“Last Warning!” She Said—They Jumped Her Anyway And Met A Navy SEAL Combat Master.
Part 2
The facility wasn’t quite a base and wasn’t quite not a base. Joint-use training compound. Mixed personnel. Marines, contractors, Army, federal tactical liaisons, agency-adjacent civilians in bad polos pretending not to be agency-adjacent. Places like that always got sloppy around authority. Too many egos. Too many half-chains of command. Too many men who confused noise with rank.
It was perfect for what I needed.
Also dangerous in all the old, familiar ways.
“I know where I am,” I said.
“Then act like it.”
I bent, picked up the grappling dummy by the shoulder harness, straightened it, and set it back in place. “You should try the same.”
One of the Marines behind him let out a low whistle. Havens’ jaw tightened.
For half a second I thought he might put hands on me right there. His fingers flexed once at his sides. The kind of involuntary movement I’d spent years learning to catch before it became intent.
Instead he leaned back and laughed.
“All right,” he said. “Okay. I get it. Tough girl routine.”
I didn’t answer.
He nodded toward the combat pits. “You assigned to today’s evaluation block?”
“I’m assigned where I’m told.”
“That means yes,” one of the Marines muttered.
Havens smiled again, a little too wide this time. “Good. Then maybe we’ll all get to learn something.”
“Maybe,” I said.
The lieutenant in the doorway finally moved. “Havens.”
Just his name. Nothing more.
Havens turned enough to show he’d heard, then threw me one last look and stepped back. “See you in the pit.”
He walked off with his little orbit of amused followers. The sound came back into the yard all at once after that—weights hitting rubber, somebody cursing at a pull-up bar, a radio crackling near the supply cage.
I crouched again and adjusted the dummy’s hip joint, even though it no longer needed it.
My hands were steady. That was good.
The part of me I trusted most was always the part that stayed calm before impact.
A shadow fell over me.
I looked up expecting Havens again, but it was the lieutenant from the doorway.
Part 3
He was younger up close. Late twenties maybe. Clean-shaven. Officer haircut already losing the fight against desert dust. He held the folder in both hands like he actually read things before signing them.
“Lieutenant Dylan Cross,” he said.
I stood. “Brennan.”
He glanced past me toward the pits. “You don’t have to let them bait you.”
“I know.”
He studied my face for a second, probably looking for nerves, pride, anger, something he could categorize.
“What branch were you with?” he asked.
“None that matter here.”
His mouth twitched, almost a smile. “That answer usually means one of two things.”
“And?”
“And either you were nobody important, or you were important enough that people stopped asking.”
I said nothing.
He took that in, then nodded once. “You’ve been moved to the 0900 full-contact block.”
I already knew I would be. Men like Havens always reached for institutions when their egos got scraped. If they couldn’t dominate informally, they tried to make the system do it for them.
“Three-on-one assessment,” Cross added. “Unofficially.”
There it was.
Not enough to be written down. More than enough to be a problem.
I slid the clipboard under my arm. “Appreciate the warning.”
He lowered his voice. “If you want me to kill it, I can try.”
“No.”
“You sure?”
I looked out over the pits. The dawn light had just started touching the far fence, turning the wire bright and thin like it was drawn in pencil. Men were gathering already, pretending they had reasons to stand near the mat area that had nothing to do with me.
“I’m sure,” I said.
Cross followed my line of sight. “They think you’re about to learn where you are.”
I adjusted my gloves and started walking toward the training block. “Then today should be educational.”
I heard him exhale behind me, the sound halfway between concern and resignation.
By 0858, the whole facility seemed to know where to stand to get a view.
And when I stepped into the pit and saw who was waiting for me, I realized Havens hadn’t come for a lesson.
He’d brought witnesses.
