29. Tony
TONY
The house was too quiet.
Avery had fallen asleep on the couch after her third cookie, chocolate smeared across her chin. I'd carried her upstairs, tucked her in, pressed my lips to her forehead. She smelled like butter and sugar and the lavender shampoo Mia bought her.
Sophia had gone home an hour ago. The kitchen was clean. Cookie sheets stacked by the sink, flour wiped from the counter.
Mia sat across from me at the kitchen table. Hands wrapped around a mug she hadn't touched. She had the look of a woman about to detonate her own life.
"Tell me," I said.
She didn't look up. Her thumb traced the rim of the mug. Around and around.
"My name isn't Mia."
The words landed between us. I didn't move.
"My name is Hadley Winslow. I was a broadcast journalist in New York. A news anchor." Her voice was steady. Rehearsed. Like she'd practiced this a hundred times and was terrified of getting it wrong.
"I had a show. Three million viewers. I was good at it."
I waited.
"I had a fiancé. Cory Wheeler. The man I told you about." She swallowed. "He wasn't killed in a car accident. He was murdered. A hitman shot him on the sidewalk outside our apartment."
Her hand drifted to her lower back. The scar I'd traced in the dark but never seen.
"I was standing next to him. The second bullet hit me." Her fingers pressed against the spot. "It's still in my spine."
Silence. Just the refrigerator humming. Where Avery had held up a wooden spoon two hours ago and announced she was the boss of the cookies.
Same table where I drank coffee every morning and watched Mia wipe syrup off Avery's chin.
"The FBI put me in witness protection. They gave me a new name, new hair, new history. Sent me here."
She finally looked at me. Brown eyes. Wet. Steady.
"Lucas Rivera is my handler. He's been running my protection since the day I arrived in Rockford."
Lucas Rivera. A name I'd never heard before this moment. A man who'd been part of her life the entire time she'd been part of mine.
"A few weeks ago, a note appeared under my door. Two words. 'Found you.'" She pressed her lips together. "Lucas sent an agent after that. His name is Dale. He's been monitoring the property ever since. Hidden cameras on the perimeter. Wildlife cameras, disguised."
She paused. Swallowed.
"He operates from a rental. You've never seen him because he was never supposed to be seen."
Cameras. On my property. Pointed at my home, my studio, my daughter's bedroom window. An FBI agent I'd been breathing the same mountain air as for weeks without knowing he existed.
The anger started low. Not in my chest. In my hands.
My fingers pressed flat against the table.
"The man at the grocery store. Angelina's fiancé." Mia's voice cracked for the first time. "He called me by my real name. Ms. Winslow."
She gripped the mug tighter.
"I don't know how he knows. I don't know if Angelina told him or if he found out some other way." Her breathing hitched. "But he knows who I am. He knows where I live. And he said Avery's name like he'd been thinking about it."
Avery's name.
In that man's mouth.
The pieces locked into place. Not breaking. Assembling. Every loose fragment of fury and fear clicking together.
"I've been lying to you since the day we met." Her words were barely a whisper. "About everything. My name, my past, why I'm here. Why I check my phone. Why I lock my door. Why I flinch."
A tear slid down her cheek. She didn't wipe it.
"I wanted to tell you. Every single day I wanted to tell you. And I couldn't."
I watched her.
The woman sitting across from me was not the woman I'd thought she was. A journalist. A public figure. A woman with a dead fiancé and a bullet in her spine and an FBI handler and a life I'd never been told existed.
And none of that was what made me want to put my fist through the wall.
"I told you about Angelina."
Mia flinched.
"I sat on that porch and I gave you the worst thing that ever happened to me." Quiet. Controlled. The most dangerous register I had. "Every detail. Every locked door. Three years of my life I've never told another living person about."
I held her gaze.
"I gave you all of it because I trusted you."
"Tony."
"And you sat there and held me. And you couldn't give me the truth."
Her lids closed. The tears fell. She didn't argue. Didn't defend herself. Didn't explain.
I was glad she didn't. Because there was no explanation that would fix this right now.
The chair scraped against the floor as I stood. Mia's head snapped up, tracking me. Terror flashed across her face. She thought I was leaving.
My hand closed around the phone.
The first call was to Garrett. My lawyer answered on the second ring because I paid him enough to answer on the first.
I told him what I needed. "Private security and investigation firm. Ex-military. The kind that find people and make sure they stay found. I want a team in Rockford by morning."
"Tony, it's eleven at night."
"Then you'd better start making calls."
I hung up. Dialed my financial team.
"Open a discretionary account. No spending limit. Route everything through Garrett."
The woman on the other end didn't ask questions. That's why I kept her.
Mia hadn't moved. She was watching me with those brown eyes. Wet. Steady. The same eyes I'd been falling into for months.
Except now I knew they belonged to Hadley Winslow. A woman who'd stared into a camera and talked to millions of people. Who'd watched the man she loved bleed out on a sidewalk.
Who'd let me fall in love with a ghost.
I dropped back into the chair. Not because I was calm. Because what came next required precision.
"Tell me everything he said. Every word."
She told me. His questions at the grocery store. The rehearsed delivery. The way he'd asked about Avery's age. The ski resort investment. The line about disappearing.
Like a reporter, she laid it out. Clean. Chronological. Every observation cataloged. Even terrified, her mind was precise.
I listened. Filed every detail.
"I need to call Lucas," she said. "He doesn't know about the grocery store yet."
"Call him. Tell him to come here. Tonight."
She made the call from the burner phone. The cheap flip phone I'd seen her palm away a dozen times. Now I knew what it connected to. Who it connected to.
Lucas Rivera arrived within the hour. He'd been working out of a field office in Aspen since the note. Closer than I'd imagined. Older than I'd imagined, too. Forties. Dark jacket. Calm face.
He studied me the way a man studies a situation he's been dreading.
"Mr. Rossi."
"Sit down."
He took the chair across from me. I laid out the security firm. His jaw tightened.
"With all due respect, private contractors complicate a federal protection operation. We have protocols."
"Your protocols put cameras on my property without my knowledge." I kept my tone level. "Your protocols had an invisible agent living in my town while I had no idea my family was in danger."
I leaned forward.
"Your protocols let a man walk up to Mia in a grocery store and say her real name." The words landed hard. "I'm not asking for your permission. I'm telling you what's happening. My team coordinates through you. But they answer to me."
Lucas glanced at Mia. She stared at the table.
"He's right," she said, her voice small. "I should have told him from the beginning."
A shift moved through Lucas's face. Not anger. Closer to resignation. He nodded once.
Then he turned to Mia. Professional now. "Walk me through the grocery store. Exact words."
She did. When she finished, Lucas was quiet for a long moment.
"He said Winslow? Not Hadley?"
"Ms. Winslow." Mia's jaw tightened. "Like he was tipping a hat."
Lucas leaned back. I could see the gears turning. "Angelina knows the name Winslow. You destroyed her reputation on national television. She'd remember." He paused. "She could have told Brooks after she identified you from the photographs."
"Could have," Mia said. "But the note came before Angelina arrived in Rockford."
"Which means the note and Brooks may not be connected." Lucas rubbed his thumb across his knuckle. "We have another lead we're running down. I can't say more until we've confirmed."
I filed that. The FBI had another suspect. One Lucas wouldn't name in front of me.
"Brooks goes on the surveillance list tonight," Lucas said. "But I'm not closing any doors."
Mia's hands tightened around the mug. "I should leave. If I'm gone, whoever this is has no reason to stay in Rockford. Tony and Avery are safe."
"No." The word came out of me before Lucas could respond. Flat. Final.
"Tony."
"You're not running. And you're not taking yourself away from my daughter to protect us from a problem you didn't create."
Lucas held up a hand. "Nobody's running. And nobody's making sudden moves." He leaned forward. "Whoever is behind this, they think their intelligence is good. If we change routines, we tip them off. If Mia disappears, we lose our best chance to draw them out."
"You want to use her as bait," I said.
"I want to keep the picture looking exactly the way it looks right now." Lucas's tone was measured. "We add your private team. We add layers. But from the outside, nothing changes. When they move on information they think is solid, we're ready."
Mia was quiet. Then: "He's right. I spent ten years watching people reveal themselves when they thought no one was paying attention. The moment you change the picture, they adapt."
The trap strategy. Her journalist's instinct meeting Lucas's operational logic. The two of them building it together while I calculated how much money it would take to make my family untouchable.
Lucas considered the shape of it. Nodded. "It could work. If the private team is disciplined enough to stay invisible."
"They will be," I said.
We talked for another thirty minutes. Lucas laid out what the FBI had. What they didn't have. What Dale's cameras had captured. What the protocols would look like moving forward with a private team added to the picture.
When it was done, Lucas stood. His attention shifted to Mia.
"Are you okay?"
She glanced at the doorway I hadn't walked through. At the phone I'd set on the counter. At my coffee mug, still half full.
"I don't know," she said.
Lucas paused at the door. "I'll be back in the morning with details. I'll coordinate with whoever you've hired."
He held my gaze for a beat longer than necessary.
"For what it's worth, I think you're right to be angry. And I think you're right to stay."
He left.
The room was quiet again. The refrigerator hummed. Outside the glass walls, the property was dark. The mountains invisible against the sky.
Out there, Dale's cameras were recording nothing and everything. And a man who'd said my daughter's name was sleeping in a town that had no idea what he was.
Mia sat at the table. She hadn't moved. She was watching me the way I'd watched my canvases dry. Like the colors might shift if she looked away.
I should have stayed. Should have taken her hand. Should have said the words that would make the wreckage between us smaller.
Instead, my hand closed around the phone. More calls to make. A security consultant from a gallery showing in Denver. A contact in Jamie's network who specialized in threat assessment.
"I need to make a few more calls," I said.
Mia nodded. Her face was very still.
I walked out of the kitchen.
Not away from her. Toward the study, where I could close the door and speak without waking my daughter.
Where I could give orders and make plans and build a wall around the people I loved. With money. With fury. With the kind of cold, patient precision that men like me learned from surviving men like Angelina.
But Mia didn't know that.
From where she sat, it looked like I was leaving.
I could feel her watching. I didn't turn around. If I turned around, I'd see her face. And if I saw her face, I'd cross the room and pull her against my chest and tell her it was going to be okay.
It wasn't okay. Nothing about this was okay.
The study door closed behind me.
I made the calls.