44. Mia
MIA
Something about the way Elijah Brooks stood in the living room made my skin feel two sizes too small.
Tony had appeared in the library doorway six minutes before the doorbell rang. His face was tight. Controlled.
"Dominic's team just flagged a car on the access road. It's Brooks."
My stomach dropped. The grocery store. The cereal aisle. Have a good day, Ms. Winslow. The eggs on the floor and the world shrinking to a point.
"What do we do?" I asked.
"We don't know it's him. Not for sure." Tony's voice was steady.
The voice he used when he was thinking three steps ahead.
"But if it is, and we don't answer, he knows we're onto him.
He adapts. Changes his approach. If we let him in, he thinks his cover is still good.
And people reveal themselves when they feel safe. "
I stared at him. He was right. Ten years of interviewing people on camera had taught me the same thing. You don't get the story by slamming the door. You get it by smiling and letting them talk.
"Stay close to me," Tony said. It wasn't a request.
He texted something. Then the doorbell rang.
Brooks stood on the porch with a bottle of wine and an open palm. That pleasant, symmetrical face. Blue eyes. A smile that hit every mark.
"I was in the area," he said. Like people just happened to wander up a private mountain road with twelve hardwired cameras and motion sensors on every approach.
Tony shook his hand. "Come in."
I watched him say it. Watched the muscles in his jaw work as the words came out. He held the door open and Brooks walked into our home and Tony didn't take his eyes off him once.
Now Brooks sat on the edge of the couch with a glass of the wine he'd brought. Relaxed. Comfortable. Like he'd been invited. Tony stood by the fireplace, arms crossed, coffee mug untouched. Not leaving. Not sitting down. Positioned between Brooks and the hallway that led to Avery's room.
I stood next to Tony. Close enough that my arm pressed against his.
Brooks was telling a story about leaving Angelina. His voice was warm and easy. The words came out polished, like he'd rehearsed them in a mirror and then rehearsed them again until the rehearsal disappeared.
"She crossed a line," he said. "After that confrontation with Mia, I couldn't look the other way anymore.
I told her it was over and she didn't take it well.
" He shook his head. The performance of a man carrying a burden.
"I should have seen it sooner. The way she talked about Tony. About Avery. It wasn't healthy."
"That must have been difficult," I said. Smiled. Played my part.
And the whole time, my stomach was turning.
He asked about Avery's school. About the security upgrades. About whether Tony was still painting. Each question landed with the precision of a man who already knew the answers and wanted to see if ours matched.
Tony answered in short sentences. Polite. Casual. Giving nothing. I could feel the tension rolling off him like heat from a stove, but his face showed nothing. He looked like a man making small talk with an acquaintance.
He looked like a man who wanted to break the wine bottle and use the jagged end.
I couldn't name what was wrong with Brooks. That was the problem. There was nothing off about his words. Nothing wrong with his posture or his tone or his sympathetic head tilts. He was doing everything right. Every social cue, every beat of the conversation, landed where it was supposed to land.
But something underneath the surface was wrong. Like a house with perfect paint and a foundation full of cracks.
The journalist in me, the one I'd buried under a fake name and a new life in the mountains, lifted her head. She didn't have a reason. She had a feeling. And feelings weren't evidence.
But they'd kept me alive before.
Avery came padding in from the playroom with a crayon behind her ear and marker on both hands.
"Hi," she said to Brooks. Avery said hi to everyone. The mailman. The deer that stood at the tree line and stared at the house. Everyone.
Tony shifted. One step to the right. Closer to Avery. The movement was small. Brooks wouldn't have noticed. I noticed.
Brooks crouched down to her level. "Well, hello there."
"Your eyes are really blue," Avery said.
"Thank you. And yours are really green."
He smiled at her. It was a good smile. Practiced. But the way he looked at her, studied her, catalogued her. She wasn't a child to him. She was a piece on a board. A variable to be noted and filed away.
My spine pulsed. The old pain, the bullet that still lived inside me, waking up. My body always sensed the threat before my brain caught up.
I wanted to pull Avery behind me. I wanted to put myself between her and that smile. The same instinct I'd felt since the day she'd looked up at me with those green eyes. Mimi, can you read me a story?
Instead I stood there. Smiling. Playing hostess to a man who made my skin crawl for reasons I couldn't prove.
"Pickle," Tony said. "Why don't you go finish your picture for Sophia."
Avery considered this. "Can I use the glitter?"
"Go ahead."
She padded back down the hall. Tony's shoulders dropped half an inch. The only sign that every muscle in his body had been locked.
Brooks straightened and turned his attention to me.
That was when I caught it.
The look.
It was fast. Half a second, maybe less. His gaze tracked me from the bracelet on my wrist to my face and then down to my bare feet and back up again. Not the way a man looks at a woman he finds attractive. Not even the way a man looks at a woman he wants.
The way a man looks at something he owns.
I'd seen that look before. On Angelina's face, the day she'd walked into this house and talked about Tony like he was property she'd misplaced. The look that said mine without ever forming the word.
I glanced at Tony. His jaw was set. His eyes fixed on Brooks with an expression I'd only seen once before. The day he'd told me about Angelina.
He'd seen it too. Whatever instinct was screaming at me without a name, the look on Tony's face told me he'd caught the same thing.
His history with Angelina had given him a radar for this.
He'd grown up inside the cage of someone who looked at people like property. He'd recognize those bars anywhere.
Brooks turned to Tony with that easy smile. "Beautiful place you've got here. Avery's gotten so big."
"She has," Tony said. His voice was level. Casual.
But the hand resting on the mantel had gone white at the knuckles.
Brooks stood and wandered toward the front hall, wine glass in hand.
I watched him take in the house. Not admiring.
Inventorying. He paused where Avery's butterfly backpack hung on its hook by the door.
His eyes lingered. Not on the backpack. On the laminated half-day schedule taped to the wall beside it.
Drop-off. Pickup. Emergency contacts. The name of the school printed in cheerful blue letters at the top.
He'd just gotten everything he needed from a hook by the door and a piece of paper on the wall.
Tony saw it too. I could tell by the way his breathing changed. Slower. Controlled. The way a man breathes when he's keeping himself from moving.
"Half-day program," Brooks said, reading the schedule on the wall like it was a menu at a restaurant. He turned back to us with that easy smile. "That's great. Structure is so important at that age."
"It's been good for her," I said. The words came out before I could stop them. Too much. I knew it the second I said it.
Brooks nodded. "Smart. Ease her in."
He finished his wine. Set the glass on the coffee table with a soft click. Thanked us for the visit. Shook Tony's hand. Touched my shoulder on the way out, just briefly, just his fingertips grazing the fabric of my sleeve, and every cell in my body recoiled.
Tony opened the door for him. Stood in the frame until Brooks's car disappeared down the mountain road.
Then he closed the door. Locked it. And pulled out his phone.
"He's gone," Tony said. "Run him. Everything."
Lucas was already on the line. Dominic's team had called him the moment Brooks turned onto the access road.
"Tell me what happened," Lucas said through the speaker.
"He came in with a bottle of wine and a story about leaving Angelina.
Charming. Polished. Every word out of his mouth was calibrated.
" Tony was pacing in front of the glass wall.
"He looked at Mia like she was something he owned.
He looked at Avery like a chess piece. And he read our daughter's school schedule off the wall. "
Silence on the line. Then: "Tony, we've been focused on Marchand. If we pull resources and we're wrong..."
"You're not wrong. I watched his eyes. Mia watched his eyes. Run Elijah Brooks. Not Oliver. Brooks. Financials, background, Lascus Property, every shell company, every property."
More silence. I could hear Lucas thinking.
"Okay. I'm pulling additional agents from the field office tonight.
Full background, financials, Lascus Property, everything.
I'll coordinate with Dominic's team on surveillance.
And I want eyes on Brooks around the clock until we know what we're dealing with. "
Tony hung up. Turned to me.
"We should go," he said. "Pack a bag. Take Avery. Drive until we hit an ocean."
"No."
"Mia."
"No." I crossed my arms because if I didn't hold onto something I was going to shake apart. "I am not running. I am not packing Avery into a car in the middle of the night and turning her into a ghost. I'm not doing to her what the FBI did to me."
"This isn't about the FBI. This is about keeping you safe."
"Safe where, Tony? Another mountain town?
Another fake name? How long before he finds us again?
" I stepped toward him. Not backing down.
Not now. "Whoever is doing this found me through witness protection.
" My voice cracked. I made it stop cracking.
"Running doesn't work. It never worked. It just buys time until the next set of dead flowers shows up on the next doorstep. "
Tony stared at me. His chest rose and fell. The thin white lines across his palms caught the light from the glass wall.
I could see him fighting it. The instinct to grab us and go. To put Avery in the truck and drive through the night. Somewhere with no mountains and no glass walls. No man with blue eyes who showed up with a bottle of wine and an inventory behind his smile.
"Then what?" he said.
"We stay. We fight. We let Lucas do his job and Dominic do his job and we keep Avery close and we don't blink."
He closed his eyes. His hands curled at his sides and then opened again.
"Okay," he said. The word sounded like it cost him something.
"Okay."
He pulled me into him. Not gentle. Not rough. Just close. His chin rested on top of my head and I pressed my face against his chest and for a few seconds neither of us moved.
"If anything happens to you," he said into my hair. He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
The bracelet on my wrist caught the last of the evening light. I didn't know what it contained. I just knew he'd given it to me after the dead flowers. That he touched it sometimes when he thought I wasn't looking. Like it was a rosary. Like it kept me tethered to him.
I held on tighter.
That night I stood in the hallway outside Avery's room and watched through the crack in the door.
Tony sat in the rocking chair with Avery asleep against his chest. Her dark curls spilled over his arm. One of his hands covered her entire back. Like if he could just make himself big enough, wide enough, nothing could reach her.
He wasn't rocking. He was just sitting there. Holding her. Staring at the butterfly nightlight glowing in the corner with an expression that was somewhere between prayer and war.
I leaned my shoulder against the door frame. My ribs ached. Not the bullet. Something deeper. Something that hurt because it was full, not because it was empty.
This man. This child. This life I'd stumbled into with a fake name and a borrowed car and a bullet lodged against my spine. I would burn the world down before I let anyone take it from me.
The deadbolt on her window was locked. The motion sensors blinked along the ridge outside. Twelve cameras fed live footage to a monitor that Dominic's team watched around the clock.
The fortress protected the house. Every angle. Every approach.
But Avery went to school three mornings a week. Three hours each time. Five minutes between the SUV and the building entrance. Five minutes of open air and parking lot and a gap in the wall we'd built around her.
And somewhere out there, driving down the mountain road with our daughter's schedule memorized, was a man with blue eyes. A smile that never quite reached them.
School was not the fortress.
School was not secure.