She could handle a rifle as well as the next guy, was actually a better marksman than most—growing up poor and hunting to supplement the dinner table did that for a person—but she’d be an awful field operative.

“You’re serious,” she said.

“As I live and breathe.”

She swigged from the longneck. “Even if I wanted to say yes, my next reenlistment doesn’t come up for another year and a half.” She clinked the bottom of her bottle against the side of his. “Kind of out of luck there, buddy, but let me know if you’re still hiring in eighteen months.”

He took a swig of his own. “It’d be a deployment change,” he said. “Same NOS on paper but with a rate bump, which is long overdue, if you ask me.” He patted his chest, as if indicating a pocket inside his jacket. “Orders from higher up, a little document shuffling, and done.”

She scrutinized him over the bottle.

Nick wasn’t, had never been navy. He was a jarhead, Force Recon.

They’d met on the USS Boxer when she was in the middle of her first tour. He’d been charming as all get-out and kind in a way most people weren’t, and she’d gone out of her way to avoid him because, in her experience, accepting kindness from a popular kid now meant paying with hell and humiliation later.

Turned out he was a nerd in a jock’s body.

And the body was more of a recent development.

His high school stories weren’t as traumatic as hers, but they’d been enough to connect over and a friendship had been built and they’d stayed in touch.

She was in for twenty, gunning for retirement. He’d done eight and decommissioned for the private sector and then contract work.

This team he was talking about wasn’t within any of the military branches, and yet if he was to be believed—and she had no reason to doubt him—she’d be working for him while still on Uncle Sam’s payroll.

She said, “What kind of team, exactly?”

He hemmed and hedged.

She was smart enough to convert the inference to statement of fact.

Any job that didn’t exist while keeping her on the navy payroll meant a whole lot of risk, and if anything did go wrong, there’d be denial and disownment, and she’d be kissing away a retirement that was close enough she could almost taste it.

She drew another long drag and swallowed.

“I could do the job, might even be decent at it,” she said, “but that’d be testament to sheer force of will and my delightful nature. I’m an analyst, Nick. I’m not built for fieldwork, and you know it.”

“I need an analyst,” he said.