Chapter 10 – Morgan
Ten
Sleep Is for the Innocent
Morgan
Sleep was not happening.
I'd been staring at the ceiling for three hours, replaying every detail of what had happened in that alley. The sound of the mugger hitting the ground. The figure stepping back into shadows. The professional precision of how it had all gone down.
I rolled onto my side, pulling Lance's pillow against my chest. It still smelled like him, sandalwood and something indefinably masculine that made my heart ache. But tonight, instead of just grief, there was something else.
Hope. Stupid, impossible hope.
I sat up, running my hands through my hair. This was insane. Lance was dead. I'd been to his funeral, seen the wreckage of the car, and watched them lower his casket into the ground.
But remember you never saw a body.
The thought whispered through my mind like a serpent for the third time. The explosion had been too severe, too complete. There hadn't been anything left to identify except dental records and DNA fragments.
Fragments. Not a body.
Stop it. You're going down a rabbit hole that leads nowhere good.
But I couldn't stop. Because someone had been in that alley. Someone who moved like Lance, fought like Lance, and protected me as Lance would have.
Someone who knew exactly how to incapacitate without killing.
I threw off the covers and padded to the window, looking out at the city lights. Manhattan never slept, but at three in the morning it was quieter, more subdued. Somewhere out there, my mysterious savior had melted back into whatever shadows he'd come from.
What if it wasn't a stranger? What if it was—
No. I couldn't let myself think that. Couldn't let myself hope for something impossible.
But what if it's not impossible?
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass and closed my eyes. The dreams I'd been having, so vivid, so real. The feeling of being watched that Dr. Chen had dismissed as hypervigilance. The sense that someone had been in my space when I wasn't there.
What if none of that was in your head?
What if someone had been visiting me while I was unconscious from sleep medication? What if those dreams weren't dreams at all?
That's crazy. Even for you, that's crazy.
But crazy was starting to feel relative. Because every instinct I had was screaming that something was off about the official story. About Lance's death, about my supposed paranoia, about today's "random" mugging.
Too many coincidences. Too many things that don't add up.
I thought about Pierce's report. A small-time dealer who'd never escalated to armed robbery suddenly decides to mug someone in broad daylight. An unknown Good Samaritan with professional fighting skills appeared at exactly the right moment.
And then vanishing without a trace.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from Micah: Can't sleep either. Want company?
I stared at the message. How did he know I was awake?
Maybe because he knows you better than anyone.
I typed back: How did you know I was up?
Because I know you. Big trauma + overactive brain = no sleep. I'm in the lobby. Anthony's bringing me up.
Of course he is.
Five minutes later, there was a soft knock on my door.
"It's me," Micah's voice called quietly.
I opened the door to find him holding a bag from the 24-hour deli and wearing sweatpants and a Columbia hoodie. His hair was sticking up at odd angles, and he had the slightly manic look of someone running on caffeine and concern.
"Thought you might be hungry," he said, holding up the bag. " Besides, wallowing requires fuel."
God, I love this man.
"You didn't have to—"
"Yes, I did." He pushed past me into the room, settling cross-legged on my bed and unpacking what looked like enough food for a small army. "Talk to me. What's keeping you up?"
Where do I even start?
I sat down across from him, accepting the sandwich he handed me. "The mugging."
"Understandable. Trauma can cause insomnia—"
"Not the trauma," I interrupted. "The details. The things that don't make sense."
Micah unwrapped his own sandwich, studying my face. "Such as?"
Such as everything.
"The mugger. Pierce said he'd never escalated to armed robbery before. So why start now? Why me, specifically?"
"Maybe he was desperate. Maybe you looked like an easy target."
Maybe. But that doesn't explain the rest.
"And the person who saved me," I continued. "Someone with professional training just happened to be in that alley at exactly the right moment?"
"Good Samaritans exist, Morgan. People help each other."
Not like this. Not with that level of skill.
"Micah." I set down my sandwich and looked at him directly. "What if I told you the person who saved me moved exactly like Lance used to move?"
He went very still. "What do you mean?"
Here goes nothing.
"I mean, he had the same fighting style, the same way of moving through space. The same... presence."
Micah was quiet for a long moment, processing.
"Morgan," he said carefully, "Lance is dead."
"Is he, though? Really?" The words tumbled out before I could stop them. "We never saw a body. The explosion was conveniently thorough. And now someone who fights exactly like him saves me from a mugger who doesn't fit his own criminal pattern?"
Say it out loud. Make it real.
"What if Lance isn't dead?"
The silence that followed was deafening.
"Morgan..." Micah's voice was gentle, careful. "You know how that sounds."
Insane. It sounds insane.
"I know how it sounds. But what if I'm right?"
"Then where has he been for almost two months? Why would he let you think he was dead? Why put you through that kind of grief?"
To protect me. Because he had to. Because someone was trying to kill him.
But I couldn't say that without sounding even crazier than I already did.
"I don't know," I admitted. "But Micah, I felt something today. When that figure stepped back into the shadows, my whole body recognized him."
Recognized him like muscle memory. Like home.
"Your body was flooded with adrenaline and trauma chemicals. It's not a reliable narrator."
Reliable narrator. Right.
But even as he said it, I could see something in his eyes. Not dismissal, exactly. Something more like... consideration.
He's not shutting you down completely.
"You think I'm losing it," I said.
"I think you're processing trauma in a way that's trying to give you hope." Micah leaned forward. "Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it could be dangerous if you start making decisions based on what-ifs."
What-ifs like the possibility that my husband might be alive.
"But what if it's not a what-if?"
"Then he'll find a way to tell you," Micah said simply. "If Lance is alive, if he's been watching over you, he won't stay hidden forever. Not from you."
Won't he?
But maybe Micah was right. Maybe if Lance was alive, if he was the one who'd saved me, there would be signs. Real signs, not just desperate hope and wishful thinking.
Maybe there already are signs. Maybe you just haven't been looking hard enough.
"You're right," I said finally. "I'm probably just grasping at straws."
"It's okay to grasp at straws sometimes. Especially when the alternative is drowning."
Drowning in grief. Drowning in uncertainty.
We ate in comfortable silence for a while, and I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders. Whatever was going on, whatever was real or imagined, I wasn't alone in figuring it out.
You have people who love you. That's real, even if nothing else is.
"Micah?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For coming over. For not making me feel completely insane."
He smiled. "That's what friends are for. Besides, your brand of crazy is pretty entertaining."
My brand of crazy.
If only he knew how deep that particular rabbit hole went.
Lance
The Monserrat file was a fucking ghost.
I'd been searching for three hours, cross-referencing every database I had access to, following every lead Francois had given us. The name kept appearing in fragments. A mention here, a reference there, but nothing substantial. Nothing that would tell us what our mother had actually found.
Like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands.
The safe house's home office was state-of-the-art, equipped with enough technology to run a small corporation. Multiple monitors, encrypted connections, access to databases that technically didn't exist. But none of it was helping me find what I needed.
Because what you need is probably sitting in Gwen's system.
The thought made my stomach clench. The gala files that Team Pendragon had downloaded. Financial records, business documents, communications from grandfather's various enterprises. If our mother had found evidence of his more questionable operations, it could be in those files.
Files that Gwen had locked down tighter than Fort Knox.
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the screens full of dead ends and partial leads.
Hacking Gwen's system wasn't just technically challenging.
It was a betrayal of trust. She'd welcomed me into her family, treated me like a brother, and I was considering violating her security to chase down a lead that might not even exist.
But if it does exist, if this file contains what Francois claims...
It could be the key to everything. The evidence we needed to take grandfather down, to end this nightmare, to reclaim our lives.
To go home to Morgan.
That was what it always came back to. Morgan, alone in that penthouse, thinking she was losing her mind, while I hid in shadows like a coward.
I stared at Gwen's system architecture on my screen, studying the security protocols she'd put in place.
Military-grade encryption, multi-factor authentication, intrusion detection that would make the NSA weep with envy.
Getting in wouldn't just be difficult. It would be impossible without her knowing.
Because Gwen is better at this than you are. A lot better.