Six hours of this—six hours of walking the same fence line with nothing but the wind and Shaw's carefully controlled breathing for company. He didn’t exactly mind the quiet. But Shaw was right there and it made absolutely no fucking sense to suffer in silence.
Hudson couldn't take it anymore. "So… You always this fun on night shifts?"
Shaw shot him a brief look. "We're working."
"Ah. So that's a yes." Hudson grinned into the dark.
When they reached the first checkpoint, Shaw pulled out the clipboard and clicked his pen once.
"Lock," he said.
Hudson grabbed the padlock and tested it. "Good."
Shaw made a note, pen moving in neat, controlled strokes. He formed each letter with the same deliberate precision he did everything else—no wasted movement, nothing hurried.
Hudson rolled his eyes.
"Time," Shaw said.
"Twenty-three fifteen."
Shaw wrote it down in straight lines like he was using an invisible ruler.
Sweeping the flashlight along the fence line, Hudson checked for gaps or disturbances in the snow beneath. “Fence is clear.”
Shaw checked something off. Even his checkmarks were regimented. It was kind of impressive, actually. In an annoying way.
Leaning back against the post, Hudson watched him. "You think anyone actually reads these reports?"
"Yes," Shaw said, eyes on the clipboard.
Hudson couldn't help but grin. "Well, good. I'd hate for your impeccable handwriting to go unappreciated."
Shaw let out a faint huff of breath that might've been a laugh if Hudson used his imagination.
Yeah. He was going to file that as a laugh.
When they reached the second checkpoint, Hudson’s mind drifted to something he had overheard earlier in the day, after drills wound down. He had been heading towardthe lockers when he caught voices from Kowalski’s office. “...doesn’t surprise me,” Kowalski said. “He was raised for this.”
“For sure,” another voice replied. “Imagine having General Shaw as a father?—”
The rest was swallowed by a door closing, but Hudson connected the dots just fine. General Shaw—the most decorated man still wearing a uniform—was Shaw’s dad.
Growing up with a man like that. Damn. He thought about his mom’s kitchen in Brooklyn, the way she’d taped his mediocre eighth-grade art project to the fridge and left it there for two years. Somehow he doubted General Shaw had done the same.
The overheard conversation still bounced around his head as he watched Shaw work. This was probably a bad idea. Shaw clearly didn't like personal questions. Or any questions. Or talking in general. But Hudson had never been great at leaving things alone, and his brain kept circling back to it—so, to hell with it.
"Hey. Can I ask you something?"
"You just did,” Shaw said, studying the clipboard.
Hudson snorted. "Let me rephrase. I heard something earlier. About your... let's say, family ties."
Shaw’s hand stilled mid-sentence, shoulder pulling tight. He finished writing whatever he was writing and clipped the pen back into place. When he looked up, his expression was blank, but Hudson caught the tension in his jaw, thick muscle working under the skin. "What about them?"
"Is General Shaw really your dad?"
There was a new hardness to Shaw’s expression Hudson hadn’t seen before. Maybe he had actually crossed a line this time.
