“What?”
She’s averting her eyes. Is she actively embarrassed by me taking my clothes off in front of her? All she can see is my ass.
“No individual bathrooms in the field.” I shrug. “You served for almost ten years. Plus your time at the Air Force Academy. You can’t tell me this is the first time a guy’s stripped naked in front of you.”
Some of her swagger and bravado fade away, and she turns back to her locker. “Hardly.”
As soon as I’m dressed, I clear my throat. “Are we going to have a problem, Probie?”
“You didnotjust call me probie,” she growls, her blue eyes blazing.
“I did. Because that’s how things work here. You’re the newest member of this team now—unless you royally fuck it up in the next couple of weeks. So, I’ll ask you again. Are we going to have a problem? I may be a few years younger than you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know my shit.”
“It don’t mean you need to throw yer weight around neither.” Her Texas drawl thickens when she’s upset, and she jams her hands on her hips. “Tryin’ to intimidate the new recruit with the size of yer dick?”
That’swhat she thought this was?
Running a hand through my hair, I force out a long, slow breath. “Look, probie. I’m gay. And even if I weren’t, that behavior isn’t tolerated here. You’re new. Maybe you think you need to prove yourself. Or be tougher than the rest of us, harder than the rest of us. But take some advice from someone who wore that Probie title for eighteen months. This is a family. The sooner you figure out how to trust that we’ve got each other’s backs—all the time—the happier you’ll be here.”
Raelynn stares at me, her face a mask I can’t read. All this posturing has left my coffee barely lukewarm, so I head to the kitchen for a refill, then join West. He’s straddling a chair, his arms folded over the back of it, focusing all of his considerable staring power at Raelynn as she finishes up with her locker.
Without even blinking, he asks, “You get that all straightened out?”
“Yeah. Kind of surprised you didn’t intervene, though.”
He chuckles, which only enhances his unnerving stare. “You’ve earned your spot on this team, Graham. I stood up for you the other day so the newbies would understand the chain of command. But you don’t need me to tell you what you already know. You belong here. And anyone who challenges that? They don’t.”
* * *
After four hoursof simulation drills, West dismisses Raelynn. “Not bad instincts, Probie. Particularly where listening devices are concerned. At least in a sim environment. But your fine motor control needs work.” He heads for one of the storage cabinets along the wall, punches in a sixteen-digit code, and when he turns back around, he’s holding a game of Operation. “Practice with this.”
“You have got to be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” Raelynn mutters. “A kids’ game?”
“Don’t laugh. My wife was an ordinance specialist in the army for years, and when she chose that specialty, this is how she trained. Once you can go an hour without triggering the buzzer, and try to do the same thing drunk.” West rubs the light stubble covering his chin. “Gotta be prepared for anything. Even diffusing a bomb when you haven’t slept for forty-eight hours. We stay alive because we train for anything.”
“Yes, sir.” She snaps to attention, preparing to salute, but West waves her off.
“We don’t do that here. You call me West or Sampson. And no saluting. Because that’s our other mission. To blend in. So get used to it.”
Raelynn nods and heads for the lockers. Five minutes later, after she wheels her bike out the door, West shakes his head. “That one’s got a stick up her ass the size of a two-by-four. But she graduated top of her class, and she’s got a jacket full of commendations.”
We’ve all read her file. Even though Ry had the final say over who we brought in and who we didn’t, the five of us—West, Inara, Ripper, Ry, and me—sat in the lounge next to the kitchen for hours the other day, debating whether to hire Raelyn or Caleb. In the end, we decided to hire both of them, but Caleb landed himself in the hospital with appendicitis, so his training’s delayed for a month until he heals up.
“You going to talk to her?” I ask, locking up the laptops.
“Not yet. We’ll see if she comes around when we parachute into the middle of the Sinaloa jungle next week.”
“What?” I stop in the middle of filling up my water bottle and glance back at the SEAL. “We’re taking her on a mission? Already?”
“Fuck no.” He pulls the tab on an energy drink can and chugs half of it. “Training only. I got one of the guys I know from BUD/S to set up a fake hostage rescue op. We’ll see how she responds under pressure.”
Forty-eight hours. For the first time, the idea of going on a training mission doesn’t sit well with me.
“Something wrong?” West asks.
Shit. He never misses a damn thing. The man can read micro expressions just as well or better than Ry, and when he thinks you’re hiding something, he won’t stop until you break.
“Uh, that walk of shame? It wasn’t a one night stand.”
