Chapter 9 #2
Despite his answer, Azalea Oswald seemed to take it the way she wanted to hear it. “Yay!” she cheered as her mother carried her toward the swings where her big sisters were already swinging high in the air.
“There’s something wrong with your kid,” he muttered to his boss as he watched the mother tickle her daughter as they whispered and giggled together.
There was something about seeing a mom actually love her kid and want to be with them, to care about whether they were happy and safe, that always made him edgy.
It was how the world was supposed to be, and yet it was the opposite of his own lived experiences.
“She should be better at recognizing darkness given who her dad is, who her family is.”
“Actually, I think my kid is a pretty good judge of character for a literal toddler,” Falcon said, not taking offense at the slight insult to his daughter.
“Yeah? How do you figure that?” Van asked, turning around to glare at his boss.
Not that he saw Falcon’s kids often, but whenever he did, Azalea was always excited to see him.
Always. Without fail. It made him uncomfortable because the toddler loved hugs, both giving and receiving them, and he didn't want to be rude to a little kid, but he had no experience with people who wanted to hug, child or adult. Had zero experience with a family that operated the way it was supposed to. With love, support, acceptance, care, and thoughtfulness. The Oswald family was the epitome of how a family should be, but his own was everything it shouldn’t be.
“Because she sees you. The real you. Not the one you pretend is real,” Falcon said calmly, making Van’s scowl deepen.
“Trust me, if your kid saw the real me, she’d be running screaming in the opposite direction, hiding behind you and her mom.”
“If that was the real you, you never would have met my kids, or their mother.”
There wasn't really a comeback for that, because Van knew that it was true. If Falcon thought he was good at what he did, he would have gotten the job as part of Prey’s undercover team, but if his boss thought he was dangerous, he’d never allow Van around his family.
Family always came first for the Oswalds.
“I didn't come here to talk about me,” he muttered, sliding onto one of the picnic table benches.
“Yet it’s your conversation,” Falcon said mildly, taking the other bench.
“My conversation was actually that your kid is a cute little weirdo,” he countered.
Falcon just grinned.
“What?”
“Never heard you call anyone cute before, and you’ve met all three of my kids several times.”
Shrugging, he ignored the hidden question behind his boss’ seemingly innocuous statement. He got that Falcon wanted him to admit that something had changed for him, but he wasn't going to do that.
Nothing had changed.
Makayla Adair was nothing more than a complication, but she didn't have what it took to change who thirty years of life had molded him into.
No one could do that. He was who he was, and he was too old to change that now.
Maybe thirty wasn't all that old, but given what he’d experienced in those three decades, he felt like he was about a hundred years old already.
“I've got the cameras mostly set up. I want to add a few more, but the space is mostly covered now,” he announced, ignoring the entire topic. Because if he let Falcon dig, the man might force him to uncover things he had no interest in giving attention to.
Going with the flow, Falcon nodded. “Good. With all the changes Azure has gone through over the last few weeks, if ever there was going to be a time where they slip up, this will be it.”
“I don’t think Nathan or Mateo realized what kind of mess they were going to leave behind,” he said.
While he didn't understand why the men had allowed women to get in the way of what they were supposed to be doing, he didn't really begrudge them a shot at happiness.
In this world where joy barely existed, if you happened to find the rare emotion, he got why you would want to hold onto it.
“Don’t think they were thinking of anything beyond Emma and Ally.”
That was true, and it irritated him because it was irresponsible, but he also … wondered what it would be like to let himself see another person as an ally instead of an enemy.
“How are the new batch of women settling in? Are there any we need to be immediately worried about?” Falcon asked. It was no wonder his boss always went straight to checking in on the women, given that he’d rescued his own wife from a sex trafficking ring.
If there was anyone he was particularly concerned about, they usually brainstormed a plan to get them out. They couldn’t put in false buyers too often, but from time to time they used the tactic to get out someone they were worried about. It was often the quickest way to solve the problem.
It felt wrong to consider using that tactic with Makayla, because she had what it took to see this through and come out the other side in one piece. But on the other hand, he didn't like the idea of her suffering through days, weeks, or possibly months after everything she’d already been through.
“What?” Falcon prompted.
“Four of them are no threat, already conforming and doing as they’re told. One has a bit of spunk, but I suspect her fear is going to lead to her complying.”
“And the other one?”
“Held a knife to my neck,” he said before he could stop himself. Van was still a little in awe of the move, and while obviously he was glad he wasn't dead, he wished she’d carried through with her plan without letting her emotions get in the way.
Laughter erupted from the other side of the table, transforming the stoic, most of the time grumpy-looking man, into something else entirely.
Was that what love did to you? Changed something fundamental inside you, making you into an entirely different person?
Because the Falcon who had existed before Hope wasn't this man.
“Love it,” Falcon said, still chuckling.
“It was a good move, but … I'm worried about what she’s going to try next.”
“You think she’ll keep trying to escape, try to kill if she gets her hands on another weapon?”
“Guaranteed she will. I’m worried that if it had been any of the other guys there when she tried to escape, they might have killed her before they thought it through. Azure would have had them punished, possibly killed for it, but it wouldn't change the fact that one of the women was dead.”
“Does she know? About you?”
It was a hard admission because it had been a mistake on his part to be honest, even if there hadn't seemed like another viable option, because life had told him that any mistake, no matter how small, could be punished.
“Yeah, she outright asked. I was worried that if I didn't tell her who I was, she would have told the others.
Makayla can keep it to herself, but the others can't.”
“It’s okay that you told her, Van,” Falcon assured him. “If I didn't trust you to make split-second decisions, I wouldn't have hired you. I wasn't there, I haven’t met her. If you think telling her was the right move, then it was.”
Making this admission was even harder. “I don’t know how to handle her. Even knowing the truth, she’s still going to try to get herself out. She’s not going to sit and wait to be saved. Next time she tries to escape, she might not be so lucky.”
And the thought of Makayla Adair dead affected him a whole lot more than it should.