Chapter 22
Travis
Sera was already packed when I managed to get myself downstairs.
Not packed, exactly. Neither of us had brought anything to pack. But she'd wiped down the kitchen, washed the mugs, straightened the couch cushions. The safehouse looked like nobody had been here, which was the exact point of a safehouse.
But the efficiency of it sat wrong in my chest.
"Maude confirmed the route is clean," Sera said. "No activity on any of the corridors between here and the compound. I'll drive."
She said it the way she'd said everything so far this morning. Polite. Competent. A woman handling logistics because logistics needed handling.
I didn't argue about the driving. My side was a little better, but I was definitely not up to regular speed. I got into the passenger seat, and she adjusted the mirrors and pulled out of the garage and pointed us south.
The highway unrolled in front of us. Empty, mostly. Montana in the early morning, all sky and grass and fence lines running to the horizon. Sera drove with both hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road and didn't talk.
I watched her profile and tried to read what was underneath the composure. Last night’s discussion had been heavy. Hell, all of it had been heavy, and I could’ve gotten both of us killed. I was glad she was still around at all.
But something was still definitely off. She wasn't angry. Wasn't cold. She was just operating at a distance that made my chest tight, and I couldn't tell if the distance was about what I'd told her or about something she'd decided while I was sleeping across the hall.
"Twenty minutes to the compound," Maude said through the speakers. "Route remains clear. No anomalies."
Sera nodded without responding. I looked out the window and let the quiet hold.
Neither of us broke it for the remaining twenty minutes. She drove, and I sat with the silence and tried not to read too much into the set of her jaw or the way her hands stayed locked at ten and two, knuckles white against the wheel.
The gate opened and we pulled through, and I waited for the relief. This was my place. My walls, my system, my air. Every surface calibrated, every variable accounted for.
The relief didn't come because Sera's distance had followed us through the gate, and no amount of controlled environment could fix what was wrong in the three feet of space between us.
Maude's voice filled the walls. "Welcome back. All systems are nominal and there have been no security disruptions. The white kitten knocked your coffee mug off the counter fourteen hours ago. I want you to know I handled the crisis with remarkable composure."
The joke should have landed. Any other day, it would have drawn something out of one of us. But the room absorbed it and gave nothing back.
The kittens appeared from wherever they'd been hiding. Gray first, trotting across the kitchen tile with its tail up. The black one followed, cautious, hugging the wall. The white one was already on the chair Sera always sat in, curled into a ball, watching us with detached interest.
Sera's legal pad was still on the counter where she'd left it. A coffee pot half-full of yesterday’s coffee.
One lone mug in the dish rack. She must have made herself a cup yesterday before realizing I was gone.
The evidence of two people living here was everywhere, woven into the surfaces and the routines, and all of it felt like something that was ending.
Sera went to the coffee machine, grabbed the stale coffee and poured it out and started a fresh pot. When it was done, she poured two mugs, set mine on the counter near my hand, and stayed on the other side of the kitchen with hers.
"I've been thinking," she said.
My stomach dropped. This was it. All of today’s measured silence had led up to this.
"I've been working remotely for the FBI since I got here, but we always knew that was temporary.
I need to go back at some point. The model I've built using your data is strong enough now that the Bureau will have to take it seriously.
I can hand them something undeniable on Kindt's pipeline.
Routes, courier patterns, the logistics structure.
Enough to justify a real investigation."
She laid it out clean. No emotion, no drama.
She could set up remote access to maintain the analytical work from a distance.
She'd do what she could to make sure the Ghost stayed off the FBI's radar.
She framed the whole thing as the natural next step, a professional transition that made sense on every level.
"My work here is done," she said. "The model is built. You have the tools. It's time for me to go back to my real life."
Every reason she gave was sound. I couldn't punch a hole in a single one of them because there were no holes. The logic was airtight and perfectly reasonable.
And completely wrong.
"I don't want you to leave."
She blinked. Then recovered. "Travis, think about it practically. I can't stay here indefinitely. I have a job, a life, an apartment that I'm paying rent on."
"I'm not talking about the logistics."
"The logistics are what matter."
"No, they're not." I leaned forward. "You just laid out a perfectly reasonable plan, and none of it is the real reason you want to leave. So what is?"
"I just told you the real reason."
"You told me a list of practical considerations that you could have raised at any point in the last three weeks. You didn't. You're raising them now, the morning after I told you about Naomi. That's not a coincidence."
She didn't answer. Her fingers pressed harder against the mug. The kitchen was quiet except for the gray kitten batting something across the floor near my feet.
"Sera."
"You were with Naomi." It came out quiet. Almost flat. "You chose her.”
“Yes, but—”
“You were with a woman who was strong and capable and fearless. A woman who could match you in the field. Who could walk into a room and own it. Who could shoot and fight and run and look downright gorgeous while she did it.”
“And then she died. You blame me for getting her killed.” I couldn’t blame Sera for that.
“No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Maybe Naomi made some sort of mistake on the mission that night, maybe she didn’t.
Maybe it was because you two had a tiff earlier that morning, or maybe it was because she saw something and decided to make a move and it got her killed.
Either way, I’m not talking about Naomi’s death.
I’m talking about her life. That’s why I need to go. ”
“I—” I scrubbed my hand down my face. This wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all. “I don’t understand.”
She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the mug in her hands.
“You loved Naomi because of all of her great qualities. But I don’t have any of them.
I'm soft. I'm carrying thirty pounds Naomi never carried.
I can't breathe right without an inhaler in my pocket.
I panicked yesterday and hit a man in the face with my fist because I forgot every single thing you taught me about using an open hand, and I nearly broke my hand doing it. "
She held up her right hand. The knuckles were swollen and dark, bruised deep into the tissue. She'd been hiding it. I hadn't noticed because I'd been too busy with my own wounds.
“Sera…”
"I sit behind a desk and read data, Travis. That's what I do. That's what I've always done, even before working for the FBI. I was a damned accountant. It doesn’t get much more boring than that. You and I staying here playing house? That’s no good for either of us.”
She still wasn't looking at me. Her voice was steady in a way that told me she'd rehearsed this, not out loud but in her head, turning it over during the hours she'd spent in the chair across the room last night while I slept.
She took a sip of coffee. “Everything you would want in a woman, everything you chose when you chose Naomi, I'm the opposite of it. I'm not angry about it. I'm not trying to make you feel guilty. I've known I’m plain and pretty boring my whole life. You just confirmed it."
"I confirmed it." How had I fucking confirmed something that was the most absurd thing I’d ever heard? “How, exactly?”
“You were with Naomi. That's the kind of woman you want. I've always known where I stood relative to my sister, and I accepted it a long time ago."
She shrugged like it was no big deal and took a breath. "So last night made me realize I should go. Before this turns into something where I'm the woman you settled for because she happened to be here, and we both end up pretending that's enough."
I opened my mouth and what I wanted to say was simple and clean, but I couldn't get it out that way. "I need to tell you something I didn't say last night."
Because, goddamnit, if she was leaving, then she was leaving here with the truth.
"I told you I was going to leave Naomi. I told you I'd already decided. But I didn't tell you why."
"You said things had changed. You were growing apart."
"That's the version I gave you. The clean version. The one that sounds like two adults drifting in different directions." I pressed my palms flat against the counter because my hands wanted to move, and I needed them still. "The real reason I was leaving Naomi was you."
Sera went rigid.
"I was attracted to you while I was with your sister.
I never would have acted on it, and I wasn't leaving Naomi to be with you.
But you made me see what I actually wanted.
What was missing. Every time you were in the room, I could feel the difference between what I had and what I wanted, and the difference looked like you. "
She shook her head. Small, involuntary. "Don't."
"I'm not making this up to make you feel better. I didn't leave Naomi because I was chasing you. I was leaving because being around you showed me that what Naomi and I had wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough."
"Travis, stop."