Any Day Now (SWAT Generation 2.0 8)

“Here,” Silas said as he typed away on the phone, his face a mask of pissed off fury. “Baby, can you catch a ride home with Sebastian? I’m going to take care of some things.”

Sawyer patted Silas’ hand. “Don’t do anything stupid, Silas Mackenzie.”

Silas snorted. “I’m not going to do anything to anybody that doesn’t deserve something to be done to them.”

With that he pushed his chair back, causing a loud screech to reverberate throughout the area, and then stalked off.

Servers and waitresses alike moved out of his way, clearly understanding that the man was pissed and he’d mow them down if they didn’t move first.

“Well then,” Amelia sighed. “Do you think this is all going to change my chances when it comes to getting a job with the FBI?”

That was when Sawyer sat forward and said, “Absolutely not, Amelia.”

Amelia sat back and scowled. “Why not?”

“So you are her,” the paramedic that’d walked up to the table, and still hadn’t left, said. “I thought it was you, but I couldn’t be sure. Can I have your autograph?”

There was a long pause before Amelia said, “Why would you want my autograph?”

“Girl.” He laughed. “You’re so fucking popular online right now! You beat up the Mad Dog! All with one punch.”

“Mad Dog?” Shiloh said. “Who the hell is Mad Dog?”

“Mad Dog is…”

“The bodyguard,” Sebastian finished. “The bodyguard that you kicked in the face was Mad Dog. He’s one of the most ‘fearsome’ bodyguards in Hollywood. Everybody wants him. I read up on him from one of Dad’s reports. Didn’t realize that she was all that popular, though. I did teach her everything I knew.”

Sebastian’s grin slid off his face when Baylee, who now I recognized as one of my mother’s old partners, leaned over the back of Sebastian’s chair and placed an upside-down kiss onto his mouth.

He grinned as she pulled away. “So… is there anything left to eat or did Amelia eat it all?” There was a long pause. “Oh, this is Kirk. Kirk, this is my family. Take a seat.”

He did in Silas’ vacated seat, and both Shiloh and Sawyer scooted over to allow him more room.

Or to get away from him. That was possible, too.

The guy was a bit odd.

“On Reddit, you’re a superstar,” Kirk continued. “Everyone is going to flip their lids when they see that I was here with you. Do you know how hated he is by the gaming community for protecting Rogan?”

There was a long pause and then Amelia said, “No. Why is Rogan so hated?”

Kirk grinned. “Well, it all started out with him being the model for a character in one of the gaming world’s most popular upcoming games. The game went all the way to beta mode when Rogan Germain decided to throw a wall-eyed fit about something. Shit happens, and then his lawyers force Rode Red Blue to go all the way back to design mode. And the bad thing is, the character that Rogan posed for is like, the main guy. You don’t have a game if you don’t have the main guy. And this setback cost the game producers millions, and set the game back another entire year.”

I blinked, impressed.

“Shit,” I said. “I’ve heard of that game. It’s based on the really popular TV series, right?”

“Right.” Kirk nodded, happy to have someone that spoke his language. “It’s also a popular book series. I bet y’all would really like it if you played.”

Nobody at the table played video games. Except for Kirk, that was.

“Then, a couple of months after he pissed off the video gamer world, he pissed off a hacker. This hacker has made it his life’s mission to take Rogan down. I bet you’re his favorite person, too. You punched Rogan Germain in the face. HuntHack only punches him in the psychic plane,” Kirk continued.

“What did he do to piss off a hacker?” Sebastian asked, pulling his wife in closer.

The waitress came and set all the food that Amelia ordered down, and she dug in.

Everyone waited for her to grab some food, and it was then that I realized that they waited out of worry for Amelia. They wanted her to get what she needed because of her illness. They weren’t waiting because she was the one to order the appetizers and it was polite.

“Do you remember when Rogan played that hacker in that movie? I think the movie was called Little Black Hack?” Kirk asked.

The table nodded.

Little Black Hack was a fairly big movie last year and had done really well in the box offices.

“Well, they hired a real-life hacker as a consultant, or at least someone that knew what a hacker was,” Kirk said. “The man helped him do everything from looking like a hacker to acting like one. The real-life hacker spent months working with him on this role.”