“Better. But it seems to me that, at best, we’re gray hats.”

“SEALs are the last resort in bad situations. Never doubt that we’re the good guys at the end of the day. We just use more…pragmatic…means than other people to achieve the good end. Leave the political nuances for the folks back home.”

“I’d like to know why I’m being asked to kill someone,” she responded.

“You won’t always be told,” he said solemnly. “But you’ll be expected to pull the trigger anyway. Ours not to reason why. Ours but to do and die,” he paraphrased.

“Tennyson?” she asked in surprise.

“You know it?” he asked in equal surprise.

“‘Charge of the Light Brigade,’” she said softly. “They all died in the end.”

“Another piece of sage advice, grasshopper: don’t think about death. It has a way of coming for those who do.”

She peered at him in the dark. “Is that Tennyson, too?”

“No. That’s Griffin Caldwell.”

“I hear he’s a smart man.”

Silence fell between them. He stared over at her. If possible, the shadows and darkness made her appear even more otherworldly and beautiful than usual. He reached out and pushed a strand of her hair back, tucking it behind her ear. The shell of her ear was soft and smooth, and she shivered lightly under his touch.

“How is it possible that you keep getting more beautiful?” he murmured.

“You’re fatigued and deprived of the sight of any other women,” she replied practically.

He chuckled. “You’re starting to sound like a SEAL.”

“How so?”

“You’re losing all that diplomatic doublespeak you used to do all the time.”

“Is that good?” she murmured.

“Yes.” He leaned in a little closer to her. “That’s good.”

A patter on the plastic shell of the Jeep made him look up. “Here comes the rain.”

“You wanna ride it out in here or find shelter?” Sherri asked.

He wanted her in his arms, and not jackknifed into the back seat of a car like a couple of guilty teenagers. “Do any of those buildings have intact roofs?”

“Yes. There’s one. A side wall is gone, but it ought to be dry. It’s over there. I don’t think we can drive to it, though.”

“Let’s make a run for it.”

Except, instead of running directly after Sherri, he paused long enough to scoop up a big armload of fallen branches and a couple of small logs. By the time he joined her in the partial shell of a one-story cinder-block building, it was starting to rain in earnest.