Threshold

Then, as he spun, something hit his neck.

The third hit his forehead and stuck.

He reached up expecting to find some kind of hypodermic dart, but clenched his fingers around something soft and rubbery. As his fingers felt the suction cup tip, a high-pitch voice shouted from within the room, “I got him, Rook!”

The lights switched on, filling every room of the home with one-hundred-watt warmth. King squinted in the light and as he searched the room for the source of the voice. He didn’t see her.

“Up here,” Fiona said.

King turned toward the bedroom door. Fiona, dressed in her black pajamas and black socks, stood on top of it, her back pressed into the upper corner of the room. Her black hair had been pulled back into a tight bun and she wore a black bandanna over her mouth. She held a dart gun in her hands. He recognized it as one of two bright- orange dart guns they had bought, but it had been painted black.

Stan Tremblay, call sign Rook, shouted from the living room. “Sorry, King. Couldn’t stop her. I’m out!”

“Where’s my gun?” King asked.

“In the closet with the rest,” Rook replied.

“Bye, Rook!” Fiona shouted.

“Later, kid! Oh, and sorry about the kitchen floor, King.” The front door opened and closed a moment later.

There were a thousand parental things King knew he should say at that moment. You could have broken your neck if you’d fallen from the door. You had me worried sick. We don’t aim guns at people. And there were just as many nonstandard chew-outs. What if I was armed? I could have shot you. I could have shot Rook.

But he didn’t say any of that. Instead he said what he really thought. “That was pretty good.”

“Pretty good?” Fiona said, her voice full of mischief. “You just got taken out by a girl. And I’m not even a teenager yet. I’d say it was amazing.”

He could see her smiling with pride behind the mask. It was an infectious smile, which he was grateful for because it hid his true feelings. He had just been taken out by a twelve-year-old girl. The very girl he’d sworn to protect. Was he so distracted by Fiona’s presence in his life that he might actually fail to protect her?

She saw his distraction and brought him back to the current situation. “So, are you going to get me down or what?”

“You’re the ninja,” King said. “You get down on your own.”

He started to leave the room. “Rook put me up here.”

King gave a shrug, his smile spreading wider. “Taking out a target is useless if you haven’t planned your escape.” Halfway out the door, King felt a tug on his hair. A sudden weight on his back followed. Fiona had leaped from the door onto his back. She clung to him sideways with one arm and one leg wrapped over his shoulders. His protest was drowned out by her wild laughter.

King held on to her limbs and stepped back into the bedroom. He fell back onto the bed, careful to keep most of his weight off of her. He held her there, pinned and laughing. “King is awesome,” he said.

“What?” she asked between laughs.

“King is awesome. Say it.”

“Keep dreaming, Dad!”

That’s when the laughter faded. She knew he didn’t like to be called “dad,” but she’d also been unable to fall asleep that night because she knew about the court hearing. She had yet to learn the results.

With her grip on King relaxed, he sat up knowing full well what she was about to ask.

“So,” she said, “what’s the verdict?”

He turned to her slowly, suddenly uncomfortable. He couldn’t find the words. Luckily for him, Fiona was never slow at providing them for him. “Are you my foster father or not?”

He grinned. “I am.”

She sat still for a moment, eyes glossing over, lips pinched tight. Seeing her like that, glowing with joy, desperate for affection, and totally vulnerable, put a crack in King’s defenses. He let out a small laugh and held his arms out to her. She dove into his embrace and squeezed him tighter than he thought the little girl capable.

He lowered his head onto her small shoulder and repeated the words he knew she needed to hear. “I am.”

THREE

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

2011—One Year Later

“NOTHING LIKE THE smell of a firing range on a sunny day,” Rook said as he stared down the sight of his .50 caliber Desert Eagle. He pulled the trigger. The loud boom of the powerful handgun was followed by a distant ping as the fired round hit its target. He straightened, took a deep breath, and let it out with an “ahh.”

Next to him, Fiona took a deep breath and coughed. “Smells like gunpowder.”

King chuckled, running a hand through his messy black hair. “Gunpowder is like an aphrodisiac for Rook.”

“An afro-what?”

Remembering that the girl beside him was not only thirteen, but also under his direct care and supervision, King reminded himself to watch what he said. “Never mind.”

“Jack Sigler, the perfect role model,” Zelda Baker, call sign Queen, said from the next station over. She was cleaning her UMP submachine gun. Her grease-stained “wife-beater” tank top stood in sharp contrast to her wavy blond hair and her face, which was feminine despite the bright red skull-in-star brand burned into her forehead.

Beyond Queen, Shin Dae-jung, call sign Knight, lay on the ground staring through the scope of a sniper rifle at an apple a half mile away. “Ears,” he said.

Those not wearing protective gear covered their ears with their hands. A loud clap echoed. A fraction of a second later, the apple ceased to exist. Knight stood and offered the group a cocky grin. He looked at Fiona. “It was a bad apple.”

Fiona laughed and said, “Lame.”

“Lame?” Knight said. “That apple was more than a half mile away.”

“Not the shot,” Fiona said. “The joke.”

Eric Somers, call sign Bishop, laughed quietly, his barrel chest shaking. He’d already unloaded all of his ammunition and was watching the others from the long wooden bench that stretched along the backside of the outdoor range. He rarely spoke, allowing his actions to speak for him. His quiet laugh was enough to tell Knight he was being mocked.

“Shut up, Bish,” Knight said with a wave of his hand.

As King reloaded one of the assorted weapons he’d brought to the range, Fiona picked up his unloaded Sig Sauer. She aimed it downrange. King had never let her fire a real weapon, but she was eager to try. “So when do I get to shoot some bad guys?”

The team fell silent. Killing was something they did. It was their job and they were good at it. But it was not something they took lightly, especially when it came to kids killing people, which happened more than most people wanted to know. King took the gun from her hand. “Killing someone isn’t something you should want to do.”

“But when they’re bad guys—”

“Killing is a last resort.”

“But you guys joke about it.”

King shared a guilty glance with the others. They were prone to raucous retellings of old missions. King was hoping someone else would join in, but they remained silent. He was Dad now, after