Chapter Nineteen
Rylee
Friday
When the test ended, the engineers were stunned — the AI hadn’t detected a single team. The system, trained on predictable human patterns, couldn’t comprehend movements that were chaotic, illogical, or even as absurd as the two Marines somersaulting across the terrain.
Thwarted by creativity, the engineers would go back to the drawing board.
For now, the human brain reigned supreme.
“What are you thinking about this, Rylee?” Dakota asked.
It was the three of them in her car—Rylee, Dakota, and Tank. While Dakota changed in the Cerberus Headquarters, Neely and Jasper decided to head off for dinner in his car. And because Neely had given Rylee a puppy dog look, Rylee had agreed to drive Dakota and Tank home.
That was a lie.
Rylee wasn’t doing her bestie a solid. Her being with Dakota was pure self-indulgence.
“I think that kind of system is too dangerous to play with.” Rylee was driving, and it had been a non-issue when she fobbed her car open.
With men in her past, they got a little twitchy when they weren’t the ones behind the wheel and in control of the vehicle.
“You’ve heard about that kid in Maryland who got jumped by the police for having a gun when he was eating a bag of chips?
Someone’s going to get killed. That’s my prediction. Why? What are you thinking?”
“It was fun to thwart,” Dakota said. “A chess game when you weren’t sure of the rules.
I mostly have questions. Who would rely on this system?
If the system failed, what would the ramifications be?
Something we didn’t test was the breaking point.
No one simply crawled forward. No one skipped, or limped, or did a squat every three paces.
No one wore a balaclava or carried an umbrella.
If I were designing the test, I would have said, ‘Do less, okay, now do less, and once again with less.”
Rylee gave a little finger wave as she passed by the Iniquus gate guard. “They might have already tried all that, so they needed special ops to get in there and do what wouldn’t occur to their engineers.”
“Possibly. We’ll never know.”
“Where am I driving?” Rylee asked, turning on her windshield wipers as the first blobs of rain obscured her windshield. “Do you already have plans for tonight, or would you like to hang out?”
“I’d like to hang out with you. But you’re going to want to get cleaned up. You haven’t seen your backside.”
“You were looking?”
“I was.” He chuckled. “Very nice, but also filthy.”
“Okay, so obviously my place. You cooked last time. I can pull something together for dinner. I could maybe do rice and chicken for Tank?”
“Yes to your place, absolutely no to your cooking.”
“Scared?”
“Terrified,” he said with an easy smile.
“Pizza? I do need you to run by my house so I can pick up my car. Thunderstorms are in the forecast for tonight, and I don’t want you on dangerous roads alone in the dark, and it’s a weekend, so it’s hard to get a taxi to come out to the burbs.
I’ll go home, feed Tank, and pick up a couple of pizzas.
I just have to know what you’re in the mood for. ”
Rylee turned her face as if she were checking her mirror. She absolutely didn’t want Dakota to see the lascivious glimmer that must be sparkling in her eyes.
What was she in the mood for?
Ever since they were rubbing thighs over two hundred yards, feeling the power of his body against hers, she knew exactly what she was in the mood for, and pretending otherwise only made the ache deeper. “Whatever looks good on the menu, I’m game. No pineapple or sardines, though, please.”
He held out his phone, the map app open, showing the route to his house, where she left him off.
At home, she had to do a quick run-through of the rooms because she wasn't company-ready like Dakota had been.
She jumped in the shower where she did a power prep, shaving and moisturizing, swiping on deodorant, throwing her hair up into what she hoped was a sophisticated messy bun before tugging on a pair of oversized sweatpants that hung low on her hips.
For her top, Rylee chose a lacy bra and a little cami.
Easy access, and hopefully the only invitation Dakota would need.
Then she lit a fire and dimmed the lights. “I just have to know what you’re in the mood for,” he’d said.
She was in the mood for everything.
She was in the mood to talk to him. And look at him. And touch him. All of it, all at once.
“Slow your damned motor,” Rylee whispered as she answered Dakota’s call.
“Hey, I found a place to parallel park down the street from your townhouse. Can you open the door and call Tank so he runs to you? You don’t want the smell of wet dog in your house.”
Rylee grabbed a towel from the guest bath. “Ready,” she called, leaning out the door.
Off in the distance, she saw Dakota open the back door, and with her call, Tank raced down the street and inside, where Rylee rubbed him dry while Dakota jogged in with the pizza protected by an extra-wide umbrella.
They decided on a picnic in front of the fire.
“Good?” he asked as she peeked into the boxes.
“Perfect.” But when she said, “I’m starving,” she was looking Dakota in the eye.
The blush. The smile. So damned cute.
Rylee, leaning back against a chair and crisscrossing her legs, lifted a slice to her mouth. “Thunderstorms set the stage for pillow talk.” Then she took the bite.
“Yeah?” Dakota settled against the chair, facing her. “I’m game.”
Tank lay on the cool slate in her foyer, where he’d been banished while they were eating.
“Why don’t we catch up on all the things we would already know about each other, if we were, say, two months into a dating relationship?”
“Interesting.” Dakota reached for a napkin and pulled a slice of pizza from the box.
“Isn’t it?” Rylee asked. “I’ll start. You were with special operations forces. Why did you choose to be a little-known Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman and not go for the SEAL Trident so you could have life-long bragging rights?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to be on a special forces team, and I’m not great at swimming in black water. I’d rather be sitting in a boat.”
Rylee leaned forward, wiggling her fingers in the air. “Something might come up and nibble your toes?”
“That’s it exactly. Nightmare material. Like that hand you thought you’d be dragging from the water.” He made a stink face and shook his head. “That’s a nope for me.”
She laughed from her belly because it was so endearingly humble.
Dakota felt so solid and dependable to Rylee. If circumstances were different, she could imagine a relationship with him rather than simply enjoying his company.
While wonderful, this was merely a moment in time. Rylee was in survival mode, and a relationship didn’t make any sense.
“My turn,” Dakota said. “If I had known you for two months, I would already know what you wanted in a relationship. Right now, I’m more interested in what you don’t want from a relationship.”
“Neesa and I were just talking about this. I don't know if you know this, but Neesa has a doctorate in mathematics.”
“Smart cookie.”
“Intimidatingly brilliant,” Rylee agreed. “We were talking about game theory and how relationships can be seen through that lens.”
Dakota’s mouth pulled into a bemused expression.
“What? Are you telling me that your friends don’t sit around discussing the application of game theory to relationship status?”
He laughed. “Okay, let’s go. Are we looking back at your past relationships? Present?”
“I’m single.”
“Same,” he said, looking straight into her eyes.
That word flooded Rylee’s system with relief.
But then again, she reminded herself, she was living in the moment; her future was too tenuous.
That MRI truly freaked her out. She had only put MS into her health equation.
But because of her time in the sand, sniffing in the fumes from the burn pits, she was now thinking about imminent, lethal diagnoses like glioblastoma and cancer on her spine.
“Which game theory did you and Neesa apply?”
“Neesa said The Prisoner's Dilemma worked best. Originally, we were talking about it in terms of our corporate culture at WorldCares. We want to stay dynamic and growing. Our goal is to be a source of good for people outside of our organization by serving human needs in disasters, but we also want to be good to our people inside the organization. And that means we need to know that everyone’s pulling their own weight over time.”
“Same with my crew in the Navy,” Dakota said. “You were only as good as your weakest link.”
“Exactly. But humans are humans, you can’t always show up with the same level of go-juice.
Sometimes others need to step up and, for short periods, carry more weight.
Let’s say you and your crew have a log overhead, and one of the guys is low glycemic, everyone takes on an extra pound or so.
But he gets some calories, he’s energized and able, and now he does a little more lifting to give the guy who just ripped his rotator cuff a bit of a break. ”
“Show me how the Prisoner’s Dilemma applies here.”
“In this game, two suspects are interrogated in different rooms. If they both stay silent, they’re golden.
If one confesses to receive a reward, like immunity, the other will go to jail.
If both of them confess to gain the reward, they both lose, and both go to jail.
Both of them should choose to remain silent.
But that takes an enormous amount of trust.”
“I’ve seen this dilemma as a war game run on things like price wars and environmental agreements. I’ve never applied it to a love relationship,” Dakota said, taking a bite of pizza and putting the slice down on the box lid.