Off the Grid Read online

  When he thought of how he’d held on to it like some sort of precious talisman, refusing to sell the Easter egg–sized diamond even when he desperately needed cash as he made his way out of Russia . . . it made him want to slam his fist through the table and turn the fine mahogany into kindling. Scott was an expert at controlling his emotions, but right now they’d been pulled too close to the surface and stretched taut to the snapping point. His pride hurt worse than the patched-up shoulder where he’d taken a bullet a few hours ago.

  For the first time in his life, a woman had made a fool of him, and Scott didn’t know how to handle it. It was a bitter pill for any guy to swallow. For a SEAL officer whose job it was to see things like this coming from a mile away, who was supposed to be smarter and savvier than everyone else, it was the worst kind of humiliation.

  Kate had tried to warn him, but Scott hadn’t wanted to believe it. He’d defended Natalie, even when the coincidences piled up. Russian birth and adoption that she’d kept secret? So what? There were thousands of kids adopted from Russia—were all of them suddenly suspected spies? Phone contact with the same guy who’d targeted the reporter writing stories about the “Lost Platoon,” and who also happened to be born in Russia and came to America via the same adoption agency as Natalie? Not enough. But when that same guy, Mikhail “Mick” Evans, kidnapped Brittany in an attempt to capture and kill John Donovan, all Scott’s doubts had been put to rest. Brutally.

  He could still hear the bastard’s taunts as Scott tried to question him. “She played you like a fool. How long did it take for her to get in your bed? A few hours? And you never suspected a thing. Man, it was almost too easy.”

  Scott had wanted to kill him. But Donovan had done it for him after Scott had been shot and Mick had turned a gun on Kate.

  For almost three months, while his men had been forced to scatter across the globe and go dark, Scott had been busting his ass, trying to figure out what had happened out there and how their mission had been compromised. He’d looked into everyone who could have known about the mission, followed leads that went nowhere, searching for motives or anything suspicious that could lead him to figuring out who was responsible for the deaths of eight of his men and the woman he’d loved.

  But the person responsible for feeding the information to Russia about their mission had been right there in front of him the whole time. One of their own hadn’t betrayed them; the leak had come from a Russian mole. His Natalie. No, Natalya—and definitely not his.

  Maybe he should be relieved. He had an answer. The Russians were responsible. There wasn’t anyone on the inside waiting to take them out. His men could come out of hiding.

  But nothing could lessen the bitter sting of betrayal that filled him with anger and shame.

  Sucker.

  “If you won’t go the hospital, at least let me call my doctor,” Kate said. “I’m sure he will be discreet.” She paused, staring at him in earnest. “You don’t look good, Scott.”

  Not surprising since he felt like shit. But the pain from the gunshot was the least of it.

  He and Kate had known they were brother and sister for almost three years, but it was still strange having someone worry about him. Scott had been alone for a long time. His parents had been killed in a boating accident when he was in his first year at the Naval Academy. Actually, his father had survived for a few days, which was how Scott had learned that he wasn’t his biological father. He’d needed blood and their blood types had been incompatible.

  Scott’s seemingly idyllic family and happy childhood had been built on a bed of lies. The man whom Scott had loved and admired more than anyone in the world—who’d left Scott the family fortune—hadn’t been his biological father. The discovery had devastated him. Scott had been angry at everyone—at everything—but especially at his recently deceased mother. How could she have betrayed his father, her husband like that?

  He’d never given much thought to the man she’d cheated on his father with or the fact that Scott might have half siblings somewhere. He never would have known if Kate’s ex-husband’s jealousy hadn’t led them to the truth.

  “I’m fine,” Scott assured her. “This isn’t the first time Colt has had to patch me up.”

  But rather than reassure her, the mention of her ex-husband’s doctoring made Kate look even more upset. But she didn’t need to worry about Colt using his old corpsman’s skills for bad. Whatever reason Colt might have had to want to kill Scott was gone. The only person Colt looked like he wanted to kill right now was himself. Which was good. After what he’d done to Kate, the bastard deserved to suffer.

  Colt had thought Scott and Kate’s unusual closeness was because they were having an affair, and he’d only just learned that they were actually brother and sister. For years Colt had hated Scott—blaming him for the destruction of his marriage—but now Colt was facing the truth. There was only one man responsible for the mess Colt had made of their lives, and it wasn’t Scott.

  “What now?” Baylor looked at him, asking the question that was foremost in all of their minds.

  The six survivors had been in hiding since their mission had gone bad, and Scott knew how anxious the guys were to get back to the land of the living and the frogman work that they all loved.

  “Now that we know where the leak came from and who was behind it”—aka Russia and not someone inside—“we don’t have to play dead. I will contact command and explain what happened. They can decide how they want to handle our sudden reappearance.”

  In an attempt to quiet the public interest roused by Brittany’s “Lost Platoon” articles, equating the missing platoon of Navy SEALs with the famous Lost Legion of Rome, the navy had recently announced that a platoon of SEALs had been killed in a training exercise.

  Baylor and Donovan looked relieved by Scott’s decision.

  Colt not so much.

  “You sure that’s a good idea, Ace?” Colt asked with that lazy drawl that belied the savvy operator whose mind was always working every angle. Colt wasn’t a part of their team anymore, but he still worked for the military in some kind of clandestine unit that Scott didn’t know much about—didn’t want to know much about, as he was sure it was of questionable legality.

  It was the first time Colt had used Scott’s call sign in over three years, but if his former friend thought Scott was going to forgive and forget all that had passed between them, he was out of his mind.

  Colt had been the senior enlisted man in Team Nine when Scott had joined as a young lieutenant. Colt had shown him the ropes and taught Scott everything he knew about being an operative. To most people their friendship didn’t make any sense. Scott was by the book and believed in rules. Colt didn’t. But somehow they’d gelled. Scott had looked up to him as an older brother, which made Colt’s accusations and turning on him even more unforgivable. How could Colt think Scott would ever do that to a Teammate and a friend?

  Scott and Kate hadn’t betrayed Colt; Colt had betrayed them.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Scott said. “Technically we’ve been AWOL since the explosion. Without a good reason not to come forward, we could have a hard time explaining ourselves.”

  Or defending themselves against a court-martial.

  “I wouldn’t be so ready to make a reappearance,” Colt said. “Not until you learn the extent of the damage done by Mick and Natalie. We don’t know what Mick was able to pass on to his superiors before he was killed. We also don’t know the extent of their cell here in Washington. I suspect it was a small one since the guys Mick had with him when he took Brittany were more hired mafia thug than professional. But that isn’t to say there isn’t someone else out there. Who else knows there were survivors? Mick found out about Donovan but how about the rest of you? You guys are safer dead than alive.”

  “You think they might come after us again?” Donovan asked.

  Colt shrugged.