Elijah met Jarrett’s frown with a look of calm. Not because that’s how he was feeling—hell, no. The warning, on top of a brutal debriefing, had his gut twisted with a miserable sort of fury. But there was no point confirming the gossip that he was a mess. “I’m good,” he lied.
“I know you’re clean, Prescott. I just want to make sure you watch your back. People get ugly when they’re under suspicion.” Jarrett snapped his teeth together, his eyes worried. “You don’t need more dirt thrown your way. Not after everything you’ve been through. So if you need anything, I’m here for you.”
His own jaw tight enough to snap his teeth off, Elijah nodded. “Yes, sir. But Commander Savino is my commanding officer, and I report to him.” Elijah pulled his cap out of his back pocket and tugged it onto his head. “If there are any issues, I’m sure I’ll hear it from him.”
“If he’s brought into it,” Jarrett said quietly, stepping forward until the tips of his boots knocked against Elijah’s. “Someone wants Poseidon brought down. How long can Savino stop that? People higher up are watching. It’s making everyone nervous. They’re wondering who’s involved, who’s clean and who’s not.”
“Are they looking at me?” Elijah asked.
“They’re looking at everyone. You roomed with Ramsey. You’ve had some shit going on, and your psych eval says you have reason to resent the Navy. Some people worry about serving with a guy with your issues. And then there’s the question of who really sold the chemical formula. Do you think everyone believes it was some dead guy?” Jarrett shook his head, as if disgusted by the chatter. “Just watch your back.”
Elijah refused to reply. All he could do was nod. Then, shoulders stiff, he watched the captain shove through the doors and saunter away. He wished like hell he could claim the man was full of crap. But Elijah had seen the looks.
The warning was legit.
* * *
TWO DAYS LATER, Elijah strode down the hallway toward Savino’s office. He didn’t know if he was making the right choice. He just knew he couldn’t make a different one.
So when he strode through the door, his chin was high, his eyes direct and his expression clear.
His commander was at his desk, papers stacked in two neat piles on the dingy metal surface. Elijah wouldn’t mind the rank, but damned if he’d want the paperwork that went with it.
“Reporting as ordered, sir.”
“You want to explain this?” Savino invited, lifting one of the papers from the stack on the left.
His face blank, Elijah looked from his commander to the paper the man held and back again. It seemed pretty self-explanatory to him. But he knew Savino wasn’t asking him to clarify the request for leave. He wanted to know why. He wanted details; he wanted insights. As always, he wanted every damned thing.
Savino was a hard-ass. He was a tough commander, a man with a wicked sense of humor held under tight control and razor-sharp lines in the sand when it came to right and wrong. He was the first man to reach out his hand and the last to walk away.
He was a friend.
They’d trained together. They’d sat watch in a cave over a village beset by terrorists together. They’d gotten drunk together. They’d been through a million experiences in the near-decade they’d known each other.
So Elijah couldn’t hold back. “I’m not one hundred percent. I thought I was, pushed the medics to release me and ignored their concerns,” he said quietly. Then, in case Savino suspected he meant the head shrink as well as the physicians, he drummed his fingertips over his thigh. “I’d rather take a few weeks’ leave before I do irreparable damage.”
He knew that excuse would hold. His medical records said as much. But Savino knew him too well. So the question was, would he accept face value or would he push for the truth?
“And this has nothing to do with the heap of crap chickenshit gossips are trying to pile on you?”
Had he thought that wouldn’t get back to Savino? Elijah almost smiled. “Someone wants to take down Poseidon,” he said, sidestepping. “They’re using the convenience of gossip to accelerate that mission.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. Do you believe that anyone on the team doesn’t trust you? Do you believe anyone thinks you’re dirty?”
Yeah. He did believe that. “I believe there are some that might have questions,” he said carefully instead. “Since our job is not to follow blindly but to think outside the box, I don’t blame them for wondering.”
Savino frowned, but simply folded his hands on his desk instead of saying anything.
“At the very least, they’ve got to wonder why I hadn’t seen anything. Why I didn’t realize that Ramsey was dirty, that he was a psychotic traitor with a taste for greed and a hard-on to take down Poseidon.” Elijah rubbed his hand over his face, feeling stained, as if he’d never be clean. “I served with him and Adams. I partied with them. I roomed with them for eight fucking months. How could I miss something that ugly?”
“By that train of thought, you’d think I should have realized it, too,” Savino countered quietly, looking tired. “I served with Ramsey myself. I trained him, commanded him. Hell, Rembrandt, I signed his fucking DEVGRU recommendation.”
Knowing Savino’s use of the word fucking was permission to fall out, Elijah dropped to the empty chair in front of the desk, his boots clunking against the metal.
“I can’t get past it,” Elijah admitted. “The weight of it. The feeling of failure.”
“You’re going to have to. You’ve got enough weighing you down already. Don’t haul someone else’s crap, too.”
Made sense. Elijah knew it made sense. He’d told himself the same thing already, hadn’t he? But he’d seen the expressions on some people’s faces. He’d read the question in their eyes, the wondering. Was he in league with Ramsey? Was that how he’d survived the explosion? Did they think he’d missed that sniper last week because he’d meant to? That he’d fallen back on the command not to fire, had used it as an excuse to let his partner take a bullet? The questions swirled, ugly and sharp, scraping at his composure, tearing at his resolve.
“I need a break. I need to get away from it all,” Elijah murmured, finally meeting Savino’s eyes. “I thought I was ready to come back. I’m not.”
“I could order a psych eval, another round of physical therapy,” Savino said. “That’s what I should do. For your own good and for the good of the team.”
“You could. But I’m hoping you won’t. I just need a break. A real break. Away.”
A dumb-ass move, his brain warned.
Walking away now would only add fuel to Jarrett’s insinuations. To those who thought him guilty, it’d look like a retreat. Even to himself—who knew he was clean—it would feel like he was running.
“You’d be smarter to stay on base, take light duty until you’re ready to face fire again,” Savino advised, reading Elijah’s mind with his usual savvy.
“Yeah. I know.” He’d been going on eight months without leave when he’d been blown to hell. After that had been a couple of months in and out of the base hospital, a month easing back into training. For the last year he’d lived and breathed the Navy, SEAL Team 7, Poseidon.
Once he’d thrived on immersing himself in this world.
Now?