Epilogue
What happened next? Glad you asked…
The Creighton Heights neighborhood was positively abuzz with gossip when “Clark and Emma” vanished in the dead of night.
Some speculated that the dour husband had murdered his sunshiny wife and fled the country.
Others assumed they were in WITSEC and got moved to a new location after a security breach.
But the story Stella and Eric decided to share with everyone was way less fun than that.
They said Clark lost his new job before it even started due to some unforeseen circumstances with the company’s finances, so Clark and Emma had decided to move back to the city (in a big hurry) where all the good job opportunities were.
Speaking of Stella and Eric, their happily ever after continued without further interruption.
It did, however, expand quite a bit when they decided to become foster parents to a set of newborn triplets.
They promptly graduated from fosters to foster fails and adopted the babies with unprecedented ease.
(Someone—and no one knows who, of course—hacked the court system and cut every piece of red tape that could’ve stood in the way of the adoption before it ever became a problem. Weird, huh?)
Mitzy became president of the Creighton Heights HOA in a landslide victory. The party that followed would go down in the neighborhood’s books as the greatest of all time. Mike was there, too.
Reuben’s takedown of Franklin earned him a huge promotion.
He was so happy about it that he completely forgot about the hot carpenter he met at the bar that night, and he met his husband, a lovely chef who worshipped the ground he walked on, a few months later.
They were never allowed to adopt another dog, though.
Seemed Reuben had been banned from every rescue in the state after his quick return of his last dog.
(Again, it’s a total mystery how all those rescues seemed to know about his past return record.)
Franklin was never heard from again after he was scooped up by the CIA. No one cared enough to look for him or try to figure out what happened to him.
As for Cole and Hadley, they had more to figure out after the love declarations were made than most couples. Relationships after double homicide, CIA operations, and one-night stand agreements gone wrong weren’t for the weak.
Good thing Cole and Hadley were anything but weak.
They got married three weeks after Cole proposed, opting for a simple civil ceremony at the courthouse. They only waited that long to ensure Cole could stand up for longer than ten minutes at a time without feeling like his lungs were on fire.
After that, they decided to move into Cole’s house because it had more square footage, and because Cole already had it outfitted with the latest and greatest surveillance equipment. Hadley didn’t mind moving. She loved Cole’s house. So did Warrant.
Hadley went back to work as usual shortly after the wedding. She loved her job and creating beautiful things for her clients.
After much soul searching, Cole decided he wasn’t fit for any normal nine-to-five gig.
But he also wasn’t fit for sitting idle while Hadley worked and earned money to support their household.
So, Ren set him up with him clients in need of…
.shall we say…less than legal assistance?
His specialty quickly became helping good people who’d been wronged get revenge on those who’d wronged them.
No murder or anything. Just good, old-fashioned, targeted consequences for people who deserved them.
But that’s a story for another time…
So, at the end of the day, the grumpy, broken-down spy who thought he was incapable of love fell ass-over-elbow for the hopeful romantic who refused to settle for anything less than a fairytale-style ending (the Disney kind, not the Grimm kind). And the only thing they argue about these days?
Who fell for whom first.
Not too shabby, huh?
The End