Maybe they would complete their mission without casualties and he would come back, and yeah . . . maybe they had a future.

He could let himself love her.

And then he could finally go home. Stay.

And maybe a guy like him could live happily ever after.

Maybe.

Ranger could run the op with his eyes closed, he’d gone over it so many times in his head. And that was probably a good thing because tonight, for some reason, he was hyperaware of the dark spots in his eyesight.

This might be his last op, so he’d make it the best. No casualties. One hundred percent mission success.

Now, he hung out under the long dock that stretched out on the south side of the island, his rebreather rendering him silent in the dark water as he listened to Ham and Fraser check in as they set their teams in place. Overhead, the moon had rounded midnight, over to the wee hours of the morning.

Ranger would wait until the teams cleared out the traffic, drawing attention to both sides of the camp, and then he and Roy would run a play up the middle, right to the pool house. Secure the canisters and then call in the big dogs, once the smoke died down, to transport them into government custody.

Felt like old times.

Beside him, Roy was a ghost in the water. He emanated a dangerous quiet, even when he wasn’t in stealth mode, but his eyes were embedded with a story that said he could keep up with their assault team just fine, thank you, and still slip unseen into the night.

“In position.” Jake’s voice came through the coms.

Ranger had gotten some of Roy’s story from Ham during their strategy sessions.

Roy, along with Logan, had been on Ham’s SEAL team, had been one of the guys separated from the team during an ambush deep in the Afghani mountains. Logan had been captured by the Taliban, along with Roy. Ranger didn’t want the details of what the terrorists had done to them. But they’d been rescued by an unsanctioned op put together by Ham and a guy named McCord—ironically the father of his brother-in-law, Riley, Larke’s husband.

McCord and Ham had rescued Logan and Roy.

And then things went south.

According to Ham, the CIA made the reported-as-dead SEALs an offer they couldn’t refuse, then secured their yes by casting blame for a Pakistani general’s assassination on them.

Logan refused to play ball and disappeared for the better part of three years before he resurfaced in Alaska. Ham didn’t know the details of how Logan ended up on President White’s private task force.

Roy had joined up with the spook squad and spent three years in Europe, doing wet work and gathering intel and generally being the guy who kept everyone safe and sleeping in their beds.