It was a rough mission, fraught with mistakes by others and close calls that he always pulled out in the end. He never missed, but he lost a few men, and it burned every time that happened. Another tick mark he had to rub out.

But, as had become somehow customary, he had somewhere other than HQ to go back to. Debriefed and patched up, he headed for the dusty book store, the place she'd first offered him that cup of tea. He couldn't even remember what kept him coming back at first, other than the fact that she seemed to turn up in the strangest places. He'd call it fate or something akin to it, but somehow that cup of tea after a mission always melted away the last remnants of the stress of war.

Customary, too, was his soft, rhythmic knock on the door to the shop.