16. Mia
MIA
The apartment smelled like nothing.
That was the thing that hit me when I opened the door. Weeks ago this place had smelled like fresh paint and chemical carpet and the kind of desperate newness that came with starting over.
Now it smelled like absence. Like a room that had stopped waiting for someone to come home.
I dropped my keys on the counter out of habit. The counter was bare. The kitchen was the size of a closet and it looked smaller now. Shrunken.
The bay window still faced Main Street. The same shops sat below. The same mountains pressed against the sky beyond the rooftops.
Everything was the same.
I was different.
I'd come into town for groceries. The cottage fridge was down to half a jar of peanut butter and some leftover rice. I'd also promised Avery the chocolate cereal she'd been negotiating for all week.
But a few pieces of mail still came to this address. I hadn't finished forwarding everything and my landlord had called twice about a utility bill.
So here I was. Standing in the ghost of a life I'd already outgrown.
I checked the mailbox first. Electric bill. A flyer for a pizza place. A coupon booklet addressed to "Current Resident," which was generous, considering nobody currently resided here.
I tucked the mail under my arm and unlocked the apartment door. The key stuck in the lock the same way it always had. I jiggled it. Swore at it.
Pushed inside.
And then I saw it.
A folded piece of paper on the floor. White. Ordinary. The kind you'd use to print a grocery list or write a note to your neighbor about their dog.
Someone had slipped it under the door.
My body knew before my brain did.
The cold started in my hands. It spread up my wrists and into my arms and then it was everywhere.
My back, the place where the bullet still lived inside me, throbbed like a second heartbeat. Like it remembered, too.
I picked up the note. My fingers were shaking so hard I almost dropped it.
Two words. Handwritten. Neat block letters. Black ink.
Found you.
The floor tilted.
I don't remember dropping the note. I don't remember backing up.
But the next thing I knew, the wall was behind me and I was sliding down it. My legs had stopped working. The grocery flyer and the electric bill were scattered across the floor.
The note lay facedown two feet from my knee.
Two words. That was all it took to dismantle everything.
Get up, Mia. Get up and move.
I couldn't move. My vision had narrowed to a tunnel. The edges of the room went dark.
My chest was locked. No air going in. No air coming out.
My hands pressed flat against the floor. The floor was cold and solid and I held on to that because everything else was spinning.
Someone knew.
Someone had walked up to this door, bent down, and slipped a piece of paper into a gap that was barely half an inch wide. Someone who knew my name. My address. The town I'd been sent to disappear in.
The burner phone was in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out. My thumb missed the contact three times before I managed to hit Lucas's number.
It rang twice.
"Mia."
"Lucas." My voice came out wrong. Too high. Too thin.
"There's a note."
Silence on the other end. One beat. Two.
"Tell me."
"Under my apartment door. The one in town. I came to check the mail and it was on the floor."
I swallowed. My throat was sandpaper. "Two words. 'Found you.' Handwritten."
More silence. I could hear Lucas breathing. Steady. Controlled.
The way he always sounded when he was already three steps ahead and didn't want me to panic.
Too late.
"Okay. Listen to me," he said. "Don't touch the note again. Leave it where it is."
"Don't move it, don't pick it up, don't fold it."
"I already picked it up."
"That's fine. Set it down. Don't touch it again."
His voice was the same temperature it always was. Warm and level and made of something unbreakable.
"Are you safe right now? Is the door locked?"
I looked at the door. I'd closed it behind me when I came in. Habit.
"Yes."
"Good. Stay there. I'm going to send someone to process the note and the door."
"He'll be there within forty-eight hours."
"Who?"
"You'll know when you see him." A pause. "Mia, have you told Tony?"
The question landed like a rock in my stomach.
"No."
"Your call. But secrets have a shelf life, sweetheart."
I pressed my head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. A crack ran from the light fixture to the corner. I'd never noticed it before.
"If I tell Tony, I have to tell him everything."
"I know."
"I can't do that."
Lucas didn't argue. He never did. He just let the silence sit until it said what he wouldn't.
"I'll call you when my guy's en route," he said. "Stay aware. Change nothing about your routine."
"If this is what I think it is, the worst thing you can do is let him know you're scared."
"Too late for that."
"Then don't let him see it." Another pause. Softer this time. "You're tougher than you think, Mia. You always have been."
He hung up.
I sat on the floor of my empty apartment for a long time. The light through the bay window changed. Shadows moved across the wall. My hands stopped shaking, then started again, then stopped.
The note sat facedown on the floor two feet away. I didn't look at it. I didn't have to. The words were already burned into the back of my skull.
Found you.
I thought about Cory. The sidewalk. The sound.
I thought about nine cameras in my old apartment. Ceiling fan. Bathroom cabinet. Smoke detector above the bed.
Months. Maybe years.
I thought about Tony and Avery and the cottage. The mountain through the back window. The fridge with Avery's drawing and the Colorado-shaped magnet. Everything I'd built since I got here, torn apart by two words on a grocery-list piece of paper.
Get up. Go home. Be normal.
My knees ached. My back screamed. But I got up.
I picked up the electric bill and the pizza flyer. I left the note on the floor. I locked the door behind me.
The key stuck. I jiggled it. I didn't swear at it this time because my jaw was clenched so tight my teeth hurt.
The grocery store was four blocks away. I walked. I bought milk and eggs and Avery's chocolate cereal and the vanilla yogurt Tony pretended he didn't eat.
I smiled at the cashier. I said "thank you" and "have a good one." I carried my bags to the car like a person whose world hadn't just cracked open.
A good liar. That's what I was when it mattered.
Hated that about myself.
The drive back to the cottage took twenty minutes. Mountain roads. Pine trees. Snow still clinging to the peaks even though the valley was thawing.
The radio played something soft and I turned it off. The quiet was easier. The quiet didn't ask me to pretend.
Tony's studio lights were on when I pulled in. A warm glow against the ridge.
I could see his silhouette through the glass. Moving. Working. Not knowing.
Avery met me at the kitchen door before I'd finished climbing the porch steps.
"Mimi!" She grabbed my leg. Her hands were covered in something purple. Marker, I hoped.
"I found a ladybug. She has seven spots. Sophia said that's good luck."
"Seven spots?" I crouched down. Kissed the top of her head. She smelled like kid shampoo and the outdoors. "That's very good luck."
"I named her Francesca."
"Beautiful name."
"She lives in the garden now. I told her not to leave."
I carried the groceries inside. Sophia had left dinner warming on the stove. Some kind of chicken and rice.
The kitchen was warm with cumin and garlic and home. I stood there with a bag in each hand and something cracked behind my ribs.
Don't cry. Not here. Not in front of her.
Tony walked in ten minutes later. Paint on his hands. Dark curls pushed back from his forehead.
He grabbed an apple from the bowl on the counter and leaned against the doorframe, watching me unload the groceries.
"You okay?"
I turned around. Smiled. "Great. Just tired."
His eyes moved across my face the way they always did. Reading. Cataloging. Filing things away in whatever vault he kept behind those green eyes.
"You sure?"
"Positive." I held up the chocolate cereal. "Avery won the negotiation."
He almost smiled. Almost. Then he pushed off the counter and went to set the table.
Dinner was normal. Avery talked about Francesca the ladybug. She talked about how ladybugs are different from regular bugs because they have "fashion spots."
She asked if ladybugs could swim. Tony said he wasn't sure. I said I thought they could float. Avery decided floating counted and moved on to whether Francesca would like cereal.
I laughed in all the right places. I ate without tasting anything. I washed the dishes while Tony read Avery a story in the living room. I gripped the edge of the sink and focused on my breathing.
In. Out. In. Out.
You're fine. You're safe. He doesn't know where the cottage is. He found the apartment. The old apartment. The one you don't live in anymore.
The thought should have helped. It didn't.
Because the apartment was in Rockford. And the cottage was in Rockford. And if someone had found one, finding the other was just a matter of time.
I dried my hands. I kissed Avery goodnight. I told Tony I had a headache and I was going to turn in early.
"Get some rest," he said. His hand caught mine as I passed. Brief. Warm.
His thumb pressed against my knuckle and I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to say there was a note and someone knows I'm here.
I wanted to tell him my real name was Hadley Winslow. That I was in witness protection because a man murdered my fiancé and put a bullet in my spine. And now he'd found me.
I squeezed his hand.
"Night," I said.
"Night, Mia."
I walked to the cottage alone. The path was dark. The air was sharp. Spring in Colorado still bit at night.
I kept my eyes on the ground and my hands in my pockets. I didn't look at the tree line.
The cottage door locked with a click.
First time I'd ever locked it.
I checked the windows. Pulled the curtains closed. The ones above the kitchen sink. The ones in the bedroom.
The back window with the mountain view that had made me go quiet the day I moved in.
No view tonight. Tonight the mountains were just dark shapes behind fabric.
Pajamas. Teeth brushed. Lights off.
The bed was cold when I climbed in. I stared at the ceiling.
Every sound was too loud.
The wind against the window. A branch scraping the roof. Something rustling in the garden.
Francesca's garden. I told myself it was a raccoon. Or a deer. Or the wind.
The quiet didn't feel honest anymore. It sounded like someone holding their breath.
My back throbbed. My hands were cold. The sheets smelled like lavender and Sophia's detergent and I pulled them to my chin and pressed my face into the pillow.
Found you.
The words sat behind my eyes like a pulse. Steady. Patient. Not going away.
I thought about calling Lucas again. I thought about packing a bag.
I thought about the FBI protocol. Immediate extraction. New location. New identity. New name.
Leave Rockford. Leave Avery. Leave Tony. Start over. Again.
My chest locked at the thought.
No. Not again. I'm not running again.
Footsteps on the path.
I sat up. My heart slammed against my ribs. The footsteps were getting closer. Soft on the dirt. Steady.
My hand found the burner phone on the nightstand. My thumb hovered over Lucas's number.
The footsteps stopped.
A knock on the door.
I stopped breathing.
Then, small and sleepy and perfect: "Mimi? Can you read me a story?"
The air rushed out of me so hard my chest ached.
I opened the door. Avery stood on the porch in her pajamas. Pink ones with little stars on them.
Her stuffed bear hung from one hand, dragging on the ground. Her dark curls were wild. Her eyes were heavy.
"Hi, sweetheart." My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. "Of course I can read you a story."
She weighed nothing when I scooped her up. She tucked her head against my shoulder. Her bear bumped against my back. Toothpaste and warmth and everything good in the world.
The bed was still warm from where I'd been lying. I pulled the covers over us. She picked a book from the stack on the nightstand. Something about a fox who lost his tail.
We read. She listened. Her breathing slowed. Her eyes fluttered. Her hand curled around my wrist.
She was asleep before the fox found his tail.
I closed the book. I turned off the lamp. I held Avery against me in the dark and listened to her breathe and didn't sleep.
The curtains were closed. The door was locked. The wind pushed against the window.
And somewhere out there, past the mountains and the miles, someone knew exactly where I was.
Two words. Neat handwriting. Black ink.
Found you.