Lana had never experienced the morning after sex, but it sucked. Her body was sore in ways she didn’t think were possible, and Hawk was nowhere in sight. The pillow next to hers still held the imprint of Hawk’s head, but she heard nothing in the bathroom, and his clothes were gone. She gingerly got to her feet and padded to her bathroom. Maybe a good shower would help soothe the soreness, then she’d go find the man who’d put her in her current predicament.

She couldn’t say she wasn’t worried about coming up pregnant. Her career was all she had, but her time here, in the slower pace, had shown her she’d done it more for a way to escape than because of any real love for it. She enjoyed activism and wanted to continue to support the right for plus-size women to have a place in the entertainment industry, but she believed she could let modeling go. Still, the uncertainty of what she’d do, despite the money she’d made, was a concern. She’d purchased this ranch in Montana, and she had a flat in London, but she didn’t own much else. Her financial security meant so much to her that she’d opted to invest more than spend. She’d have to get with her broker to really see where her worth was. She may very well be able to walk away from it all.

As the hot water poured down her body, Lana ran her hand over her stomach. To be a mother. How would she feel? She’d wanted a life with a marriage and kids but didn’t want the cart before the horse, so to speak. Maybe she wouldn’t even have to worry about it. Disappointment dampened her spirits, but she pushed it aside. She was too old to have flighty dreams of a knight in shining armor rushing in to save the day. She and Hawk hadn’t even talked about the logistics of their relationship, or even having a relationship. She’d have to see where they were before she could do anything else.

After she got out of the shower, Lana dressed in a pair of jeans and a soft-yellow shirt before she headed downstairs to face the music. She was met with a flurry of activity. Someone had put up a large corkboard. On it, were pictures of the four men on her narrowed lists, with red string leading down to index cards with information neatly printed on them. Copies of her letters were next to the board, along with random documents.

“What is all this?” she asked.

Hawk spun around with a broad smile that warmed her to her toes. “Did you sleep well?” he asked as she approached. She didn’t get to answer before he pressed a kiss to her lips.

“Woohoo, Hawk! It’s about damn time,” Welsh called.

“Clip his wings, girl. Don’t give him any slack,” Heim teased.

Hawk rolled his eyes and kissed her again before she could speak. “I’m a bit sore,” she whispered.

His boyish grin sent her nerves into a frenzy. The man was lethal. “Sorry, not sorry.”

Lana shook her head, confident that what they shared last night wasn’t gone this morning. Hawk straightened and looked back over the board.

“We’ve been triangulating who it could possibly be, as well as comparing writing samples. The letters have a particular turn of phrase, and we wanted to see if it showed up anywhere. So far, we haven’t seen it, but we’ll keep looking. As for who, all the men you provided have holes in their timeline around the times you had incidents, and we haven’t been able to contact Damien or Terry about the recent events. We are waiting to talk to them. Based on what T was able to find out, the source would have taken just two to three days to find you and book travel to get here in time to throw the brick in the window,” Hawk explained.

“You’ve been busy,” Lana commented. “But that sounds like a lot of time”

“It might, but that’s actually fast to sift through the databases for information and lead to you. Sloane, T’s IT guy, did it in that amount of time. He said with information like that, you’d have to know what you’re looking for. It verifies it is someone you know.”

Her stomach grumbled loudly, and Hawk stopped. “Breakfast first. Let’s drive to town for some grub. Don’t think you have enough to feed all of us in here. Plus, it’ll get you out of the house for a bit,” he announced.

After a few minutes of organizing, they all piled into vehicles to head to the main part of Eagle Rock and the diner Hank had told them about. It seemed almost normal. Hawk had her in the passenger seat, with Welsh and Glitz in the backseat. They chatted and laughed back and forth on the short drive into town.

Hawk’s phone rang. “Hold on, fellas. Hello? ... What?”

The vibe in the car changed. It was subtle, but both Glitz and Welsh had a quiet watchfulness about them the minute Hawk’s voice changed.

“Look at me, Lana,” Welsh commanded.

Like the silly women in the scary movies she always laughed at for turning around, she mimicked their actions and stared forward. She shouldn’t have. Her world tipped, and she blinked through blurry eyes, hoping against hope that none of it was real. Hawk cursed and slammed on the brakes, sending the car fishtailing before he got it under control.

Strung up on string, down the streets of town, were pictures of her … and Hawk. She couldn’t see them all, but what she could see made her stomach churn. All in caps, bright-red letters marked the images, calling her a slut, a cheater, and a whore. The most beautiful time in her life was on display for everyone to see.

“Hank, what the hell is going on?” Hawk yelled. “When did this happen?”

Lana couldn’t hear Hank’s response. She felt dirty and violated. Hawk had handled her with such care, and her stalker tried to destroy it. People pulled at the photos, stacking them in bundles and handing them over to deputies, but it didn’t stop them from seeing. The urge to leap out of the car and throw up forced her to grasp at the door handle. Cool hands covered her eyes from behind her.

“Breathe, yeodongsaeng.” Glitz’s soft voice pushed through the chaos in her mind as doors opened and the jeep shifted, but Glitz never moved.

“Don’t look at it, just breathe. What you shared, no matter what this bastard has done, is sacred. I will end him for you, I swear it. I will not leave until Hawk has found this man and we ensure he never touches you again.”

Warm tears splashed into her lap. “That was ours,” she wailed.

“And it still is. Never forget that,” he returned. “Just breathe, yeodongsaeng. Let Hawk find out what has happened, and then we will go hunting.”

Lana did as he suggested and took a deep breath. She didn’t want to remember Hawk’s touch with splashes of red. Her pulse settled, and she reached up and gripped Glitz’s wrists to ground herself. This was what mattered—the way Hawk had raced to find out what had occurred and how his team had closed in. What mattered was she’d found a man worth giving herself to, and no one could ever take that away. Lana searched for the warmth of the morning, but it didn’t envelope her like it did before. At least, she could breathe, and when she pulled Glitz’s hands from her eyes, she didn’t lose her calm. When she turned in the seat to face him, his dark gaze met hers with absolute conviction. She had never truly looked at the Asian member of Hawk’s team. His long, dark hair fell with a slight wave at the end, as if the hair was used to being tied into a bun, and he had a slight mustache. His full lips and chiseled jaw were perfect. She smiled through her pain.

“I swear, your whole team could have been models. Heim, the All-American with blond hair and blue eyes, Snake, with his ice-burst eyes and massive build, Welsh is a perfect Scot, but don’t tell him I told you that, and even Cry Baby makes me want to weep. What is in the food you all ate growing up?”

Glitz shrugged, though a small smile played on his lips. It was the most expression she’d seen on the quiet SEAL. “Extra vitamins?” he asked with a straight face.

She chuckled, the laughter still trapped behind her carefully contained hysteria. “Thank you for calming me down.”

“Trauma is trauma. Even the civilian world can be a battlefield. You belong to a SEAL, and we won’t let you down,” he promised.

Glitz took her hands in his as Welsh and Hawk climbed back into the car. When Lana tried to turn around, he stopped her and shook his head.

“Not just yet. Let’s get out of here first.”

He kept her like that, until Hawk had the car turned around, and then he let her take her seat.

Lana looked to Hawk’s hard face. “What happened?”

“The pictures were spotted around six a.m., but no one saw who strung them up.” Hawk hit the steering wheel hard enough to make her jump. “Where are you, you bastard?”

“Someone had to see something, maybe even someone fleeing the scene?” she asked.

“Nothing more than a tall man, dressed in all black and a ski mask, racing between buildings at the end of the picture trail. A ranch hand coming in for a bit of grub saw that, and then the pictures. He called it in immediately. It took time for forensics to powder all the lines and try to catalogue the crime scene. Small town, and they couldn’t cover anything up. I’m sorry.”

“We can track him, can’t we?” Welsh asked.

“Planning on it. Vixen can stay with Lana in the house, and then we are all going to find who’s doing this to my woman,” Hawk promised.

Lana trembled, hearing the deadly intent in his voice. But even when she searched deep inside, she couldn’t find any compassion for the one who had done this to her, and she felt a thrill shoot through her at Hawk’s words. His woman. She was, irrevocably, and she knew he wouldn’t let something like this stand.