7. Adrian
SEVEN
Inever used to enjoy driving with the radio on, but seeing Elias smile and relax in the backseat instead of flinching in pain with every pothole was definitely making me a fan. “We’re getting near a rest stop,” I announced as we passed a blue sign advertising as much. “Do we need a stop?”
“I’m fine.”
Nataliya turned in the passenger seat to look at her son. “Are you sure, sakharok?”
The boy nodded. “I promise to tell you if I’m hurting.”
“What does it mean? Sakharok?” I asked. I’d heard her call him that several times now, and I was curious.
Nataliya smiled. “Literally, it means ‘piece of sugar,’” she said. “He’s my sweet baby.”
“Mama!” Elias whined. “I’m not a baby.”
She pursed her lips, but that wasn’t enough to hold back the laugh that burst out. The pure amusement on her face was beautiful, and my stomach flipped over. Just like it did when I touched her hand yesterday. What the hell is wrong with me? We were in the middle of a mission—I had never had trouble reining in an attraction before, especially when I had a task taking up so much of my focus and concentration, but the more time I spent around her, the harder it was to ignore how she made my skin feel like it was crackling.
“Of course, you’re not a baby, sakharok,” she said in her most serious voice…but Elias couldn’t see her face as well as I could. She was trying so hard not to coo at him, and the red spreading across her cheeks made me think it was a losing battle.
Elias harrumphed in the back. “Adrian?”
It was a little surprising to hear him say my name. He hadn’t really addressed me directly yet. “Yeah, bud?”
“Did you have more successful or unsuccessful missions when you were a SEAL?”
The question shocked a laugh out of me. “What?”
Elias repeated his question. “I’m reading a book about a spy, and he always succeeds. Is it like that in real life?”
I snorted. “Unfortunately not, bud,” I said. Hell, we wouldn’t be doing this if all I had were wins. It was a bitter thought that I did my best to shake off. “While my team always did their best to come up with an ironclad plan, sometimes bad stuff happens anyway.”
Elias hmm-ed softly. “That makes sense,” he said. “If the good guys always won, we wouldn’t have to worry about those men who keep attacking us. Right?”
He was a perceptive kid; I’d give him that. “Don’t worry about all of that, sakharok,” Nataliya said. “That’s for adults like Adrian and me to deal with.”
He obviously didn’t like that answer, but he didn’t push back either. “We won more than we lost,” I said, trying to distract him. “Some of the best moments of my life happened while I was on a mission.”
Elias perked up. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah. I went from being alone to having brothers,” I said, “and I’ve gotten to meet and help people all over the world.”
I spent the next hour telling them some of the best moments on missions. Details were still mostly classified, so I couldn’t give specifics of names or places, but I could give them the broad strokes as long as I kept it general—the time I got to literally rescue a princess, the time the team and I traveled through countless countries in a seventy-two hour window and nearly laughed ourselves sick at the jetlag, the time we got to surprise Nate’s mom with a visit before she passed.
“You’re a real-life hero,” Elias said. “That’s what I want to be when I grow up.” He said it in that decisive way children do, like he’d made up his mind once and for all.
Nataliya made a soft sound in the back of her throat. How hard must it be for her whenever he made those kinds of statements, knowing what she did about the life expectancy for children with his disease? “When you’re eighteen,” I said, “you and I can talk about it again, all right? Let’s not give your mom a heart attack until then.”
She laughed, and it was a wet sound as if she was barely keeping herself from sobbing, but she mouthed thank you at me. Before I could say anything in return, both our cells shrieked. She pulled hers out. “It’s an Amber—” The color drained from her face.
The alarm turned off. “An Amber alert?” I prompted. She didn’t say anything. “Nataliya? What’s wrong?”
The music playing on the radio cut off mid-song. The DJ came back on: “We just got word at the studio that a child has been kidnapped who might be traveling through our area. Reported missing by his father, the eight-year-old boy, Elias Koza, was last seen with his mother, Nataliya, and an unknown man traveling east in—” The DJ rambled off the make and model of our car and the license plate number.
Fuck.I reached out and clicked the radio off. Stunned silence roared through the car. Beside me, Nataliya’s breath came out in sharp pants. “Elias’s father left us ages ago. We’re divorced—he hasn’t even seen Elias in the past two years. I don’t…I don’t understand. Why would he just show up like this out of nowhere?” Her voice was tight with fear. Even more so than when she was attacked outside the diner back in St. Francisville. She’d been so strong up to now, through every new problem, that it was startling to see her so rattled—but at the same time, it made sense. Elias was clearly the center of her world, the one she’d do anything to protect. Of course the prospect of someone taking him away from her was what would scare her the most.
“He can’t come back like this, right?” Elias demanded from the back. “He can’t just come here and take me, can he?” The boy was terrified, and for once, his mother didn’t have anything comforting to say. She was shaking in her seat, lost in her own fears.
I put my hand over hers, and she clutched at my fingers like they were a lifeline. “It’s not his dad,” I said. “It’s Hayes. He used me to find you, but now that he doesn’t have a tracker on us anymore, he’s trying to use the system to put eyes on us—get other people looking so they can find us for him. The good news is that if he’s taking this step, it means he doesn’t already know where you are.”
“How did they know all that information about my car?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Best guess is that there may have been security footage of that parking lot behind the diner he got ahold of.” I squeezed her hand. “What’s important now is that we get off the road, okay? We need to get somewhere we can lay low and regroup without being seen.”
I wracked my brain for a second, and then I remembered: we were nearly in Tupelo, which meant Nate was staying nearby. I grabbed my phone from the cupholder and found “Shaw” in my contact list. “Hey, man,” the younger man answered after enough rings that my heart had started to crawl out of my throat. “What’s up?”
“We need help,” I said.
The car bumped and swayed over the gravel road, and my stomach rolled. You can’t throw up now, I reprimanded myself. Elias needed me to be calm. He hadn’t said a word since Adrian had started following Nate’s instructions to the supposed-safe cabin the Shaws were renting.
“Almost there,” Adrian said. His hand was still wrapped in mine. Maybe I should let go, but it was…nice to have that little bit of comfort. Ever since Elias and I had come to the US, I had felt so incredibly alone. I had to be strong at all times for Elias, and I would happily do that for the rest of my life if it meant I got to keep my baby with me, but with Adrian sitting beside me, I wasn’t alone in shouldering the fear that could so easily cripple me.
We cleared a curve, and a small house came into view. A man I recognized from the video call yesterday—Nate Shaw—stood on the porch with a woman and a little boy. Adrian pulled in alongside the other car.
We realized we would have to let go of each other at the same time, and he cleared his throat and unthreaded his fingers from mine. I looked over my shoulder. “Do you need help, sakharok?”
Elias unbuckled himself. “I’m okay, Mama.”
We climbed out of the car, and Elias and I hung back as Adrian stepped up to greet his friend. “Nataliya,” he said, “this is Nate Shaw, his wife Emily, and their son, Matthew.” The little boy beamed, and I thought of what Adrian had told me in the car about how Emily and Nate had adopted Matthew.
Biologically, the little boy was actually Nate’s half brother, and the two of them were initially raised by their shared parent—a single mother. But two years ago, their mom was fatally injured in a car accident. Her dying wish was that Emily, who was Matthew’s nanny at the time, would adopt the boy so Nate wouldn’t have to leave the Navy and his career as a SEAL. Matthew was only two at the time, Adrian explained, and he’d quickly grown used to thinking of Emily as his mom, but Nate being his dad was a new development. When Emily had needed some help with medical expenses a few months back, Nate had offered a marriage of convenience so he could put her and Matthew on his insurance. Living together as a married couple, they’d found themselves falling in love, and they’d made the decision together to make their marriage real—and for Nate to adopt Matthew, also.
I tried to smile, but I wasn’t entirely confident in how it came out. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “Though I wish it were under better circumstances.”
The woman, Emily, had a lovely smile. “Trust me, I’m not a stranger to iffy circumstances.” Her eyes dropped to Elias, who was leaning into my side. “Hello,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Elias,” he said.
The little boy at Emily’s side puffed up. “I’m Matthew. I’m almost five.”
“I’m eight.” Matthew drooped a little, as if he thought an eight-year-old wouldn’t have any interest in spending time with him. “We can still play, if you want,” Elias offered before he glanced up at me. “Right, Mama?”
I ruffled his hair. “Sure,” I said. “Just be careful, okay? No running around.”
Elias followed Matthew into the cabin. “What does he have?” Emily asked. “Matthew has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.”
Something in my gut relaxed. She gets it. “Loorer’s,” I said.
“Want to come have some tea?” she offered. “Let those two figure out what comes next?”
“Absolutely.”
Emily and I sat at the table, sipping from ceramic mugs and watching as our sons navigated a game of Candy Land together. It was unbearably cute to see Elias walking Matthew through the rules and letting him cheat when he didn’t quite understand.
Emily was wonderfully easy to talk to as we compared notes about what it was like being a single mom with a sick kid. Nate had really come through for her, thankfully, and Matthew was doing well now, but I could still see an edge of anxiety in the way she kept an eye on him. It takes a long time to stop being afraid for your child. Maybe it’s the kind of thing you never fully get over.
Adrian and Nate came inside after too long. “We can’t go on with your car,” he said.
I figured that was going to be the best course of action. “We’ll have to get a new one, won’t we?”
“Not brand new—but you’ll have a good, solid car,” Nate said. “We’re going to swap with you.”
“What about the license plate?” I asked, worried. “I don’t want you getting pulled over because of the Amber alert.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Nate assured me. “We’ll get another license plate before we get on the road with it. And in the meantime, Hayes will have no way of connecting Emily’s car to you. You’ll still have to be careful if you stop anywhere, but at least you won’t have to worry about people calling the police if they see you on the highway.”
“Thank you.”
“Dad?”
We all turned; the two little boys had obviously grown bored with their game. “Yeah?”
“Elias says that you and him,” he pointed at Adrian, “are superheroes.”
Nate’s face split into a grin. “I wouldn’t say superheroes.”
“But you can do stuff,” the boy insisted.
“Stuff?”
Elias nodded, absolutely solemn. “Hero stuff,” he said. Both of the former SEALs chuckled, and my heart fluttered. Elias had never had the opportunity to look up to a man before, aside from my brother. And while he’d adored Anton, his uncle had been more of a playmate rather than a hero. The look on his face now was beyond precious. “You should show us some hero stuff,” Elias suggested.
Adrian looked to me. “What do you say? Can we show them ‘hero stuff’?”
Elias gave me his best puppy dog eyes. “Please, Mama!”
“Okay, okay,” I conceded. “Adrian can show us some heroics while Nate works on getting a new license plate.”
Adrian got his gun out of his bag, and I followed behind him and the two little boys as we went outside to scope out a safe spot to show off some “hero-level” shooting. The property was large, from the looks of it. Adrian walked a good way away from the house so we weren’t in danger of hurting anyone.
“Okay, boys,” he said. “You stand back and watch, all right?” He took the safety off his handgun and checked the clip. “Do you see that knot in the tree over there?”
When the boys nodded, Adrian aimed and squeezed down on the trigger. The spot he’d pointed out exploded. The boys practically danced with excitement.
Adrian showed them a few more shots that got increasingly harder with each target before he turned to me. “Do you want to learn?” he asked. “Just in case?”
I couldn’t hold in my scoff. “Did you forget I come from a country that hasn’t had a stable government in my parents’ lifetimes, let alone mine?” I shooed the boys even farther back—while I was confident I wouldn’t shoot my own foot, I was not confident enough to let the boys anywhere near me while I held a weapon. I’d been a decent shot when I was younger, but it had been years since the last time I’d handled a gun. I certainly hadn’t had one since coming to America. Even when Elias and I had first gone on the run, it still hadn’t seemed safe to buy one. I hadn’t wanted to run the risk of a gun dealer doing a background check and realizing my ID was a fake.
Stepping closer to Adrian, I held my hand out. He checked the clip again, popped the one in the chamber out, and clicked the safety on before handing it to me.
“Gun is hot,” he said.
I kept the 9mm pointed at the ground, finger pressed against the barrel instead of anywhere near the trigger. When I glanced at Elias, his eyes were wide with shock. For the most part, I was glad he’d never had to see me handle a weapon to defend the two of us. But I was also glad I could do this if I had to, and I wanted Elias to know that.
Adrian pointed to a tree about fifty yards away. It had a large enough knot that I could easily pick it out. He stepped back, and I took aim. A second later, the knot blew apart in a shower of splinters, and from the corner of my eye, I could see the little boys gripping each other, grinning.
Adrian, too, looked impressed. “What?” I asked with faux innocence.
Those dark eyes bore into me. It wasn’t hard to tell when a man was interested in me, at least physically—working as a waitress, I’d learned to deal with come-ons all the time—but it was still quite…satisfying to see that look on Adrian’s face. The flirting from all those other men at the diner had never made me feel like this. Most of the time I wanted so badly not to be perceived, but it felt delicious to be looked at like that now. By him.
“That…” Adrian said, stopping to clear his throat. “That was really good.”
I smiled and nearly gave into the urge to bat my eyes at him. “Thank you. My father taught me when I was a girl, just in case something happened while he wasn’t at home.”
A complicated look filtered across his face, but he nodded. “I get it. He wanted you to feel safe.”
“He did.” He always had. Mama and Papa had been good parents, loving and supportive. It still broke my heart that we had lost them when Elias was just a baby. He’d seen pictures and I’d told him stories, but he didn’t have any memories of them.
“And do you?” Adrian asked. “Feel safe?”
My heart thudded almost painfully beneath my breastbone. There were several feet between us, but I swear I felt the heat of his body from here. “I do,” I said. “I feel safe with you.”