Chapter 50 Bastian
BASTIAN
walk-through /w?k THro?o/: noun
The next morning, I wake before dawn. I feel like I got shot in the stomach.
Probably because I got shot in the fucking stomach.
But the pain isn’t such a big deal when I have all the other things I need. My little brother is snoring one room over, my best friend and his woman are asleep down the hall, my future mother-in-law is safely ensconced on an air mattress in the den.
And, most crucially of all, Eliana is curled against my side, with our baby at ease in her womb.
I could lie here forever and watch this.
I want to memorize every fucking part of her, with my eyes, my lips, my fingers, all of it.
I’ve never seen something that made me so violent and so peaceful all at the same time.
Violent because the thought of anyone harming so much as a single strand of her hair makes me see red.
Peaceful because why would I ever leave this room?
She breathes in, slow and soft. Breathes out, slower and softer. It’s a miracle that happens over and over again.
She’s breathing. Beside me.
Wonders never fucking cease.
I watch her so intently that it unsettles me after a while. It can’t be safe to love something this much. It’s like staring at my heart as it beats outside my body, all while wondering who the fuck said it was okay to remove it from my chest.
When the moon finally sets behind the trees and sun starts to steal over the sky, I decide to slip out and let her rest, just in case my churning thoughts are audible.
I ease out of bed without waking her, pull on jeans and a hoodie, and go to the kitchen. As the coffee pot stirs to life, I stand at the window scanning the street out of habit. Nothing moves except a cat slinking between parked cars.
I tell myself we’re safe here. Aleksei doesn’t know where we are. But I’ve been telling myself versions of that lie for weeks now, and it’s never once been true. It’s hard to believe it’s suddenly true now.
Eventually, cold hands come around my torso from behind, ten frigid little fingertips ducking into the waistband of my jeans.
“Jesus,” I mutter, “are you made of ice?”
“I’m cold,” Eliana complains. “Warm me up.”
I turn around and swallow her up in an embrace. She feels tiny in my arms, even though I’m all too aware of the bump of her baby belly between us.
She sighs happily and burrows her face in the crook of my armpit. “Is it weird that I like your musk?” she mumbles. “Even when it’s, like, sweaty and stuff?”
“Oh, definitely. Strange. Repulsive. They ought to lock you up and throw away the key.” I press my nose to her bed-warm scalp. “But they’ll have to lock me in there with you, because I like your scent, too.”
She giggles against my chest. Feeling her melt into me and knowing it’s because she trusts me to keep her safe and warm… Fuck, that sets off strange flurries of sparks in my chest.
“How’s the stomach?” she asks.
“Manageable.”
“Are you fibbing, Mr. Hale?”
“Fine. It hurts like hell.” I kiss the top of her head. “But I’ve had worse.”
She frowns. “You’ve been shot before?”
“Not like this. But I’ve eaten Zeke’s attempt at pad woon sen. Frankly, I prefer the bullet.”
“Isn’t he, like, a professional chef?” she asks. “At your restaurant?”
“He has his talents,” I admit. “Thai food is not among them.”
She laughs again, then presses a kiss to the center of my sternum. “Bastian…”
“Uh-oh,” I interrupt. “Why do I feel like you’re about to tell me something I don’t want to hear?”
“More like I’m about to ask you a favor that you won’t be able to refuse.”
“I didn’t know I’d impregnated The Godfather,” I tease.
She scowls in a way that really does look just like Marlon Brando, which just makes me laugh louder. She slaps a hand over my mouth and hisses not to wake her mother. “Don’t be an ass,” she scolds. “I was just going to say that I want to take our morning walk.”
I hesitate. There are a million fucking reasons that’s a bad idea.
For one, the wound in my abdomen throbs at the mere thought of moving faster than a shuffle.
If something happened out there—if Aleksei’s men found us, if I had to run or fight—I’d be operating at maybe ten percent capacity. Probably less.
Every instinct screams to stay inside. Stay hidden, stay small. Don’t give the universe another opportunity to fuck us over.
But Eliana is already reaching for her stick, her jaw set in that stubborn way I’ve learned means arguing is pointless. And besides, we can’t live like prisoners forever. We can’t cower in this borrowed suburban house and call it a life.
If these mornings are all we have left—if Aleksei finds us tomorrow or next week or next month—I want to give her as many of them as I can.
“Let me grab my jacket,” I say.
She grins, which is like a sunrise in and of itself. Goddammit, I’d do anything for this woman.
I’d do fucking anything.
Outside, we fall into rhythm like we’ve been doing it our whole lives. Eliana has one hand on her stick and the other hand looped through my arm.
“What do you see?” she asks. “Describe it to me.”
So I tell her. A woman jogs by with a bobbing blond ponytail and neon running sneakers.
Lawn sprinklers catch the early sun and cast tiny, refracted rainbows across manicured grass.
A slouchy pre-teen waits alone at a bus stop, hunched over his phone with massive headphones clamped to his ears, completely oblivious to the world.
It’s the beautiful, colorful mundanity of it all that makes me happy, against all odds. When the world is this calm and predictable, I can almost believe that there’s a place in it for Eliana, our child, and me to all be safe and happy together.
Of course, that’s when I notice the dogwalker.
He’s male, in his mid-forties, receding hairline, nondescript windbreaker, holding a leash attached to a beagle that’s a bit too well-behaved for my liking. I clock him a half-block back and keep walking, but something prickles at the base of my skull.
The man’s gait is wrong. He’s not meandering the way people do when they’re letting a dog sniff every fire hydrant. He’s maintaining distance. Matching pace.
He’s following us.
My fingers tighten almost imperceptibly on Eliana’s arm.
“Bastian?” she whispers, sensing the shift. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” I lie smoothly.
I test my conspiracy theory by guiding her left at the next corner. I count silently to thirty, keeping my stride casual, before glancing back under the pretense of adjusting my hoodie.
The dogwalker has turned left, too.
The beagle trots at his heels, not pulling or straining toward interesting smells the way a real pet would. It’s a prop. The whole thing is a fucking prop.
My wound throbs in time with my accelerating pulse. “Hey, I want to show you something.”
“What?” She frowns and tilts her head, confused by the sudden detour.
“Just trust me.” I steer her off the sidewalk and toward the yard with the overgrown rose bush.
It’s the same one from the last time we did this, where I’d placed her hand on a bloom and told her to watch out for the thorns.
The hedge has grown wilder since then, sprawling in thick tangles that could hide a crouching person from the street. Perfect for today’s needs.
I position her behind it, my hand on her lower back, my mouth close to her ear. “I need you to stay hidden and stay quiet. I saw something. Gotta go check it out.”
Eliana’s face goes pale. Her hand shoots out and grips my wrist. “Is it Aleksei’s people?”
“I don’t know.” I cup her jaw and kiss her hard. “But I’m going to find out. I need you to trust me. You trust me, right?”
She doesn’t let go. Her fingers tremble. Then she nods once and crouches behind the roses with her cane clutched to her chest.
I force myself to turn away from her.
I double back through a neighboring yard, using hedges and parked cars for cover.
My wound screams with every quick movement, but adrenaline mutes the worst of it and stubbornness takes care of the rest. I circle around through a gap in a chain-link fence, past a rusted swing set, until I’m behind the dogwalker.
The man has stopped at a corner. He’s pretending to check his phone while the beagle sits obediently at his feet.
I move fast and quiet, closing the distance in seconds.
When I’m near enough, I hit him from behind.
He crumbles face-first into a wooden fence.
Before he can even sag to the ground, I’m wrenching his arm up between his shoulder blades.
The leash drops from his fingers. The beagle, to its credit, merely sits down and watches with mild interest, confirming my suspicion that this is not a normal dog and not a normal dog owner.
I shove the man’s face harder against the fence post. Splinters crack and pierce his cheek, drawing little beads of blood. He grunts and tries to twist free, but I’ve got leverage and fury on my side.
“Who are you?” I growl into his ear.
The man wheezes something garbled. It sounds like “federal agent,” but I’m not fucking stupid, so I don’t let go.
Instead, I torque the arm higher, feeling the shoulder joint strain toward its breaking point. Another few pounds of pressure and he’ll never swing a golf club again in his whole goddamned life. “Try again. Who the fuck are you?”
“Jesus Christ!” He grunts in pain. “I’m a fuckin’ fed, man. Badge number 63592. Check my jacket pocket. Left side. Credentials are right there, you damn psycho.”
I keep pressure on his captured wrist as I reach around with my free hand and fish inside his windbreaker until my fingers close on a leather bifold. I flip it open one-handed and angle it so I can see.
FBI Special Agent Jordan Solis. The photo matches the face currently being ground into fence planks. The badge number: 63592.
My grip loosens slightly, but I don’t release him just yet. I’ve been fooled before.
“How’d you find me?”