I gave his leg a squeeze.Down, little one.
“No, that’s…” The guy shook his head and sat a little straighter. “I think I saw you in a bar in Norfolk a few years ago. You were there with someone.”
I scratched my head. It rang a bell?—
“Yeah, you were vague about not being military and not being a civilian at the same time,” he added.
Okay, okay, I remembered now. Yeah. It’d been my first assignment after meeting Danny. I’d missed him like crazy.
“You were the Navy kid,” I stated.
He smirked faintly. “Yeah. We’ll see how long that lasts. I’m Elliott.”
Elliott. I remembered that now too. The kid had grown up, which I suspected had more to do with a deployment than anything else.
“What’s the Navy doing these days other than sending cruise missiles?” Danny joked. Half joked. “Gotta love war in a country that’s landlocked.”
Elliott snorted and picked up his beer. “Most recently, they told me I’ve developed a problem with authority and that I have anger issues.”
That a fact?
I glanced at Danny, and he smirked.
“Fuck it all,” I heard Elliott mutter. “We’re not gonna make a damn difference anyway.”
I turned back to him and eyed him for a beat.
In the back of my mind, I had Terrance’s voice, telling all senior operatives for the hundredth time to be on the lookout for the next-generation operators who could be fast-tracked straight out into the field. Eight months of training, final selection, bam, welcome to Hillcroft.
After taking a swig of my beer, I patted the stool next to me.
“Elliott, let me tell you a story about a hotheaded soldier named Danny Rose.”