Chapter Thirty-Four
Elise
A week had passed since I walked out of the compound.
The desert sun felt entirely different now.
It was warmer, less like a hostile variable and more like something I could simply stand in and enjoy.
I stepped out of the little corner store clutching a cold bottle of water and a mesh bag of fresh oranges, and two separate people waved at me from across the street.
Actual, neighborly waves. They weren’t the cautious, suspicious nods I used to receive when I was “that quiet woman who came to bingo sometimes.”
Mrs. Donnelly’s friend Jennifer even called out a cheerful, “Morning, Elise!” from the window of her parked car.
I lifted my hand and waved back before my brain could activate a defense mechanism to overthink it.
I didn’t analyze the security parameters or look for a hidden motive. I just . . . waved.
My phone buzzed in my pocket with another text update from Keaton.
Keaton: Dad’s still steaming but I’ve got him pointed at a new encryption protocol. You good?
Elise: I’m fine. Taking some time.
Keaton: He’s not happy. But he’s not sending anyone after you either. Yet.
I slipped the phone back into my denim pocket without answering further. The boundary felt strange, but completely necessary.
Kara spotted me before I made it halfway down the block. She was power-walking with another woman, both of them carrying heavy, reusable grocery bags.
“Elise!” Kara called out, waving wildly to get my attention. “Hold up!”
She introduced me to Simone, a tall woman with remarkably kind eyes and elegant silver streaks woven through her dark hair.
They chatted easily about nothing important: how the melons at the market were finally good again, how the senior center was hosting a massive puzzle tournament next week.
Then Kara dropped an invitation like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“We’re doing an X-Files marathon at my place Friday night. And I mean a real one: questionable snacks, zero self-control, and at least one screaming argument about Mulder’s life choices. You should absolutely come.”
I waited for the usual internal panic and overthinking to begin. Neither did. All I felt was gratitude and happy anticipation.
I heard myself calmly say, “You know what? I’d actually love that.”
Kara’s grin turned huge. “Yes! Simone, I knew she’d say yes.”
Simone laughed, giving Kara a playful nudge. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to hang out with an older crowd, but we’re not senior center old. And we know how to snack!”
“It all actually sounds perfect,” I gushed.
We stood right there on the sunny sidewalk for another few minutes, Kara talking the entire time about which early seasons were “emotionally mandatory” while Simone consistently corrected her memory of the air dates.
I walked away smiling like an idiot, looking down at my screen at two brand-new contacts.
As I completed the remaining block toward the diner where I was meeting Brady, everything felt right in the world.
Brady was already sitting at our usual corner booth, two steaming coffees already waiting on the table.
The moment his eyes found me stepping through the door, his whole face lit up in that brilliant, unfiltered way that still made my stomach do a ridiculous, uncoordinated flip.
I slid onto the vinyl bench across from him, catching his clean, familiar scent as I leaned over the table.
I caught his mouth for a quick kiss before I thought about who in the diner might see us.
His lips were warm, tasting faintly of coffee, and I let myself linger for one extra, indulgent heartbeat until the background noise of clinking silverware completely faded away.
“Hey,” he said, his eyes darkening with warmth as he reached across the table to link his fingers with mine. “Good store run?”
“Unexpectedly social,” I told him, setting the oranges down as I relayed Kara’s X-Files invitation.
He leaned back in the booth, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “Look at you. Getting invited to gatherings within a single week of freedom. I’m incredibly impressed.”
“Oh, I should have asked if you could come.” I smacked my forehead. “It’s just Kara and Simone.”
“Hey, you’re allowed friends of your own, Elise. And I want to be with you, but you don’t have to explain everything you do to me. Or apologize for wanting time for yourself. We’re good.”
I looked down into my mug, comparing the steady weight of his trust against the suffocating boundaries I had lived with for twenty-four years.
Brady didn’t only give me space; he protected it.
He wasn’t tracking my coordinates or demanding a rationale for a Friday night plan.
It would take my system a long time to fully recalibrate to this level of freedom, but God, I loved it. “I’m making friends, Brady.”
“Yes, you are,” he said, his smile softening into something so fierce and proud it made my throat tight.
While we ate, he casually gave me the structural update on his family.
“I told them I didn’t find anything worth sharing about Thomas Steele,” he said, his voice dropping into a lower register as he met my eyes across the table.
“Protecting your dad’s privacy is as important as our issues.
But I did tell them,” he said, grinning as he slid his phone across the laminate toward my plate, “I met someone.”
How could I not fall for him? He had actively lied to his own family, keeping his siblings completely in the dark about a thirty-year corporate betrayal, solely to keep my father safe from their scrutiny. He was willingly carrying that massive narrative weight alone.
I glanced at his screen. My cybersecurity brain automatically tried to redirect the sheer gravity of the emotion by focusing on the physical interface. “You run an unencrypted group chat?” I asked, half-laughing to clear the sudden lump in my throat.
Brady shrugged, completely unrepentant. “Yeah. Trust me, absolutely no one on the internet cares about the pure silliness we send each other.”
He leaned over the table and showed me a rapid-fire string of media the siblings had been firing at one another for the last forty-eight hours: a dog wearing aviator sunglasses, a dramatic clip from an old soap opera, and something involving a chaotic goat that I didn’t fully understand.
I studied the digital timestamps, tracking the organic, effortless way the jokes escalated between them.
I narrowed my eyes at him playfully. “You harass them with memes?”
His grin was shameless. “Guilty as charged. My family is too serious and this is how I mess with them.”
“I can see that, but you did get them to play along.”
“Because I’m too cute to resist.”
“Cute isn’t how I’d describe you.”
He wiggled his eyebrows, “Good. With you I hope I’m a hot stud. But with my family, it’s probably best if they don’t see me that way.”
I laughed at that and he joined in. I mean, he wasn’t wrong, but when vocalized, somehow it became our own private joke. We were still smiling when his phone rattled violently against the hard wood of the tabletop. A new text notification flashed across the glass.
Nora: Call me.
I recognized the name instantly. An old, defensive trace flickered deep in my chest before I could suppress it. The woman he used to protect. The woman he had confessed to having a crush on. I shot him a cautious, suddenly guarded look. “Is that your brother’s fiancée?”
Brady nodded, instantly sensing the subtle shift in my parameters. He reached all the way across the table, his large, warm hand securely catching mine and locking our fingers together. “Only friends,” he said, an absolute, unmovable sincerity anchoring his voice. “I promise you, Elise.”
I exhaled the lingering tension, forcing my shoulders down, and nodded. “You should call her back.”
He picked up the device, but the exact second I started to slide out of the vinyl booth to grant him privacy, his grip tightened on my fingers, stopping me. “You can stay right where you are. Anything she has to say to me is nothing you can’t hear. I have absolutely nothing to hide from you.”
The words landed entirely differently than they would have a week ago.
They felt less like a complex data point I needed to analyze for hidden loopholes, and more like a physical reality I could simply choose to rest in.
I stayed, my palm resting flat against his, choosing to trust the complete lack of an escape hatch in his tone.
Brady dialed the number and immediately put the call onto speaker, setting the phone down between us on the table.
Nora answered on the very first ring. Her voice didn’t come through with a greeting; it burst through the speaker in a ragged, breathless gasp. “Brady? Brady, thank God. You need to listen to me. You have to get on a plane right now. You have to come home.”
Hearing her speak to him with that frantic, unscripted familiarity sent an ugly needle of jealousy through me.
My fingers involuntarily tightened around Brady’s hand.
She was commanding his presence, pulling at him from across the country, and for a split second, I hated how easily she could disrupt the quiet world we had started to build.
I hated that a part of me was still small enough, and damaged enough, to doubt him.
Then Nora took another rattling sob of a breath, and the real payload delivered. “It’s Evan. He’s missing, Brady. There was a struggle in the barn. There’s blood. He’s just . . . gone.”
The words hit the booth like a kinetic shockwave.
The petty spike of jealousy vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, sickening wave of self-reproach.
I looked at Brady, my chest aching. He had been entirely transparent with me from the moment we met.
He had put the phone on speaker without a single hesitation because he had nothing to hide, while I had spent our entire relationship running hidden diagnostics, calculating risks, and testing his character.
He was pure truth, and I had just wasted precious time analyzing a ghost.