SEAL in Deep Cover

PROLOGUE

Reid Rivers had a bullet scar, a fake death certificate and one hour to convince a stranger with a clipboard he deserved his life back.

He sat in a molded plastic chair in a classified area of the military hospital, separated from other military personnel. He’d never hear their war stories, and they’d never hear his.

Because technically, no one was in his chair. He didn’t officially exist.

That was the deal with SEAL Team Blackout Sierra—they went dark the day they signed on. No unit patch on their jackets. No official records that said what Rivers really did.

Or who really shot him. Not that he knew either.

He drew a slow breath, but it did nothing to calm his nerves. He was about to face the biggest test of his life.

Today would decide whether he still belonged in a war room or ended up behind a desk pushing paper for men who hadn’t earned half the scars he had.

Fit for duty.

Those three little words would either hand him his life back or take it away slower than the bullet tried to.

In his mind, he could see every moment of the attack in slow motion. The rally point surrounded by pines close enough to scent the air with the sharp smell of sap. The order that came down from Blackout Command.

Get Jolie and Stina to the secure point, hold until extraction.

He’d run more dangerous ops a hundred times without a scratch.

As soon as they arrived, a gunman had rushed out of the tree line, weapon already up, and Rivers had done the only thing twelve years of training instilled in him—he twisted and put his body between the muzzle and the two women he was there to protect.

He’d meant to let his vest take the hit. The bullet found the two inches of him that weren’t covered.

It sliced through him, hot as a brand, he remembered thinking with the strange, detached clarity that made time slow in the worst seconds of his life.

The bullet nicked his liver and put him on his back for two months.

He didn’t remember much after that. The voices of the women he was supposed to be guarding, sharp and far away. The crunch of tires as their kidnapper took them. The icy cold of the snow Rivers managed to pack around himself to slow the bleeding and prolong his life.

That indignity had hung around his neck for eight weeks, and today it had a different name.

The fitness board.

It started with a physician assigned by whoever handled Blackout’s paperwork, asking Rivers to describe his pain on a scale of one to ten, and a dozen more invasive questions that had nothing at all to do with his injury.

Then bloodwork—fasting of course. A man couldn’t even have a friggin’ cup of coffee after taking a hit for his country.

Then came the physical. The full physical.

“Bend over the table. Feet a little wider. Pull up your gown for me.”

Rivers craned his neck to give the doctor a flat stare. “You’ve got to be kidding me. They didn’t shoot me in the—aghh!”

“Standard for post-injury clearance.” The doctor wouldn’t be so amused if he knew Rivers was thinking up ways to put that stethoscope where the sun didn’t shine.

After his violation, he didn’t think anything could be worse. Until the psych eval.

No cold hands here—just a woman with kind eyes and a legal pad. She knew only what her clearance allowed. Her questions cut a lot closer to the bone.

Do you think of the incident often? Do you sleep through the night? Do you feel responsible for what happened that day? Would you hesitate, if it happened again?

Rivers gave her the answers any man on his team would give to get back to duty.

By the time Blackout Command showed up for the video debrief, he’d been poked, scanned and psychoanalyzed enough for a lifetime.

He sat straight in his chair and answered “yes, sir” and “no, sir” in all the right places while three men he’d never met in person decided his future from behind a screen.

The last stop was the one that actually mattered—in a briefing room that didn’t appear on any hospital directory.

His own commanding officer of Sierra team was waiting for him outside it, arms crossed. As Rivers approached, he couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face, even as he realized Cannon was giving him a thorough once-over.

“They clear you?” he asked.

He gave him a hard nod. “Every box checked off.”

For the first time, Cannon’s face split into a grin. “They give you the man physical?”

“Standard for post-injury clearance,” he repeated the doctor’s words.

Cannon snorted and studied him another second—long enough that Rivers felt that scrutiny in his spine. His leader was trying to assess whether to trust his gut or a doctor’s signature.

Whatever he saw must be convincing because Cannon’s expression relaxed.

“Good enough for me.”

He clapped a hand on Rivers’s shoulder, the closest thing to affection either of them ever exchanged.

“Welcome back.”