“Hi, I’m Jessica,” she said. “I heard from some of the other moms that you used to travel a lot for work. Corporate logistics, right? Do you ever miss the excitement of the road?”
I watched Leo run up to his favorite teacher and give her a massive hug, his right wrist strong, agile, and completely free of pain. As I smiled at the sight, I casually adjusted my purse on my shoulder. I felt the heavy, reassuring weight of the small, encrypted GPS transmitter and the compact Glock 43 hidden in a specialized, breakaway compartment. It was a habit I’d never break. The world was full of wolves, and I refused to be a sheep ever again.
“Not at all, Jessica,” I replied, turning my gentle smile toward her. “I realized that the most critical intelligence missions happen right here. Making sure the world is safe enough for him to just… play with his trucks. That’s the only ‘work’ that actually matters.”
Jessica beamed, completely oblivious to the layers of truth in my statement. “That’s so sweet!” she said, before wandering off to find her husband.
As the ceremony ended, I took Leo’s hand and we walked toward our car. Out of the corner of my eye, through the dark tint of my sunglasses, I noticed a black, unmarked sedan parked illegally about a block away. Its engine was idling. The windows were limo-tinted.
I didn’t panic. My pulse didn’t even elevate. I simply tapped the face of my smartwatch twice, sending a silent, encrypted, priority-one GPS ping directly to Kozlov and my father’s Overwatch team. I was a mother, yes. I was present. But I was still the highest-value target they could never, ever hit.
I strapped Leo into his car seat, kissing his forehead. As I climbed into the driver’s seat and put the car in drive, Leo looked at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes wide with innocent curiosity.
“Mommy,” he asked, kicking his little feet against the seat, “are we going on a ‘trip’ soon? Like an airplane trip?”
I winked at him in the mirror, my hands gripping the leather steering wheel. “Only the fun kind, Leo. Only the fun kind.”
As we pulled away from the curb and drove down the sunlit, tree-lined street, the black sedan threw itself into gear to follow us. But before it could clear the intersection, two massive, unmarked black SUVs roared out of a blind alley, slamming on their brakes and completely cutting the sedan off, boxing it in from both sides.
I didn’t even have to look back to know the threat had been neutralized. I just turned up the radio, and drove my son home.
If you want more stories like this, or if you’d like to share your thoughts about what you would have done in my situation, I’d love to hear from you. Your perspective helps these stories reach more people, so don’t be shy about commenting or sharing.
