Chapter Five

Sami

Three Months Later

The obstacle course never failed to kick my ass. Quinn called it “The Grinder,” like the one he and his Navy SEAL buddies ran during training back in the day. It was an apt description, because no matter how many times I ran it, every muscle in my body felt like it’d gone through a meat grinder.

After three months of hard physical training, I was in the best shape of my life. I had no problem running the mountain path to the ridge, which my fellow trainees had started calling Deadman’s Run. I could even do it decked out in full battle gear. I could do all the push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups demanded of me. I had defined muscles in my arms and legs. And, for the first time in my life, abs.

But that obstacle course? OMG. Quinn kept making it harder, more intense. Today, he’d added live fire. You know, real bullets zooming over our heads. The man got off on torturing us. If I hadn’t seen for myself how sweet Quinn was with his fiancée and two young children, I’d think he was a sadist.

I had just finished running the Grinder with Wolfe—we’d been assigned as training buddies, and he’d fast become one of my favorite people. We were trudging back to the dorm for showers, and I was only half listening to him talk about the night out in town he and some of the other guys had planned. I was thinking of my shower. Hot water beating down, releasing the tightness in my muscles…

My phone blasted Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher.”

I glared at Wolfe as I grabbed it from the side pocket of my duffel bag. Sure enough, it was Harvard’s name on the caller ID. “Very funny.”

Wolfe made kissy faces at me. Yeah, he knew about my crush. I’d told him about it during an ill-advised night of drinking in town, and he never passed up the opportunity to make jokes. I walked away from him and answered.

“Can you hack my drone?” Harvard asked without preamble.

“If that was a pickup line, you need to up your game.” Holy shit. Did I just say that out loud? To Harvard? Either I was spending too much time with the guys or the Grinder had ground my brain into lunch meat. Probably a little of both.

Harvard stuttered. “No—what? No, it wasn’t— Jesus. What exactly are you doing?”

“Dying,” I said on a drawn-out sigh, pretending I hadn’t just opened my mouth wide and stuffed my whole foot in. “Quinn just tortured us on the obstacle course.”

A moment of silence passed. “Can you hack my drone or not?”

I groaned. So much for my shower. Harvard and the rest of HORNET were on a mission overseas, rescuing a doctor. He had tapped me for research help during the course of the mission, but this was bigger. I had no idea what he wanted me to do with his drone, but if he was calling for my help, he must be in a tight spot. “Honestly, I don’t know. You created that thing. It might be above my abilities.”

Another short pause on his end. “You need to break into my office.”

I pulled my phone away from my ear and gaped at it. “Wha—?” I started to ask, but he rolled over me like he hadn’t even heard the question.

“On my desktop, there’s a program that will allow you remote access. You’re going to provide surveillance for the team.”

“I—what? Wait.” It was his job to provide surveillance. He wanted me to do it instead? “What will you be doing?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

He hung up, and my heart bungeed into my throat. That abruptness wasn’t like him, but I’d noticed a change in him over the last few months. He wasn’t the shy, awkward nerd I’d met my first night in Wyoming. He was quieter. Withdrawn. Angry, even. He didn’t smile as easily or as often. Something was definitely going on with him, and so many times I’d wanted to ask if he was okay. Except it wasn’t my place to ask. I was his student.

I about-faced and ran past the Grinder—Wolfe’s roommate, Blaze, was running it with Remy now—toward the building containing classrooms and Harvard’s office. We called it Quentin Hall, named for Tucker Quentin, who financed HORNET and the training program. Harvard’s office was on the first floor, in the Physick Computer Lab—which had been named after him.

With HORNET on a mission, the office was locked. Luckily, I’d learned how to pick locks a long time ago. A useful by-product of my days in juvie. I was inside in a matter of seconds. I powered up his desktop and found the program he’d mentioned. Took a second of tinkering to figure out the controls, but soon enough I had control of the drone. It was sitting on the hood of an SUV in a heavily forested area. I had no idea where he wanted me to go, but I found the team after switching to thermal imaging. I stayed above them, scanning the immediate area, though Harvard hadn’t given me any instructions on what to do if I spotted something out of the ordinary. I guess call him?

They approached a structure that looked to be a castle tucked into a mountainside. Ancient and beautiful. I wondered if I’d see places like that, too, when I became a full-fledged member of the team.

I adjusted the drone’s flight path to avoid a large tree, and it went spiraling through the air. Shit. Maybe I hadn’t adjusted enough. Maybe I’d clipped one of the tree’s branches. The stupid thing was going to crash if I didn’t—

I typed commands furiously, searching for any response, and finally the drone leveled out.

All right. Okay.

I drew a deep breath and then nearly choked on it.

The castle was in flames, and one wall had crumbled. It hadn’t been a branch that knocked the drone but an explosion. I switched back to thermal and searched for the team. There were definitely fewer heat signatures than before, and I had no way of knowing who was okay and who was injured. I kept the drone in the air until reinforcements arrived. Then there were so many people and so much confusion I wasn’t going to be any help. I set the drone back on the SUV where I found it, then shut down Harvard’s computer and sat back. I stared at the blank screen for several long minutes, my heart thundering in my ears.

I had seen people die since starting this program. We had a training mission go way sideways on us about two months ago at a resort in Martinique, and HORNET had lost a man. The newly finished Giancarelli Recreation Center, the GRC, on campus now carried his name.

Had I just watched them lose more men? Had I watched Harvard die?

The thought twisted my stomach into a pretzel, and I grabbed my phone, dialing him without thinking. Straight to voicemail. My hand shook as I dialed again. And again.

Not until I heard the door open behind me did I realize I was sitting there with tears tracking down my face, dialing my teacher over and over like a freaking psycho. A teacher I had a serious crush on. A teacher who might have just died.

Oh, God. I couldn’t breathe.

“Hey, there you are,” Wolfe said behind me. “Got worried when you never showed up at the dorm. What are you doing in here?”

I stood and swiped at my cheeks with my hands. “Harvard asked me for a favor.”

I tried to walk past him, but he caught my arm. “Whoa, slow down, Geek Girl. What’s wrong?”

Glancing back at the computer, I completely lost my shit. Wolfe folded me up in his big arms. Not the arms I wanted, but it felt nice. He was the big brother I never had, and at that moment, I was so grateful for him.

“Aw, Sami,” he said softly. “Why don’t you just tell him how you feel and see where it goes?”

I sniffed and stepped back. “He’s my teacher.”

“He won’t always be.”

“And then maybe I’ll say something. Maybe.” I looked back at the computer one last time. The team was okay. This was what they did, what they were trained for. What Wolfe, Remy, Gavin, and I were training for.

Harvard was okay.

I held on tight to the thought, though I wouldn’t believe it until I heard from him again.