She’d never hugged George Shaw in her life, but figured this was an appropriate occasion for it. “George, you beautiful, brilliant, badass—” She stopped. Her mind went blank as she took in everything he’d done, so she just spoke the truth. “I don’t even have words…”

For the hundredth time since this ordeal began, her eyes teared. But the feeling behind it now was different.

He wrapped an arm around her waist, squeezing back. “With that list, I think the next word should be bastard.”

Tears leaked from the sides of her eyes. “No way. I think saint is more appropriate.”

He shook his head. “Hell no. I’m much more bastard than saint.” He leaned back and studied her face. More tears spilled, as she took in his lined cheeks and long dark hair streaked with gray.

His gaze landed on her throat, which she imagined was red from her encounter with the tango in the forest. “You okay, Aud?”

She nodded. “I’m fine. That we’re even here at all is thanks to you.”

“Hear, hear,” the medic tending George’s leg chimed in.

Audrey turned her gaze to him and realized he wasn’t one of the SEALs she’d met in the forest. He must be one of the men from Xavier’s team who’d been taken hostage.

“It was your call when the cameras went out that alerted me,” George said. “I got your message right away and grabbed my binoculars and went to see what the hell was going on. It was clear they weren’t looters. They were dressed for combat, and when I saw them recover their cache of weapons from the site, their plan to attack the training was obvious.”

“Why didn’t you call or text me?”

“I think they had a shorter-range signal jammer on them. My phone worked one moment, and the next, it was toast. If your cameras had been wireless with a satellite feed, there would have been no need for them to cut the line.”

She thought of those days in November of backbreaking work as she buried the conduit for the cables. It was common for satellite signals to be interrupted, and the security team monitoring the camera feeds might never have noticed—especially if the signal was restored once the weapons had been retrieved.

Without those cut cables, George never would have been warned. Audrey wouldn’t have entered the park. Xavier would have been ambushed along with the rest of his team.

The events of the last day and a half would have played out very differently.