“You miserable all by your lonely self?” Scavenger shot back. “Poor guy, stuck bouncing from woman to woman because none of them want to keep you?”
“Yeah.” Taylor’s grin turned wicked. “It’s rough having women fall all over me, every one of them hot for good times, good sex and no strings. I gotta tell ya, I’m not sure how I sleep at night trying to figure out which one I’ll hook up with next.”
“Dog.” Scavenger threw back his head, laughing. “You would be such a dog if you really thought like that.”
“Can’t say I mind the bevy of beautiful women and lack of strings,” Taylor admitted with a shrug. After all, he liked—no, he loved—sex. But the only thing he was willing to commit to was his country.
“Then you’re in for a good time.”
“You don’t say.” Catching Scavenger’s grin, Taylor frowned. “Correction, say. What’s up?”
Scavenger shrugged but unless the guy was standing at attention or facing an enemy, he had a lousy poker face. Still, it was hard to tell which was more apparent. Amusement. Or guilt.
“You sending me a stripper for my birthday?” Taylor hazarded a guess. “I’m partial to blondes with big—”
“Your birthday isn’t until December and with any luck...”
Damn.
“With any luck, what?”
When Scavenger didn’t respond, Taylor grabbed his arm.
“What?”
“It’s nothing.” Scavenger grinned. “The ladies are on a tear, is all.”
“Ladies?” Uh-huh. “So what kind of trouble is your girlfriend starting?”
“Hey, don’t blame Lark. Alexia started it.”
Damn and double damn it all to hell.
“Matchmaking?”
“You’re quick,” Scavenger said in an admiring tone.
Quick?
Hardly.
Given that the commander’s wife had been trying to hook him up for months, that Irish’s new bride had started asking him to dinner to meet her friends and that even the sweet hippie Aiden had married was talking about casting charts to find his perfect match, he was feeling pretty slow.
But he wasn’t going to admit that.
“Nobody quicker,” he said instead as they crossed the asphalt. “Which is why you owe me fifty bucks.”
“The hell I do. I hit the ground first. It was my shot that took out the security system.”
“You should have hit the ground first since you jumped first. What’d you do on the way down, man? Take a side trip? I landed first. It was my shot that took out the mark.”
“Yo, Ice. Got a second to settle an issue?” Scavenger called out to the guy a few steps ahead of them.
“Settling issues is my specialty,” the tall, blond SEAL said, his expression as deadly serious as his aim.
“Who hit the mark?” Scavenger asked, jerking his thumb between the two of them. “Me or the Wizard?”
“Are you kidding?” The Nordic mountain slowed, his pale blue eyes shifting left then right, piercing both men. “While you guys were getting ready to play hopscotch with guerillas, I was infiltrating a high-tech installation’s security, weaving a virtual time bomb through their system without setting off any alarms.”
Hopscotch. The image flashed through Taylor’s mind of a baby-faced terrorist, barely five foot nothing in ragged clothes and dirt-encrusted bare feet. There should be rules about who could play. There should be rules about who was safe.
A vicious knot wrapped itself around his guts and was ignored. He’d learned a long time ago that rules were like fairy tales. Believing didn’t make them real.
But there was no point telling Ice that.
The man was a SEAL.
He already knew.
So Taylor pretended he was trying not to grin and gave a cocky nod.
“Yeah. You were busy playing hero.” He waited a beat. “So who hit the mark? Me or Scavenger?”
Ensign Dag Eckart gave a sad shake of his head before striding off. Taylor exchanged grins with Scavenger as they waited with matched stances. Feet wide, arms crossed, chins high. It only took about a dozen steps before, without a hitch in his stride, Ice jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward Taylor.
“Son of a bitch,” Scavenger muttered as Taylor let out a loud whoop.
“Drinks are on you, my friend,” he said, slapping the other man on the shoulder as they headed toward the base. “Olive Oyl’s. 2100.”
“I want a second opinion,” Scavenger said, looking around for the rest of their teammates. “I’ll find a second opinion.”
“Knock yourself out.” Taylor grinned as they approached debriefing. “You have till 2100.”
As they rounded the building, they almost plowed into one of their teammates leaning against the wall.
“Yo, Mouse,” Scavenger said, bumping the smaller man with his shoulder. “You get lost?”
Taylor smirked. Even though he was new to the team, everyone knew there was no place Mouse couldn’t find.
Taylor’s grin faded when he caught a better look at the man’s face.
Haunted was the only way to describe it.
“Mouse?”
Nothing.
Damn it.
“Ensign Bertowski,” Taylor snapped.
“Sir?” Bennie Bertowski, call sign Mouse, blinked, the horror fading from his eyes as he looked from Taylor to Shane then back again. He blinked then came to attention with a salute. “Sir.”
Shane started to reach out but when Taylor gave the tiniest shake of his head, the other man let his hand drop to his side. Mouse was his. Taylor had recruited the guy; had mentored him once he’d joined the team. Pulling him out of this was his responsibility.
“Debriefing in ten,” Taylor said, keeping his tone crisp. “Stow your gear first.”
“Yes, sir.” Mouse opened his mouth as if to say something but then shook his head. “I’ll be there.”
With a nod to his superior officers, he strode off toward the armory, his weapon over one shoulder, his parachute pack over the other.
“Not the first time he’s had issues with a mission,” Shane observed when Mouse was out of earshot.
“It’s only his third mission.” Taylor shrugged off the tickle at the base of his neck. “He graduated top of his BUD/S class. He’s got what it takes.”
“They don’t all make it,” Shane pointed out quietly, his eyes on the retreating SEAL. “Not even getting through BUD/S is a guarantee.”
“This one was rough,” Taylor said dismissively, thinking of his own troubles shaking off the mission aftermath. “He’ll be fine.”
He’d make sure of it. The SEALs, the team, they were a brotherhood. Taylor hadn’t had siblings growing up and he’d be damned if now that he’d found them he was letting a single one go without a fight. Especially not one he’d brought in himself.
* * *
AT