46. Mia
MIA
The road narrowed to one lane and the trees closed overhead like a tunnel and I stopped counting the turns.
Left. Right. Right again. A switchback that pressed me against the door. My wrists burned where the zip ties cut into skin, and the seat belt held me tight because Elijah Brooks had buckled it for me. Like a gentleman. Like a date.
He sat beside me in the back seat. Calm. Unhurried. Up front, a driver kept both hands on the wheel. The man in the passenger seat hadn't spoken since the parking lot. He was the one who'd shot Dale.
The mountain road climbed and the air thinned and the trees grew taller and darker until the sky was just a ribbon overhead.
I tried to think. Tried to make my brain work the way it used to behind a news desk. Sorting facts into order. Building a story that made sense.
But the facts were these: the man who left the note under my door was sitting beside me. The man who sent the dead roses. The man who watched me sleep in the cottage while Avery slept down the hall. The man who put a bullet in Cory's chest and another one in my spine.
My phone was on the seat of my SUV. My reading glasses on the dash. Nobody knew where I was. Nobody was coming.
I thought about what he might do to me. The dead roses.
The note under my door. The way he'd touched my shoulder when he left Tony's house, like he was claiming something.
Men like this didn't take you to have a conversation.
They took you to finish a story they'd been writing in their heads for years.
A story where you didn't get a voice and you didn't get a choice and you didn't get to leave.
The bullet in my spine throbbed. It always knew before I did.
"You're quiet," Brooks said.
I didn't answer.
"That's all right." He settled back against the leather. Nothing behind us but empty road. "I've waited a long time. I can wait a few more miles."
"Harvard," he said. "October. The library. Second floor."
My hands went still.
"You were sitting on the floor between the stacks.
Pink t-shirt. Jeans. A textbook in your lap.
" He said it the way someone describes a painting in a museum.
Reverent. Practiced. A memory he'd polished until it gleamed.
"Someone called your name and you looked up and you smiled at me. Thirty seconds. Maybe less."
I had been a kid. I didn't remember his face. I didn't remember the library or the stacks or the pink t-shirt.
He remembered everything.
"I went back every day for two weeks," he said. "You never came back. I didn't know your last name. I didn't know anything except Hadley and that smile."
The trees blurred past. The road climbed higher.
"Years." His voice was soft. Almost tender. "Years, Hadley. I saw you on television and I knew. I found your apartment in a week. Your coffee order. Your morning routine. The way you stretched by the window when you thought no one was watching."
My stomach turned. The window exercises. The physical therapy after the shooting.
"Cory Wheeler was in the way," Brooks said.
I stopped breathing.
"I gave clear instructions. Remove him. Do not touch her." He straightened his cuff. Calm. Businesslike. Like he was discussing a contractor who'd botched a renovation. "The man disobeyed. He shot you both. I killed him for it."
The road hummed under the tires. My vision tunneled.
Cory. Standing on the sidewalk outside our apartment. The way he'd grabbed my hand. The pop. The look on his face.
The man sitting three feet from me had ordered it.
"The hospital was difficult," Brooks said. "Nine months is a long time to sit beside someone who can't hear you."
The hospital. The nurses had mentioned a cousin who visited at night. A quiet man who held my hand.
That was him. That was this man.
"I had a plan," he said. "The island. The chapel. A pastor. Everything was ready." The driver took a curve and the SUV hugged the road. "And then you disappeared. Overnight. The FBI took you and I had to start from nothing."
His voice tightened. The first crack in his composure since the parking lot.
"It took me a while to find you in Rockford. The note under your door. I wanted you to know." He glanced at me. Blue eyes. Pleasant face. The kind of face people trust. "I wanted you to know I would always find you."
I swallowed. My throat was raw.
The journalist in me was still working. Still recording. The trembling, terrified animal part of me was screaming behind walls I'd built from years of practice.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked. My voice didn't shake. I didn't let it.
"Because you deserve the truth." The SUV turned off the paved road onto gravel. "Nobody else ever gave you that. Not the FBI. Not your handler. Not even the artist."
The gravel crunched. The trees opened up.
A valley stretched below us. Mountains on both sides, steep and close, like walls. One road in. I could see the roof of a building at the bottom. A ranch house. Lights on.
"I bought this through Lascus Property," Brooks said. "My father's company. Different name. No trail." The driver pulled through a gate. Two men in dark jackets stood on either side. They nodded as we passed. "Nobody knows this place exists."
We stopped in front of the house. The driver cut the engine.
The silence was enormous. No traffic. No neighbors. Just wind in the pines and the tick of the cooling engine and the sound of my own breathing.
The driver and the operative got out first. They crossed the gravel toward the gate without looking back. More muscle for the perimeter. Brooks didn't need them inside. This part was personal.
Brooks came around to my door. Opened it. Unbuckled my seat belt. Cut the zip ties with a small knife and put the knife back in his pocket.
"Don't run," he said. Not a threat. A statement of fact. "There's nowhere to go."
He was right. The valley was a bowl. The road we'd come down was the only way out and the men at the gate blocked it.
I rubbed my wrists. The skin was raw and red. Tony's bracelet caught the light. The last thing he'd given me. I closed my fingers around it and held on.
I walked toward the house because he expected me to. The valley was a cage. The gate was guarded. My phone was in an empty SUV in a school parking lot a hundred miles away.
Nobody knew where I was.
The house was clean. Spotless. Warm light from lamps that someone had turned on before we arrived. Fresh flowers on the entry table. White lilies. Alive.
My skin crawled. Dead roses in the cottage. Live flowers here. Like he'd upgraded. Like this was the real version of his obsession and everything before had been a draft.
A hallway. A large room at the end. I stopped in the doorway.
An altar.
Someone had built a makeshift altar against the far wall. White fabric draped over a wooden frame. Candles. A minister stood beside it. Real collar. Real Bible. The kind of man who'd marry a woman against her will as long as the check cleared.
A wedding dress hung from a hook on the side wall. White. Simple. My size.
"I had it made in Paris," Brooks said behind me. "Your measurements from the photographs."
I turned to face him.
He was standing in the doorway. Backlit. His hands at his sides. No weapon visible. He didn't need one. He'd killed people with his hands. He'd ordered hits from hotel rooms. He'd dismantled security systems and outwitted the FBI and tracked me across the country.
And he'd done all of it because a girl in a pink t-shirt had smiled at him in a library.
"Put on the dress," he said.
"No."
The word came out steady. Stronger than I expected. My fingers found Tony's bracelet on my wrist. The thin silver band he'd clasped on me one evening while Avery slept down the hall. He'd kissed my wrist after he closed the clasp. I hadn't understood why it mattered so much to him.
I understood now.
I was going to find a way back. Back to the man who painted me in secret because he couldn't say the words yet.
Back to the little girl who called me Mimi.
Back to the glass house full of light and noise and the life I'd chosen.
The life I'd fought for. The life this man had no right to take from me.
He tilted his head. Studied me. The way he'd studied me across Tony's living room. Like I was something that belonged to him. "Hadley."
"My name is Mia."
Something shifted behind his eyes. A flicker. The first thing I'd seen from him that wasn't complete control.
"Your name," he said, "is whatever I decide it is."
"My name is Mia Hayes. I chose it. It's mine."
He looked at me for a long time. Then he smiled. Not warm. Not cold. Patient. The smile of a man who had waited a long time and could wait a few more minutes.
"We'll start without the dress," he said. He walked past me toward the altar. "Come."
I didn't move.
He stopped. Turned. His voice didn't change. Still pleasant. Still calm. "The artist lives in a glass house, Hadley. Glass breaks. And the little girl sleeps with a nightlight that I can see from the tree line."
My blood went cold.
"I'm not asking you to love me," he said. "Not yet. I'm asking you to walk to that altar. For their sake."
The minister shifted on his feet. His eyes were flat. Bought and paid for.
I walked to the altar. My legs moved. My brain recorded. Every detail. The grain of the wood. The wax pooling at the base of the candles. The way Brooks positioned himself to my left. The side closest to his right hand.
Brooks pulled a tablet from his jacket. He tapped the screen and I caught the image before he angled it away.
The glass house. Vehicles in the driveway. Lights in the windows. Movement behind the glass walls.
Tony was home. The security team was in position. Nobody had mobilized. Nobody was coming.
Brooks set the tablet on a side table, screen up, and turned to the minister.
"Begin," he said.
He cleared his throat. Opened a book. His hands trembled.