“You need some more coffee?” I opened one of the sliding doors leading to the porch and joined Maggie in the early morning light.

“Sure.” She held out her cup, and I topped it off. Setting the coffee pot on the table, I settled into the chair next to hers. Side by side, we sat peacefully watching the sun continue its climb up into the sky as we sipped our coffee.

“How is your shoulder?”

“Doesn’t hurt too much, but I took those pills you gave me.”

“Mmmm.” I savored my coffee, enjoying the high quality brew. In country, we drank whatever was easy to get, but Kona coffee was my favorite. Ben needed a raise. “Let me know how the pain goes. I don’t want to give you too many pills. It’s easy to get addicted.”

“This is going to drive my publicity team crazy. They hate bad press.” She hung her head. “I can’t image what me disappearing and leaving them to cancel the tour is going to do. God, Julie must be going nuts. She flips out if we change the schedule.”

The manager again. That woman was everywhere in Maggie’s life. “What's the deal with you and Julie?

“Well… We grew up on the same street. I went off to boarding school in fall, but summers I’d go home. Then for college, I came back to town, and we just sort of always drifted together. Some guy she was dating wanted to start a band, so we sang together in his garage. I discovered I loved to sing. I think that was the summer between freshman and sophomore years of high school. He didn’t last long, but by then I knew what I wanted to do with my life.”

I took a sip of coffee and watched as a bird flew alone over the surface of the water. “How did you know?”

“When I stood in front of the microphone and let the sound come out, I felt so free. Everything else in my life was controlled right down to the minute, but that,” she turned her smile to me, “that was mine.”

“But doesn’t Julie do the same thing to you on tour? Controls you right down to the minute?”

“Businesswise, yes, but I need that structure. She makes sure we make money and don’t lose it on stupid stuff like fines or paying for a second day because we’re late. I need that, and I don’t want to do it myself. It’s more like I get to control me—where I go, what I do, how I spend my time.”

“Boy,” I laughed, “you must really hate me and my team.”

“You’re not my favorite person. You guys are everything I ever wanted to avoid. It’s like living with my parents again.” She screwed her cute face up and threw on a nagging tone. “’Margaret, you should be doing more with your life. Margaret, where are you going? You need to study to get into a good college. Margaret, why are you wasting your time with that singing? Margaret, you need to be focused on your future. Margaret, Margaret, Margaret.’”

“And here I come in to tell you what to do, how to do it, and when… and cancel your tour.”

“Yep.” She pursed her lips and nodded. “So, yeah. I fought you every step of the way. I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“Oh? You gonna make me say it again? I’m sorry. I should have listened. I shouldn’t have made you take me dancing. You were right.”

I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. “I’m sorry too, Maggie. Sorry we made you feel so out of control and turned your life into a prison.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but you were right. It was dangerous. I’ve been doing this so long I forget that the kooks can be real threats.”

“That’s my job—to assume everyone is serious. That’s what I do. If you’ll let me do what I do best, we can neutralize this guy, and then you can go back to the life you love.”

Maggie didn’t say anything in response. We sat in silence a little longer. A tiny hummingbird came up and flitted from flower to flower in the blooming honeysuckle vines that wrapped around the porch rail.

“Liam?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you do it?”

“What do you mean?”

“This. Why did you choose this? Security… protecting people.”

“Well, it wasn’t my dream or anything. I was a lost kid. A throwaway. I grew up on the bad side of town. My dad was a drunk. My mom was an addict. I ran the streets and got involved with the wrong people. I was stealing cars and other shit. and one day I got caught.”

“Oh, Liam, I’m so sorry.” Her big green eyes were full of genuine pity.

“No. It made me who I am. I lucked out and got a good judge, one with some common sense. My friend Luke’s dad. Luke and I didn’t meet until later, but his dad, the judge, he saw something in me. It was a fluke I got caught, really. I was very good at it. I was practically running the gang. I used my brain, and I guess he saw that. He made a phone call and sentenced me to Noah’s boys.”

“Noah’s boys?”

“That’s what we called ourselves. It was an alternative to straight up juvie. Noah is a billionaire tech genius. He would take on some of the biggest juvenile offenders, the ones who had the potential to turn their lives around, and give us jobs—real, honest jobs—and train us. Business boot camp. If we screwed up, we were sent straight back to juvie and locked up until we were 21. If we stuck it out and got with the program, we went back to school, and Noah helped us pay for college. It wasn’t a handout. We had to work for it either with him or with someone else in a field we were interested in. But we got a top notch business education. I guess me turning that street gang into a profitable business enterprise got me noticed.”

“Holy shit! I’ve never heard of anything like that!”

“It’s not publicized. He doesn’t do it for the money. He’s got plenty of that. I saw it for what it was to me—a way to make something of myself. So I jumped in, finished high school early, started taking some business classes, and then I joined the army. I wasn’t ready to strike out on my own quite so early, not like Mason or Damon. I hadn’t found my passion yet.”

“But you were ready for the military?”

“The army extended my education. I discovered I was good at killing people. Hunting them down across the globe and wiping them off the face of the Earth.” I looked in Maggie’s eyes. “I mean really good at it. I flew up the ranks, and they sent me to every spook school that existed. Not only was I good at it, but people needed my skills. After 20 years, I got out of the service and started Scorpion Security. The rest is history.”

“Wow. That’s pretty amazing, Liam. Where are your parents now?

“Dad’s in jail, and Mom died of an overdose. I never saw them again after I want to juvie.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not.” I flashed her a smile. “Noah’s boys became my family. And now my guys in the company are my family. I don’t need anything else.”

“You always need someone, Liam. What about a girlfriend?”

“I tried that once. It ended badly. No woman can accept what I have to offer.”

“I think you’re wrong.” She shook her head and stared at the distant trees on the other side of the lake. “You’re a good man.”

“I’m not whole. There is something missing. No woman can accept that.”