Chapter 2
Tucker
The writer thinks I'm a bellhop.
I'm still smiling about it twenty minutes later, doing my second perimeter check as the sun sinks below the treeline. In eight years on the teams, I've been mistaken for a lot of things—contractor, bouncer, someone's ex-husband at a bar in Virginia Beach—but bellhop is a first.
Grab my suitcase, please. Like I was on the clock at a Marriott.
She didn't even hesitate. Just looked at me, assessed, categorized, and assigned me a task. There's something almost impressive about that efficiency—brain snapped to a conclusion, ran with it, no second-guessing. Type-A, clearly. Probably color-codes her calendar and outlines her grocery lists.
My radio crackles. "Tuck, status?" Calder's voice, clipped and professional even through static.
"All clear. Perimeter's secure. The writers are having cocktails on the veranda."
"Any concerns?"
"Negative. Unless you count bad chardonnay."
A beat of silence, then: "Stay sharp. Hartwell's publisher flagged two more messages this morning. Same sender."
"Understood."
The humor drains out of the moment. This is the job—the real one.
Diana Hartwell has a persistent admirer who's escalated from fan mail to something darker, and Salt & Steel was brought in because her publisher doesn't take chances with their biggest name.
Calder assigned me point on this because he said I needed "something lower stakes than Kabul to ease into civilian work. "
Lower stakes. Right. Because babysitting a bunch of novelists at a beach house is exactly where a former SEAL operator pictures himself at thirty-two.
Six months. That's how long it's been since I retired my trident.
Since the world got quiet and stayed that way, and the silence stopped feeling like relief and started feeling like erasure.
On the teams, every hour had purpose. Every breath had context.
Now I wake up at 0430 because my body doesn't know how to stop, and the rest of the day stretches out like a road with no destination.
Calder offered me the job at Salt & Steel because we served together on SEAL Team Seven.
He got out two years before me, built the company from a one-man operation into something real.
When he called—three weeks after I separated—he didn't pitch it as charity.
He pitched it as we need people who get it.
Getting it is the problem. I get the tactics, the logistics, the threat assessment. What I don't get is how to fill the hours when nobody's shooting at me.
My phone buzzes. Channel 16—the team's group text, named after the emergency maritime frequency because someone thought they were clever.
Riggs: heard you're on babysitting duty. any of the writers hot?
Decker: leave him alone. he's protecting literature.
Riggs: I’m just saying. writers are creative. could be interesting.
I pocket the phone without responding. Riggs will entertain himself with or without my participation.
The veranda is visible from my position near the east tree line—close enough to monitor, far enough to stay unobtrusive.
The writers cluster in small groups, glasses in hand, voices carrying on the breeze.
I scan faces. The poet, nervous but warming up.
The thriller writer, positioned with her back to the wall—instinct or research, hard to say.
The memoirist, already on her second glass.
And Kassidy Monroe.
She stands slightly apart from the group, champagne flute held like a shield.
Her sundress—yellow, the color of afternoon light—shifts in the wind, and she keeps tucking a curl behind her ear that won't stay put.
There's a tension in her shoulders that doesn't match the setting.
Everyone else is relaxing into the evening. She's bracing for something.
Diana Hartwell approaches her, and I watch the interaction with professional attention.
Hartwell is my primary—her safety is the priority.
But my gaze keeps drifting back to Kassidy.
The way she laughs a beat too late, like she's translating the conversation through some internal filter before responding.
The way her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes.
She's performing. Wearing confident writer at a retreat like a costume that doesn't fit.
I've seen that look before—on guys coming home from deployment, sitting at family barbecues, smiling at all the right moments while something inside them screams. It's the look of someone trying to be who they were before the thing that changed them.
Decker radios in from the west side. "All clear. Switching to north approach."
"Copy. I've got east and south."
The mixer winds down. Guests drift inside. Kassidy doesn't. She slips off the veranda and heads toward the beach, shoes in one hand, wine glass in the other. My job is the perimeter, which technically includes the beach, so following at a distance is professional obligation. Nothing more.
She settles on a rock near the dunes and pulls out her phone. For a minute, she just stares at the screen. Then she starts talking.
Not on the phone. To herself. Or to the air, or the ocean, or some invisible character only she can see.
"She's standing on the porch. It's raining. He's leaving, and she knows she should let him go, but her hand is on the door frame and she can't—"
Her voice is different now. Not the polished, slightly defensive tone from earlier.
This is raw. Unguarded. She's inside whatever story she's telling, and watching her there—salt wind in her hair, bare feet tucked under her, working through someone else's heartbreak—is like catching a musician alone in a practice room. Private and a little sacred.
She pauses, frowns. "No. That's too passive. She won't let him go. She steps into the rain and—"
The professional move is to keep walking. Pass by, nod, continue the patrol. That's what training says. That's what the job demands.
"Does she go after him?"
The question leaves my mouth before the professional part of my brain files its objection.
She nearly falls off the rock, which makes me feel like an asshole. Her eyes are wide—dark brown, catching the last amber light—and for a second she looks genuinely startled. Then the defenses slam back into place.
"Were you eavesdropping?"
"I was walking the perimeter. You were narrating pretty loudly."
"I was not narrating. I was... working through a scene. It's a writing technique."
"Talking to yourself on a beach?"
"It's a respected writing technique."
She delivers this with a conviction that suggests she's had to defend it before. Maybe to herself. The curl breaks free from behind her ear again, and she shoves it back with an impatient hand.
"So does she?" I press. Gently, because something in me needs to know the answer. "Go after him?"
Her face changes. The armor slips, just a fraction, and underneath is something that looks like honest confusion. She glances down at her phone—blank screen, blinking cursor.
"I don't know yet. She's stuck."
"Stuck how?"
"She's scared. That if she goes after him, she's admitting she needs something. And she's spent the whole book proving she doesn't need anyone."
The words land heavier than she probably intends. Or maybe exactly as heavy as she intends. Hard to tell with writers—they build sentences like other people build IEDs, layered and precise, designed to detonate at the right moment.
"Sometimes the bravest thing isn't proving you don't need anyone," I say. "Sometimes it's admitting you do."
She stares at me. Not the polite social stare from the veranda—this is the full attention of someone who just heard something they didn't expect.
Her lips part, and for one second the mask is completely down, and the woman underneath is startling.
Open and searching and a little bit broken and trying so hard not to show it.
"You should put that on a T-shirt," she says.
There she goes. Sarcasm like a door slamming shut. But she's smiling when she says it, a real one this time, and my ribs tighten like tumblers falling into place.
"Just an observation," I manage.
The ocean fills the silence between us. Not awkward silence—both of us in the same moment, aware of it.
"I should head back," she says, sliding off the rock.
"Need an escort? It's getting dark."
"I think I can survive fifty yards of beach."
"Copy that."
She starts walking, then turns. The wind catches her dress, and the curl is loose again, and the whole scene looks like the cover of one of those books she writes.
"Tucker?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for carrying my bags earlier. And sorry I thought you were the bellhop."
"Don't worry about it. I've been called worse."
She walks away, and I watch her go because it's my job to ensure she reaches the house safely. That's the reason. The only reason.
My phone buzzes.
Riggs: well??
Decker: dude. leave him alone.
Riggs: i just want to know if any of them are cute
Calder: Channel 16 is for operational comms. Which this is not.
Riggs: fine. but tucker hasn't denied anything.
I pocket the phone and resume my patrol. North side, check the tree line. East side, check the access road. South side, check the beach where a woman with a broken story and a curl that won't stay put just looked at me like no one's looked at me in months.
Professional. I need to stay professional.
Back at the main house, I do a final sweep of the ground floor. Doors locked, alarm set, cameras operational. Decker takes the overnight shift, and I brief him on the evening—movements, positions, nothing to flag.
"Quiet night," he says.
"Yeah."
"You good?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
Decker shrugs. He's been with Salt & Steel for a year, former Marine, good instincts. A guy who notices things without making a production of it.
"No reason. Just checking."
In my quarters—a converted ground-floor room with a twin bed and a desk—I lie in the dark and listen to the ocean through the window. This is usually the worst part. The quiet hours where civilian life feels like a costume and every sound that isn't gunfire or orders reminds me of what's missing.
But tonight, the quiet has a different quality. Less empty. I keep replaying the conversation on the beach, the way Kassidy's face changed when she talked about her character being stuck. The way she said scared like she was describing herself.
She came here to write, and she can't. Something—someone—knocked the words out of her.
A breakup, maybe, or a failure, or just the slow erosion of believing in your own voice.
Whatever it is, she's carrying it in her shoulders and her half-smiles and the way she talks to invisible people on beaches because she can't get them to cooperate on the page.
My phone glows.
Riggs: for the record i think writer girls are underrated
Calder: Go to sleep, Riggs.
Riggs: yes sir. tuck, report in the morning. want details.
I set the phone face down and close my eyes.
Professional. I need to stay professional. But the way she lights up talking about her characters—even the ones who won't do what she wants—is something I haven't seen in a long time. That kind of passion, even frustrated, even blocked. It's the opposite of the flatline I've been living.
She asked if her character should go after the man. She doesn't know the answer yet. Neither do I.
But something about the way she said scared—like she was describing herself and didn't mean to—stays with me longer than it should.