"Satellite-boosted. Sully set up a dedicated encrypted connection for this cabin. It won't be as fast as your office, but it's secure and it'll handle video calls."
"Cell service?"
"Spotty at best. Satellite phone in the top drawer by the bed for emergencies. If you need to make calls, the lodge has a boosted signal. I can escort you."
"I don't need an escort to make a phone call."
"You do while you're here."
I turn to look at him. He's standing just inside the door, hands loose at his sides, taking up more space than a man his size should reasonably command. And that's the problem, isn't it? He doesn't look like what I expected. I expected someone like the men on my corporate security team. Older. Thicker. Forgettable. Men who blend into the background like expensive furniture.
Hayes Donovan does not blend.
He's tall enough. Six-two, maybe. Athletic in a way that suggests function over vanity. The black henley he's wearing stretches across his chest and arms like it was bought a size too small, and the rolled sleeves show forearms that are corded and tan. Light brown hair a little long on top, pushed backcarelessly. A trimmed beard that frames a jaw strong enough to be aggravating. And those eyes. Hazel with gold flecks, framed by laugh lines that deepen when he's amused, which appears to be often. He has dimples. Actual dimples.
He looks like a man who's never had a bad day in his life, which I know isn't true because I read his file on the drive up. Twelve years of Pararescue. Combat deployments. A Silver Star he never talks about. A teammate he couldn't save in a training accident his second year. He's carried weight.
He just doesn't wear it the way the older operators do. And that makes people assume he hasn't carried any.
I know the feeling.
"Your security briefing," I say, sitting on the edge of the bed and crossing my legs. "Go ahead."
He doesn't react to being given permission to speak in his own cabin on his own compound. Another point for him. Most men would bristle. Hayes just leans his shoulder against the doorframe and starts talking.
He's thorough. I'll give him that. He walks me through the compound layout, perimeter security, communication protocols, emergency procedures, and extraction plans. Three different routes depending on threat direction, each one mapped to terrain features he describes with the specificity of someone who's walked every inch of this mountain. He covers my schedule for the two weeks. Morning briefings, afternoon sessions on threat awareness and personal security (I almost object, but the look on his face says he's expecting me to, so I don't give him the satisfaction), and free time that isn't actually free because he'll be within earshot at all times.
"At all times," I repeat.
"My cabin is forty yards east of yours. Direct sight line to your front door. If you leave this cabin for any reason, day or night, I go with you."
"And if I want privacy?"
"You'll have privacy inside these walls. Sully's system monitors the perimeter, not the interior. What you do in here is your business." A pause. "But if your door opens, my phone alerts me, and I'm on your porch in under thirty seconds."
I study him. He delivers all of this without posturing, without the puffed-chest performance I've seen from a hundred security professionals who wanted me to feel impressed by their protocols. Hayes is just stating facts. This is how it works. These are the rules. There's no negotiation in his tone, but there's no condescension either.
It's infuriating because I can't find a legitimate reason to dismiss him.
"Questions?" he asks.
"Your commander said you're the best available operator." I uncross my legs and stand. "Are you the best available? Or are you simply the only one not otherwise committed?"
The question is deliberate. Cutting. The kind of thing I'd say in a board meeting to test whether a vice president has spine or just a title.
Hayes doesn't flinch. Doesn't bristle. He pushes off the doorframe and takes two steps into the cabin, closing the distance between us to something that would be unprofessional in most contexts. Close enough that I catch his scent. Pine and gun oil and something warm underneath, like sun-heated skin.
Close enough that I have to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze.
"I'm the best you're going to get, Ms. Morrison." His voice is quiet. Even. No ego in it, just fact. "And by the end of this, you're going to be glad about that."
My pulse does something unhelpful. A quick stutter-step that I haven't felt in years, not since before the divorce, not since before I locked down every part of myself that responds to men who think confidence is the same as competence.
But Hayes Donovan isn't just confident. He's confident and correct, and those two things together in a man seven years younger than me is a problem I did not budget for.
"We'll see," I say.
He nods once, steps back, and the cabin breathes again. "Dinner's at the lodge at eighteen hundred. I'll come get you at seventeen-forty-five."
