When the Small Town King Met a Space Queen

I used to think my biggest challenge was building life support systems for astronauts, but then I came home.

My quiet Ohio hometown, the one I' d escaped with an MIT scholarship and a secret burning desire for a bigger life, felt smaller than ever.

I was back for a high school reunion, reluctantly, to face Matthew Scott, the boy who' d relentlessly bullied me and now owned half the town.

He thought I was still "just Gabby," a wash-up struggling with a boring data entry job, a lie I carefully maintained to protect my parents and my classified work at NASA.

The reunion quickly devolved into the public humiliation I expected, with Matthew and his sycophants cornering me, pouring wine on me, and trying to extort money.

But then, he crossed a line far more dangerous than he could ever comprehend.

He snatching my phone, oblivious that it held top-secret national security data, and used it to call his corrupt sheriff buddy, thinking he had finally trapped me.

He thought he was calling in local backup to finish off his high school rival, but in reality, he had just triggered a security alert that would bring the full force of the federal government crashing down on his little kingdom.

He had no idea that in his arrogant attempt to destroy my life, he had just detonated his own, and mine was about to get a surprising new chapter.