7. Michael
Chapter seven
Michael
M etal scraped against concrete as the interrogation room door swung open. The afternoon heat had transformed the small space into something between a sauna and a pressure cooker, with my shirt clinging to my back like a second skin. Sixteen hours of questioning had worn grooves into my patience.
Inspector Hauata returned with new lines etched around his eyes that hadn't been there when we started. His uniform remained crisp despite the heat, but exhaustion seeped from his pores.
"You are free to go, Officer McCabe."
I didn't move. "Just like that?"
"Not entirely like that." He glanced at the door
The man who entered wore the unmistakable uniform of American bureaucracy—a well-tailored navy suit. No badge or identification was visible. His salt-and-pepper hair was cropped short, and he carried himself with relaxed confidence.
"Thomas Schulz, State Department." His handshake was firm but perfunctory. "Let's talk."
Inspector Hauata exited, leaving us alone in the stifling room. Schulz loosened his tie a quarter-inch—his only concession to the heat.
"You've created quite the diplomatic situation, Officer McCabe."
"I responded to an explosion. A man attacked me with a knife."
"A man who happened to be Lars Reeves, heir to one of the largest defense contractors in the states." Schulz draped himself into the chair across from me, posture casual while he rattled off steely words. "You've made powerful enemies. Fortunately, you have friends with longer arms."
"Seattle PD?"
A smile appeared briefly on his face. "Higher. Some families have more power than governments. Be grateful one of them's interested in keeping you alive. And fortunately for us, the deceased was a US national, or you would be rotting in a French Polynesian jail."
My throat constricted slightly. "Am I exonerated?"
Schulz slid a manila envelope across the table. "You're not staying long enough for that to matter."
Inside, I found my passport, a boarding pass, and customs clearance forms. They booked me on a private charter.
"There's a car waiting. We've collected your belongings from the resort." Schulz brushed invisible lint from his sleeve. "A word of advice. Whatever you saw or heard on that dock—forget it. The official report here will show a tourist tragically caught in an accident."
"That's not what happened."
"It is now at least until the Seattle PD decides what they want to do with you." His voice softened. "I'm not your enemy, McCabe, but there are people who would like to be. Don't give them reasons." He checked his watch twice during our five-minute conversation. Not nerves. Timing.
I climbed into the back of a black SUV, and it pulled away from the station with a low growl. It had windows so deeply tinted that the outside world dissolved into a smeared suggestion of heat and motion. I sat stiffly in the backseat, hands pressed to my knees, trying not to think about the knife or fire.
At the first intersection, the vehicle slowed. A crowd had gathered just beyond the perimeter of the station, penned back by a loose chain of uniformed officers.
A few held phones high above their heads, angling for a shot. Others simply stared, their faces blank with that unnerving stillness people get when they're not sure if they're watching an unfolding tragedy or only its aftermath.
A girl in a yellow and orange sundress stood near the front of the barricade. She held her phone perfectly still, camera aimed at the car with calm precision. She didn't glance at the screen or check the frame. She merely kept watching as we passed.
The car rolled forward.
A white scooter zipped alongside us for a beat too long. The driver wore a GoPro on his helmet and leaned in, clearly trying to get a view through the glass.
I turned my head enough to meet his angle. He grinned and peeled off, disappearing into the flow of afternoon traffic like he'd gotten what he came for.
The driver of the SUV never spoke. He wore mirrored aviators and a gray collared shirt with no insignia. His hands never left positions ten and two.
At a red light, I saw myself in a mirrored shop window—a dark silhouette in the back of a black car, barely recognizable. I was merely another foreigner caught in something he couldn't explain.
I pressed the side of my head against the cool glass, watching paradise recede in the rearview. Twenty-four hours ago, I'd been walking on the beach with Alex, his laughter carrying across the sand. Now, authorities were whisking me away like a problem that needed solving.
When we reached the private terminal, the gate swung open without a word. The SUV pulled onto the tarmac where a sleek, white jet waited—engines humming low and ominous.
We stopped twenty feet from the boarding stairs. The driver exited and opened my door but still didn't speak. He only nodded toward the plane.
As I stepped out, a man on the edge of the tarmac lifted a camera. It wasn't a phone. It was a real camera, professional gear. His press access badge hung crooked around his neck.
"Officer McCabe! Did you kill Lars Reeves? Was it self-defense or did it get personal?"
Two airport security guards flanked him instantly, but not before the shutter snapped in rapid succession. I turned away, but the flash still caught me.
By the time I climbed the stairs to the jet, sweat slicked the back of my neck. It wasn't from the heat. It was from the sense that the story was no longer mine to tell.
Just before entering the plane, I glanced back one last time. The photographer was still there. Still snapping.
I didn't wave or flinch as I walked into the belly of a plane that would carry me home, but not back.
Not rescued—removed.
A flight attendant greeted me with a nod that contained no warmth. Her smile was professional as she guided me into a cabin that smelled of fresh leather and money. Recessed lighting cast everything in amber, making the polished wood surfaces gleam like honey.
"Anything to drink, sir?" She gestured to a bar heavy with crystal decanters.
I shook my head. "Water."
Pain pulsed through my forearm where the blade had sliced. The resort doctor's bandage was already fraying at the edges. The stitches pulled when I flexed my fingers.
As the engines roared to life, their vibrations traveled through my bones. I closed my eyes while we taxied down the runway.
On the backs of my eyelids, I saw the masked man dragging the guard. Next, I felt the impact of his fist against my jaw.
The memory rewound itself and played through again. Could I have stopped him from falling? There had been a fraction of a second—his hand outstretched while my fingers reached out.
I'd moved to grab him, but not fast enough. Had I hesitated? Had some part of me wanted him to fall?
The plane lifted off the ground, and my stomach lurched. I gripped the armrest until my knuckles blanched white.
Tell her the deal's off.
His final words followed me into the clouds. After so many hours of questioning, I still had no context for or explanation of them.
Who was her? What deal? And why tell me, a stranger who happened to be in the wrong place?
The jet hit turbulence, a pocket of rough air that sent my glass skittering across the table. Outside the window, darkness swallowed everything. I couldn't see stars or the moon. It was only black emptiness.
While the jet smoothed out the ride, I pulled my phone from my pocket. It connected to the plane's WiFi and notifications flooded in like water breaching a broken dam.
My brothers tried to contact me. I had missed calls from Marcus and text messages from Matthew and Miles.
Notifications gave me news alerts with my name in bold type. The world had continued spinning while I sat in that sweltering interview room, and it had spun stories where I was either the villain or victim, depending on the source.
I scrolled past them all until I reached my contacts. And there he was—Alex.
My thumb hovered over his name. What would I even say? Sorry, I killed someone after our one night together. Hope that doesn't color your memory of me.
He'd sent a message asking how I was. There was no simple answer.
I stared at his name for a long time.
Not calling. Not texting.
Staring.
I hovered over "Delete Contact." My finger trembled, its pad brushing the screen like a trigger I couldn't quite pull.
The action should have been simple—clinical, even. It would be a digital amputation to prevent infection from spreading, the kind of clean break I'd always been able to make before.
This wasn't before. This was after Alex. After his hands on my skin and the weight of his grief had somehow made room for mine. After I'd watched him sleep, his breath steady against my chest in a rhythm that had briefly made the world feel less hollow.
He didn't need me complicating his life. That much was certain. Still, something in me rebelled against erasing him completely. It would be like cutting out a vital organ because it might someday fail.
I closed my eyes, and his face appeared with perfect clarity. He had a slight dimple in his left cheek when he smiled, and his eyebrows furrowed when he concentrated. His beard tickled my chin when we kissed.
What did he think now? Had he watched the grainy videos circulating online? Had he believed them?
Would he remember how my hands traced patterns on his back as he slept, or would he only remember the knife in my hand and the dead man consumed by flames?
I backed out of the delete menu. Tried again. Paused again.
Then, I did the one thing that felt like control: I archived the thread. Swiped it into silence. Buried it under layers of digital dust.
Not gone. Only out of sight.
Out of the way.
But still there—just in case.
The wheels hit the runway with a dull double thump, hard enough to rattle my teeth. Outside the cabin window, dawn smudged the horizon in bruised grays and pale blue. No fanfare. No sunrise. Only the colorless quiet of a city not quite awake.
Seattle.
I hadn't slept. Couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the dock again. The knife. The mask. His voice.
Tell her the deal's off.
The jet taxied to a private terminal far from the main concourse. No windowed jet bridges or bustling crowds greeted me, only a narrow service ramp and a black town car idling at the bottom.
The driver leaned against the hood, checking his phone like it was any other Tuesday pickup. His jacket didn't quite fit.
I stepped onto the tarmac into a slap of cold air. The tropical breezes were gone, replaced by Seattle's chilly and damp welcome.
The driver didn't introduce himself. He popped the trunk, took my bag, and slid behind the wheel. I followed, still stiff from the flight, and every movement reminded me of the cut across my forearm and the muscles bruised from the fight.
As we pulled away from the airstrip, I realized there were no photographers this time. No questions shouted across a security barrier. No flashes.
We merged onto the highway, the skyline unfolding ahead. Seattle looked like it always did, with clouds sitting low on the mountains, but I worried I didn't fit anymore. The city hadn't changed, but I had.
We passed a billboard advertising a streaming docuseries about missing hikers in Olympic National Park. I wondered how long before my name ended up in that kind of project with a voiceover asking what really happened in paradise.
The car ride was silent, and I didn't try to fill it. The driver didn't ask questions. Maybe he'd been told not to.
When we pulled in front of my apartment building, he left the engine running and nodded once. I opened the door myself. No handshake. No parting words.
Inside my apartment building, I climbed the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. The hallway smelled of bleach.
The key fit and the lock resisted. It was a perpetual issue.
As I shouldered the door open, the scents of my life hit me—faint detergent, old coffee, and dust. I stood in the doorway for a long beat before stepping inside.
No one was watching, and that somehow made it worse.
Darkness greeted me, dense and undisturbed. I stood on the threshold, letting my eyes adjust. Everything was exactly as I'd left it, yet somehow foreign.
After switching on a light, I dropped my bag by the door and collapsed onto the couch, letting the silence of the apartment settle around me. I woke my cell phone.
My call log lit up.
Missed Call – Marcus (5:42 PM)
Missed Call – Marcus (7:13 PM)
Voicemail – Marcus (7:14 PM)
I tapped play and put the phone on speaker, letting it rest on the arm of the couch. My older brother's voice filled the room—rough, clipped, and charged with barely contained fury.
"Michael, Jesus Christ. What the hell happened over there?"
Metal clinked in the background. It could have been his keys hitting the kitchen counter or the sound of him pacing.
"You were supposed to take a break. Sit on a beach. Drink something with a paper umbrella in it. Not make the national news."
A long pause.
"You're okay, right? You're not hurt? Miles said he saw blood in one of the clips but couldn't tell if it was yours."
His voice dropped low.
"Call me back. Just... call me back."
The call ended. No lecture. No, I told you so. Only concern in a tone he failed at softening.
I turned to my messages. Two new ones since I'd last looked. Both were from the brothers who always knew how to wait until I had room to breathe. Matthew: Still proud of you, no matter what the headlines say. Let us know when you're ready to talk. We're here. Always. Miles: If you don't respond, I'm taking that as permission to show up with food and awkward emotional metaphors. Don't make me do it. Seriously. Love you.
I stared at the screen until it dimmed, the battery dropping low.
I should've read the messages and answered on the plane. Should've called back, but the words were heavy in my throat. I couldn't find the right theme that landed somewhere between apology and exhaustion.
I turned the phone face down on the table and leaned back on the couch. It was easier to sit alone in the silence.
It was a moment I would've reached for it—my father's badge.
That's what I always did when the weight was too intense to carry alone. I thumbed the back of it like worry beads, tracing the number etched into the old bronze. It didn't fix anything, but it made the silence less empty.
Now, there was nothing to reach for.
The badge was gone. I'd lost it somewhere between the beach and the fire. Maybe it had fallen out in the fight.
I told myself it was only a piece of metal, but I couldn't lie that well, even to myself.
The kitchen clock ticked loudly. I checked the time on my phone—4:37 AM. I couldn't call anyone at that hour and was too wired to sleep.
My apartment had always been a place to shower and change between shifts. Not a home, only a location. I should have felt safe here, back on American soil, surrounded by familiar streets and my own belongings. Instead, a restless vigilance kept my shoulders tight and my breathing shallow.
Lars Reeves had been someone's son and someone's brother. Men like him didn't die without consequence.
Whatever had led him to that dock in tactical gear hadn't ended with his fall. It had only changed shape, a flame passing to a new fuse.