"A taut, edgy thriller."--Linda Howard

"Thanks to Suzanne Brockmann's glorious pen, we all get to revel in heartstopping adventure and blistering romance."--Romantic Times

"A smart, thrilling keeper ... this is one to recommend heartily to friends.... While heating tension and passion to the boiling point, Brockmann firmly squashes the cliche of military men with hearts of stone and imbues her SEALs with honest emotional courage."--Publishers Weekly

"[Brockmann] takes a quantum leap forward with a novel that is richly textured, tenderly touching and utterly exciting. This is one book you will be unable to put down or forget!"--Romantic Times

The moon was hanging insolent and full in the sky just to the left of a billboard for a bankruptcy lawyer, and Stan knew.

It was the full moon's fault.

It had to be the goddamn full moon.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Stanley Wolchonok steadied himself, holding on to the side of a pickup truck in the parking lot of the Ladybug Lounge and praying to whatever god was listening that he wouldn't throw up.

His fever was spiking. He could feel his entire body break out in a sweat as a flash of intense heat gripped him. God damn, of all the times to get the flu... Of course, there was never a good time to get sick. This just happened to be a worse time than any other, coming back to the States after two relentless months away.

"Senior! Thank God you're here!"

Stan wasn't ready to thank anyone for anything -- particularly not for his command performance tonight at this cheap-shit, lowlife bar where he hadn't come by choice in well over two years.

Which didn't mean he hadn't been here plenty of times in the past two years.

Cleaning up after whichever dumbass in the team had gone ballistic.

The average dumbass didn't get more than two strikes before he was out of the SEAL Teams -- or at least out of the elite Team Sixteen Troubleshooters Squad.

Truth was, the average dumbass who was smart enough to become a SEAL learned rather quickly to be neither dumb nor an ass most of the time. But everyone had to blow off steam, particularly after two months away from loved ones, two months filled with high stress and not a hell of a lot of down time.

The married men -- and the men whose relationships with their girlfriends had survived these past two very cold and lonely months of separation -- were all home in their honeys'sweet arms tonight. The single guys were in bars like the Ladybug -- an alcohol-doused location where it was extremely easy for the average dumbass to get into some serious trouble.

Tonight's dumbass was newly promoted Chief Petty Officer Ken Karmody, more affectionately known by his extremely accurate nickname WildCard. Unfortunately, there was nothing even remotely average about him.

This was, without a doubt, the seventeenth strike against him. Another man would've been out on his ear a long time ago. Problem was, another man couldn't do half the things to and with computers that WildCard Karmody could.

And Lieutenant Tom Paoletti, CO of SEAL Team Sixteen, honestly liked the little butthead. Truth was, Stan liked him, too.

But not tonight. He didn't like him at all right now.

And the million-dollar question was, what had WildCard done to live up to his nickname this time?

Chief Frank O'Leary had made the SOS call that had pulled Stan out of bed. A man of few words, O'Leary's usual lazy drawl was clipped and tight. He'd gotten right to the point. "Senior, WildCard's in deep shit. Sure could use you at the Bug, ASAP."

If it had been anyone else calling, Stan would have rolled over and moaned himself back to a feverish, near-sleep state. But O'Leary rarely asked for anything. So Stan had been up and dressed and in his truck inside three minutes.

He forced himself to straighten up now as Petty Officer Second Class Mark Jenkins scurried across the parking lot to him. "O'Leary and Lopez locked Karmody in the bathroom, and Starrett, Muldoon, Rick, Steve, and Junior are holding off about twenty jarheads who want to rip him to shreds."

Stan's head throbbed. "Sam Starrett and Mike Muldoon are here?" Fuck. They were officers. Despite the fact that Sam was a mustang -- an enlisted man who'd gone to OTS and made the leap to officer -- and Muldoon damn near worshiped the ground Stan walked on, their presence here made cleaning this up more complicated.

And that wasn't even taking into consideration the twenty U.S. Marines who wanted -- probably for some very good reason -- to rip WildCard Karmody to shreds. Twenty Marines. Not two. Not three. Twenty. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

"Starrett swears he's blinded by the extremely generous, uh, charms of a young lady he met here tonight. He's seen nothing and will continue to see nothing. And Muldoon promised he'd be out the back door as soon as you arrived," Jenk reported in his schoolboy tenor. His cartoon-character voice matched the freckles on his deceptively honest face.

Stan managed to walk upright all the way to the Ladybug's door. Damn, he was dripping with sweat. The key to defusing a volatile situation like this was to come in looking completely calm and cool. He found his handkerchief, mopped his forehead, and prayed again that he wouldn't puke on the floor. "What happened?"

"I don't know exactly, Senior." Jenk, a veritable fountain of information and official team gossip, was coming up dry. When was the last time that had happened?

Stan cursed the full moon again. "Guess," he ordered the kid.

"I think WildCard went to see Adele again," Jenk told him. "And I think it probably didn't go too well. Again."

Adele Zakashansky. WildCard's high school sweetheart who had dumped him without ceremony after years of alleged devotion. At least that was WildCard's side of the story. The dumping had occurred a mayhem-filled six months ago. If Stan never heard her name again, it would be too soon.

"I was playing pool with Lopez and Rick," Jenk continued. "I didn't even see WildCard come in. Then there was this commotion, and I look up and he's going one on twenty with this bunch of Marines, like he's Jackie Chan or something. O'Leary was near the bar, and he grabbed WildCard and tossed him into the head. Muldoon got the Marines to agree to a temporary cease-fire. But it's only temporary."

God bless Chief Frank O'Leary and Ensign Mike Muldoon. "Anything broken?"

"A big mirror on the wall," Jenk said. "A coupla chairs." He laughed. "And a lot of Marine balls. The Card's a wild man."

The door opened and Mike Muldoon peeked out. "Senior! Thank God. You better get in here. The manager's about five seconds from calling the police, WildCard's shouting about getting out of the bathroom and finishing what he started, and the Marines are more than ready to rumble."

Stan mopped his face one more time and stepped inside. "I got it from here, Muldoon," he told the younger man.

"Oh, wow, Senior, you look really terrible. Man, you got the flu," Muldoon realized. He had one of those too-young, too-handsome faces with big expressive blue eyes that gave away everything he was feeling. And he wondered why he never won at poker. "You should be home, in bed -- "

"And you need to get out of here," Stan said bluntly. "I can't fix this for Karmody with you here."

Muldoon looked as if he were about to cry. "But -- "

"Get lost. Sir."