Chapter 2
"Yo," he called, and his voice had the carrying quality of someone who had learned early that volume functioned as authority. "Who let the secretary in?"
Laughter came quick and reflexive, the kind that does not require the joke to be funny, only the person delivering it to be the person delivering it. Sergeant Cole Vance walked toward me with the loose-hipped confidence of a man crossing a room he owned. He stopped three feet away. Close enough to communicate something. Far enough to claim accident if anyone asked.
"You lost, ma'am? Admin offices are in Building 6."
I kept writing.
He leaned slightly, trying to catch my eyes. "Or are you here to take notes? Write up how awesome we are for a Navy newsletter?"
Someone behind him shouted something about being too badass for a report. I finished the sentence I was writing, drew a small diagram in the margin, and said one word without looking up.
"Observing."
Vance blinked. "Observing what?"
"Training protocols."
He turned back to his crowd with exaggerated confusion, the performance of a man who needs witnesses for every moment of his comedic life. Then he turned back. "You got a name, observer?"
"That's sufficient."
He stared at that for a moment. He was not used to answers that did not invite a next move. He found one anyway.
"You want to observe from the mat?" he said, loud enough for the whole bay. "Dare to fight, Navy?"
The room shifted. This was the moment Vance had been building toward since he first saw me, the transition from performance to confrontation, the escalation that would either produce submission or spectacle. Either result would serve him. He had run this sequence before and it had always resolved in his favor because he was six two and 220 pounds and held a black belt and trained in this room six days a week and nobody who had ever been on the receiving end of that reality had ever successfully argued with it.
I kept writing.
I finished the line. I noted the time in the margin. I wrote a brief observation about the kimura sequence I had watched earlier, the way Vance had held past the second tap, the specific mechanics of why that choice was tactically poor outside a training context. Then I closed the notebook.
May you like
I looked at him.
"I'm observing," I said.
