As soon as I stepped onto the LAX airport terminal, a heavy duffel bag clutched in one hand and my formal Marine cap held loosely in the other, I knew something was up. Instead of being ushered down the route the other passengers were going down, I was pointed towards the opposite direction by a bubbly Filipino airline attendant flanked by two bored security guards.

The sign at the other side read Customs: Military Personnel Only. "Excuse me, ma'am, but I'm discharged. I'm on my way home."

The woman's smile didn't so much as twitch as she gestured politely. "Agent Moore is expecting you, Commander Nolan. This way, please."

I stifled a sigh, hefted my bags a little higher, and ignored the ache that was starting to make itself known in my lower back. Damn, I was starting to feel my age – a nice and even 48.

The walk down to the offices was with little fanfare and the attendant held open the glass door. "Conference Room 3, please. Enjoy your stay here in Los Angeles."

"Thank you ma'am." I nodded at her as I walked through the door.

Mindful of my bulky luggage I continued onwards, briskly marching through the buzzing offices full of men and women in plain military outfits – mostly Army, but there were a few Airforce and Marines – talking on phones or rushing around with boxes of papers. I passed by conference rooms one and two, both occupied with a smattering of people from what I could see through the frosted side windows, and reached my destination after a few more steps.

I knocked twice on the wooden door and waited a moment before opening it.

The room was a standard meeting space, one long oval table in the middle with about twelve chairs total surrounding it; on the table was a single black leather briefcase. The far wall was a floor-to-ceiling glass window that showcased the vast expanse of tarmac two stories down and the dozens of airplanes idling on it. There were no doors other than the one I had stepped through.

A tall man – six feet three inches based on a glance – stood a few paces from the window with an inch-thick folder in his right hand. He was approximately in his mid 50's, based on the grey hair and facial wrinkles, and dressed in a nondescript black suit and tie. He turned to face me and I could see an identification badge clipped to his chest.

I set down my bags and promptly saluted. It was the only thing I could do, in an unusual situation like this. "Agent Moore, sir."

"At ease, Commander. I apologize for bringing you in so abruptly, but I hadn't received word of your discharge until after the fact." The agent gestured for me to take a seat, and I did. He set down his folder and slid it across the table at me.

At this close up, I could read his badge clearly. Agent Moore was from the F.B.I.

"Before your discharge was processed, you were supposed to have been given a four-day's notice to report to officers over at Oklahoma's Fort Kinnean for your final orders. Somewhere up in Washington messages got crossed and you ended up discharged first."

The agent took the seat across from me and casually folded his fingers together.

"That leaves your final orders at an impasse. Now that you are, officially, a free man, I've been called in by my superiors to determine if you'd be willing to cooperate with the F.B.I. as a consultant for the duration of this mission. Don't be mistaken, you are free to leave right now and go home, but you can open the folder in front of you and complete the last task you were supposed to have done in service of your country. After that, you'd be free to leave, no questions asked."

I took in the information I'd been given, mulled it over for a few seconds, and then flipped over the cover of the folder. A sheaf of papers, rife with text and full-color pictures, greeted me. I quickly skimmed through the first page.

Agent Moore gave a slight, approving tilt of his head that I would've missed had I not looked up at the next moment.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Granted." The agent seemed mildly amused for a moment. "You're a consultant for the F.B.I. starting now, Nolan. You don't need to ask."

I hid my wince. I've only been discharged for barely a day and I've already forgotten.

"These are all pictures of my hometown." I gestured to the glossy images I had spread out. "I don't recognize a few of these, however. New faces and a new… church?"

"Yes. It seems like sometime during the past year, a group of individuals the F.B.I. has been keeping tabs on managed to open up shop in Lake Salinger. We suspect that they opened up the church for their Mexico drug smuggling operations, based on reports from the agents we had in the area."

Had. Past tense. Something's must've gone wrong, or else they would've never looked twice at me. I looked back at the mission brief. "What are my orders?"

Agent Moore leaned back slightly in his chair. "You came highly recommended from your superiors with your record as a sniper before the promotion to Commander a few years back took you off the main field. Infiltration is your area of expertise, and it is exactly what we need for this operation."

I initially fought the urge to lean back in my chair, but then I remembered I wasn't part of the military flock anymore and let the plastic chair creak with my weight. The ache in my lower back subsided with the new position.

"Infiltrate the cell and locate potential hostiles." My brain shifted over to tactical mode.

"No need for that, actually. Your job is much more simple: return to your hometown as a veteran of war and live your life as unassumingly as possible. Provide us reports every other day of suspicious activities, potential hotspots, and the like. I believe you were on your way to Lake Salinger anyways?"

The agent was right. My reasons for choosing Lake Salinger over any other city in California to retire in was simply because a week before today I had received news that my childhood best friend and amicable ex-wife, Vanessa Cooper, had passed away from ovarian cancer and left behind two children with nobody to take care of, seeing as her second husband – the biological father of those children, Eddie Foster – died in a car accident almost four years ago. The joint will that both she and her husband agreed on stated that the custody of their children, in the event of their untimely deaths, to go to me since Vanessa was estranged from her relatives and Eddie's parents were legally declared unfit to care for children several years ago after an incident.

It wasn't like I was a stranger to my stepchildren in any case; I've always been a part of their lives, seeing as my half-decade-long marriage to Vanessa during our early twenties had been more of a thing of financial convenience that we were finally relieved to break off once she had found 'The One' and I'd saved up enough money for my own apartment across the street from her house. I couldn't always make it to the kids' – Kinzie, 16, and Seth, 10 – birthdays or Christmases, but thanks to their mother they knew from the start that they had a stepdad that loved them as much as their mom and dad did and probably got them the best late presents every year.

They were my family even if it wasn't through blood, all four of them, and I would never trade it for anything in the world.

Ever.

I turned over a few more pages in the folder. Upon arrival in my hometown, I'd be assigned the standard nondescript gear for trained F.B.I. infiltration agents that I could easily chalk up to personal safety concerns; 10mm Beretta plus four boxes of ammunition, TAC vest, burner cellphone, and collapsible night-vision goggles. All enough for a simple enough job, I suppose.

"So I take it, you're my handler?"

"My team's has been regularly scouting the area for almost half a year, so we're familiar faces around town. Every Tuesday and Thursday at 4 PM I expect you at the diner on Bristol Street to submit your report. My cover is a therapist, and my routine's already been established."

I raised my eyebrows.

"Can you handle some mild PTSD?"

Agent Moore's grin was a bit lopsided. "I do have a Ph.D. in Psychology, among others."

A learned man. Not shocking in the least.

"I don't suppose there's a car waiting for me in the garage? If California's anything like I remember, the public transport system is clogged no matter what time of day. More so in LA."

I could recall the times long ago when I had to use the systems to get to school a whole city over; the rank smell of a little over two dozen passengers crammed into each section of the buses with the ever-present sunlight beaming through fogged windows to cook the grime off on anyone's skin. It was unpleasant, but that was life back in '81 when I was 15 and a one-way ticket had cost half a dollar.

"There's a cab waiting for you at the entrance that will take you all the way up to Lake Salinger. The fee's been paid in advance. You're dismissed, Major. It's good that you've decided to help out." Agent Moore got to his feet, and I did the same.

We shook hands.

"I know how much you've missed your family, so I won't keep you here any longer. Have a safe trip."

"Thank you, agent."

I managed to catch myself before I saluted.

The other man grabbed his briefcase and exited the conference room with the walk of a professional. Once he was gone, I shoved the folder into my backpack and swung it on with a stifled groan. My duffel bag wasn't any better.

I left the Customs office and headed to the entrance of LAX airport. As the agent said, there was a yellow cab at the front with a sign on the back that read Cmdr S. Nolan in block sharpie print. I knocked on the glass at the passenger's side and gestured at the sign. The driver set down her thermos and leaned over to the left, grasping for something. The trunk popped open and I went over to dump my luggage into it before getting into the car. Without so much as a word, the cab driver started driving the moment my seatbelt clicked.

The silence was somewhat jarring. After nearly three decades of ear-deafening military transportation via ship, helicopter, or barge, and the unending chattering of my fellow SEALs around every corner, the lack of sound beyond the honking of cars stuck in a traffic crawl and muffled construction noises put me on edge. With every screech of tires or explosive car honking, I kept telling myself I'd only be in the cab for two hours, three at most. Lake Salinger wasn't too far from Los Angeles.

Despite this, unease settled deep in my gut and stayed with me all the way through those two hours and seventeen minutes.

Lake Salinger hadn't changed much from the last time I'd visited in person four years ago for Eddie's funeral. The same paint-peeled welcome sign, the unchanged population of roughly 11,000 people, and the mile-long dried farmlands marking the edges of the town that belonged to nobody were all very familiar sights.

Once we cleared the fields, the first real building the cab passed was an old community center for youths. The place looked like it got a new coat of paint a while ago in addition to the various colorful murals that were defaced with smatterings of graffiti. After that, it was one of those new-age grocery stores that I remembered opening up when I'd gotten back from three consecutive tours right after 9/11. An unfamiliar shoe store popped up, that new Mexican restaurant that Vanessa had mentioned during one of our Skype sessions a few months ago, and the mom-n-pop diner on Bristol that Agent Moore set as the FOB.

Lake Salinger's ancient Pastor Jim's Church of Christ greeted me as the cab stopped at a red light.

Although I'd been raised Christian by my parents, as it was the religion held by most if not all of the townsfolk when I was young, I was of uncertain standing with my faith. After seeing much of God's work being done in various parts of the world during my military service, I simply stopped attending the religious services offered by the military chaplains and instead put my belief into what my eyes saw and what the eyes of my team ascertained in the distance. After so long, it just seemed like God had nothing to do with us. All the problems I'd been sent to fix all came from men and women that believed in what they wanted and that was that.

I've seen what too much belief could do to a person, to a whole nation.

The cab moved on and I tapped the window divider when we reached the street that my now-deceased best friend had lived with her equally-deceased husband and the children that now survived them.

"Can you drop me off at that house, ma'am? The green two-story with white windows?"

"This one?"

The cab smoothly slid to a stop at the right house. I put on my uniform cap, straight and center from the first try.

"Yes. Thank you, ma'am."

"No problem. Welcome home, sir."

"Thanks for the smooth drive."

I got out of the cab and went over to grab my bags, relishing the stretch in my legs. I waved with my free hand at the cab as it pulled out into the street and U-turned back towards the main intersection. When it disappeared around the corner, I turned to give a long, sobering look at the house I was standing in front of.

Vanessa and Eddie's presences were gone and the house itself seemed like it was sagging under its weight. Their cars, a green VW Beetle rust-bucket that Vanessa had bought almost two decades ago and a faded blue 2004 Dodge Ram that had belonged to Eddie, were further up the driveway; there was a sleek black Lexus with government-issued plates closer to the driveway entrance that I assumed belonged to the social worker that had been taking care of the children for the past week.

I could hear muffled voices through the walls, which usually meant that someone was yelling inside.

I unlatched the gate and stepped through. The front yard was just beginning to look rough with the overgrown grass on the trodden dirt pathway reaching my just below my calf in height and there were two bikes – one purple adult-sized and a moderately smaller blue one – lying on their sides in the middle of the yard. On a good day I would've smiled at the sight, but today wasn't a good day.

The porch creaked under the weight of my steps. The wind chimes Kinzie had made in her woodshop class a year ago as a Mother's Day present tinkled quietly from the slight breeze that filtered through. I dropped my duffel bag onto the ground and took in a much-needed breath.

I was about to knock when the front door was practically wrenched open.

"—NOT MY MOM!"

A teenage girl reaching my shoulder in height with cropped brown hair and various ear piercings finished yelling at whoever she'd been yelling at and turned just in time realize that someone was standing in the doorway.

"Kinzie…" I tried to keep the tiredness out of my voice and inject some warmth into it since God knows the kids need some happiness after all that's happened to them, but the cab ride took a lot out of me.

Kinzie's hazel eyes widened and her hand dropped from the doorknob to grab at my dress jacket, as if she couldn't believe I was standing right there. "…Shaun?"

"Shaun!" A speeding bullet with twig-like arms and legs and half the size of Kinzie slammed against my stomach with all the force of wet tissue paper, staining my dress uniform with snot and tears (not that I minded at all); Seth, in all of his childish glory, as I scooped him up as if he were still a toddler. "SHAUN! YOU CAME BACK!"

"Shaun!" Kinzie wrapped her arms around my middle as much as she could with my backpack in the way. Her words were muffled into the fabric of my jacket. "Mom's… mom's…"

"I know." I wrapped them both up in the tightest hug I could manage. "I'm sorry I couldn't get here faster."

God knows how much I regret always somehow ending up a smidgen too late for my family. As I let the two cry and sob and talk into my chest, I made a silent vow: never again.

2: Chapter 2

The Foster-Cooper house changed very little since the last time I visited in person nearly two years ago. The living room's vintage box television had been swapped with a flatscreen, the kitchen window's curtains were blue instead of khaki now, and Kinzie's room was a muted shade of ivy green instead of pale pink, but that was the extent of the changes that I could recall at the moment.

I stood stiffly in the kitchen with a mug of black coffee as the social worker talked to the kids in the living room in hushed whispers. I turned to look out the window, noting that Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, the elderly next-door neighbors, were peering curiously over the edge of tall hedges that separated their property from this house. I waved my mug at them and the couple waved back hesitantly before going back to clipping their overgrown rose bushes.

The murmuring from the living room stopped and the social worker walked back into the kitchen, tiredness evident from the circles under her eyes and the way she stifled a groan when she bent over to rummage through the large suitcase in front of the refrigerator; the woman was hardly a day over twenty-five, but dealing with a grieving family coupled with the very obvious fact that she was fairly new to the job made her seem much older.

A stack of papers and a pen was put onto the kitchen counter and the social worker's reassuring smile was only half-false when it was directed towards me.

“Mr. Nolan, I'm sure that you know Mrs. Cooper's will stated that you will be granted legal guardianship of Kinzie and Seth. The agency has reviewed and approved the files from your July court hearing. I've been assigned as the children's social worker and I will be conducting weekly drop-ins until the paperwork is finalized and you are deemed a fit guardian. Any questions?”

I put my mug down on the counter and held out my hand. “We're going to be working together for quite a while, so call me Shaun.”

This time, the relieved smile was mostly genuine, and she shook my hand with a firm grip. “Emily Nguyen. I need you to carefully read through the packet, sign the blanks, and return it to me on Friday.”

“Thank you.” I squeezed her hand once and then let go, a ghost of a smile on my face.

The social worker nodded and then went back into the living room to exchange a few parting words to the kids. I stayed in the kitchen and finished my mug of coffee to give them some semblance of privacy, but I couldn't help the smile that pulled at my lips when I overheard Kinzie sullenly apologizing for her earlier outburst; it seemed that my sudden appearance shocked her into feeling embarrassed about her slips into emotional immaturity, although I was quite sure that the lingering aftereffects of recent events only exacerbated the completely natural teenage rebellion she was going through.

Within a few minutes, the social worker was dragging her suitcase out the door and backing out of the driveway with her car. Seth waved goodbye through the living room window and then ran off into his room, banging around as if he was looking for something.

Being reminded of Vanessa brought my mood to a sobering standstill and I dumped the last of my coffee into the sink. Despite the long flight I just got out of, it didn't feel right standing in Vanessa's kitchen and drinking her coffee like nothing had happened and that she'd walk through the front door any minute now with a smile on her face.

Kinzie slowly walked into the kitchen, took one look at me and then rushed over for a hug. I returned the hug just as tightly.

“You're back...” Kinzie sounded close to tearing up again. “Are you….”

I pressed a kiss on the top of her head. “I'm staying right here.”

A smaller body crashed against the back of my legs and stick-thin arms wrapped around Kinzie and I as a face pressed against my side. Seth's voice was muffled into my shirt. “Forever?”

“Yeah, forever.” I let the two hug me for as long as they wanted and needed. “I'm... retired. I'll be around whenever you need me, now.”

Seth's face pressed harder into my side and I could feel a spot of wetness forming. I let my hand rest on the top of his head, like I'd always done when he was much younger.

Just on cue, someone's stomach rumbled – probably Seth's.

“You two are gonna have to let me go so I can make lunch, though.”