposite direction from where Wolf had taken Rawls earlier.