Page 1 of Wrong Number Right Grumpy Navy SEAL

CHAPTER 1

COLE

It’s a Friday night and I’m staring at the ceiling. It has a crack shaped like the Tigris River.

I know this because I’ve been staring at it for forty-five minutes, and I’ve stared at the Tigris River on a map enough times that I could draw its path from memory. Before that, I did two hundred push-ups that my shoulder is already making me pay for. I’ve run out of ways to kill time in an apartment that isn’t mine. My buddy Jared is letting me crash at his place while I figure out what I’m doing now that I’m no longer a SEAL.

Six weeks. Six weeks since the Navy signed me out, handed me a folder of VA resources, and thanked me for my service. I’d rather they’d punched me in the mouth. At least I’d have known how to react to that.

My phone buzzes on the coffee table. I ignore it because no one but Jared has this number, and there’s no way it’s him. He went to Vegas for a week with some buddies. He invited me, but the crowds and noise would be a deadly combination for me right now.

Then the phone buzzes again. And again. What the fuck.

Unknown number

I can’t be alone right now. Please.

I can’t be here when he shows up. Answer me!

Then another.

Where are you?! Come get me. Please!

I should tell them they’ve got the wrong guy. Let them reach who they’re trying to reach. But there’s something here that tells me this isn’t a prank. Someone needs help and that kicks my ass into gear.

Because this is the kind of man I am. Running into bad situations is what I do, and I’ve done it with less information than whatever is going on right now.

Send me your location.

The typing dots appear and vanish. Then a pin drops.

I grab my jacket off the back of the chair, shove my feet into my boots, and I’m out the door before I’ve put the address into GPS. I don’t know who this person is. Don’t know what I’m walking into. Could be anything—a breakup, a stalker, a domestic situation that puts me in the middle of someone else’s war.

Doesn’t matter.

Somebody’s scared. Somebody texted for help. And for the first time in six weeks, I’ve got somewhere to be.

In my truck, my hands feel right on the wheel. The highway opens up and I push it to seventy-five, eighty, checking the GPS. Sixteen minutes.

This is the thing nobody tells you about leaving the Teams. It’s not just the adrenaline you miss. It’s the knowing. Knowing your objective, knowing your role, knowing that every second you’re awake means something. Knowing you’re a part of a team that makes the world a safer place. Take that away and you’re just a guy on a couch, staring at drywall, with a skill set that doesn’t translate to a single goddamn thing in the civilian world.

But a pin on a map, a person in trouble, a clear directive? This is my wheelhouse.

Whatever is happening, I will fix it.

I end up at a place I’d never set foot in on my own. I pull into a lot full of BMWs and Teslas, my truck sticking out like a fist at a cocktail party. The building is floor-to-ceiling windows, warm light spilling onto the sidewalk, the kind of bougie place where the hostess judges you before you open your mouth.

Inside, the hostess looks at my boots like I’m tracking in dog shit from the parking lot. There’s a private event sign on an easel near the back.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asks, adding a long pause before the word sir. “There’s a private party tonight,” she adds, in a not-subtle suggestion that I don’t belong here.

“I’m here to pick up someone,” I say, craning my neck so I can scan the place.

“Then you can wait outside,” she snips at me.

I turn to face her and stand to my full height, and she instantly stops talking. Intimidating women isn’t something I enjoy doing, but snobs don’t cut it for me. And there’s no way in hell I’m turning around without the person who texted me at my side.

“I’m not fucking Uber. I’m going to go in and find who I’m looking for, alright? I don’t want any problems.”