Chapter Five #2
It was a printout of a forum post—a screenshot, really, with the browser bar still visible at the top, and a red circle around a specific block of text. I scanned the headline, then the body, and felt the ice hit behind my eyes:
ANYONE SEEN THIS GUY? — USER: PETERSENAQ
We’re looking for a friend, mid-twenties, blond, recently traveling through the area in a blue or gray sedan. Last seen at a gas station near Casper, heading north. Please contact the following number with any info: [number]. Thank you for your help.
Underneath, in smaller print:
Peterson, Forrester & Carrington, Attorneys at Law.
The number was Montana, not Wyoming. The date on the post was four days ago. At the bottom, a note: post deleted by forum moderators.
I read it twice, then looked up at Jojo. He was watching the floor, shoulders hunched like he expected a shoe or a bomb to drop.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked, voice low.
He shrugged, not looking up. “Friend in Sheridan saw it and screen-shotted before it came down. Figured you should know.”
I grunted. “Thanks.”
He lingered, a human question mark, so I held the paper up between two fingers and said, “They’re not even pretending, are they?”
Jojo shook his head, hair scattering across his eyes. “I think they want you to know.”
He was probably right. I looked at the contact number again, the careful wording. It didn’t say what they wanted, but it said who had been paid to want it. The kind of lawyer that didn’t stop at letters.
“Did you tell Rawley?” I asked.
“Yeah. He’s in his office.” Jojo’s gaze flicked to Emilio, then to the window, then back to the floor. “You want me to watch him while you…?”
I shook my head. “He’s coming with me.”
Jojo nodded, still not quite meeting my eye, then slipped back out the door, trailing a scent of flour and soap and worry.
I stood there for a minute, staring at the paper.
The text didn’t change on the second read, but the weight of it doubled.
These people probably had eyes everywhere, maybe not good ones, but enough to keep Liam from hiding forever.
I wondered what he was doing right now, if he’d seen the post, if he was watching the same sunset, if he was cold.
I tucked the printout into my shirt pocket, picked up Emilio, and settled him into the crook of my arm. He blinked up at me, unimpressed, mouth working like he had a complaint to file, but was saving it for management.
The formula bottle was still warm. I tested it on my wrist, then touched it to his lips, and he latched on like a wolf, jaw working, eyes rolling back in bliss. I cradled his head, thumb circling behind his ear, and watched as he drained the whole thing without pausing for air.
“Gonna be a power forward,” I said.
He gave a burp that could have rattled drywall.
When he was done, I wiped his chin with a sleeve and held him upright, palm supporting the full length of his spine. He snuggled in, making those newborn grunts that sound like every emotion compressed to one syllable. I rocked him slow, let my mind tick through what came next.
Once he was asleep, I set him down in the crib we’d jury-rigged out of an old laundry basket. I lined the edges with towels, made a nest of flannel, and watched as he curled into himself, one arm flung over his face like a man too tired for the world.
Then I went looking for Rawley.
He was in his office, same as always, the door open a crack and the light pooling on the hallway rug. I didn’t knock. I just stood in the doorway, hands jammed in my pockets, and waited for him to finish whatever email or war game he was running on the battered laptop.
He looked up. The left corner of his mouth quirked, then vanished. “What’s up, Hoop?”
I took the printout from my shirt and held it up, waving it once. “I need you to put the word out,” I said. “If Liam’s on the move, we need to find him before these guys do.”
Rawley’s eyes narrowed, but his voice stayed level. “Already did.”
“Good,” I said. “Just wanted to hear you say it.”
He studied me for a second, then leaned back in the chair, arms crossed. “You all right?”
I shrugged. “Not really, but I will be.”
He nodded, slow and careful, the way he did when something mattered and he wasn’t sure if saying it would help. Then he said, “You did the right thing, bringing him here.”
I didn’t answer. There wasn’t one.
The silence in the office was a comfortable one. You could stack a hundred pounds of need or regret on top of it, and the chair wouldn’t creak.
Rawley didn’t move, didn’t blink, just watched as I folded the paper in half, then quarters, then shoved it in my pocket like it was scrap.
“If he calls,” I said, “tell him to use the back channel. The old one.”
Rawley nodded. “He knows.”
I stood there another second, then turned to go. Just as I hit the door, he called after me: “Hoop.”
“Yeah?”
He didn’t look up from the laptop. “You’re not alone, you know.”
It was the kind of thing that could have sounded like pity from anyone else, but Rawley said it like he was stating the wind speed or the price of diesel. Just a fact, neutral as gravity.
I nodded, once, and left the office.
The kitchen was still warm, still yellow and bright, still smelling of steamed formula and baby skin and the faint, fresh chemical of new beginnings.
I looked at Emilio, asleep in the basket, breathing deep and even. I wanted to tell him it would be okay, but I wasn’t sure I believed it yet.
Instead, I sat at the kitchen table, turned the chair so I could see the window, and let the condensation blur the world outside into a soft, forgiving blue.
The house was quiet. The baby was fed. The night was coming, but for the first time in weeks, I wasn’t afraid of it.
* * * *
The nursery was a box of borrowed quiet, wrapped in the kind of shadow that only came from a night without stars.
The crib was set up under the window, where the moon could run a single white stripe across the baby’s head.
The floorboards picked up every footstep, every time the chair creaked, every whisper of flannel on cotton.
There was a green dot blinking on the baby monitor, steady as a heartbeat.
I sat with my boots planted, arms braced on my knees, close enough to rest a hand on the edge of Emilio’s crib. He’d been asleep for almost an hour, his breath coming in ragged but rhythmic pulses, eyelids flickering with whatever his brain was sorting through.
I tried not to stare, but every time I looked away, the universe found a new way to draw my attention back—his hand clenching, a whimper in his throat, the shiver of a muscle under his jaw.
I didn’t blame him. The night had that effect.
The house had wound itself down for the evening—Rawley and Jojo in their own wing, Jasper back in his place, the old pipes finally settling after their last complaint.
I had the monitors set to max, and I could hear the house breathing—every tick, every sigh, every rumor of wind that prowled the eaves.
I should have been asleep. I should have at least been pretending. But after three tours, two break-ins, and one exceptionally weird childhood, my body didn’t trust a peace this deep. It waited for the next thing, and it knew the next thing was always coming.
Around one-thirty, the headlights found us. At first just a pale flicker in the glass, nothing a civilian would notice. Then, slow as rumor, the beams swept the window in a measured arc, painting the whole room in a sick blue daylight.
I didn’t move, not at first. I just let my hand drift to the window frame, fingers curling over the sill. The cold bled through the wood, straight into my bones.
The lights moved slow. Not the pace of a ranch hand heading home after drinks, but the kind of slow you get when someone’s counting fence posts, checking sightlines.
They came up the main drive, then hung a left at the bend, idling just past the tree line.
I heard the engine, a soft purr, not even trying to muffle itself.
I stood, careful not to let the chair scrape, and moved to the window. I didn’t bother with the lights. I watched.
The car was a sedan, dark color, big enough to carry four or five people, but only one silhouette in the driver’s seat. It idled for a full minute, headlights trained on the house, not wavering.
Then, with a practiced deliberation, the driver cut the engine. The lights stayed on, burning the snow in perfect cones, and then, after a pause, they blinked out, plunging the yard back into the gray-on-gray.
I waited for movement—door opening, figure getting out, maybe a phone raised to take a photo—but nothing happened. The car just sat there, gathering condensation, ghosting a cloud of breath into the cold.
My own breath fogged the window, a soft bloom in the dark. I rubbed it away with the side of my hand and leaned in, getting a better angle.
Still nothing.
Behind me, Emilio stirred, made a soft cry, then went quiet again. The monitor blinked green, unconcerned.
I thought about calling Rawley, but I didn’t. If it was trouble, it was mine before it was his.
I watched the car for another two minutes. Time stretched, bent, threatened to snap. The cold pressed harder against the glass, the kind of pressure that promised a storm by morning.
I stood there, statue-still, one hand on the frame and the other loose at my side. I let myself remember every time I’d waited for a bomb to go off, for a perimeter to be breached, for the future to arrive with its boots on.
This was the same kind of waiting, the kind that demanded you hold your ground and let the world make the next move.
The car didn’t move. The window glass went slick under my palm. The world outside was a study in white and black, the snow reflecting the last of the moonlight, the trees at the edge of the property lined up like soldiers waiting for orders.
In the crib, Emilio settled again, his hand curling around the edge of the blanket. I let myself breathe.
I stood at the window until the cold reached up my arms and into my chest, until my breath came out in a thin, steady line, until the car became just another shadow on the landscape.
I didn’t look away, and I didn’t stand down. Not until the world told me it was safe.
It never did.