Part 1

The silence was the worst part. It wasn’t a respectful quiet; it was the suffocating silence of a room waiting for a punchline. And I was it.

I stood before Judge Harrington Blackwell, my calloused hands clasped behind my back, my faded work shirt smelling faintly of motor oil and sawdust. I’m Mack Reeves, a handyman. A single dad. In a town like Thatcher, that’s a complete identity. It’s who I was. It’s all they saw.

The courtroom was packed. The laughter was a low rumble, like a predator’s growl. They’d come for the entertainment: the local handyman who was dumb enough to represent himself against charges of assaulting an officer.

Judge Blackwell, a man whose family name was carved into the town library, peered down at me over his glasses. His smirk was a weapon. “Mr. Reeves,” he boomed, savoring the moment. “You are wasting this court’s time. You fumbled your opening, you seem confused by basic procedure, and frankly, you are an embarrassment to this institution.”

A fresh wave of chuckles rippled through the gallery. I saw faces I knew. Mrs. Gable, whose garbage disposal I’d fixed last week. Mr. Abernathy, the prosecutor, who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else than swatting this gnat. And Sergeant Jasper Rhodes, the man I’d allegedly assaulted, sitting with his uniformed buddies, confidence rolling off him in waves.

“I… I’m just trying to show what happened, your honor,” I said, letting my voice sound hesitant. I had to play the part they’d cast me in.

“What happened,” Blackwell countered, his voice dripping with condescension, “is that you, a common laborer, assaulted a decorated officer of the law. You have presented a video that shows nothing but a confusing scuffle, and you expect us to believe your word over his?”

The video. My trump card. It clearly showed Rhodes shoving my 12-year-old son, Finley, shoving him so hard he’d cracked his head against the stone of the veteran’s memorial. It showed Rhodes, his face purple with rage, looming over Winslow, a homeless vet he was tormenting. The video showed my intervention. It was precise. It was fast. It was non-lethal. It was over in three seconds.

And the judge had just dismissed it.

In that moment, the objective changed. This was no longer about beating a misdemeanor rap. This courtroom, this judge, this entire system was sick. And the sickness had just threatened my son.

“Mr. Reeves, I am losing my patience,” Blackwell snapped. “Do you have anything else to say in your defense, or are you finished? Speak up like a man.”

The gallery laughed. Speak up like a man.

The silence returned, heavier this time. I let it settle. I’d spent three years in Thatcher building a ghost. “Mack the handyman,” a quiet, broken man raising his son, a man nobody looked at twice. A man who patched roofs and fixed sinks, polite and unassuming. A man who was invisible.

It was a good cover. It had given Finley and me peace after his mother died. It had kept the nightmares at bay.

But the ghost had just been given a direct order.

Slowly, I unclasped my hands. I felt the change in the room before they saw it. My slouch evaporated. My spine aligned. My shoulders squared. The muscle memory of twenty years in service, a lifetime of command, flooded back into my limbs. I was no longer “Mack.”

I lifted my eyes and met Blackwell’s gaze. The smirk on his face faltered, replaced by a flicker of confusion. The man looking at him now was not the man who had been fumbling with papers seconds ago.

“Your Honor,” I said. My voice was no longer hesitant. It was clear, cold, and carried to the back wall of the chamber without effort. The courtroom didn’t just go quiet; it went still.

“You’ve made a fundamental error in judgment today,” I stated.

Blackwell’s face flushed. “Mr. Reeves, you are dangerously close to contempt…”

“With respect, Your Honor,” I interrupted, “contempt has already been demonstrated. Not by me. You assumed silence was ignorance. You assumed my clothes defined my capabilities.”

I reached into the back pocket of my worn jeans and pulled out a battered leather wallet, held together by sheer habit. I flipped it open.

“One more word, Mr. Reeves…” Blackwell warned, his hand reaching for his gavel.

I stepped forward and slid the wallet, open, across the polished wooden bench. It landed with a soft, precise thud in front of him.

“Before you find me in contempt,” I said, my voice dropping into a register I hadn’t used in three years, “I believe you should identify the defendant.”

Blackwell’s eyes dropped to the wallet. He read the identification card inside.

The blood drained from his face. His knuckles, gripping the gavel, turned white. The smugness, the arrogance, the confidence—it all shattered and fell away, leaving a hollow mask of shock. He looked up at me, his mouth opening and closing, but no sound came out.

The packed gallery, moments ago filled with laughter, was now so quiet I could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights. Sergeant Rhodes had stopped snickering.

Blackwell stared at the card, then at me, then back at the card, as if his brain could not reconcile the two realities. “This… this is a joke,” he whispered, his voice trembling.

I stood at perfect parade rest. “I assure you, Your Honor. It is not.”

The card was worn, the hologram faded, but the emblem of the United States Navy was unmistakable. And beneath it, my name and rank:

Lieutenant Colonel Mallister M. Reeves. Navy SEAL. Team Six. Retired.

Part 2

The gavel in Judge Blackwell’s hand was suspended in the air. His knuckles were white. But it was his face that told the story. The blood hadn’t just drained from it; it had been violently vacuumed away, leaving a waxy, sagging mask of gray. His eyes, which had been so full of smug superiority, were now wide, slick with a sudden, cold sweat as he stared at the ID card.

Lieutenant Colonel Mallister M. Reeves. Navy SEAL. Team Six. Retired.

The silence in the courtroom was a physical weight. It wasn’t just quiet; it was a void. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights, which I’d tuned out for an hour, now sounded like a roaring engine. The snickers from the gallery, the whispers of contempt—all gone. I could hear Sergeant Rhodes shift in his chair; the sound of his polyester uniform scraping the wood was like a gunshot.

Blackwell’s mouth opened. A dry, rasping sound came out, not a word. He looked from the card to my face, then back to the card. His brain was failing to compute. He was trying to reconcile the image of the fumbling, grease-stained handyman with the man described on that piece of plastic.

“This…” he finally croaked, his voice a fraction of its former boom. “This is a forgery. A… a sick joke.”

“I assure you, Your Honor. It is not,” I said. My voice, my real voice, cut through the silence like a scalpel. It was a command voice, forged in the deserts of Afghanistan and the jungles of God-knows-where. It was a voice that expected to be obeyed, and it hit the room with the force of a shockwave.

Bailiff Thornhill, the old vet, flinched. Not in fear, but in recognition. His hand, which had been resting near his sidearm, now dropped. His eyes locked on me, and for the first time, he wasn’t looking at me; he was seeing me.

Blackwell, desperate, tried to regain control. He slammed the gavel down, a pathetic, trembling thwack. “Order! Mr. Reeves… your… your service, while commendable, has absolutely no bearing on the charges against you. You are still in contempt…”

“Don’t you mean ‘Lieutenant Colonel Reeves,’ Your Honor?” I interrupted. The correction was sharp, disrespectful, and deliberate. “And I believe you’re mistaken. My service has everything to do with the charges.”

I reached into my other back pocket. The courtroom held its breath. I pulled out a second, identical battered leather wallet. I opened it and slid another card across the bench, placing it perfectly parallel to the first.

“But perhaps this has more bearing,” I said.

Blackwell squinted at it. The color, what little had returned, vanished again. This one wasn’t military. This one was civilian.

“Georgetown Law, Class of 2012,” I announced for the benefit of the room. “Admitted to the Bar in Virginia and, on a pro hac vice basis, for the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. I served seven years as legal counsel for Joint Special Operations Command. I’ve argued cases you’ve only seen in spy novels. So, if you’d like to continue this proceeding, Judge, I would be delighted to.”

I turned my head, just slightly, to lock eyes with prosecutor Vincent Abernathy. He looked like he’d swallowed a hornet.

“Mr. Abernathy,” I said, my voice cold and clinical. “Ten minutes ago, you offered me a plea deal. Six months, suspended, for ‘assaulting an officer.’ Let’s re-evaluate that offer, shall we? You have a perjured testimony from your star witness, Sergeant Jasper Rhodes. And you have a judge who has, on a live-streamed public record, demonstrated such profound bias that any conviction he presided over for the last decade is now grounds for appeal.”

“Live-streamed?” Abernathy whispered, his face going white.

Zaria Walsh, the court reporter, spoke up, her voice clear and proud. “That’s correct, Colonel. My stenograph has been feeding a live, court-sanctioned transcript to the state judicial wire. And,” she nodded to the gallery, “at least four attendees have been streaming to social media for the last twenty minutes. The video of Judge Blackwell calling you an ’embarrassment’ is, I believe, already trending.”

A symphony of pings and buzzes erupted from the gallery as people checked their phones. Faces went from curious to horrified. Mrs. Gable, whose disposal I’d fixed, had her hand over her mouth. The town council members who had been laughing along were now sinking in their seats, desperately trying to become invisible.

I turned my full attention to Sergeant Rhodes. He was trapped, a rat in a cage of his own making.

“Let’s talk about the ‘assault,’ Sergeant,” I said, taking a slow step toward the prosecution table. His fellow officers, the ones who’d been snickering with him, physically leaned away from him, creating a quarantine zone.

“You testified,” I said, my voice dropping to a conversational, terrifying calm, “that I ‘snapped.’ That I ‘attacked without provocation.’ That it took ‘three officers to subdue me.’ These are not just misremembered facts, Sergeant. These are lies. You perjured yourself on that stand, under oath.”

I held up my hands, showing the calluses and scars. “These hands are my living. They fix pipes. They patch roofs. But for twenty years, they were registered as lethal weapons by the United. States. Government.”

I pointed at him. “When you shoved my twelve-year-old son, Finley, you initiated a hostile action against a minor. I responded. What I did to you was not an ‘attack.’ It was a textbook, non-injurious control maneuver. A simple wrist lock combined with a five-second pressure point application to the brachial plexus. I did not strike you. I did not harm you. I neutralized you.”

I let that hang in the air.

“Let me be perfectly, crystal clear for the record,” I continued, my voice dropping even lower. “If I had wanted to ‘assault’ you, Sergeant, you would not have spent the last two weeks on desk duty. You would have spent them in surgical reconstruction. Your jaw would be wired shut, and you’d be learning to eat through a straw. The fact that you are sitting here, unharmed, is proof that I showed more restraint, more professionalism, and more respect for the law than you have ever been capable of.”

Rhodes was trembling, his face a mottled mask of purple and white.

“As for ‘resisting arrest’,” I said, “the video clearly shows me releasing you and assuming a position of surrender the instant backup arrived. I complied. The ‘three officers’ were needed, if you recall, to stop you from trying to attack me while I was already compliant. You were, to use the clinical term, ’emotionally compromised’ and a danger to yourself and others.”

I turned, finally, back to the judge. The man was destroyed. He was a hollow shell in a black robe.

“You asked me to ‘speak up like a man’,” I said to him, the contempt in my voice palpable. “But what you meant was ‘know your place, trash.’ You judged me the moment I walked in here. You judged my clothes, my hands, my silence. You sat on that bench, a symbol of American justice, and you acted like a petty king in a banana republic. You mocked a single father. You ignored evidence of a crime against a child. You, Your Honor, are the real embarrassment to this institution. And your career is over.”

“That’s… that’s enough!” Blackwell stammered, raising his gavel.

“It’s more than enough, Judge.” A new voice cut through the courtroom.

A woman in a sharp, gray business suit stood up from the back row. She was the one I’d seen Zaria nod to earlier. She walked forward with a purpose that parted the stunned gallery like the Red Sea. She didn’t approach the bench; she approached the prosecutor’s table and placed a badge wallet down.

“Lucinda Mercer, State Judicial Review Board,” she announced. “Judge Blackwell, I have been investigating your conduct for six months. I have 34 formal complaints against you for judicial bias, abuse of power, and, as of today, blatant ethics violations. Colonel Reeves just provided the public, high-definition conclusion to my investigation. You are to recuse yourself from this bench, effective immediately. A formal notice of your suspension pending a removal hearing is being filed as we speak.”

Abernathy, the prosecutor, had already snapped his briefcase shut. “Your Honor… Ms. Mercer… the State of Washington moves to dismiss all charges against Lieutenant Colonel Reeves with extreme prejudice. And… and we will be opening an immediate investigation into Sergeant Rhodes for perjury, assault, and filing a false report.”

Blackwell didn’t even have the strength to respond. He just nodded, a puppet with his strings cut. He stood up, his robes catching on his chair. He stumbled, catching himself on the bench. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at anyone. He fled the courtroom through his private chamber door, a disgraced man.

The room erupted. It wasn’t talking; it was a roar. The gallery shot to their feet. The reporters were already on their phones, dictating the story. “That’s Lieutenant Colonel Mallister Reeves, R-E-E-V-E-S, Navy SEAL Team Six…”

I gathered my two ID cards, my movements calm and deliberate, and slid them back into my wallets. As I turned to leave, a man blocked my path.

It was Winslow, the homeless veteran Rhodes had been tormenting. His eyes were clear, and he stood with a ramrod-straight posture I hadn’t seen in him before. He wasn’t looking at me like a handyman. He was looking at me like he’d seen a ghost.

“Sir?” he said, his voice cracking. “Fallujah. 2007. The Anbar ambush. You were Captain Reeves then. My… my fire team was pinned down. We were out of ammo. You… you came over the berm… just you and two others. You dragged me and Sergeant Peters out… under fire.”

Tears were streaming down the old veteran’s face. The reporters, sensing an even deeper story, swarmed, microphones and cameras thrust forward.

I put my hand on Winslow’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you, Master Sergeant,” I said, quietly. “Get yourself to the VA in Seattle. Tell them you’re a friend of ‘Mack.’ They’ll get you processed.”

He nodded, unable to speak, and rendered a shaky, perfect salute. I returned it. The flashbulbs were blinding.

I turned and walked down the center aisle. The people who had laughed at me just minutes before now shrank away, their faces a mixture of awe, shame, and fear. They didn’t see a neighbor. They saw a weapon. They saw a ghost.

I pushed through the heavy courtroom doors into the marble hallway, which was already a circus. A local news crew, alerted by the stream, was running, camera light on.

“Colonel Reeves! Colonel Reeves! Why Thatcher? Were you undercover?”

“Is this a federal operation?”

“What will you do now?”

My mind went cold. I was back in-country. The press was a hostile crowd. I scanned for threats, identified exits, and calculated my route. I didn’t speak. I just moved. I moved through them like they were water, a ghost in a storm of my own making. My quiet life was gone. My peace was shattered.

I burst out the front doors of the courthouse into the sunlight. I had won. I had protected my son. I had exposed the rot.

And I had lost everything. All I wanted was to get to Finley.

---

Mrs. Devo’s house was quiet, a small island of calm. I parked my truck and sat for a moment, my hands gripping the wheel. They were still shaking. Not from fear. From adrenaline. The storm was over. Now the flood.

I walked to the door and knocked. Mrs. Devo opened it. She was a kind, elderly woman who had always paid me in cookies and lemonade. Now, she looked at me like I was a stranger.

“Mallister,” she said, her voice trembling. “I… I saw the news.”

“Is he…?”

“He’s in the backyard. He’s been watching it on his phone. He… he hasn’t said a word.”

I nodded and walked through her house, out the back door.

Finley was sitting in the grass, his back to me, his small shoulders hunched. His phone was on the ground next to him. I could see the video playing on its small screen—my face, cold and angry, in the courtroom.

“Finn?” I said, my voice softer than I thought possible.

He didn’t turn around. “Is that you?” he asked, his voice small and strange.

I sat down in the grass next to him. “Yeah, buddy. That’s me.”

“You… you lied to me,” he whispered. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement of fact, and it shattered me more than anything Blackwell had said.

“No, Finn. I didn’t,” I said, my throat tight. “I… I didn’t tell you everything. That’s different.”

He finally turned to look at me. His eyes, his mother’s eyes, were full of confusion and a deep, bottomless hurt. “Why? Why did you let them… why did you let me… think you were just… just a handyman?”

This was the hardest part. Harder than Fallujah. Harder than the courtroom.

“After your mom died,” I started, my voice thick, “I… I was broken, Finn. And the… the other guy. The Colonel. He wasn’t a dad. He was a… a tool. A weapon. He was good at what he did, but he wasn’t good at… this. At being here. For you.”

I looked out at the quiet yard. “I just wanted us to be normal. I wanted you to have a normal life. I wanted you to be ‘Finley Reeves, the kid who’s great at math,’ not ‘Finley Reeves, the SEAL’s son.’ I didn’t want you to live in that shadow. I wanted to patch roofs and fix sinks and… and just be your dad.”

I looked at him. “I didn’t lie to you, Finley. I just… I compartmentalized. I kept that part of me in a box. For you. Today… Judge Blackwell and Sergeant Rhodes… they broke the box.”

Finley was quiet for a long time, just looking at me. He was studying my face, as if seeing it for the first time.

“I always knew,” he said, finally.

“Knew what, buddy?”

“I didn’t know what,” he said, frowning with a 12-year-old’s profound seriousness. “But… you stand too still. When you’re angry, you don’t get loud. You get… quiet. And you always know where I am, even when your back is turned. I always knew you weren’t just a handyman.”

He reached out a small, hesitant hand and touched my arm. “Was that guy… the one in the video… was that the real you?”

I put my arm around him and pulled him close, burying my face in his hair. “We both are, Finn. The man who fixes sinks and the man in that courtroom. They’re both the real me. But the most real part? Is being your dad.”

He relaxed into my side. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay, Dad.”

---

The next two weeks were a special kind of hell. My anonymity was gone, vaporized.

The day after the hearing, I went to the Thatcher Diner for coffee, just like I did every Tuesday. I’d been doing it for three years. The waitress, Darla, who always called me “hon” and complained about her bunions, was at the counter.

When I walked in, the entire diner went silent. The clatter of forks, the murmur of conversation—it all stopped.

Darla looked up, her face pale. “Good… good morning, Colonel Reeves,” she said, her voice a nervous squeak. “Coffee, sir?”

“Just Mack, Darla. Please,” I said, sliding onto my usual stool.

“Yes, sir. Colonel. I mean, Mack.” She poured the coffee, her hand shaking so badly she spilled it in the saucer. She wouldn’t let me pay. “It’s… it’s on the house, sir. For… you know.”

I left a ten on the counter and walked out. I’d never felt so alone in my life.

It was the same everywhere. At the hardware store, Mr. Oaks, the councilman who had been laughing in the gallery, practically tripped over himself to apologize. “Colonel, I had no idea. We… the town… we’re so grateful. What you did…”

He was obsequious. It was disgusting. I just wanted to buy roofing nails.

My house became a shrine. People left pies on the porch. American flags. Letters from veterans across the state. A local TV crew was permanently camped at the end of my street. My quiet life wasn’t just over; it had been publicly executed.

Then came the call from Mayor Winters. “Colonel Reeves,” she’d said, her voice all business. “We are holding an emergency town hall meeting. The town is… it’s coming apart. We’ve suspended half the police force, pending review. Judge Blackwell is gone. We have no leadership. The people are scared. They’re also… inspired. By you. We need you to come. We need you to speak.”

“I’m not a politician, Mayor,” I said.

“I’m not asking you to be,” she said, her voice softening. “I’m asking you to be the man who lives on Elm Street. The man who is also… the other thing. Please. We need a leader.”

I looked at Finley, who was doing his homework at the table. He was watching me, his expression serious.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

---

The high school gymnasium was packed. It smelled of old varnish and floor wax. The entire town was there. And the press. National press. Lucinda Mercer was in the front row, her face impassive.

I wasn’t wearing my work clothes. I’d dug out the one suit I owned, a simple, dark gray suit I hadn’t worn since my wife’s funeral. It felt wrong. It felt like a uniform.

Mayor Winters gave a nervous speech, then introduced me. “A man who needs no introduction… our neighbor… Lieutenant Colonel Mallister Reeves.”

I walked to the podium. The applause was thunderous, but it felt… strange. It wasn’t applause for a neighbor. It was applause for a symbol. For a hero. I hated it.

I gripped the sides of the podium. “Good evening,” I said. My voice echoed in the gym. “I’m not a politician. I’m a handyman. And I’m a father. For three years, that’s all I’ve been. And it’s all I wanted to be.”

I looked out at the crowd. I saw their faces. Eager. Scared. Hopeful.

“What happened in that courtroom was not about me,” I said. “It was about a system that failed. A system that protected the corrupt and punished the vulnerable. It failed Winslow. It failed my son. It failed all of you. The rot in our town hall and our police department… you all knew it was there. You just… you looked away. Because it was easier.”

“Now, the rot has been exposed. And you have a choice. You can be afraid of what’s been uncovered, or you can grab a shovel and help me dig it out.”

I was about to outline my plan for a civilian oversight committee when the double doors at the back of the gym burst open.

The entire room turned.

It was Jasper Rhodes.

He wasn’t in uniform. He was in dirty jeans and a stained t-shirt. The smell of whiskey and stale sweat hit me, even from the stage. He was drunk. Crazily, dangerously drunk. His eyes were wild, yellowed, and bloodshot. He’d lost his job, his pension, his entire identity. He was a man with nothing left to lose.

“Reeves!” he roared, his voice a broken gravel-pit of rage. “You! You ruined me! You ruined my life!”

People screamed. They scrambled out of the aisle, tripping over folding chairs. The two deputies at the door, new, young, terrified, moved to intercept him. “Sir! You need to…”

“Get off me!” Rhodes screamed, and he shoved the first deputy so hard he flew backward into a row of chairs.

Rhodes was advancing down the center aisle. He was focused only on me. “You think you’re a hero? You think you’re better than us? You’re nothing! You’re just a… a…”

He was 30 feet away. My mind went cold. I was no longer in a gym. I was on an objective.

Threat assessment: Male, 220 pounds, intoxicated, highly agitated, non-compliant. High probability of being armed.

I saw his right hand twitch toward the small of his back. He telegraphed the move. A fatal, amateur mistake.

“Rhodes!” I commanded, my voice the crack of a rifle. “Stand. Down. Now.”

“Go to hell!” he screamed, and his hand went for the gun tucked in his jeans.

He was fast. But I was faster.

I didn’t run. I moved. I stepped off the low stage in a single, fluid motion. The distance between us, 30 feet, I crossed in a way that defied the eye. The crowd gasped.

He was still fumbling for the pistol when I arrived.

I didn’t go for the gun. I went for the limb.

I seized his right wrist with my left hand, his elbow with my right. I didn’t slow down. I used his own forward, drunken momentum against him. It was a simple hyperextension. A clean break.

The sound was not a crack. It was a wet, sickening pop.

Rhodes screamed. It wasn’t a scream of rage. It was a high-pitched, animal sound of pure, agonizing pain. His fingers spasmed open. The gun, a small .38, clattered to the floor.

I didn’t stop. I spun him, pinned his good arm behind his back, and drove my knee into his spine, slamming him face-first onto the gym floor. The entire confrontation had taken less than three seconds.

The gym was utterly silent, save for Rhodes’s sobbing, agonizing wails.

I kept my knee on his back, my hand gripping his neck. I looked up at the two stunned, pale-faced deputies who were just now drawing their weapons.

“Secure. Your. Prisoner,” I ordered, my voice filled with a cold contempt that made them flinch.

They rushed forward and fumbled with their cuffs. I stood up, kicked the .38 away, and retrieved the microphone from the floor. I walked back to the podium. My heart wasn’t even racing.

I brushed the dust from my suit jacket. I straightened my tie.

The entire town was staring at me, their faces white with terror and awe. They had just seen the handyman disappear. They had just seen the ghost. They had just seen the Colonel.

I cleared my throat. “As I was saying,” I said, my voice perfectly calm. “The first step to accountability is transparency.”

A woman in the front row fainted. Then, slowly, one person began to clap. Then another. Then the entire gym erupted. It wasn’t applause. It was a catharsis. It was terror and relief and something I couldn’t name.

---

Later that night, I sat in my dark living room. Finley was asleep. The house was quiet. My suit was hung up. My hands were clean. But I could still feel the pop of Rhodes’s elbow.

My phone, a new “secure” phone given to me by a very flustered FBI agent who’d “just wanted to check in,” rang. I knew the number.

“Reeves,” I answered.

“Heard you made a mess, Mack.” The voice was gravelly, familiar. General Harrison James. My old CO. The man I hadn’t spoken to in three years.

“It was a mess when I found it, sir,” I replied.

He chuckled. “It always is. The footage from that courtroom… and the town hall… it’s made quite the stir. All the way to the top. The President saw it.”

I said nothing. I just waited.

“The world is full of Thatchers, Colonel,” James said, his voice losing its humor. “Towns where the rot has set in. Where good people are scared, and bad men wear uniforms. What you did… it’s given some people an idea.”

“I’m not interested, General. I have a son.”

“This is about your son,” he countered, his voice sharp. “It’s about the world he’s going to grow up in. The President is authorizing a new domestic task force. Small, autonomous, answers only to him. It’s an… ‘accountability’ unit. To find the other Thatchers. To root out the other Blackwells and Rhodes. It needs a leader. Someone who knows the law, and… knows the other things, too. Someone who can be a ghost.”

He paused. “The mission is yours, Mack. If you choose to accept it.”

I looked down the hall to Finley’s room. He’d asked me to leave his door open. He still had nightmares.

“I’m not a soldier anymore, sir,” I said quietly.

“No,” the General agreed. “You’re not. You’re a father. You’re a handyman. You’re a lawyer. And you’re a SEAL. Turns out, the country needs all of them, wrapped up in one angry package. The job is yours, Colonel. Fix our house.”

He hung up.

I sat there for a long time. The quiet life was a fantasy. I had tried to hide from who I was. I had tried to be “just a dad.” But the world doesn’t let men like me rest.

The next morning, I was in the kitchen making pancakes when Finley came downstairs.

“Morning, Dad,” he said, sliding into his chair.

“Morning, buddy.”

He looked at me, a new, appraising look in his eye. “So… what happens now?”

I put a stack of pancakes in front of him. “Well, I still have to fix Mrs. Ortiz’s garage door. And you have a math test on Friday.”

He smiled. “And… after that?”

I poured myself a coffee and sat down across from him. “After that… I think we’re going to have to move, Finn. I got a new job.”

“Is it… is it like the old job?” he asked, his voice hesitant.

“It’s a new job,” I said. “It’s about fixing things. Just… on a bigger scale. It’s going to be a fight, Finn.”

He took a bite of pancake, chewed thoughtfully, and then looked at me with that old, serious expression. “Well, you’re good at fixing things. And you’re really good at fighting.”

I smiled. My name is Mallister Reeves. My quiet life is over. My new mission has just begun. And by that measure, I’m just getting started.