Page 77 of Code Name: Admiral

ALICE

Pershing said I’d gone native. I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, but I thought it had something to do with how comfortable I’d become here, at the camp. What started as a refuge had become home, though I still had my apartment in Manhattan for when K19 Sentinel Cyber work required our presence in the city.

I still drank Matcha instead of coffee, still surrounded my workspace with crystals, still spent hours coding, but I’d also learned to kayak and identify bird calls, and to appreciate the quiet moments as much as the adrenaline rush of a successful operation.

The dock where we’d made our desperate escape became my favorite place to work when the weather permitted. It was also where Pershing had proposed three months ago, transforming our place of crisis into one of joy. He’d arranged crystals in a circle—he’d learned their properties almost as well as I did—and waited until sunset, when the lake turned to liquid gold.

I said “yes” before he finished asking.

Next month, we’ll marry here, in a small ceremony, with just our K19 family and Lark, who’d ended up moving back to Gloversville to help care for her aging grandmother. In the brieftime since she had, our friendship had grown quickly. More often than I went to see her, she came up to the lake, where she also taught me how to make the perfect cup of Matcha.

Pershing asked Diesel to be his best man and Grit to be a groomsman. I’d asked Bryar, whose pregnancy was finally starting to show, to be my matron of honor and Lark to be a bridesmaid. And in what would be our first in-person meeting after all these years, Tex had agreed to fly in to walk me down the aisle.

Even Alessandro promised to attend, saying he could take a brief break from his work helping federal prosecutors dismantle what remained of his family’s criminal empire. Vincent’s trial was scheduled to start next week, and according to the federal prosecutors, between Alessandro’s testimony and the evidence we’d gathered, the mob boss would never see freedom again.

Sweeney and Huxley had already been convicted. The corruption they’d enabled was being systematically exposed and eliminated. It was slow work, but necessary. Sarah had understood that. Now, I did too.

I’d placed her photo on my desk, next to my primary monitor. When I worked late into the night, tracking digital breadcrumbs or untangling encryption, I swore I could feel her presence. I was proud of what we’d accomplished and at peace with how her story ended, even though I missed her so much that, sometimes, it hurt to breathe.

Two loons called from across the lake, pulling me from my thoughts. Pershing would soon be up from the boathouse, where he and Grit had been working on developing Sentinel’s operations. We were building something extraordinary, combining my technical expertise with their tactical experience in ways that were already revolutionizing cybersecurity.

But more than that, we were building a life. One that honored Sarah’s sacrifice while creating something new and beautiful from the ashes of tragedy.

From the window, I could see the two men walking up the stone steps, and headed to the kitchen to brew my husband’s coffee. He still drank it cold more often than not, but I’d learned to time fresh pots with his arrivals. It was a small thing, but marriage, I’d been discovering, was built on such moments.

“Hey,” he said, walking in and pulling me close.

“Hey, yourself,” I responded, breathing in his familiar scent.

Later, we’d sit on the dock and watch the sunset. He’d tell me about his day while I shared any new security vulnerabilities I’d discovered. We’d plan our wedding and our future, dreaming about the family we hoped to create.

But for now, I simply held him close, grateful for this unexpected life we were building together. Sarah was right—sometimes, the smartest thing you could do was run. But other times, if you were very lucky, you could run straight into exactly where you were meant to be.

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