Blindside: A Novel

"Pull up what the system has on the intruder. I'll fire it over to Ganos to see if she can do any magic with it."

"Roger." Mac flipped the screen back on and keyed in some requests. "1.71 meters tall. 76 percent likely they're male."

"That only describes about twenty percent of the planet," I said.

"It tells us something, though," said Mac. "For a system as good as yours to only have seventy-six percent confidence...that's not an accident. The intruder purposefully worked to conceal that information."

I frowned. "You sure?"

Mac gave me the look that noncoms give officers when the officer asks a stupid question.

"Right," I said. "Of course you are. So, a pro."

"At least in that aspect. It's worth looking into."

"Sure. I'll have Ganos run a search on anybody who might be on planet who fits the bill." It seemed like a search for the letter O in a field of zeroes, but it didn't hurt to try. If anybody could turn nothing into something, Ganos could.

"I'm going home to change," said Mac. "Do me a favor, and don't wander outside of your security system until I get back?"

"I won't," I promised. I actually meant it.

CHAPTER 2

Mac

I DON'T LOOK FOR trouble. I can see why people might not believe that, given how often it finds me. And that's fair. I own it. I've made some decisions in my life that ensure that trouble and I...well...we're never too far apart. Funny thing is, when I joined the military, I was trying to get out of trouble. That worked out great.

And then there's Butler. Look up trouble in the dictionary, and there's his mug staring back at you. But I love the guy, and here's the thing: While I don't look for trouble, I learned my lesson that first time. I don't run from it. I also know it when I see it. When someone came onto Butler's property two nights back, that was trouble. Butler didn't see it that way, but there was nothing new in that. He has the luxury of looking past stuff. Because he has me. And that was trouble of a different kind. At least if you listened to my therapist, which I mostly did. He said that I needed to figure out who I was outside of the military. Outside of Butler. That I used my dedication to Butler as a coping technique to avoid spending time with myself. He might have been right. He had a lot of fancy diplomas on his walls and seemed pretty smart. On the other hand, he'd also told me that you can't solve every problem in life by punching someone in the neck.

So clearly some of his advice was suspect.

Right now, I had to focus on the current trouble: we hadn't found anything to add to what we knew the first morning after the intrusion onto Butler's property. Ganos had even looked into it and come up blank. Nothing. She and I had never really seen eye to eye—we're too different. And things had become extra weird between us since I left her behind on Taug and she got kidnapped. Sure, I'd saved her after that. But she had scars, and I blamed myself for them. But whatever baggage we had, she's the best there is when it comes to finding information. So for her to come up blank? That meant something. For now, it meant that I needed to keep looking. Something would show up. It always does, even if you don't see it until it blows up in your face. But I still had a gym to run, and right now that meant a completely different kind of trouble in the form of one of my regulars: a fit-looking woman named Judith Strand.

Judith was a forty-something woman with blonde hair and a fully paid-up membership. And not one of the discount specials we ran at the beginning of the year to entice people with ill-conceived new year's resolutions. She'd joined about a month ago and paid full price. Her husband had a membership too, though he'd never been in. Judith came in five times a week and had a smile for everyone. She addressed even the part-time staff by name. Today, she was staring at her leg press machine like it owed her money.

That might not sound like trouble, but here's what I know about running a gym: if you want to keep it running, you better keep your forty-something-year-old woman clients happy. They've got the time and money to spend on memberships, and if they like you, they tell their friends.