She ached from head to foot. Although calling it an ache didn’t quite do justice to the screaming agony shooting through her body. Nonetheless, it felt so damned good just to sit down in this hard, uncomfortable chair and rest that she had no desire to complain.

Whatever kind of head game this was by the BUD/S instructors, she didn’t much care. She closed her eyes once more to grab whatever nap she could get before the torture began again.

Sunlight blazing through the window woke her up the next time. That and nigh intolerable heat. She’d gotten accustomed to the pounding sun of the California desert in BUD/S, but being trapped inside a small, enclosed space like this was like sitting in a broiler.

What was this all about? No one had ever mentioned anything about prisoner-of-war training being part of Hell Week. Surely, Griffin would have told her about it and not thrown her into this cold.

Maybe it was some secret SEAL rite of passage.

She assessed her overall health quickly. Sore as hell from the past five days and nights of hell. Hungry. Thirsty, but not dangerously dehydrated…yet. If she kept sweating at this rate, she was going to need water bad in a few more hours. As it was, she felt the first ticklings of a headache, a sure sign she was dehydrated.

She tested the ropes binding her to what turned out to be a sturdy metal chair. They were solid. She was effectively unable to move for now. Might as well go back to sleep. She had a whole lot of that to make up.

* * *

The next time she woke up, the heat of the day felt like it might be starting to break. Red sunlight came in low through cracks in the siding, and she quickly oriented herself. Off to her left was west. Duly noted.

The noise that had woken her up—an approaching vehicle engine—cut off. She listened with interest to the rattling of locks on the door, and then three men stomped into the tiny cabin, filling it with their big bodies. They all had bandannas tied over their faces and were dressed in black cargo pants and T-shirts in shades of brown, gray, and green.

Sherri examined their physiques closely and didn’t recognize them as any of her BUD/S instructors. But that made sense if this was some sort of prisoner training. They would be a different cadre of instructors from the regular BUD/S guys.

She waited quietly, interested to see what would happen next. The good news was she’d had hours’ worth of badly needed sleep and felt like a new woman. But a woman who had to pee.