hell. And sometimes the kid had been pointing at the ground. Mitch had been clearly identifiable in several—as had another bruiser with tattoos for sleeves. But the other men on the film had their faces turned away from the cell phone’s camera most of the time. Tag suspected the guy with the tats would be identified …eventually. Those tats were a unique design. But as of now, the bastard was still in the wind.
It was too bad the film hadn’t been better quality, but hell, it was hard to get annoyed with the kid, considering he’d paid for that footage with his life. How the hell he’d managed to film at all was an unanswered mystery. Everything had been recorded with his cell phone. It must have been difficult to hide what he was doing. Yet somehow he’d managed to record the meetings and then hide the footage. And all beneath the noses of the gunrunners, who tended to be notoriously suspicious and quick on the draw.
In the end, the kid had done good. He’d obviously been focused on filming Mitch. Which made sense as exposing the bastard’s criminal activity was Sean and Sarah's ticket to freedom. He’d caught Mitch on all three recordings, offering U.S. military weapons for sale, as well as accepting payment for stolen goods. If he’d lived, those videos would have put Mitch away for good.
It was too bad Sean wasn’t alive. The kid deserved a handshake and a slap on the back for what he’d managed to accomplish.
Eventually, Devlin had made a third copy of the micro card and headed off to meet some super-secret hacker friend. Whoever Dev was meeting obviously wasn’t in the official channels, hence the secrecy. But fuck, if he could identify the bastards on that film, Tag would buy the dude a beer.
Hell, maybe Dev’s hacker could figure out what those strange strings of numbers on one of the videos were. They had to be important. Sarah said they were in Sean’s handwriting—which meant he’d written them down so he could film them.
But why?
The string of numbers was too long to be a bank account or a phone number. There were no letters, so they couldn’t be an address. Nor did the sequence and spacing match any GPS coordinates. What the hell were they? And why had Sean risked his life to pass them on?
There had been a fourth video. One addressed to Sarah. Tag hadn’t seen it. Far as he knew, the only one who’d watched that video other than Sarah was Devlin. His C.O. had called it an apology. He’d also made a copy of the video and given it to Sarah, then deleted the original—a sure sign he’d decided not to implicate her in Mitch’s side business.
Devlin’s decision was one of Tag’s biggest post-surgery surprises. His C.O. was a hard ass, even more unforgiving than Tag, but something had softened him toward Sarah.
Or maybe he simply felt guilty after Sarah had taken a bullet for the team.
Tag wanted to ask Sarah about that fourth video. Make sure she was okay after watching it. That must have been hard, hearing her little brother’s voice so soon after finding out he was dead. But somehow the right moment had never appeared. And considering how tense things had gotten between them over the past two days, it wasn’t looking likely the right moment would be popping up any time soon.
She’d wedged a distance between them. Oh, not a physical one—hell, most of the time she sat in the chair beside the bed. But an emotional gulf stretched between them now. She didn’t reach for his hand anymore. She refused to hold his gaze.
She’d pulled away.
Five days ago, she’d claimed to still love him. But that had been before—before he’d stalled out, refusing to reciprocate. Before she’d watched him hit the ground beneath Mitch’s bullet. Before she’d been shot herself.
Maybe she’d changed her mind. Watching someone get shot or getting shot oneself could lead to life reassessments. Maybe she’d decided life with an active duty SEAL wasn’t worth the pain.
If so, fuck—he couldn’t blame her.
A knock on the open door swung both his and Tram’s heads around. Speak of the devil. He could just make out Sarah’s tall, lean body and sizzling red hair around the edge of the privacy curtain surrounding his bed.
She’d stopped by for a visit before heading home after all. The weight of the Black Hawk that had landed on his chest when Tram said she was