Chapter 2 #2
Renzo laughed. "He's got you there."
"I'm not looking for work," I told him.
"Neither was I when I got here." Renzo leaned back. "Was supposed to be passing through, maybe stay a couple weeks. That was over a year ago. Now I'm married, finishing my Tennessee architect license, all in with the local construction company with a good man named Harvey Sadowski."
The burger was good. Better than good. Real beef, not the processed stuff from military facilities. It was an ordinary, perfect moment.
"Look." Roan waited a beat. "I'm not going to push. But if you're sticking around and get bored, come by the office. We've got some interesting cases. Nothing like what you're used to, I'm sure, but..."
"Define interesting."
"Corporate espionage. Guy thinks his business partner is selling secrets to competitors in China. Can't prove it because everything's encrypted."
"What kind of encryption?"
"Hell if I know. That's the problem."
The technical part of my brain engaged before I could stop it. "Recent activity or historical data?"
"Both. Three years of emails, plus whatever he's doing now."
"You check keystroke loggers? Network traffic analysis?"
Roan stared at me like I'd grown a second head.
"See?" Jase grinned. "This is what I'm talking about. You two need each other."
"I said I'm not looking for work."
"And I said I'm not pushing. But there's no reason we can't talk."
The conversation shifted. Renzo talked about barn renovations. Roan mentioned a classic car restoration. Normal things. Civilian things. Conversations without IEDs or nation-state cyber attacks.
"I should get back." Jase checked his phone. "Bonnie's probably cooked enough food for an army by now."
"I’m just one former Army."
He laughed. "Same thing in her mind. Don't worry, it'll be so good you'll want to eat it no matter how full you are."
Goodbyes. Renzo made me promise to visit. Roan handed me a business card for Onyx Security. Into my pocket it went without looking.
The drive back stayed quiet.
The house had transformed. No chaos. The smell of roast chicken and apple pie. Spotless living room. The robot sat on the coffee table, functioning arms, LED eyes blinking.
"Code!" Amber appeared from the kitchen. "We fixed it! Want to see it move?"
"After dinner." Bonnie followed her daughter out, freshly showered, jeans and a sweater. The stress from earlier had vanished. "I'm sorry about earlier. Saturday afternoons are... always like this," she ruefully admitted.
" I've seen forward operating bases with less activity."
She laughed. "That's one way to put it. Hope you're hungry. I may have gone overboard."
Overboard was an understatement. Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, cornbread, salad, two pies cooling on the counter.
"Mom stress-cooks." Lachlan appeared with somewhat tamed hair. "Last parent-teacher conference, she made ten dozen cupcakes."
"They were having a bake sale," Bonnie defended.
"The next week, Mom."
Dinner was loud. Amber and Lachlan talked over each other. The robot's features. The motor that kept getting stuck. Twenty other topics without any connection.
"Is it always like this?" The question slipped out quietly to Jase.
"Wait until you get together with all seventeen of my siblings and their children. This is calm."
A shudder ran through me.
After dinner, the robot performed. Walking across the table. Picking up a pencil. Something Amber called a "victory dance" that looked more like a seizure.
"The coding is pretty good." Amber's laptop screen drew me in. "But your motor keeps stuttering. You need to make the turns smoother."
"That's what I said!" Amber shot her brother a triumphant look.
"You said the motor was stupid," Lachlan corrected.
"Same thing."
The laptop ended up in front of me somehow.
Simple commands needed tweaking. My fingers moved across the keyboard, muscle memory from a thousand late nights debugging systems. Except now it was explaining basic if-then statements to nine-year-olds.
Amber absorbed every word. Lachlan focused on playing with the robot and making it do kung fu moves.
"The presentation's Monday morning." Amber's earlier anger had evaporated. "We're supposed to demonstrate a practical application."
"What'd you choose?"
"It sorts recycling." Lachlan's chest puffed out. "It can tell the difference between glass and other stuff."
"Using what sensors?"
"Weight. Amber pulled up more code. “We asked for one of the advanced kits to work with from the teacher. Every student had the opportunity to choose what level of kit they could work with.”
"Show me."
An hour disappeared into elementary school coding. Fixing why the robot kept turning left. Teaching them how to make it stop when something went wrong. Scout curled up at my feet, apparently deciding I made acceptable furniture.
"You're good with kids." Bonnie appeared with coffee.
"I'm just explaining computers."
"Same thing with these two."
The kids eventually went to bed with minimal protest, robot in tow ‘for practice.’ Bonnie followed, claiming exhaustion. Her hand squeezed my shoulder as she passed. "I'm glad you're here. Jase has missed you."
ESPN played at low volume in the living room. Just Jase and me.
"Guest room's all set up. Stay as long as you need."
"I haven't decided, but it won't be more than a week."
"Or a month. Or three. No pressure."
Comfortable silence settled between us. The kind civilians didn't understand. No need to fill space with words.
"You want to talk about it?" he asked.
"No."
"Okay."
He went up around ten. The living room stayed dark except for the TV glow. Scout had migrated to the couch, snoring softly beside me.
Different from a barracks. Different from base apartments. This was permanence. Roots. The thing everyone said we fought for but most never figured out how to build.
I was so fucking happy for Jase. I didn't have words to describe it.
The laptop came out from habit. Encrypted channels that technically didn't exist. I watched as Fort Gordon operations proceeded without me.
My monitoring systems, my threat assessments, now someone else's responsibility.
Someone younger who still believed the mission meant more than staying ahead of disaster.
The cursor blinked.
Waiting.
For twenty years, there'd always been input. Another threat. Another vulnerability. Another attack. Now, just a blinking cursor and my cousin's family breathing in sleep upstairs.
I closed my laptop.
Monday, the robot presentation. Bonnie would stress about something else, but handle it with grace. Jase would watch for signs of me breaking. Maybe that security company deserved a drive-by.
Not because the work interested me.
Just to have purpose that wasn't typing commands into servers that shouldn't exist.
The guest room was nice. Queen bed, dresser, attached bathroom. Fresh flowers on the nightstand. In my world, flowers meant someone had died.
I lay down on the bed, fully clothed, staring up at the ceiling fan. It stared back down at me.
At Fort Gordon, Thompson would be starting the night shift. Reviewing threat indicators. Tracking Russian and Chinese APT groups. Three years of playing defense, watching patterns, documenting tactics. Always reacting. Never striking back.
The forty-page briefing I'd left him covered everything.
The cryptocurrency correlation with cyber attacks.
The defense contractor probe patterns. Three meetings walking him through it all, but knowing and seeing were two different things.
Thompson was the smartest of the bunch, but would he catch the pattern shifts?
The subtle variations between probe and attack?
That new pattern I'd found in my last month still gnawed at me. APT groups coordinating where they shouldn't. I'd flagged it, documented what I could, but that kind of thing took months of patient observation. Instinct.
They'd probably be fine. They had good systems and a solid team. But twenty years taught me it was never the attack you expected; it was always the blind spot you didn't know existed.
I gritted my teeth.
Not my problem anymore.
Before I could close the bedroom door, Scout padded in, looked at me, then jumped on the bed. That was definitely not part of his training. When I got into bed, he settled against my side with a contented sigh. I was under supervision, apparently.
"This your job? Making sure the weird cousin doesn't disappear in the night?"
One tail wag. Eyes closed.
Smart dog.
My eyes closed too. The sound of nothing happening. No alerts. No operations. No missions.
Just a dog breathing and a house full of people teaching me that maybe belonging was possible.
Maybe Renzo was right.
Maybe passing through became something else when you weren't watching.
A week to see. Watch the robot presentation. Navigate whatever crisis came next. Drive by that security company.
Just to look.
A week couldn't hurt.
Okay, maybe more.