Chapter 1 #2
Dexter is the first living creature I've spoken to in days and probably the only one I'll talk to until lunch. Unless the grocery cashier asks if I found everything I needed, assuming I remember I need groceries and don't just order them for delivery.
The mere thought of groceries makes my stomach growl.
I should figure out something to eat. When was the last time I ate?
Since being laid off, my routine has changed drastically.
If you can even call it a routine. I sleep when normal people are awake and am awake when most people are deep into slumber.
I make a mental list of what's inside my refrigerator. Half a bottle of mustard, expired yogurt I should really toss, three energy drinks, an alarming number of cheeses, and a large jar of pickles.
"We're ordering takeout." Dexter lifts his head hopefully. "Don't get excited. I’m not sharing."
He looks personally betrayed. Laughing to myself, I settle into my chair, nudge Dexter just enough to reclaim a sliver of keyboard, and crack my knuckles.
The malware has a sense of humor.
Not a good one, nothing so sophisticated as wit, but it has personality, which is more than I can say for the last three jobs I've cracked open this month.
Somebody built this thing to sit quietly in a shipping company's payroll server for eleven months before it did anything, and when it finally woke up, it didn't just steal the data. It left a note behind.
Told you I'd be back.
"Rude," I say, to no one, because the cat doesn't count as an audience.
He's fallen asleep on my left arrow key, which is less than helpful.
I nudge him off with my elbow. He resettles on the mousepad instead, tail over my wrist like that's helpful, and goes right back to snoring.
I get to work trying to figure out this puzzle.
Hours later and the coffee sitting at my desk has gone cold.
I drink it anyway, because standing up means admitting I've been sitting in this exact position for two hours, and it's currently — I glance at the corner of my second monitor — one forty in the afternoon, and I haven't eaten, and there's a very good chance I smell, which, could offend someone, but I’m not too worried about that, because I haven't left the townhouse in two days.
Two days.
I decide not to think about that too hard. Some records are better left unbroken and also unexamined.
I'm lines into the note's payload, trying to figure out if Told you I'd be back, is a threat, a brag, or just a guy who really likes his own writing, when my phone rings. I glance at the caller I.D..
Hunter.
My smile comes before I can stop it.
Then my heart drops to my stomach. It’s not a text, but a phone call. Hunter doesn't call unless something is the matter, that narrows the possibilities considerably.
Either, someone is dead, needs rescuing or with Hunter, he could need someone else dead.
Or — and statistically the most likely option — it's been approximately six months since his last unofficial wellness check, and he's decided it's time to determine whether I'm eating actual food or surviving exclusively on caffeine and whatever questionable snacks happen to be within arm's reach of my keyboard.
Hunter never gives me warning before his check-ins, he simply shows up in his Hunter way.
He and Ryan were close and after his death, Hunter made sure to let me know I still had someone out there who cared about me.
He simply appears from time to time. It’s like an overwhelming certainty that if I've gone too long without answering my phone, he'll somehow know and be the one to break the cycle.
I asked him once if former Delta operators receive psychic abilities after retirement. His completely serious answer was, "Only the good ones."
I still haven't figured out if he was joking. I answer on speaker while continuing to type. I am not going to let this dude best me. I will find him and the missing money.
"I'm eating.” That’s how I answer the phone. Might as well get it out of the way, because I know he’s going to ask. I mean, it’s not a lie. I am eating. Am I eating healthy? No. Three meals a day? Also, no. But, I am eating. Even if it’s mostly crackers, cheese and an occasional chocolate donut.
"Good to know." I hear the laughter in his voice.
"I beat you to it."
"I wasn't going to ask."
"Liar."
"I was going to ask if you'd slept."
"Also, yes." Not a lie. I do sleep. Maybe not regularly and maybe not eight hours at a time, but I do sleep. I mean, I fell asleep for an hour at this very computer yesterday before Dexter woke me.
Another pause.
"Kenzi." It’s like the damn man knows when I’m not telling the entire truth or something.
"...Mostly."
Hunter sighs.
It isn't an exasperated sigh.
It's the sigh of a man who's spent over twenty years leading stubborn people into dangerous places and long ago accepted that half of leadership consists of choosing which battles are worth fighting.
"I assume you're working on something. Freelance?"
"I'm always working."
"That isn't healthy."
"It pays the mortgage."
"It also keeps you inside for days."
I look toward the window.
He isn't wrong.
"I've seen sunlight this week."
"When?"
"This very morning, thank you very much." The light from the windows count. I get a lot of beautiful sunlight streaming into my place after all.
"You looked outside."
"I made eye contact with it."
Hunter actually chuckles. It's brief and barely audible. The sound surprises me enough that I stop typing.
There it is.
Proof!
The man is, in fact, human.
"You laughed," I observe.
"I didn’t."
"You literally just did."
"I exhaled."
"It had joy in it."
"No, it didn't." His tone is grumbly and I grin. Victory. Small, but still a victory. Our conversations always work like this.
Ryan once described Hunter and I as two siblings separated by twenty years and entirely too much emotional damage.
I liked Hunter the first time I met him.
Not in a sexy man way, although his new girlfriend Amber finds him that way, but in a brotherly type of way.
He and Ryan could have been twins. They had a similar personality, the same dry humor and alpha male bossiness, but underneath it all was a heart of gold.
I remember a conversation with Ryan when he’d brought Hunter home with him for leave.
"You know Hunter isn't actually your brother, right?"
"Obviously."
"Then why do you argue like you've shared a bathroom your whole lives?"
"Practice." I pointed at him.
Ryan laughed so hard he nearly spilled his beer.
God...
I miss his laugh.
It's been fifteen years.
Fifteen years since Afghanistan.
Fifteen years since Hunter knocked on my parents' front door wearing civilian clothes because he refused to let strangers deliver the news. He knew what it would do to them to have two soldiers in dress blues show up. He’d made a promise to Ryan. One I’m sure, Ryan had also made.
I was the one who opened the door and saw Hunter.
Saw his eyes.
And I knew.
He never had to say the words.
Some moments carve themselves into your bones forever, that moment was one of them.
Hunter stayed at our house for days. He was there when the men showed up and the causality assistance officer.
He handled the phone calls for my parents, made the endless supply of coffee for the visitors who kept showing up.
He was the one who opened the door and accepted the casseroles from neighbors, neither of us remembered eating.
My mom couldn’t leave her bed. Dad, well, he started drinking a few minutes after the uniformed soldiers left and I don’t think he ever stopped.
Hunter didn’t try to explain war, or offer meaningless platitudes, he simply remained by my side. He knew if he’d left, I’d have been alone. Maybe not physically, but definitely emotionally. He taught me that sometimes grief doesn't need fixing. It only needs witnesses.
After the funeral I expected him to disappear back into whatever classified world he lived in.
Instead, he showed up again on my birthday, then on Christmas and the first anniversary of Ryan’s death. He kept showing up, never making a fuss. He’s never pretended that Ryan could be replaced. No, he just refuses to let his teammate's little sister become alone in the world.
And somewhere along the way... even before Ryan ever died, he became family. Chosen, yes, but sometimes, the bonds between chosen family can be stronger than those created out of blood.
"You still with me?" Hunter asks.
"Hmm?" I’d been lost in my thoughts and wasn’t sure what we were even talking about. I do that a lot. Hunter, just like Ryan, never judged me for it.
"You drifted."
"I was thinking."
"You thinking? That’s awfully dangerous."
"For everyone involved." I can’t help but laugh. Hunter is intimately familiar with some of the situations my brain has gotten me into over the years.
"Usually, but sometimes it’s brilliant." He says.
"To answer your previous question, I'm always working," I say. "It's my defining personality trait."
"No."
"No?" I ask.
"You paint."
"I paint badly."
"You do not. You are very talented,” he counters.
I look toward the canvases lining the living room.
Hunter saw some of my artwork when he helped me move and I immediately apologized for how amateur they looked.
He told me I wasn’t allowed to apologize.
Then, he stood in front of one of them for a long minute.
Finally he’d said, "Looks like you were angry."
I blinked, surprised he noticed. "I was." I was angry at the universe for taking Ryan away, angry at war and PTSD for taking my dad away and angry at how weak I perceived my mother to be for emotionally abandoning me after Ryan died. It was as if she’d only ever had one child. I’d put all those emotions into the painting Hunter was standing in front of.
"Good. I’m glad you have an outlet."
That was the entire critique. Oddly enough...It was exactly what I needed to hear.