“Who wants cheese on theirs?” Richard asked, packets of cheese singles in hand as he stood next to the grill.

A resounding chorus of “me!” and “I do!” permeated the air as every member of the crowd shouted out their appreciation of cheeseburgers.

The sun had rolled down behind the mountains, plunging my little piece of the valley into darkness, but my cabin’s back deck was just coming to life with the agents of Frost Security, and their wives and significant others. And, of course, my own newly found mate, adopted daughter, and our den mother and IT girl, Genevieve and Lacy Richter.

The deck nearly sagged under the weight of all thirteen people as we crowded in around the picnic table and the small table we’d moved out from my dining room, but I knew the solid construction would stand the test of time. It would take more than all of us assembled to shake its foundations.

And, as I looked around at the assembled group, all of us laughing, smiling, and passing piles of burger patties back and forth, I knew it would take more than Jaeger-Tech to shake ours.

Beside me, Rebecca Stokes was lecturing my adopted daughter Mary Waynescott about how she needed to get on the ball with her reading assignments, that there was still a big research paper due at the end of the semester.

“And you don’t want to get behind, kiddo,” Lacy said, bumping her with her shoulder. “Believe me, I had Becks for my senior English class, and she’s tough.”

Rebecca paused just before taking another bite of her burger. “Oh come on, Lacy, you’re making me sound like a dragon lady!”

“I didn’t say you’re a dragon lady,” Lacy clarified. “I’m just saying you’re tough but fair, that’s all.”

Meanwhile, I watched Elise Moon, Jessica Long, and Ashley Maxwell talking to Vanessa about the art gallery, the Curious Turtle. Vanessa was trying to stay pleasantly engaged and give them as much of her attention as she could, but I could tell that internally her eyes were glazing over. She had the same look on her face when we were younger and I’d start to talk about football. She could nod in all the right spots and appeared interested, but I knew that deep down, she was stifling some world-class yawns.

While it was true that Vanessa was an art lover, I think she loved the theft of it more, not necessarily the sale or craft. She’d spent the last fifteen years as a cat burglar, trying to stay as below the radar as possible, moving from one country to the next as she did her own research on Jaeger-Tech and their affiliates.

At least, that’s what she’d told me when she’d first arrived in town three months ago at the wedding. Even after our heart-to-heart earlier today, I still wasn’t sure how much of what she told me I could actually trust. Everything just seemed too strange but also too neat and perfect at the same time.

Nearest to the grill, Gen Richter sat with the other three guys, telling them about some of her wild child days out in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Young, carefree, without a care in the world. She told them about how she’d met Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary one time.

“But boys,” Gen said, smiling that warm, grandmotherly smile of hers, “those days are long behind me. Half of my stories would make your hair go white, anyways.”

I looked around, smiling a little to myself. This was the way it was supposed to be. All of us together, all of us part of a family. It’s what I’d wanted since I decided to start Frost Security with Richard. It’s what I’d wanted since the day I left the military—just a chance to rebuild a sane piece of the world for myself, something that didn’t make me cringe every time I thought of it.

Of course, it hadn’t always been like this. Instead, most weeks, one or two of us were out of town on business. Frost Security did more work than just helping out the locals of Enchanted Rock. At the prices we charged them for our assistance, we, quite frankly, had to find work elsewhere. There wasn’t enough money in the coffers to more or less give our services away each time we were needed.

That was, of course, until Vanessa came back into my life, and Jake had narrowed down that Jaeger-Tech had begun to scout us more heavily. When that happened, I put the agency on a freeze to outside contracts. As much as it might have hurt to do it, I couldn’t have my men running around all over Colorado when there was an imminent threat of attack.

And, yeah, we felt the sting. Of course we did. But there was enough operating capital set aside in the rainy day fund to keep the lights on and keep everyone paid. Excluding myself, of course. I was living off savings for the time being while we continued to run our drills up at the safe house.

But what good would it do any of us to even have jobs if Jaeger-Tech could strike us at our weakest? When we were running around on extraneous jobs, just trying to bring in money? I still had enough money set aside from the inheritance of the Frost estate to last me and Mary a while. And, if I had to, I could foot the bill on my men’s lifestyles for a few months, too.

If it came to that, of course.

The fact that I had somehow found Vanessa along the way—or rather, that she’d found me—was just icing on the cake. Even if, right now, we weren’t seeing eye to eye. Just having her here gave me some hope that maybe, just maybe, we’d be able to come together again.

After all these damn problems with Jaeger-Tech were over we could have our fresh start. If she and I both survived it, I was going to try and rebuild my life with her. The feel of her in my arms earlier in the day had more than made up my mind on that front.

“Any of y’all need another beer?” Frank asked as he rose from the picnic table, gathering up empties in his hands.

“I could use another,” Lacy said, holding up her empty bottle for inspection. She’d just turned twenty-one a few months ago, and I could tell from the scowl on Gen’s face that her grandmother didn’t approve of any of her habits—which was rich coming from an ex free love flower child like her. Lacy must have caught the look, too, because she just winked in Gen’s direction. “Come on, Grandma. Live a little.”

Gen twisted her lips from side to side, frowning a little as she continued to glower.

“Any more wine in there?” Elise asked, rising from her own spot at the kitchen table we’d moved outside.

“Should be,” I said, rising up from my own spot on the bench, groaning at my sore legs and back. “Lemme grab you one. Red or white?”

Selections made, beer orders placed, and empties gathered up in both our hands, Frank and I headed in through the sliding glass door. We deposited all our empties in the recycling bin before going to the fridge and beginning to pull out drinks for everyone.

“If I’d known we were going to have twelve people drinking tonight,” I said as I surveyed the extravagant amount of beer and wine stuffed in my fridge, displacing all the food for Mary and my planned meals for the week, “I would have just filled up an ice chest and put it on the damn deck.”

Frank chuckled a little. “Hey, man, which would you rather have? A whole group of people who love you and want to drink your booze? Or a whole bunch of booze and no one to drink it with?”

“Point taken,” I grumbled as I crouched down and began pulling beers from the fridge and passing them back over my shoulder.

“Tell you what, though,” Frank said as he took beer after beer from me, followed by a bottle of white wine for Vanessa and Jessica, “I gotta say I’m kind of digging this whole thing. All of us together, you know.”

I glanced back over my shoulder at him, nodding. “It feels good,” I admitted. “Feels like this is the first time we’ve really been able to do this, other than the wedding.”

Beers transferred to the counter, I got up from my squatting position and closed the door. I turned back around to Frank, who suddenly had a serious look on his face. Probably the most serious look I’d ever seen on him, if I were to be honest.

“Boss man,” he said finally, his voice low and measured, “I got a question. A serious question.”

For most people, his voice seemed lower than necessary, even for a private conversation in a house with a party going on outside. But I knew better. He was speaking low enough so even the shifters outside would be hard-pressed to hear him.

“Shoot,” I said, grabbing a bottle opener from a drawer and popping the cap on a beer.

“This shit with Jaeger-Tech. This is serious, ain’t it? Like, real goddamn serious?”

“As a heart attack,” I said, taking a big drink of my beer. “Wouldn’t be pushing you guys so hard if it weren’t, and you know it.”

He nodded slowly as I handed him the bottle opener. He popped the cap off his beer and took a long drink. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “Damn. Reckoned we were putting all that shit behind us after the war, you know? Figured the last time people would be seriously shooting at me was all that crap a year ago with my wife and her daddy.”

“Want me to tell you the truth?” I asked in a low voice.

He nodded, sighing. “Give it to me.”

“This is going to be worse than when the cartel came to town or when those security buddies of yours tried to pump us all full of lead. This is the big one, Frank. The big show.”

His chin set and his jaw clenched. He gave me a solemn nod before scooping up the beers.

“You thinking of leaving?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t think it’s the right course of action to take, but I wouldn’t blame you. You’ve got a wife to consider now.”

“Leave a fight?” he asked, his lips quirking up into a half-smile. “If I did that, I think my uncles would hunt me down and kick my ass. Besides, we’ve all told our mates. We know what’s coming down the pike, and we trust you to lead us through it.”

“They’re on board, too?”

“Think Ashley wants to leave her first job behind? Or the friends she’s made here? This is the only place she’s felt like a normal human being, where there ain’t nobody trying to pal up to her cause of her daddy’s money. Ain’t the kind of thing you just leave behind.”

Ashley had come a long way since she’d first arrived Enchanted Rock as a trust fund girl, blissfully unaware of what was going on with her father’s company. Her father had fled to the little town on the eve of his investment firm being closed by the SEC for embezzlement, fraud, and money laundering. What had started as an investigation of a simple breaking and entering case soon evolved into an international incident involving members of the Russian mafia and a Mexican drug cartel. Overnight, she’d become penniless.

I nodded. “Think I understand.”

“And you know Richard’s wife ain’t just gonna leave. Hell, she stood up to that biker gang right alongside us. If they couldn’t get her to sell out, I don’t see how a bunch of weirdos from Oregon are going to get her to move on.”

I gave him a small grin. “Good man.” I turned around and found the bottles of red I’d stashed on the counter behind me. With our bounty in hand, we headed back outside to rejoin our family.

Still, though, at the back of my mind was Vanessa’s warning about the fantastical threat Jaeger-Tech posed. Giants? Immortals? Was I not telling my men about them because I was worried they’d leave the pack behind and go running for the hills?

Or was I not telling them because of the reason I’d given? That because I couldn’t confirm the intel, it wasn’t solid or actionable.

The worst thing a leader can do is waver. If you make a choice, even a bad choice, you should follow through with it unless evidence presents itself that’s completely undeniable. If you’re a general and you say to take a hill, you don’t suddenly decide halfway through the battle that the hill your men are going up isn’t the objective you want. Because telling them to come back down with the enemy firing is just as dangerous as going back up.

Too bad the choice about letting them in on the knowledge of giants and dragons of faerie-land Jaeger-Tech was about to be taken out of my hands.