31. Tony
TONY
Her hair was in my face when I woke up.
Brown strands across my chest, tangled and warm, catching the first light through the curtains. I held still. The cottage was quiet.
The mountains outside the back window were gray at the base, white at the peaks. The sky between them turned from nothing to gold.
Mia's breathing was slow and even. Her hand rested flat on my sternum. Ink stained her fingertips from the journals.
Not paint. I kept getting them confused because I wanted her hands to belong in my world.
I watched her face. The dark lashes against her cheek. The small crease between her eyebrows that never went away, not even in sleep.
The faint scar along her hairline. I'd never asked about it.
Now I knew what it was from.
A bullet. Lodged in her spine. A dead fiance in a morgue.
An FBI handler named Lucas. A man called Dale who'd been watching my property through cameras I never saw.
Burner phones. A woman named Hadley Winslow who erased herself and became the person sleeping on my chest.
All of it. The lies. The locked doors. The flinching.
And I looked at her face and none of it changed a thing.
I don't care who you were. I care who you are.
I eased out from under her arm. She stirred but didn't wake. I pulled the quilt up to her shoulder and crossed the cold floor to the kitchen.
Her kitchen was the size of my closet. One burner that worked. A coffee maker older than Avery.
The filters were in the cabinet above the sink. The grounds sat in a tin by the window. I measured two scoops and filled the reservoir from the tap.
The motions were simple. The kind of thing a person does in someone else's kitchen when they've decided to stay.
Two mugs. Both black.
The coffee maker gurgled and clicked. Pines moved outside the window.
Somewhere a bird called the same two notes over and over. A question that never got answered.
I carried the mugs to the bedroom. Mia was sitting up.
The quilt pooled at her waist. Her hair was wild. She had the squint of someone who'd slept hard after days of not sleeping at all.
"Coffee."
She took the mug. Her fingers brushed my wrist.
A small touch. I let it land.
"Thank you."
I sat on the edge of the bed. The springs complained. The whole cottage complained.
Everything in this place was old and crooked and imperfect. I would have bought her a house made of marble. She wouldn't have let me.
"I need to tell you the rest," she said.
"Okay."
So she did.
A stalker she never saw coming. Cameras hidden in her apartment. A mole at the station who sold her home address. Cory on the sidewalk. A stranger with a gun. She was standing right next to him.
Then the hospital. The second bullet, the one in her spine. Months of recovery. One last broadcast. And then she disappeared.
Then the interview with Angelina. Years ago, before any of this. She'd written the piece that ruined my stepmother's reputation.
"Our Lady of Perpetual Victimhood." That's what the newsroom called her.
I almost laughed. Almost.
"Is Elijah Brooks the stalker?" I asked.
"I don't know." She held the mug with both hands. "Lucas is investigating."
She paused. "But he knew my name, Tony. In the grocery store. He said it like he'd been practicing."
My back teeth locked together. Brooks had been in my kitchen. He'd eaten my food.
He'd stood in the same room as my daughter and smiled like he belonged there.
"He's not getting near you again." I set my coffee on the nightstand. "Or Avery."
Mia nodded. Something crossed her face. Relief and fear braided together.
I reached for her hand. Wrapped my fingers around hers.
She was still so small. The bones of her wrist were thin enough to snap without trying.
"Hadley," I said.
Her whole body flinched. A ripple from her shoulders to her hands. Coffee sloshed in the mug.
I caught it. Filed it away. "Mia."
She glanced up at me. Brown eyes full of something I couldn't name.
"Mia," I said again. "When you're ready."
She nodded. Her grip on my hand tightened. She pressed her forehead to my shoulder.
I pressed my forehead to the top of her head. We sat like that while the coffee went cold and the gold light spread across the floor.
The meeting was at two.
Not at the house. Not at the cottage. A restaurant in Carbondale with a back room that smelled like old wood and lemon cleaner.
Lucas Rivera was already there when I walked in. Trim. Professional. The kind of face that gave nothing away.
He rose and offered his hand.
"Mr. Rossi."
"Tony."
He nodded. His grip was firm and measured. Everything about this man was measured.
The door opened behind me. A second man walked in.
Lean. Mid-thirties, maybe early forties. Built like a distance runner.
Short dark hair, no product, no style. Plain gray jacket over a black shirt. He moved through the room counting exits before he sat down.
His gaze swept the corners, the windows, the single door. He didn't smile.
"Dominic Cross." He didn't offer his hand. He sat.
"Tony Rossi."
"I know."
Garrett, my lawyer, had found him overnight. Private security and risk management out of Denver. Ex-Special Forces.
His firm handled corporate extraction and close protection for people who could afford to never appear in the news.
I could afford it.
"Walk me through the property," Dominic said.
So I did. The glass house. The cottage fifty yards south through the trees.
The studio wing with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the mountains. The approach roads, the tree lines, the hiking trails that crossed public land above the ridge.
"The FBI has cameras on the cottage and main entrance," Lucas said. "Agent Dale runs night shifts."
Dominic studied Lucas the way you study a painting that's missing something.
"I want to see the property."
We drove back. Lucas in his sedan. Dominic in a black SUV with no markings.
Dominic walked the grounds for forty minutes. He checked the tree lines, the ridge, the approaches. He crouched at points I'd walked past a hundred times and studied the dirt like it had something to say.
On the ridge above the cottage, he stopped. Kicked a patch of ground with his boot. Knelt.
"Here." He pointed at a spot between two rocks. "Disturbed earth."
He straightened. "Someone set up a position."
I would have missed it.
He kept walking. Twenty yards east, in the fork of a dead pine, he found mounting hardware. A bracket. Adhesive residue. Scratches in the bark where something small and weatherproof had been attached.
Aimed at the cottage approach.
"This was a camera," he said. "Not FBI."
Lucas's face changed. The professional composure cracked. Not much. Enough.
Dominic photographed the bracket without touching it.
"Whoever set this up had time, tools, and training. The position work is clean." He looked at Lucas. "They mapped your property before your agent arrived. They've been watching the FBI set up."
The silence that followed had weight.
"You don't have a stalker," Dominic said. He put his phone away. "You have an operation."
Lucas stared at the bracket. His jaw worked. Every assumption he'd made about the threat was recalculating behind those careful eyes.
"The camera's been moved," Dominic said. "Which means they're still active. Somewhere we haven't found yet."
My gaze went to the tree line. The ridge. The hundred places a lens could hide and I would never see it. Watching the cottage. The place where Mia slept. The place where I'd held her last night.
Something cold settled in my chest. Not anger. Colder than anger.
The kind of thing that turns a man from someone who paints into someone who plans.
Back at the house, Dominic laid out his assessment in four sentences. His team would operate from a rental property in town. Counter-surveillance sweeps.
Roads, trails, and blind spots Dale's cameras couldn't reach. Rapid response if triggered.
"Your FBI team and my team coordinate through Rivera," I said. "But my people answer to me."
Lucas started to object. I looked at him. He stopped.
Dominic didn't react. He'd stood in a hundred kitchens belonging to a hundred people under threat. None of it impressed him anymore.
Avery came around the corner dragging her stuffed elephant by one ear. She stopped.
Stared up at Dominic. He was even taller than me. She had to crane her neck.
"Are you a soldier?"
Dominic's gaze dropped to her. His expression didn't change.
"Something like that."
She considered this. Nodded. Went back to her coloring.
I watched the exchange and thought: Good. I don't need him to be kind. I need him to be effective.
Lucas left first. Dominic followed.
His handshake was the same as his arrival. Minimal. Done. He got in his black SUV and pulled out of the driveway without looking back.
The gravel settled. The house went quiet.
The sun was going down when I drove back from the follow-up call with Garrett. The mountains were on fire.
Oranges bleeding into reds. Bleeding into something I couldn't name because the colors were too close together.
I blinked. The reds separated from the oranges. Barely.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel.
Not now. Not this. A stalker in my town. A woman I loved in danger. A daughter who needed me to see the world with clear eyes.
I parked at the house. The kitchen light was on.
Through the glass walls I could see Mia at the counter. Brown hair pulled back. Reading glasses pushed up on her head. Flour on her shirt.
She was helping Avery decorate cookies. Avery stood on her step stool with frosting on her chin and a look of total concentration.
"Daddy!" Avery launched off the stool and hit me at the knees. "Mimi made cookies again!"
I crouched down. Caught her. Held her against my chest. She smelled like frosting and shampoo and every good thing I had left.
Over her shoulder, Mia waited in the doorway. Backlit by the warm kitchen.
The woman who was Hadley Winslow. The woman who is Mia Hayes.
Mine.
Whatever comes next, I'm not losing this.
I carried Avery inside. The door closed behind us.
And somewhere on the ridge above the property, a small camera recorded the house lights going on. One by one.