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At Fort Gordon, Thompson would be starting the night shift. Reviewing threat indicators. Tracking Russian and Chinese APT groups. Three years of playing defense, watching patterns, documenting tactics. Always reacting. Never striking back.

The forty-page briefing I'd left him covered everything. The cryptocurrency correlation with cyber attacks. The defense contractor probe patterns. Three meetings walking him through it all, but knowing and seeing were two different things. Thompson was the smartest of the bunch, but would he catch the pattern shifts? The subtle variations between probe and attack?

That new pattern I'd found in my last month still gnawed at me. APT groups coordinating where they shouldn't. I'd flagged it, documented what I could, but that kind of thing took months of patient observation. Instinct.

They'd probably be fine. They had good systems and a solid team. But twenty years taught me it was never the attack you expected; it was always the blind spot you didn't know existed.

I gritted my teeth.

Not my problem anymore.

Before I could close the bedroom door, Scout padded in, looked at me, then jumped on the bed. That was definitely not part of his training. When I got into bed, he settled against my side with a contented sigh. I was under supervision, apparently.

"This your job? Making sure the weird cousin doesn't disappear in the night?"

One tail wag. Eyes closed.

Smart dog.

My eyes closed too. The sound of nothing happening. No alerts. No operations. No missions.

Just a dog breathing and a house full of people teaching me that maybe belonging was possible.

Maybe Renzo was right.

Maybe passing through became something else when you weren't watching.

A week to see. Watch the robot presentation. Navigate whatever crisis came next. Drive by that security company.

Just to look.

A week couldn't hurt.

Okay, maybe more.