Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
“Oh, no,” I moaned. “Oh no.”
It was later that night that I stupidly sent the text message.
It was short and sweet, but it relayed every bit of emotion I felt.
Ruthie: You owe me a date, or was what you said all for show?
There was no reply.
***
Three weeks later
The Pentagon still refuses to give out the names of SEAL team eleven. They’re still convinced of the safety of this team, even though all evidence shows to the contrary.
I’d been torturing myself by watching CNN for going on six weeks now.
When I wasn’t working at the bar, the news was on.
Dane absolutely hated watching the news, but when I reacted rather flamboyantly when he tried to change it the first time I watched it at work, he stopped complaining or trying.
I couldn’t really tell you why I was watching the news.
Most of the time they didn’t even cover SEAL Team Eleven’s disappearance.
As the weeks had passed, slowly the new news started to cover up the old.
Now they were playing the same story of a man who’d tried to kill his wife, over and over again.
They were dissecting his motives, as well as his past life.
At night, though, when my favorite reporter came on, was when I got the real information.
It seemed that the show’s host and reporter, Gordon Matthews, cared about his country and those that protected it.
He of course touched on the other hot topics, but the majority of his time was spent on what was happening with our troops on the other side of the world.
Gordon, what do you think is the White House’s reasoning behind their refusal to give any names out? A woman on the screen asked him.
I froze in the kitchen of Halligans and Handcuffs, where I sometimes snuck breaks so I could see if anything new had transpired over my shifts, and stared at the flat screen hanging on the wall.
Being a Navy SEAL is a tremendous accomplishment. However, they put a lot of time and effort into becoming a SEAL, and maintaining their status as a SEAL. Their identity is their protection. They rely on their identities being secret while they’re over there. What if they’re alive, and their pictures are splashed all over every TV screen in the world? If they’re taking cover waiting for the fire to die down, and see their face on the TV screen, how are they supposed to protect themselves? They’ll be sitting ducks in a country that still doesn’t trust us, and no one to protect them or have their backs. Trust me when I say what they’re doing is protecting themselves as well as the soldiers that protect this country by not giving out names.
I smiled at the screen.
That’d been about what I was thinking, and he’d said it eloquently.
“He’s okay,” Silas’ deep voice rumbled from my side.
I whipped around; heart pounding a million miles an hour.
“How do you know?” I gasped.
He winked. “That boy has street smarts that you wouldn’t believe. Met him when he was eighteen and a thief who thought I was trying to steal his dinner. Trust me when I say that he’s alive. They wouldn’t be stalling for time if they didn’t think the same.”
I went back to work, but Silas’ words stayed in the front of my mind.
He just had to be okay.
I’d never worried about anyone this much unless they meant something to me.
And I was afraid to admit it, but the longer it went that he was gone, the more I realized how attached I’d become to him.
***
Three weeks later
I bit my fingernails down to the cuticle.
Again.
Here I was, on a Saturday night, biting my fingernails and eating a gallon of ice cream while I stayed glued to the news.
SEAL Team Eleven believed alive.
An eight member team of some sort is seen here leaving the Saudi Arabian embassy. None of their identities can be confirmed, but it is believed that this is the team that went missing two months ago, after a botched mission gone wrong. Nothing has been proven yet, but Fox News will visit this new development upon the hour.
Was that him?
They looked a lot smaller than what I thought Sterling should look, but if he was in hiding for nine weeks, then that only made sense.
My phone pinged at my side, and before looking at it, I scooped a humongous wedge of ice cream onto my spoon that was made for two mouths instead of one, and pulled it up to my face to read the message.
Kraken: It wasn’t all for show. Come outside.
My brows furrowed.
Kraken?
What the fuck, and who the hell was that?
I’d never programmed a ‘Kraken’ into my phone.
But, like the dumb movie heroine who always gets killed in the scary movies, I walked outside with my large spoon in my hand, still holding my ice cream.
Thinking I was being smart, I unlocked the back door and slowly slipped into the night.
It was raining.
Like it always was here.
It felt like I’d moved to Seattle with all the rain we’d been getting.
Luckily, the house was equipped with a wraparound porch, even if it did need fixing in places.
I knew how to avoid those places, though.
And apparently so did the man that snuck up behind me and pulled me into a warm, hard, extremely hard, body.
A metal clang announced the melting spoon hitting the ground.
“Trying to sneak up on me?” The man asked.
My heart was pounding, but not because I was scared. Not anymore.
Because I was over the fucking moon!
“Sterling!” I cried, wiggling in his arms until I had my arms around his neck.
He let me, of course, but I didn’t notice as I hugged him tight.
“You’re okay!” I cried.
“Mmmmhmm,” he hummed. “A-Okay.”
I leaned back until my hands were pressed on either side of his face, fingers grazing his beard that’d grown exponentially since I’d last seen him.
His hair had as well, from what I could tell by my emergency lights that’d flicked on the moment I’d passed.
I’d ask him later how he’d managed not to set them off.