Rogenna Brewer - The SEAL's Special Mission

“You’d let him go? Just like that?”

“Gitmo is no cakewalk.” The commander crossed his arms. “Even if he were to go free, you’re not in any danger, Ms. Ward,” he said with the unwavering confidence of his rank. “I strongly believe in Lieutenant Commander Nash’s innocence.”

He might believe it. She might even want to believe it. But she’d seen what she’d seen. And Mallory’s testimony had convicted the man, for crying out loud—what was to stop him from coming after her?

Or Benji?

There was no doubt in her mind Nash would come after his son.

She felt it with bone-chilling certainty.

Mallory stared out of focus at the two-way mirror. As if looking at it through a haze of raw emotions would allow her to see more clearly. That’s when she felt it, the eerie sensation of being watched.

Of course, there was someone behind the glass, watching them. She took a deep, shuddering breath and held Benji tighter. “Are you saying this assignment somehow hinges on my approval?”

She fixed her gaze on the commander this time. He shifted his to Galena as if this condition was a point of contention between them. “No,” he said, returning his attention to her.

“Then why am I here, sir?” Benji shoved a pudgy fist into his mouth. “Why are we here?”

Galena stepped in and answered for him. “We can’t just waltz a high-profile prisoner like Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Nash out the front gate of a federal prison.”

Mallory sensed the commander’s growing impatience with this conversation.

He hunkered down eye level to her nephew and allowed Benji to grab his thumb as he cupped the baby’s chubby cheek. Benji immediately became intent on bringing that masculine digit to his mouth like a new teething toy. She knew the commander was a new father himself and wondered what he really thought of this whole mess.

“We’re taking Nash out of here in a body bag,” he said. “Stone-cold dead. Kenneth Nash will no longer exist.”

He’d said it with such finality as he lifted his gaze toward hers that Mallory shivered and turned away from the glimpse of resignation behind the man’s eyes. Was that supposed to make her feel guilty?

“We’re going to fake his suicide.” Galena straightened in her seat. “We didn’t want you caught off guard. There will likely be renewed interest in your sister’s case as well as press coverage. We need you to keep a low profile for the next few days.”

“Out of sight, out of mind.” Mallory shook her head in disbelief.

The commander gently disengaged himself from the baby’s grasp and pushed to his feet with his mask securely in place. “We weighed in heavily against telling you anything, Ms Ward.”

“So why did you?” She glanced at the two-way mirror again.

“Frankly, Nash’s odds of survival are better on death row,” the commander said. “He may be a free man, but he won’t be free. And he won’t be Kenneth Nash.” His firm mouth held a grim line. “There’s no reason for you to be afraid. Should he survive this operation, Lieutenant Commander Nash has agreed to no contact with you or his son. Ever.”

He might want to believe there was no real danger to her or the baby, but the pounding in her chest told Mallory otherwise. She choked back a laugh as she looked the commander in the eye. “A lot of good a restraining order did my sister.”

He didn’t balk at her accusation. The facts were irrefutable.

At the time, Mallory had tried to talk her sister out of filing the protection order. The marriage had never been volatile. But Cara had kicked Nash out of their off-base housing for reasons that were still unclear to everyone, except perhaps Nash, and he wasn’t talking. He’d left without incident but had later returned drunk and dismal. Mallory had to drive him back to the bachelor pad where he was staying with friends.

Even then, she’d been on his side.

But the next morning Cara had insisted on filing a restraining order to keep him away. Mallory thought the whole separation ridiculous. Yet Cara was dead before Nash had even been served the papers—which proved, only too late, Cara had reason to fear him.

“Nash has made one stipulation,” the commander said.

“Just one?” She might have known.

“He wanted to see you and the baby one last time.”

“Seriously?” She jerked her head toward the mirror. “He’s behind that glass, isn’t he? That’s why you really brought us here?”

“He’s not asking—”

“What does he want?” She pushed to her feet with her nephew in her arms and faced off with her own reflection. “Forgiveness? Forget it!”

“To say goodbye, Ms. Ward. The man just wants to say goodbye to his son.”

Protected by that pane of glass, she put on her bravest facade and continued to stand there as tears pricked behind her eyes. She would not cry.

How had the boy her sister had dated since high school become the man who’d murdered her? No tears. Not for him.

She’d cried them all for Cara. Her best friend and big sister.

Gone forever.

“Fine. I want to see him, too,” she demanded. “I want him to look me in the eye as he begs for his get-out-of-jail-free card,” she hissed at the mirror.

“That’s not what’s happening here.”

“Even I know he has a better than average chance of survival, Commander—freedom. Anyway, why tell me any of this? What’s to stop me from going to the press?” Mallory knowingly put more than just her career on the line with that threat.

The commander’s demeanor changed in an instant. “That would be ill advised, Ms. Ward. I don’t think I need to remind you that this conversation is highly sensitive.”

Sensitive, meaning classified!

Every government agency out there—no matter what its initials—needed a deep-cover operative of Middle Eastern descent, more than they needed another homogenized desk jockey with unruly red hair and freckles like her.

Mallory scoffed at his words. “I’m not very good at keeping secrets.”

A muscle twitched in the commander’s jaw. Mallory clamped down on her back teeth to keep from saying something she shouldn’t. Tension filled the room as they squared off against each other.

“If you promise to keep quiet, Mallory, then Kenneth will sign over custody of his son to you—right here, right now, today. Plus, he trusts you.” Galena’s words broke through strained nerves and forced Mallory to look in her direction. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all.”

Her ex-brother-in-law had no reason to trust her. He had to hate her as much as she hated him. But maybe this highly irregular request for her presence and then Benji’s was finally starting to make sense.

She wouldn’t be surprised to find the proposed undercover op was Nash’s idea. Something he and the commander had concocted and then taken up the chain of command, maybe even directly to the secretary of the navy, who’d taken it all the way up the chain to the President of the United States.

The president who’d pardoned her sister’s murderer.

She might just have to change her whole party affiliation.

“I want to see him now,” she demanded a second time as Benji began to fuss.

The commander nodded to whomever watched them from behind that plated glass. Mallory bounced Benji on her hip to keep her trembling body under control. A few pulse pounding heartbeats later the door opened.

A marine guard ushered Nash into the room with his hands and legs shackled.

Mallory forced herself to look at him—at the stranger he’d become. He’d lost weight since she’d last seen him at his court-martial. The prison uniform hung on his lanky frame and washed out his olive complexion.

The dark stubble on his head and clean-shaven face brought out the high cheekbones and the prominent nose descended from the nomadic princes of the Lost Tribes of Israel. But he’d always be that boy from Brooklyn, New York, to her. Just as he’d been the day he moved into their Denver neighborhood.