Chapter Nine

Steven

“You’re an asshole, Maxwell.”

I grinned at my immediate supervisor Chief Riggs. “Come on, Riggs, you’re just pissed it wasn’t you.”

Joe Riggs clenched his jaw. “I’m serious, Maxwell. This time I can’t bail you out. The hotel is threatening to sue and that’s the last fuckin’ thing we need right now. This unit is under enough pressure as it is right now. We got everyone watching so close I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew when we all brushed our teeth or took a shit.”

The smile I’d been hiding behind started to slip as Riggs spoke. I groaned and raked my hands through my hair. “All right, so what’s the bail out here?”

Riggs sat down in the opposite chair from mine. So far, we were the only two in the large conference room. Riggs had come in to warn me of the shit storm that was going to start raining down on me. Apparently, my antics at the golf course in Dubai hadn’t gone unnoticed and I was going to be the scapegoat to get the CIA out of hot water with the owners.

“They want your head, Maxwell.”

“Fan-fuckin-tastic.” My hands rested against the table, splayed out, as though ready to push up and run. Which, was exactly what I felt like doing. “Advice?” I asked, daring a glance up at my friend and sometime CO.

Riggs frowned. “Be polite. Apologize. Beg and grovel if needed.”

“Fuck.”

Riggs pushed up from his place at the table. “Sorry, man. If you play your cards right, you’ll at least get to keep your rank.”

A bubble of panic swelled up in my gut. I’d been in trouble on a handful of occasions before. It wasn’t a new thing for me. But to have my rank threatened? Or, even my job…that was some scary ass shit.

What would I do if I couldn’t be a SEAL anymore? It was who I was. My core. My DN-fucking-A.

In the split second between Riggs’ advice and the conference room door swinging open, Ruby Westin’s face materialized behind my eyes.

I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since she’d climbed into my bedroom window. Like a complete dumbass, I didn’t get her number and hadn’t been able to call her since leaving so abruptly the morning after we’d hooked up. And shit if I was gonna call Rick and ask him for it. He’d do worse things to me than whatever the CIA liaison was about to do.

Telling my best friend—even thought he’d got weird on me—I was fucking his little sister would probably not go over well with him.

Three men in suits filed into the room. CIA. Then my commanding officers, and finally, the harpy herself, Harriet Jenners. And she looked colder than the waters off Alaska in the dead of winter.

Fuck.

I stood up at their entrance and saluted before being asked—told—to take my seat.

Harriet Jenners took focus as she cleared her throat. “Petty Officer Maxwell?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I forced my eyes to hers.

She folded her hands and set them on the table. I could feel Riggs’ eyes on me and wished I could glance over at him. He was my only ally in the room. “The situation in Dubai was a shit show of epic proportions. As you know by now, some nosy spectator has you on cell phone video. Not only was the golf course vandalized, but killing Moshe Al Saim was not what you went there to do. And especially not on video. You have embarrassed this country and—”

“—Ma’am, I—”

“Silence,” she hissed.

The temperature dropped another ten degrees.

I was fucked. There was no way I was getting out of this. And all for what? Three seconds of fun, ripping donuts in a golf cart and popping a cap in that guy’s ass? He was a known terrorist anyway? Fucking cell phone videos. Everyone had one.

Riggs was right. I’d be lucky to walk out of the conference room with my stripes still on my uniform.

“The CIA has settled with the resort, at great expense.” Harriet stopped, shooting a cold glance at Riggs. “As we are not in charge of you, there’s little we can do, other than make it plain that we will no longer take you on assignment and that we highly recommend you be held responsible for your poor choices.”

At that, she pushed up from her seat, the three suits following her lead, and then stalked from the room, her high heels clipping out her disgust as she went.

What the fuck was going on? That was it? I dared a glance at Riggs and realized he looked just as shocked.

“Maxwell…”

I flinched at the harsh tone of Captain Tucker. “Yes, sir?”

Captain Tucker commanded the attention of everyone remaining at the table. Riggs, two other officers, and myself. “Normally this is a discussion we would have in my office, but as this fiasco has spread like wildfire, we’re gonna handle it right here, right now. You may have thought that the assignment was bullshit, you might have been showing off, blowing off steam, whatever. I don’t need a reason and I don’t want a shit pile of excuses. Plain and simple. You were out of line. Our unit works with the CIA and if they won’t take you on assignment then it leaves me with two choices…”

I drew in a breath, steeling myself for his proclamation.

“I can put you on a ship, somewhere you’ll stay out of trouble, and have you run ops from behind a desk. Or, I can post you here, at the base, in an instructor’s position.”

Riggs smirked. “So he can teach his bullshit to others?”

Captain Tucker shot Riggs a cold look. “Riggs, what the hell are you even doing here?”

Riggs scrambled from his seat and left the conference room. I sighed when the door shut behind him. “Sir,” I started, flicking my attention back to the captain. “I have to admit, I’m a little confused. What would I be instructing?”

Tucker leaned back in his seat. “You’re a good SEAL, Maxwell. One of the best I’ve had under my command in a while, but I think you need a break from field work. I’m not stripping your rank. I’m offering you a teaching position. You’d be working with our new SEAL’s and getting them ready for whatever they’re going to face out in the field. It would be two years, to fulfill your contract, after that, we could reevaluate. You could come back to the field, or if you’d like, stay on as an instructor.”

The information settled heavily on my shoulders. I had to make the call. Something that I was grateful for, but it still seemed like an impossible choice to make.

“I need an answer, Maxwell.”

“Now?”

Tucker nodded. “Afraid so, son. To be straight, I’ve got the White House on my ass and I need to get this off my plate.”

I shifted in my seat, turning over each option, struggling to visualize how they might play out. Two years wasn’t a lifetime but it was longer than I’d spent in one place since I’d joined the Navy.

All at once, the answer hit me in the gut like an uppercut to the kidney.