Chapter Eight #2
He nodded, just once.
I put both hands around the coffee mug, absorbing the heat, and let the words come up.
“It was a bathroom in Billings,” I said.
“Not even a real bathroom—a single stall in the back of a Sinclair. They had the kind of lights that turn your skin green and make your eyes look like you’ve been up for three days, which I had. ”
Hooper didn’t blink, just listened.
“I bought the test at the same gas station. I waited until it was empty, then locked the door behind me and sat on the edge of the toilet. I remember thinking, This is exactly how your mother would want it . Classy.”
He almost smiled, but not quite.
I sipped the coffee again, then set the mug down. “It wasn’t a surprise, exactly. I’d done the math a dozen times before that. But seeing it… It was like getting a call from the future and not understanding the language.”
I looked at my hands, which were shaking just a little.
I pressed the palms flat to the table, felt the grain of the wood under my skin.
“I sat there for twenty minutes, just trying to figure out the next step. Not even the big stuff, like where to go or what to do—just literally, what do I do with the test stick now? Do I throw it away? Do I keep it, like a receipt, in case someone wants proof?”
I glanced up. Hooper’s face was neutral, but the lines at the corners of his mouth were deeper than I remembered.
“I left the test there,” I said. “On the back of the toilet tank, under a wad of toilet paper. Like a message for the next guy, I guess.” I let out a breath.
“I spent a week in a motel after that. Eating peanut butter, watching cable news, and trying to decide if I was actually going to do it. Every time I went out, I checked behind me for a tail. The only time I wasn’t scared was when I was asleep, and even then I’d wake up every hour thinking someone was outside the door. ”
Emilio let out a sigh, soft and almost human.
I looked at him, then at Hooper. “I didn’t tell anyone.
I couldn’t. Everyone back home had a stake in the outcome.
Even my friends—they were all friends of Eleanor’s.
Or her father’s. It was like being the only person who knew the world was ending, and everyone else just wanted to talk about weather. ”
I ran a thumb along the rim of the mug. “When it got too close, when I knew she was about to send someone after me, I just got in the car and drove. The first plan was to keep moving, to stay ahead until the baby came, and then—” I stopped, not sure what the and then was anymore.
“The plan wasn’t a plan. It was just survival. ”
Hooper nodded. “That tracks.”
We sat there, not talking, for maybe a full minute. The silence wasn’t awkward. It was solid, like new ground settling underfoot.
When Hooper finally spoke, his voice was even. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for it.”
It was the first time I’d heard an apology that didn’t ask for anything in return. No promise, no absolution, just the admission of a fact.
I let it sink in. The words filled the space between us, then went quiet.
Emilio’s hand opened, then closed, searching for something. I reached over and touched his fingers. They were small and impossibly strong. He gripped my thumb and held on.
Hooper watched, then finally took a seat across from me. He cradled the mug in both hands and stared at the steam rising from it.
We didn’t talk about what came next. We just drank our coffee and watched the morning come in through the kitchen window, the snow outside bright and blank and waiting for us to make our mark on it.
For the first time in months, I felt like maybe I could.
I heard someone coming before I saw him.
The front porch boards gave three deliberate protests—one, two, pause, three—followed by the brief, metallic rattle of the door latch.
He came in trailing the cold, a column of it that moved ahead of him and stripped the kitchen air of every scent but snow and static electricity.
He didn’t bother taking off his boots. He stood in the threshold and used one hand to rub the chill from his scalp, the motion making the whole of his frame contract and then expand, like a bear shaking off river water.
His eyes landed on me, then on Emilio, then on Hooper, all in the space of a heartbeat.
“Morning,” he said. His voice was the same as always—clipped, deliberate, every syllable weighed and measured before it left his mouth.
Hooper nodded in reply, but didn’t stand. He was holding Emilio against his chest, baby’s head tucked under his chin, and rocking slightly in a way that must have been unconscious because I’d never seen Hooper do anything unconsciously.
He gestured to me. “Liam, Emilio’s birth father.”
I almost sucked in a breath.
Rawley’s gaze slid back to me. “You up for a sitrep about Eleanor and your situation?” he asked.
I glanced at Hooper. Just how much did he know?
I set my mug down and nodded.
He took the chair at the far end of the table, then spun it around so he could rest his arms along the back. The move should have looked staged, but on him it read as a kind of challenge—to himself, to the room, to the facts.
“First thing,” he said, “your presence here is not a secret, but it isn’t public knowledge either. We run a tight comms protocol. Anyone on ranch payroll gets a need-to-know only.”
I let that sink in. “You’re saying some people do know, but they’re not talking.”
He inclined his head, a half-nod that meant “Correct, and let’s move on.”
“Second,” he said, “Eleanor’s attorney is escalating. They posted a new bulletin to two of the northern community boards. This time it’s not just a missing-person; it’s a request for sighting, vehicle, and any companions, with a cash reward.”
He paused just long enough to see if I’d flinch. I didn’t, but my hands were wrapped so tight around the mug I could feel my heartbeat in every finger.
“The boards?” I asked. “What towns?”
“First was Havre, second was Wolf Point. Both posts are less than twenty-four hours old.”
I thought about that. If Eleanor had started her net that far north, she already knew where I was headed before I did.
Rawley watched me process, then continued. “Someone probably saw you at a gas station or diner and called it in. Don’t take it personally; it’s not malice. People like to think they’re helping.”
I swallowed, then said, “Do you think she has a private investigator?”
He shrugged. “Her attorney’s firm is heavy with ex-law enforcement. They know how to find people, but they also know how to ask for favors without leaving a footprint.”
I let go of the mug and set my hands in my lap. “What do I do?”
Rawley’s eyes flicked to Hooper, then back to me.
“ We keep the perimeter tight. Nobody comes on property uninvited, and we control the narrative about who lives here. We have a contact in the county sheriff’s office, and we’ll get advance warning if any law enforcement comes looking.
If you need to communicate off-site, use the secure channel. ”
His tone wasn’t reassuring, but the precision of it was.
I nodded. “What’s the secure channel?”
“Old ranch radio system,” Hooper said, finally joining the conversation. “Shortwave, point-to-point. Not traceable unless someone is parked in the next county with a scanner.”
Rawley grunted, which I interpreted as approval. “Use it if you have to, but don’t over-communicate. Less is more.”
There was a silence then, dense as insulation. Emilio snored against Hooper’s chest, a tiny vibration that seemed to set the whole table humming.
I looked at Rawley, who was watching me with an intensity that bordered on clinical. “Can you tell if anyone else is here for me?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nobody credible so far. If someone shows up, you’ll know before they make it to the porch.”
Another pause. I glanced at Hooper, expecting him to fill the gap, but he just held the baby and let the air settle.
Rawley finally broke the moment by standing. The chair legs made a sound like a blade being sharpened on concrete.
“One more thing,” he said. “The less you move around, the better. If you have to leave the property, take a driver and don’t use your own vehicle. That’s for your safety, and for ours.” He looked directly at me then, his face impossible to read. “You got any more questions?”
I shook my head. “No. You answered all of them.” At least the ones I could think of at the moment.
He nodded, turned toward the door, then hesitated. For the first time, he looked not at me, but at Hooper, and there was something in the glance—an entire conversation’s worth of information traded in a fraction of a second. Hooper nodded back, just once.
Rawley left, closing the door behind him with a soft finality. The cold air lingered, swirling around my ankles, before fading back into the kitchen’s warmth.
I listened to the wind outside, the distant sound of the barn’s weather vane creaking as it turned. I kept my hands in my lap and tried to will them to stop shaking.
Hooper set Emilio in the center of the table, where he flopped onto his back and made an unimpressed face at the ceiling.
For a while, neither of us said anything. There was a kind of peace in the aftermath, the knowledge that someone else was thinking about the problem so I didn’t have to, at least for the next few minutes.
I picked up the mug and finished the coffee, cold by now but still good. I focused on the feel of it, the way it cut through the residue at the back of my throat, the way it forced my mind to be in the present.
For once, it was enough.
Hooper picked up Emilio again like he’d been doing it for years—one hand braced under the kid’s ribs, the other steady at the nape. He didn’t make a production of it, just held him up and passed him my way, the same way you’d hand off a wrench or a sandwich, no fuss, no ceremony.