Chapter Five Cole
“Matthews, are you listening to me?”
I blink, pulling my attention away from the lines of code on my screen. Jack stands in the doorway of my office—if you can call the glass-walled cubicle an office. It’s more like an aquarium where everyone can watch me work and nothing is a secret.
“Sorry. Deep in a network trace.” I straighten in my chair. “What’s up?”
Jack sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I asked if you finished the security audit for MediTech. They’ve been blowing up my emails all morning.”
“Just wrapping it now,” I say, turning my screen toward him. “Found three critical vulnerabilities in their patient portal, two backdoors in their billing system, and their network segmentation is basically nonexistent. They’re a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
Jack’s expression darkens as he skims my report. “Fuck. And they handle medical records for half the hospitals in Colorado?”
“Including Fort Collins Memorial,” I confirm, feeling a flicker of satisfaction at his reaction.
Jack’s wife had all three of their children at Memorial.
It’s one thing to deal with security breaches on a professional level, but it’s another when your family’s information could be at risk.
This is why I’m good at my job—I see the connections that others miss, the weaknesses others overlook.
“Good catch,” Jack says. “Write it up with your recommendations and send it to me by EOD. I’ll schedule a call with their CTO tomorrow.”
I nod, already turning back to my screen. “Consider it done.”
Jack doesn’t leave. Instead, he closes my door—a rare occurrence that immediately puts me on edge.
“Cole,” he starts, and I know from his tone this isn’t about MediTech anymore. He leans against the edge of my desk, crossing his arms. “You hungry? Let’s grab a coffee and some food.”
It’s phrased as a question, but we both know it’s not really a request. When your boss and former army buddy asks you to go anywhere, you go.
“Sure,” I say, saving my work. “Give me two minutes to finish this.”
“Take five. I’ll be ready when you are.” He taps the doorframe twice and disappears.
I finish documenting my findings and grab my jacket. The familiar itch starts at the base of my skull—the anticipation of what Jack really wants to talk about. He wouldn’t pull me away from work in the middle of the day unless it was important.
He’s already waiting by the elevator when I emerge from my office.
We ride down in silence, the only sound the mechanical hum of the cables and gears.
It’s not uncomfortable—we spent enough time in tense silence during our tours in Afghanistan to welcome peaceful quiet at home—but I can feel the weight of the conversation he wants to have like a weighted vest on my shoulders.
“Thai place?” I suggest as we step out onto the street.
“Too loud,” Jack says. “There’s that café two blocks over. The one with the good coffee.”
“Sounds good,” I say, shoving my hands in my pockets.
We weave through midday pedestrian traffic on Mountain Avenue. Fort Collins is busy this time of day, with college students rushing between classes, office workers on lunch breaks, tourists browsing the boutiques and breweries that line the downtown streets.
I automatically scan our surroundings as we walk. Exit routes. Security cameras. The positioning of parked cars. Old habits from my military intelligence days, the hypervigilance that Jack understands because he shares it.
“So,” Jack says as we wait at a crosswalk, “how’d your first meeting go?”
There it is.
“Fine,” I reply, keeping my tone neutral. “Just what you’d expect. Circle of chairs. People talking about their problems.”
“And they assigned you an accountability partner, right?”
I’m mildly surprised he remembers the details. “Yeah. His name’s Tyler. He’s…persistent.”
Jack makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff. “Good. That’s what you need.” It would be wishful thinking to hope this is the end of our conversation about group therapy, but at least I get a short reprieve as we approach Hot For Here.
The café is a renovated brick building with large windows and a nice view of downtown.
It’s busy but not packed. As we step inside, the smell of fresh coffee and baked goods makes my stomach grumble.
It’s easy—too easy?—for me to forget to take breaks and eat when the work on my desk gets complex. I scan the space out of habit.
Behind the counter, a young woman with dark hair scraped into a clip is squinting at a paper cup like it’s personally wronged her. She’s maybe twenty. Her name tag reads Madison. Holding the cup out, she announces to the entire café, “I have a caramel latte for Car-on? Carron?”
A woman in matching athleisure steps forward, grabbing her coffee from the girl’s hand. “It’s Karen. Like the name.”
Madison nods with enthusiastic patience, like she’s used to being corrected many, many times.
And then I freeze.
Because there she is.
Hailey.
She’s sitting at a table near the window with another woman, both of them laughing at something on a phone screen. Her light-golden hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and she’s wearing scrubs under a jacket. She must be going to work soon.
My heart races at the sight of her. She hasn’t seen me yet, and I’m thankful for that because I’m frozen in place, caught in a trance as I take her in.
I told myself I wouldn’t look her up. Trying to find her would have meant crossing the same line that landed me in therapy in the first place. But this? Running into her totally at random?
It feels a little bit like the universe rewarding me for good behavior.
Cosmic wingman. Excellent.
“You okay?” Jack’s voice breaks through my thoughts. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine,” I say quickly, forcing myself to look away from Hailey. “Just…recognized someone.”
Jack follows where my gaze held. “The blonde in scrubs?”
“Yeah. We met on a hike a few days ago. There was an accident, and we stabilized a guy until medical got there.”
“Huh.” Jack’s expression shifts into something soft and curious. “Small world.”
We approach the counter, and I’m hyperaware of Hailey’s position relative to us. If she looks up, she’ll see me. Part of me wants her to. Part of me is terrified she will.
Focus, Matthews.
“What do you want?” Jack asks, pulling out his wallet.
“Black coffee. Large.” I need the caffeine today. “Thanks. I’ll get it next time.”
The echo of Tyler covering our bill at the diner, then telling me I’ll get the next one, makes my throat go dry. What would he say about the way I’ve been thinking of Hailey nonstop? Would Tracey give me one of her penetrating glares—the kind designed to make me second-guess all my life choices?
Get out of my head, losers.
Jack orders for both of us, adding a sandwich I didn’t ask for but will probably need.
Madison turns her bloodshot eyes on me. “Name for the cup?”
“Cole.”
She nods, very seriously, and writes. I count the strokes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Statistically, she should have been fine. My name only has four simple letters, yet we’ve somehow landed on five flicks of her wrist.
As we wait, Madison calls out into the café, “Order for Byron! Bree-on?”
A shortish white guy in a business suit steps forward, visibly annoyed. “Brian.”
“That’s what I said.”
I resist the urge to turn around and check if Hailey’s seen me yet. I watch a different barista set our order on the counter, and I brace myself for whatever name Madison has written on my cup.
“I have a large drip for Coke!” Madison’s voice cuts through the café. “Coke? Anyone here named Coke?”
Jack’s mouth twitches like he’s holding back a boisterous laugh, but he doesn’t say a word.
I weigh my options: correct her for a third time in front of a line of caffeine-deprived customers, or accept that for the next ten minutes, I am Coke. I take the cup. The side reads in clear, confident black marker: COKE. And it’s underlined. Twice.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Have a great day, Coke!”
Jack loses it. Just for a second. Just enough that I see his shoulders shake before he gets it back under control.
“One word,” I mutter as we cross the café. “I will end you.”
“I didn’t say anything, Coke.” Jack gestures toward an empty table on the opposite side of the café from Hailey and her friend. Far enough for privacy, but close enough that I can see her in my peripheral vision.
“So,” Jack says once we’re seated, his sandwich unwrapped and my coffee sending up tendrils of steam. “Let’s talk about the real reason I dragged you here.”
I wrap my hands around the coffee cup, letting its warmth seep into my skin. COKE stares up at me. “The group.”
“The group,” he confirms. “Look, you know I went to bat for you. Convinced the board that what happened was a one-time lapse in judgment, that your skills were worth the risk.”
A one-time lapse in judgment. An extremely polite way to refer to the night that changed my life. The night I refuse to talk about at IBSG, and the night I don’t plan to tell Tyler about, no matter how much he insists we’re two peas in a pod.
The night I confronted Shitbag Steve in the parking lot of his favorite dive bar and returned every blow he landed on Emma’s body. With interest.
That’s the reason I got fired. Because when that asshole sued me for assault, it came out that I’d used company assets to find him, track him, and nearly end him.
More’s the pity I didn’t finish the job.
“I know.” And I do. Jack’s the only reason I have a job, a paycheck, and a future that isn’t completely fucked. Well, Jack and the judge who cleared me of charges because he understood the assignment. That guy was awesome.
“But here’s the thing—that goodwill has limits.
The board wants proof you’re actually working on the boundary issues.
” He takes a bite of his sandwich, chewing thoughtfully before continuing.
“They want to see Tracey’s reports. They want confirmation you’re attending every session, participating, making progress. ”