Lily leaned forward. “What are they like? We don’t get them on army posts I mean, we have Rangers. And they’re all gung ho about blowing stuff up. But I hear SEALs are even tougher.”

Sherri sighed. She’d met plenty of Special Forces types. Or at least wannabe special operators. They bathed in testosterone and actively worked at being arrogant jerks.

Anna replied, “I hear SEALs don’t talk much and can go all night.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Sherri grinned. “In other words, they’re perfect one-night stands.”

Fair-skinned Lily blushed, which made Sherri and Anna laugh.

Lily lowered her voice. “Cone of silence?”

Sherri and Anna nodded and leaned in close to her. Lily murmured, “My brother overheard the Chief of Naval Ops say the fix is on. They’ve decided to graduate one woman from BUD/S regardless of how she does, just to shut up the Secretary of Defense. They’re going to create a recruiting poster for publicity purposes and never use the woman as a real SEAL. Then they’ll wash out all the other women who try for the teams.”

Lily might as well have kicked Sherri in the gut. Nausea rolled through her as Kettering’s plan became crystal clear.

Sherri had been a pageant queen. She was willowy, blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful. Furthermore, she was a public affairs officer, accustomed to speaking to the press. She could deflect the hard questions and diplomatically redirect the rest. Heck, she was even training for the Olympics in heptathlon and was in ridiculously great physical condition. Of course Kettering had chosen her to be a fake SEAL and silence the powers that be.

Great.

Just great.

Calvin Kettering didn’t intend to let her—or any other woman—be a real SEAL. Was she never going to shed the plastic beauty-queen image?

Scholarships from the pageants had paid for a college education she could never have afforded on her own. But no one had warned her she would never live down being a beauty queen. Pageant promoters might call them “talent” contests or scholarship competitions, but to most people they were still about hot babes in bikinis.

She asked, “If they’re not going to let any of us be actual SEALs, why did Kettering bother hauling us to some secret facility to train? Why not just toss us in the regular SEAL training pipeline and let us go down in flames?”

Lily shrugged. “No idea.”

Sherri sniffed a mystery.

Anna said seriously, “Lily and I have a pact. Regardless of who’s chosen to make it through, and regardless of how they try to pit us against one another, we’re going to remain sisters and refuse to backstab each other.”

Thank God. “I’m in,” Sherri declared. “We stick together no matter what.”

The three of them traded fist bumps to seal the deal.