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looked at her for a moment as he sipped it. “You’re fine? That’s horse crap. You’re dead on your feet.” Before she could respond, he waved the matter away with one hand. “Anyhow. Most young married people would be doing handstands after their dear mates returned to the fold. Why aren’t you?”
    “Am I that transparent?”
    Jeremy laughed and walked toward the windows. “Not at all, but I’ve been there. Before Meg died, that is.”
    He put his hands in his uniform’s pockets, and Rachel could see his reflection in the glass. At the mention of his wife—her mother-in-law—who had died from cancer almost three years ago, a vaguely haunted expression flashed across his face. He hadn’t wanted her to see it, she knew, but he had been foiled by the glass before him. He turned back to her and smiled easily, all traces of loss and loneliness gone from his face. “And I have an inkling as to what makes my son tick. So …?”
    Rachel sighed and shrugged. “I guess I’m acting like the little wife, as disgusting as it sounds.”
    “I don’t know what that means. I know you probably go through a little or a lot of hell every time Mike takes off in that rig of his. Hell, I get queasy myself. But you know that his work is vital, right? That it’s part of the core reasons for this base’s existence?”
    “Yeah, I’m up on all that. It’s still a tough thing for me to deal with, and it screws up every homecoming. I just can’t stop myself from trying to convince him to try his hand at something else. Even I realize what a nag I’ve turned into, so it must be ten times worse on the receiving end.”
    “The answer’s easy—stop.”
    “I can’t.”
    He sipped more coffee as she joined him at the window. “Then you’re going to have a hell of a fight on your hands. I know Mike. He acts loose and easy all the time, but the fact of the matter is, he has one stiff neck. You try and bend it, he’s going to stand up and give it back to you one day, and that won’t be pretty.” He paused. “But your position is absolutely understandable, given what you’ve gone through.”
    “Thanks. He thinks so, too. But he’s convinced himself the rigs are the safest things around—”
    “They are,” a deep, rough voice said. Rachel’s heart seemed to freeze in her chest, and if she hadn’t been caught by surprise, she would have kept her gaze rooted on the turbine platform below. Unfortunately, she turned.
    A tall, imposing man stood in the break room’s corridor doorway, his pale eyes fixed on hers like he was tracking a target. He had a hard-edged, handsome face, bordering on old movie-star looks, but it seemed lived-in, a facade covering up decades of Rachel didn’t know what. Command Sergeant Major Scott Mulligan was the base’s senior enlisted man and a contemporary of the Old Guard—a relic.
    Jeremy jumped in quickly. “Mulligan! What brings you to our cherished inner sanctum?”
    Mulligan turned his inscrutable gaze toward the burly engineer. “My feet, of course.” He raised the notepad he held in one hand. “It’s time to go through the quarterly physical security review, which is on your calendar, Major.”
    “I thought that was tomorrow,” Jeremy said.
    “I guarantee you it’s today, sir. And it’ll be as routine as always—I’ll ask you the same boring questions, you give me the same boring answers, we’ll review the same boring data, and finally, we’ll both sign the same boring attestation forms.”
    “Doesn’t get any more exciting than that, does it?” Jeremy ran a hand over his face, then nodded to the tall sergeant major. “All right, then. Let’s get to it.” He put a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “Can we continue this later?”
    “Sure,” Rachel said, and she put her coffee mug in the sink. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
    “If it makes you feel any easier, Andrews, I can confirm for you that what Captain Andrews says is completely true—the SCEVs are