Chapter 3
Chapter three
Mac
The furnace kicked on at dawn—a metallic groan through the ductwork that pulled me from something that wasn't sleep but wasn't wakefulness either. Just the gray space where hypervigilance lived.
My hand moved before I was fully conscious. Reached for my phone on the nightstand Ma had probably inherited from her mother, its surface worn smooth by decades of late-night reaches for comfort.
6:47 AM. No new messages.
Was the quiet purposeful? I'd received a string of messages yesterday, each one tightening the noose around my throat. Now, the silence screamed louder than words.
The phone buzzed.
Every nerve fired at once—the way they do when a fastball comes at your head and you have milliseconds to decide: duck or take it in the teeth.
Unknown number.
I opened it.
Limited-time offer on your AT&T plan—
I hurled the phone across the room.
It clattered against the wall where Ma had hung a cross-stitch sampler that read "Home is Where Love Lives." Didn't break. Nothing in this house ever broke—too much love holding it together.
It was a spam text. A fucking spam text from a phone company that didn't know my life was now a countdown timer.
I retrieved the phone. I'd cracked the screen—a spider web spreading from one corner, like me.
I pulled on jeans and yesterday's shirt—my blue Columbia hoodie. It had been my father's hoodie. I'd stolen it from his closet three days after the funeral and never given it back. Wearing it was either defiance or stupidity. Maybe both.
Coffee. My brain told me I needed something that could burn away the taste of fear.
I descended the staircase, walking just heavy enough for anyone awake to hear.
Sensory overload hit me in the kitchen: Ma at the stove in her ratty pink robe and slippers shaped like cats, moving with the efficiency of someone who'd fed four boys and their friends for decades.
Michael leaned against the counter in rumpled clothes, looking like he'd slept about as well as I had.
A third man arrived at the same time I did, rising from the basement.
Tall. Broader through the shoulders than I'd guessed from my glimpses of his midnight arrival. He wore a charcoal sweater with sleeves pushed to his elbows, exposing forearms roped with muscle and marked with scars. His copper-red hair curled slightly at the ends.
He stared at his phone with the stillness of a predator deciding whether something was a threat or prey.
Then he turned.
Gray-green eyes. The color of Puget Sound in winter storms. They landed on my face and stayed there, sorting details.
My pulse sounded in my ears.
"Mac," Michael said, setting down his coffee. "Eamon Price."
"Mr. McCabe." He offered his hand, and I took it.
Up close, I saw the finer details: a beard trimmed precisely but soft-looking where it followed his jaw. His sweater stretched across his chest without being tight. A faint flush climbed his neck—pink spreading across pale skin like a sunrise.
"Mac," I managed. "Just Mac."
His gaze held mine. Steady. Patient.
Ma appeared at my elbow and shoved a plate into my hands. "Sit. Both of you. Can't think on an empty stomach."
Eamon shook his head. "I'm fine, ma'am. I have coffee."
"Coffee's not food, and you look like you haven't eaten since last week." She pointed the spatula at him. "Sit."
"I can function on coffee and willpower." Not argumentative, stating a fact.
"Stubborn," Ma muttered. "Fine. Waste away. See if I care."
I sat at the scarred wooden table where I'd done homework and eaten birthday cake and learned that home wasn't a place—it was the people who fed you even when you insisted you weren't hungry.
The bacon was perfect—crispy edges, tender centers.
My phone sat beside my plate.
"Mac." Eamon's voice cut through the morning sounds.
I looked up.
"How many times have you checked that in the last five minutes?"
"I don't know."
"Six." He set his phone down with deliberate care. "You're scanning for threats that aren't there yet."
"Or they are there and I just can't see them."
"That's my job now." He moved closer—near enough for me to catch his scent. Irish Spring soap, black coffee, and something cleaner underneath. It made me want to lean closer. "Your job is to stop monitoring your phone like it's a timer on a bomb."
"But I'm scared if I stop watching, I'll miss the moment when everything explodes."
"Mac, you're already living in the explosion."
He was right. I knew he was right.
I set the phone down. Face-down.
Eamon touched his beard. Three fingers, left hand, smoothing over his jaw in a gesture that appeared subconscious.
Michael caught me staring. Raised an eyebrow that said Really? Now?
Eamon moved to the window. Angled himself to see out without being framed in the glass.
"Still clear," he said to Michael.
"You think they'll come back?"
"Won't know until they move again." He focused on me. "The timeline in the message—three weeks until intervention—that's a deadline. But it's also a promise. They're not impulsive."
"Which means Mac needs to maintain routines without giving them evidence he's deteriorating," Michael said.
"Every time you look exhausted or scared or broken, you confirm their narrative," Eamon said directly to me. "They're building a case for extraction. Documenting why you need saving from your own life."
Saved from your own life.
"Then what do you need from me?"
"Access to your phone. Full message history. Background on anyone who might fit this profile." He paused. "And I need you to not lie about how scared you are. I can protect a real person. I can't protect a highlight reel."
Ma refilled my coffee. Her hand rested on my shoulder a moment—warm and steadying and everything my mother's hands had never been.
Michael's phone buzzed. "Security company. I need to take this." He headed for the living room, leaving us alone.
"You don't follow sports," I said.
"No."
"Michael told you who I am, though."
"He told me you're his cousin. That you're in danger." His hands hung loose at his sides, but his posture read coiled spring. "The rest doesn't matter to me."
"The rest is my entire life."
"No. Baseball is what you do. Your life is what's happening right now—someone documenting you, planning extraction, and treating you like a specimen instead of a person.
" His voice remained calm. "Your life is deciding whether you trust me enough to show me who you are underneath all the performance. "
His words touched something raw inside.
Ma announced she was going upstairs to make beds. The stairs creaked under her weight—a familiar sound dating back to my childhood.
Eamon brought a manila folder to the table. Set it between us like evidence.
"I can't protect you if you spend the entire time pretending this isn't as bad as it is."
"I don't know how not to follow a script," I said quietly. "I'm an athlete. That's what we do."
Eamon sat across from me. Folded those scarred hands on the table and looked at me with his winter-water eyes.
"We'll work on this as a team. You know how teams work."
He opened the folder.
Inside: my life as evidence. Printouts. Screenshots. My face caught at Ma's window yesterday—terrified and trying to hide it. The hiding wasn't working.
"This is what the stalker sees," Eamon said quietly. "Not screen-ready you. This."
I stared at the photos. So different from the ESPN-ready image the public saw. I saw a stranger wearing my face who looked like he was drowning.
"I need your phone now."
I pulled it from my pocket. Unlocked it and slid it across the table.
Our fingers brushed.
His knuckles against mine. It started a small fire. Heat racing up my arm, settling in my chest, and making my breath catch.
I pulled my hand back. Too fast. Too obvious.
He didn't move for three heartbeats. Sat there, with his hand extended over the space where mine had been, staring at the point of contact.
Then he picked up the phone. The flush climbed his neck again—pink spreading from collar to jaw like spilled wine.
"The messages came through standard SMS," he said, voice unchanged. "That's good. Harder to spoof and easier to trace if we can get carrier cooperation."
I watched his thumb move across my screen. His forearm flexed as he scrolled. I watched the flush fade and then creep back when he caught me staring.
Michael came back. "Cameras will be here by three instead of five. And I got you that background check you wanted. You two good?"
"Fine," Eamon said.
"Great," I added.
Michael's mouth twitched. "Right. Well, Eamon Price, an executive protection specialist who works alone and trusts no one.
Eamon, this is Mac. First openly gay MVP, currently first openly gay target of a stalker with a conservation fetish.
" He gestured between us with his coffee mug.
"Mac's superpower is charisma. Don't let him fool you into thinking he's handling this better than he is. "
Eamon stood. Extended his hand like we were meeting for the first time.
I stood and took it.
His grip was firm. He had calluses too, and they caught where mine were thickest from ten years of fielding grounders.
We held on for longer than necessary, and then we both let go at once.
I shoved my hands in my pockets to prevent reaching for him again.
Michael watched us with barely concealed amusement.
I did my best to hide behind humor. "I appreciate it. This whole knight-in-shining-armor thing—"
"Mac," Michael spoke in a warning tone. "You're deflecting."
Eamon sat back down. "You play third base."
"Yeah. How—"
"Your hands. Specific fielding gloves change the wear pattern."
"I thought you didn't follow sports."
"Only insofar as it's important for my work."
"But that's so specific—"
"It's part of the job. Like the fact that I know you're exhausted. I know you checked the street before coming downstairs. I know you're wearing your dead father's shirt because you need comfort, but you're afraid to ask for it directly."