SAFE HAVENS: Shadow Masters (A Sean Havens Black Ops Novel Book 1) by J.T. Patten Page A

and ready to react or attack at a moment’s notice. They reminded her of a big dog you trust but would never leave unattended near a child, and yet the dog would probably save the child’s life in a moment of danger.
    Then when the men would go downstairs to the man cave, she could hear their laughs, chiding, and camaraderie that could only be described as a fraternity or, in some cases, a family bloodline.
    As the night would go on, the laughing would get louder, the empty bottles would clank more often in the garbage can, the profanity would increase, then hush down in a constant flow of party party shhh shhh party party shhhh.
    By two in the morning, they would be gone.
    And oddly, so would all the trash. It struck her on more than one occasion that when Sean would hand a man a beer, they would take it from the bottle cap, slide it into their own coozie, open the top and put the cap in their pocket. It was as if they never wanted to touch the bottle or leave them behind. It would have been easier if they just wore gloves.
    She never asked her husband much about it as it was indeed a rarity for him to have these men over. Her husband was not really like them. Most had military training. He did not. Not formally. Not that she knew of. She knew he had been to a number of trainings over the years that could extend beyond a week but never more than two.
    Sean didn’t have that same look either. He was much more casual and had much more levity about him. He didn’t have that hawkish look for prey; he had a constant look as if he wanted to make a new friend. Anywhere the Havenses would go as a couple, he could chat someone up. Weddings, restaurants, taxi cabs, Sean was chatting away. He was interesting to others and yet exuded that he was more interested in others and in their interests. She liked that about him, knowing that really he was an introvert.
    Every now and then Sean would even surprise her as she eavesdropped on the conversations he was having outside of her likely earshot. He would throw out some foreign language phrases to the person he was speaking with—often of a foreign heritage. When she asked him about it, he would reply it was just a different type of Arabic but basically the same. She was a speech therapist and had an ear for subtleties in language. It was not always just a different Arabic dialect. Sean knew stuff that he didn’t share with his wife, and she was OK with that but never gave him too long of a leash.
    He said that he was more of an intelligence analyst, who would help the military on some out-of-the-box plans and stuff, or so he would describe to her when he could, so she let him keep his little secrets so he could play James Bond with the big military boys.
    He was her little Cliff Clavin know-it-all geek. A geek that was trim and chiseled with lean muscle mass—athletic but not brawn. Even his “martial arts training,” as he would call it, didn’t seem like the tough guy type. She would sometimes tease him when a Mixed Martial Arts commercial would come on the television.
    “Sean, isn’t that what you do, oh, no sorry your cage matches are with cranes and tigers and snakes. Do you guys hissss and grrrr when you make animal hands? Do they turn out the lights so you can make shadow characters?”
    She would start to giggle, mocking his Kung Fu. Some days he would give her a protective glare, defending his hobby. Other times he would play along and start to go after her. Sometimes when he would come up from the man cave she would jump out at him in a karate stance and caw like a crow with hand pincers or meow like a cat and gesture slapping a pretend air toy. She would playfully slap at his face.
    “C’mon toughie. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
    Of course, there was that time when he actually did do some crazy whirlwind move that ended up crossing her arms, twisting her around, and putting her on her back with him bracing her fall before she knew what had happened. She was a