Luke cut her off. “I know you’ll get in my way,” he countered. “When was the last time you ran a seven-and-a-half minute mile?”
“Never, but—”
“The way I see it, we can make this work by utilizing your strengths and being completely honest about your weaknesses.”
“But—” This time Syd cut her own self off. Did he say make this work?
“Here’s what I think we should do,” Luke said. He was completely serious. “I think we should put you to work doing what you do best. Investigative reporting. Research. I want you to be in charge of finding a pattern, finding something among the facts we know that will bring us closer to the rapist.”
“But the police are already doing that.”
“We need to do it, too.” The breeze off the ocean stirred his already tousled hair. “There’s got to be something they’ve missed, and I’m counting on you to find it. I know you will, because I know how badly you want to catch this guy.” He gazed back at the ocean. “You, uh, kind of gave that away in Lana Quinn’s office.”
“Oh,” Syd said. “God.” What else had she said or done? She couldn’t bring herself to ask.
“We’re both on the same page, Syd,” Luke said quietly, intensely. “I really want to catch this guy, too. And I’m willing to have you on my team, but only if you’re willing to be a team player. That means you contribute by using your strengths—your brain and your ability to research. And you contribute equally by sitting back and letting the rest of us handle the physical stuff. You stay out of danger. We get a lead, you stay back at the base or in the equipment van. No arguments. You haven’t trained for combat, you haven’t done enough PT to keep up, and I won’t have you endanger the rest of the team or yourself.”
“I’m not that out of shape,” she protested.
“You want to prove it?” he countered. “If you can run four miles in thirty minutes while wearing boots, and complete the BUD/S obstacle course in ten minutes—”
“Okay,” she said. “Good point. Not in this lifetime. I’ll stay in the van.”
“Last but not least,” he said, still earnestly, “I’m in command. If you’re part of this team, you need to remember that I’m the CO. When I give an order you say ‘yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir.”
He smiled. “So are we in agreement?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You obviously need to learn the difference between a question and an order.”
Syd shook her head. “No,” she said, “I don’t.”
“OKAY,” SYD ASKED, “it’s ten against one. Do you fight or flee?”
“Fight. Definitely fight.” Petty Officer Rio Rosetti’s Brooklyn accent came and went depending on who he was talking to, and right now it was one hundred percent there. When he was with Syd, he was one hundred percent tough guy.
Lucky stood outside his temporary office, eavesdropping as Lieutenant Michael Lee added his quiet opinion.
“Depends on who the ten are,” Lee mused. “And what they’re carrying. Ten of Japan’s elite commandos—I might choose the old ‘live to fight another day’ rule and run.”
“What I want to know,” Ensign Thomas King’s rich voice chimed in, “is what I’m doing in a ten-to-one situation without the rest of my SEAL team.”
Syd fit right in. For the past two days, she and Lucky and Bobby had been working around the clock, trying to find something that the police might’ve missed. Syd worked with the information they had on the victims, and Bobby and Lucky went through file after file of personnel records, looking for anything that connected any of the officers and enlisted men currently stationed in Coronado to any hint of a sex crime.
Admiral Stonegate’s handpicked trio of SEAL candidates spent their off hours helping. They were a solid group—good, reliable men, despite their connection to Admiral Stonehead.
And after only two days, Syd was best friends with all three of them. And Bobby, too.
She laughed, she smiled, she joked, she fumed at the computers. It was only with Lucky that she was strictly business. All “yes, sir,” and “no, sir,” and that too-polite, slightly forced smile, even when they were alone and still working at oh-one-hundred….
Lucky had managed to negotiate a truce with her. They had a definite understanding, but he couldn’t help but wish he could’ve gone with the girlfriend alliance scenario. Yes, it would’ve been messy further down the road, but it would have been much more fun.
Especially since he still hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss.
“Here’s another ‘what if’ situation for you,” Lucky heard Syd say. “You’re a woman—”
“What?” Rio hooted. “I thought you wanted to know about being a SEAL?”
“This is related to this assignment,” she explained. “Just hear me out. You’re a woman, and you turn around to find a man wearing panty hose on his head in your apartment in the middle of the night.”
“You tell him, ‘no darling, that shade of taupe simply doesn’t work with your clothing.’” Rio laughed at his joke.
“You want me to kill him or muzzle him?” Thomas King asked.
“Rosetti, I’m serious here,” Syd said. “This has happened to eleven women. There’s nothing funny about it. Maybe you don’t understand because you’re not a woman, but personally I find the thought terrifying. I saw this guy. He was big—about Thomas’s size.”
“Flee,” Mike Lee said.
“But what if you can’t?” Syd asked. “What if there’s no place to run? If you’re trapped in your own apartment by a known rapist? Do you fight? Or do you submit?”
Silence.
Submit. The word made Lucky squirm. He stepped into the room. “Fight,” he said. “How could you do anything but fight?”
The three other men agreed, Rio pulling his boots down off the table and sitting up a little straighter.
Syd glanced up at him, her brown eyes subdued.
“But we’re not women,” Rio said with a burst of wisdom and insight. “We’re not even men anymore.”
“Hey, speak for yourself,” Thomas said.
“I mean, we’re more than men,” Rio countered. “We’re SEALs. Well, almost SEALs. And with the training I’ve had, I’m not really afraid of anyone—and I’m not exactly the biggest guy in the world. Most women haven’t got either the training or the strength to kick ass in a fight with a guy who outweighs ‘em by seventy pounds.”
Lucky looked at Syd. She was wearing a plain T-shirt with her trademark baggy pants, sandals on her feet instead of her boots. Sometime between last night and this morning, she’d put red polish on her toenails.
“What would you do?” he asked her, taking a doughnut from the box that was open on the table. “Fight or…” He couldn’t even say it.
She met his gaze steadily. “I’ve been going through the interviews with the victims, looking for a pattern of violence that correlates to their responses to his attack. A majority of the women fought back, but some of them didn’t. One of them pretended to faint—went limp. Several others say they froze—they were so frightened they couldn’t move. A few others, like Gina, just cowered.”
“And?”