Doc, Rebecca said. Thomas Riley walked toward him. They shook hands. Not the handshake of two acquaintances, but the particular grip of two people who have been through something together that neither of them is going to describe in this lobby. It's been a long time, Thomas said.
7 years, Rebecca said. A pause. You look good, Thomas said. I look 40, Rebecca said. And there was something in his voice, not bitterness, but the particular dry levity of men who have survived things and use humor as the acceptable language for acknowledging that survival cost something.
Thomas smiled. Then the smile faded into something more serious. You're here, he said. You're working here. 2 years.
Thomas looked around the facility at the mats, at the championship photographs on the walls, at the equipment Derek and Ricky were working with at the far end of the floor. This is where you landed, he said. It wasn't a question. It wasn't a judgment. It was the careful statement of a man who is trying to understand a geography he hadn't anticipated.
Sophie's 12. Rebecca said, there's a good school district. The hours work. Thomas looked at him for a long moment. How is she?
She's good. She's a small pause. A shift in Rebecca's expression that lasted less than a second, but was entirely different from anything Rachel had seen on her face in 2 years of working alongside her. Something unguarded, something that looked almost like relief just from being asked the question by someone who already knew the full context of it. She's really good, Doc.
Good, Thomas said. and he meant it completely. Derek was watching from the far end of the floor. He had stopped what he was doing the moment Thomas Riley said those two words. Commander Warren and he had not resumed. He stood with a weight in his hand that he had forgotten he was holding, watching the exchange across the length of the facility.
He was too far away to hear the conversation, but he could read the body language. And what the body language told her was that the woman currently talking to Rebecca Warren knew her from somewhere that preceded Iron Ridge by a significant margin and that the knowing was deep and specific and carried weight that ordinary professional acquaintance did not produce. She set the weight down. She walked toward Rachel's office. She waited outside it.
When Rachel came in 20 minutes later after finishing the logistics of Thomas Riley's program visit and walking him to his car, she found Derek sitting in the chair across from her desk, arms crossed with the expression of a man who has decided he is owed an explanation. What do you know about him? Derek said. Rachel sat down behind her desk. About Rebecca.
Don't Don't do the thing where you repeat the question to buy time. You've been watching him for 2 years. That man just called him Commander Warren. I want to know what you know. Rachel looked at him for a moment.
I know what I've observed, she said carefully, which is that Rebecca Warren is excellent at her job keeps to herself and has a daughter she takes very seriously. And before I iron, his file lists Navy service through age 32. The specifics are not accessible to me because they're classified. A pause. I don't know that for certain, Rachel said.
Rachel. She looked at him directly. I have reason to believe, she said carefully, that Rebecca held a senior operational position. The nature of that position is not something I've been able to confirm through any available channel. And I want to be clear, I'm not going to go around him to find out.
If he wanted us to know, he would have told us. Derek absorbed that. Commander is05. he said. Yes. That's not a logistics coordinator.
No, it isn't. So, why is he here doing this? Rachel was quiet for a moment. He has a daughter, she said finally. Her father is gone.
He made a choice. Derek sat back. That man on Saturday, he said. That wasn't Rachel. The things he was doing were not sport.
They were not athletic training. They were operational. He was managing me like a field situation. Every response he made was calibrated to the minimum necessary force. I've competed against men who were technically superior to me.
I know what that feels like. Saturday wasn't that. Rachel didn't answer. Saturday, Derek said, felt like the difference between a chess player and someone who has played a different game entirely and is visiting the chess table as a courtesy. A long silence settled over the office.
Then Rachel said quietly, "Gerald Hutchkins told me something similar. He served with Marines who had worked alongside personnel from certain Naval Special Operations Units. He said he recognized the movement. " Derek went very still. "What specifically did he say? " Rachel looked at her desk, at her hands, then back at Derek. She said Rebecca's responses were threat calibrated, that every movement was sized exactly to the level of the situation and never exceeded it.
That's SEAL training, Derek said. Rachel said nothing. That's specifically SEAL training, Derek said. The calibration principle, minimum necessary force with maximum efficiency. That's a specific tactical philosophy that comes from a specific community.