Chapter 17 Lucas
Lucas
I used to like puzzles. Process of elimination. Edges first, corners sorted. Mercer isn’t a puzzle; he’s sand in the gears. Every time we clean a route, he appears three moves later with the same patient posture, like he’s waiting us out. I can feel my tolerance ratcheting tighter by the hour.
In the meantime, my life has turned into the version I didn’t know I wanted.
Two coffee mugs by the sink. Her lemon-scent shampoo in my shower.
The tree on a timer that clicks alive right when the afternoon light goes thin.
I make breakfast with the radio low, and she shuffles in wearing my sweatshirt, hair a riot, eyes soft.
She steals my last triangle of toast and I pretend to be mad.
It’s domestic and ridiculous and it slots into my bones like they were built for it.
I wish I never had to leave.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do about January. The idea of flying back to Denver and turning this into a story I tell myself on red-eyes sits like a bad meal. The idea of asking her to uproot… I won’t. Not yet. Not without a plan that doesn’t make her carry the weight.
“Appointment day,” I remind both of us as I cap her Stanley and set her vitamins by it like a man who’s learned where he’s useful.
She makes a face. “Appointment day.”
“Want me to do the blood pressure joke?”
“I will literally throw a lemon at you,” she says, but she’s smiling.
We take the stairs, wedge out, door locked.
I sweep the hall without looking like it, log the building’s noises, mark the elevator’s chime in case it becomes relevant.
The winter air bites and smells like snow that’s thinking about it.
I angle us toward the camera as we cross the lot, reverse the route we took yesterday just to be rude to any patterns Mercer likes.
The SUV engine turns over on the first try, and the heater coughs and catches.
At the OB’s office the receptionist knows our names now.
That shouldn’t make me feel as good as it does.
The waiting room is a slideshow of futures—newborns in hats the size of dinner rolls, tired parents with stupid-grin eyes, a grandparent pretending not to cry in a corner chair.
I sit where I can see the door and the nurses’ corridor and the reflection in the poster frame that shows the hall behind me.
Melanie scrolls, then slides her phone into my palm.
The lock screen is the heartbeat printout from last time.
My chest does that expanding thing I still don’t have a better name for.
“Melanie?” a nurse calls.
We’re a unit. We stand.
Dr. Patel is brisk-warm as ever. Vitals, weight, a string of answers to good questions Melanie has saved. Then the short exam. I stay at the head of the table, not because I’m squeamish but because I’m a wall where she needs one.
“Cervix is softening,” Dr. Patel says, businesslike. “About one centimeter dilated today. Totally normal at this stage. No immediate action item, just your usual: hydration, rest, call if your body decides to rehearse too enthusiastically.”
Melanie squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back. One centimeter. A measurable thing. The train isn’t at the station, but you can hear the tracks humming.
On the way out, Dr. Patel taps the chart. “Two weeks, unless baby wants a different calendar.” She smiles at me. “Good job on the support team.”
I accept the compliment like a mission ribbon I didn’t ask for and wanted anyway.
We take the long way home—my call, not hers. The low sun turns the street into mirrors, and that’s when my neck prickles. Sedan three cars back. Clean. Unremarkable. The kind of unremarkable you rent when you bill expenses to companies that don’t exist.
I change lanes, casually. He changes lanes after a pause that’s half a beat too perfect. Another two turns and he’s still there, maintaining just enough slop to look like incompetence. It reads as practice.
“Gingerbread?” I ask, eyes on the rearview.
“Cinnamon roll,” Melanie says, and I love her a little more for the steadiness in it.
I tap comms, pitch low. “Tail on Seventh heading north. Slate sedan, temporary tag. Mirrors our last two vectors.”
“Duke,” Gunner crackles, “I’ve got you on traffic cam—copy slate sedan. No plate hit. Rental behavior.”
“Copy,” Duke says. “Don’t burn. I’ll ghost from the east.”
I run the textbook: alter speed profile; take a right I didn’t signal; move into a lane with a bus I don’t like so I can use the reflection in the route map to check my check.
He keeps the gap and the posture. I could admire him if I weren’t busy deciding how much I want to put his face through his windshield.
Enough is enough.
We reach a light. I let the car in front of me catch the green and stop long onto the yellow.
The sedan behind us commits to the same choice a hair too late and has to brake harder than he planned.
I use the stop to angle my mirror, catch his profile.
Nose break, low cap, the non-blink. Mercer.
The annoyance solidifies into a clean line of intent in my chest.
“Gunner,” I say, “I want a meet. Tonight.”
“Negative,” Duke says at the same time. “We control when we escalate. He’s sniffing. Let him smell what we choose.”
“Recon, then,” I counter. “No contact. I need to know where he sleeps and who he calls when he’s bored.”
“That,” Gunner says, satisfied, “I can live with.”
We guide the sedan to a mistake he thinks is his idea—Duke peels him at the grocery lot using a delivery truck as a curtain, and by the time Mercer clears his own sightline, we’re two turns gone.
I put us in the garage under Melanie’s building because I like the cameras and I like that I know which ones work. We sit in the car a second longer than necessary. She watches me, reading the leftover adrenaline in my hands.
“Do you need to go?” she asks. No accusation. Just logistics and care.
“I need to put eyes on him without him knowing,” I say. “I can’t promise I won’t get stupid if I see his face again without a plan.”
She nods once, taking that in. “I’ll call Amelia. She’ll sit with me.”
“Good,” I say, and then I turn fully to her because I’m done pretending any of this is normal. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me do my job and be your person at the same time,” I say. “For not making me pick.”
Her mouth trembles. “I want you to pick us.”
“I am,” I say. It lands out of my mouth truer than anything I’ve said this week. “Every time.”
Upstairs, I do one more sweep like a man who is aware he’s stalling. Wedge. Chain. Blinds. I check the back stairwell because Mercer is the kind of guy who notices when building managers forget to replace a latch. It’s intact. My phone buzzes.
GUNNER: Rental traced to Valence lot on Pierce & 10th. He’s swapped rides twice this week. Lodging likely short-term. Three cheap hotels in radius. I’ll take the Hanover Motel. Duke’s got Harborview.
DUKE: Lucas, take the Kipling Motor Lodge. No burn. We collect. We do not collect him.
I brief Melanie in simple sentences. She calls Amelia, who promises to bring snacks and they chat about how they’re going to watch some show where British people cry about antique soup spoons.
I pack a small kit I could justify to a judge: not weapons, just the tools you use when you’re curious and careful.
I kiss Melanie like I mean be back soon and be safe anyway.
She kisses me like she means go do the thing and come back to us.
Amelia arrives with grapes and a glare. “If you don’t text me when you get there,” she informs me, “I will call your boss and tell him you’re fired.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, because I like my job.
I hit the street with the temperature dropping and the day turning to monochrome.
The city’s holiday lights are on early, shivering on in loops that try very hard to make cold look like an aesthetic.
I park three blocks from the Kipling Motor Lodge because I know where their cameras point and I don’t like being in records unless I put myself there.
Kipling is the kind of place that trades in anonymity as a feature.
Two stories, doors that open to the outside, ice machine that sounds like a man choking.
I walk it once like I’m looking for a vending machine.
I walk it again like I forgot my wallet.
The manager’s office smells like cigarettes and lemon cleaner.
The night clerk is the type who notices nothing unless it tips.
I learn enough in ten minutes: Mercer’s car isn’t in the lot, somebody paid cash at a hotel on the south side, and a man matching his build brought in a single duffel and a paper sack.
I settle into observation—shadow of a stairwell, line on the door, sightline to the street. Duke drifts by on foot an hour later like a man checking his steps. He doesn’t look at me. Gunner texts photos of Harborview’s guest list like a proud father.
My phone buzzes with a different vibration. Melanie.
MEL: We’re okay. Amelia brought seven cheeses. Peanut is practicing their drum solo.
Good. Be back later.
MEL: Be safe. Don’t do the thing where you make me famous on the news.
Copy. No news.
An hour and change into the watch, a stone-gray jacket appears at the end of the walkway.
Mercer. Hat low. Casual stride that’s confident in its own lie.
He keys into a door on the south side, third from the end.
I note the number, the sightlines, the escape paths.
He drops his duffel on the bed without closing the blinds all the way.
Rookie move or deliberate? He sits. He pulls out a phone that’s not the one he uses in public.
Burner. He dials. He doesn’t talk for twenty seconds. He’s listening.
I don’t hear the other side. I do hear the tone of a man who thinks he has time.
“Recon only,” Duke’s voice reminds me in my ear. “Do not collect the piece.”
I don’t. I watch. I record in my head like I’m back in training: tempo of his movements, where his hands go when he’s thinking, whether he opens the window before or after he checks the door.
He wipes the surface he touched, and he misses the switch plate.
I smile without humor and file it under human.
When he turns on the TV and cranks the volume too high for a man who likes his own thoughts, I tag it as noise for cover and consider what that means about what he usually hears.
I break the watch only when I know his rhythms. When I peel off into the cold, my phone buzzes again.
DUKE: Good pull. We’ll run his comms pattern and the number block. Back off for now.
GUNNER: You hungry? Because I am starving and I assume you’re a camel.
I need to check on Mel.
GUNNER: I knew I liked you. That was a test, you passed.
I drive home through a town that’s wrapped itself in lights to make the dark look intentional. The wedge will be under the door. The tree will be quiet in the corner. Two women I care about will be arguing about which of the seven cheeses counts as dinner.
The case is a knot I can untie. It will take time, and discipline, and the ability to sit still while someone thinks he’s the hunter. I can do all of that.
The other knot—the one labeled January—I’ll learn. I can build a life the way I clear a room: methodical, with good backup, with the kind of care that makes the next moment possible.
For now, I turn onto her street and feel my shoulders drop at the sight of her window lit warm. I’m not leaving this bubble. I’m thickening its perimeter.