20. Mia
MIA
Lucas's "someone" arrived on a morning that smelled like pine needles and bad decisions.
Lucas had called the night before. He'd offered what he always offered when things got dangerous: extraction. New town. New name. New life.
I'd told him no.
He'd gone quiet. The kind of quiet that meant he was choosing his next words with care.
"Mia, this isn't a game."
"I know it's not a game." My grip on the burner phone had gone white. "But I'm not leaving, Lucas. I have a life here. I have people who need me. A little girl who calls me Mimi and a man who..."
I'd stopped. Swallowed.
"I'm not running again. I can't. So find whoever left that note, Lucas. Please. Because I'm staying."
Lucas had exhaled. Long and slow. "Then I'm putting someone on you. Full time. Non-negotiable. He shadows you while we work the case. We're close to narrowing who had access to your location. Give me time, and we end this."
I'd been counting the hours since that call. Lucas's "someone" was the one thing standing between me and whatever came next, and I needed him here yesterday.
But whoever Lucas was sending also meant another secret. Another lie to add to the pile. Because Tony couldn't know about the protection. Tony couldn't know about the note. Tony couldn't know about any of it.
So I drove into town before sunrise, before Tony was awake, before Avery could ask where I was going. I parked at the trailhead lot on the edge of Rockford. Empty. No cameras. No windows facing the gravel. Just pine trees and a dumpster and the kind of darkness that swallowed sound.
A dark vehicle pulled in behind me at six fifteen. Tinted windows. Government plates. A man climbed out.
His name was Dale. He was broad. Not tall-broad like Tony. Wide-broad. Built like someone had stacked two refrigerators on top of each other and given them a crew cut.
He looked like if a wall decided to get a haircut.
"Ms. Hayes." His tone was flat. Professional. The kind that had delivered bad news in conference rooms and never flinched. "Agent Rivera sent me."
I leaned against my SUV in my jacket, coffee in hand, hair doing something criminal on one side of my head.
"You're the someone."
"I'm the someone."
We stared at each other. The lot was empty. A bird called from the pines. Dale did not appear to notice birds.
"So what's the plan?" I asked.
He didn't want small talk. He didn't want to acknowledge that the mountains existed or that the sunrise was turning them pink. What Dale wanted was to discuss protocol.
He had a list. An actual, printed, folded document. I watched him pull it from the inside pocket of his jacket and unfold it with the precision of a man defusing a bomb.
He'd be based at a rental in town. He would not come to the Castle, would not approach the cottage, would not make contact with anyone in my life. He'd monitor the roads in and out of Rockford. He'd track my phone's GPS and I'd check in with him three times a day: morning, afternoon, night.
He'd also place cameras. Small, wireless, weatherproof.
One on the main road leading to the Castle.
One covering the cottage approach from the tree line.
One at the trailhead where the property met the mountain.
He'd install them before dawn, disguised as wildlife cameras.
The kind hikers and ranchers used to track elk. Nobody would question them.
"I'll have eyes on your routes and the property perimeter without setting foot on it," he said.
If I missed a check-in by more than fifteen minutes, he'd come in. If I sent a coded text, he'd come in. If anything triggered his surveillance, he'd come in.
Otherwise, I would never see him. Nobody would.
"You'll be invisible," I said.
"That's the job." He paused. "Ms. Hayes, I need you to understand something. Until we know how your location was compromised, nobody in your life is cleared. Not your employer. Not his staff. Not the people in this town. Nobody."
The words landed like a punch to the sternum.
"Tony didn't do this."
"I'm not saying he did. I'm saying we don't know who did. And until we do, I stay invisible to everyone. Including the people you trust."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him that Tony would never, that Sophia would never, that Emma and Jamie and every person I'd come to love in this town was incapable of betraying me.
But I'd been a journalist. I knew how stories like this ended. The betrayal always came from someone close. Always from someone you'd never suspect.
I swallowed the argument. Nodded.
I listened to all of it with my coffee going cold in my hands.
This was real. The note was real. "Found you" was real enough for Lucas to send a federal agent to Colorado. Not to move me. To watch over me from the shadows while they tracked whoever had written those two words.
My stomach turned.
"Questions?" Dale asked.
"What if I need you fast?"
"Send a single period to this number." He handed me a card.
Plain white. A phone number. Nothing else.
"I'll be there in under two minutes. Most days less.
Hiking a trail with a sightline to the property.
Parked at a turnout reading a book. Fishing the creek below the ridge.
I rotate. I blend. Nobody looks twice at a guy in hiking boots in a mountain town. "
I put the card in my jacket pocket. Two minutes. A man dressed like every other tourist in Colorado, somewhere on a trail or a road or a creek bank I'd never notice, waiting for a text I hoped I'd never have to send.
He turned back toward his car. Paused.
"One question, Ms. Hayes."
"Mia."
"Do you always hold meetings before dawn in a parking lot?"
I looked at the dark trees. The gravel lot. The dumpster.
"Only on days when my life is falling apart."
Dale's mouth did something. It wasn't a smile. It was the foundation of a smile that got halfway built and then abandoned. Then he climbed into his vehicle and the tinted windows swallowed him whole.
I stood in the empty lot. The pines were black against a sky just starting to lighten.
A bodyguard. I have an invisible bodyguard.
I got back in the SUV and gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
Two months ago, I'd been Mia Hayes. New girl in a small town. Quiet life. Fresh start. Now I had a borrowed name, a stalker, and a federal agent tracking my phone from a rental I'd never visit.
I drove back to the cottage before Tony woke up. Parked. Went inside. Changed into jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. Pulled my hair into a ponytail.
Checked in with Dale. First text of the day. Three words: Morning. All clear.
His reply was instant: Copy.
I stared at the phone. This was my life now. Check-ins with a man I'd met in a parking lot. The people I loved eating breakfast ten yards away, oblivious to all of it.
I shoved the burner into my back pocket and walked to the Castle.
The kitchen was warm. Sophia had left a pot of vegetable stew on the stove and a note about Avery's laundry. Tony sat at the island with a mug of coffee and an open notebook. He was sketching something I couldn't see from the doorway.
Avery was on the floor with a coloring book, narrating her work to nobody in particular.
"This one is a horse but he has wings because regular horses are boring."
"Morning," I said.
Tony looked up. His gaze found mine and stayed there. Something behind his eyes shifted. Not suspicion. Not yet. But attention. The kind of attention that made my skin tighten.
"You were up early," he said.
My pulse jumped. "Couldn't sleep. Went for a drive."
It wasn't a lie. Not exactly. I had gone for a drive. I just left out the part about meeting a federal agent in a parking lot.
Tony held my gaze for one beat longer than normal. Then he went back to his sketching.
He didn't push. Tony never pushed. He just watched. And that was worse. Watching meant he was storing every detail, filing every inconsistency, building a picture I couldn't see but could feel taking shape.
"Mimi!" Avery abandoned her coloring book and launched herself at my legs. "I found something in the yard. Come see."
She dragged me outside. The morning was cold and bright. Frost on the grass. The mountains sharp against a blue sky.
"There." She pointed at a caterpillar inching along a blade of grass. "His name is Gerald and he's fuzzy."
I crouched down. Gerald was, indeed, fuzzy. He was making his way along the grass with the determination of a commuter late for a train.
"He's very handsome," I said. "Where's he going?"
"To see his family. They live under the porch."
"How do you know that?"
"Because that's where I'd live if I was a caterpillar."
I laughed. A real laugh. The kind that surprised me because for a second I forgot about the note and the parking lot and the man tracking my phone. Just for a second. Then it all came rushing back.
Then Tony's voice came from the doorway behind us.
"Avery, did you tell Mia about the swear jar?"
Avery's eyes went wide. She spun around, hands on her hips. "You did a swear, Daddy. This morning. Before Mimi got here."
I looked up at Tony. He was leaning in the doorway with his coffee. The picture of calm. But his jaw had that set to it.
"That wasn't a swear, Pickle."
"Sophia says damn is a gateway swear." Avery nodded with the authority of a tenured professor. "First it's damn. Then it's the bad one. Then Daddy has to put a dollar in the jar."
"Sophia has a lot of opinions about my vocabulary."
"She says you owe three dollars from last week."
Tony's mouth pressed flat. Fighting something. A laugh, maybe. Or the urge to add to his tab.
"Go check on Gerald," he said.
Avery ran back to the grass. Tony's eyes came to me.
"You okay?" he asked. Quiet. Just for me.
There it was. The question. The one I couldn't answer with the truth. The one that landed on the growing pile of lies and made the whole structure groan.
"I'm great," I said. Smiled. "Just tired."
He studied me. I could see him measuring the smile against whatever he'd been cataloging in that artist's brain. The locked cottage door. The way I'd been checking my phone more. The drive before dawn.
He didn't believe me. I could see that too.
But he nodded. Took a sip of his coffee. Let it go.
For now.
That afternoon, I sat on the cottage porch with my laptop open to Ludo's journals and didn't read a word. The cursor blinked. The mountain was quiet.
I pulled out the burner. Afternoon check-in.
All clear.
Dale's reply: Copy. Roads empty. No new vehicles in area.
I stared at those words. No new vehicles. That meant Dale was watching every car that entered and left Rockford. Tracking patterns. Looking for someone who didn't belong.
Looking for the person who'd stood outside my apartment door and written two words that turned my life inside out.
The lies were stacking up.
My name. My past. The man who'd murdered my fiance and put a bullet in my spine. The note under my door. The invisible agent monitoring my phone from a rental in town. The reason I locked my cottage door at night when I'd never locked it before.
Each lie sat on top of the last. I could feel the weight pressing down. Getting heavier with every smile I faked. Every "I'm fine" I sold.
Tell him.
I couldn't tell him. Telling Tony meant telling him everything. Who I was. What I'd run from. Why the FBI had built me a new life in his town.
It meant watching his face change. The moment he understood that the woman he'd pulled against his side and called "mine" was a lie.
Every version of that conversation ended the same way. With Tony looking at me like I was a stranger.
I closed the laptop. Pressed my palms against my knees. Breathed.
The sun dropped behind the ridge. Shadows stretched across the porch. Somewhere in the pines, an animal moved through the undergrowth. The mountain went dark in stages, the way it always did, the sky holding light long after the trees gave up.
My phone buzzed. The burner.
Lucas.
"How's your new friend?"
"He has a printed list, Lucas. A printed, folded, laminated list."
"Dale is thorough."
"He's a human spreadsheet."
A pause. Lucas said nothing for a beat. "He's the best I have, sweetheart. I wouldn't send you anything less."
The warmth in those words cracked something open. My throat tightened.
"How long?"
"We've got leads. I can't say more on an open line."
"Tony knows something is off. He's not stupid, Lucas. He asked me why I was up before dawn and I watched him not believe my answer. He's figuring things out on his own."
"I know. Give me time. We're going to end this."
"Before it ends me?"
He didn't answer that. Which was answer enough.
"I'm fine," I said. Because that was the answer. The only answer.
I wasn't fine.
Night check-in. Last one.
All clear. Cottage locked. Lights off.
Dale: Copy. Perimeter clear. See you in the morning.
I set the burner on the nightstand next to my regular phone. Pulled the blanket up. The cottage was still. The mountain was still. The whole world was silent except for the noise inside my head.
Tony texted at ten. Two words on my regular phone.
You okay?
I typed back: I'm fine.
Two phones on my nightstand. Two lives. One where a man I loved asked if I was okay. And one where a man told me my perimeter was clear.
How long can I keep this up?
I stared at the ceiling. The shadows from the trees moved across the plaster in patterns I couldn't read.
Somewhere in Rockford, Dale sat in his rental. Watching. Waiting. Protecting me from a threat I couldn't name to the people I loved.
And somewhere out there, past the mountains and the dark and the distance I kept telling myself was enough, someone already knew where I was.
His patience was running out.
And so was mine.