Page 44 of A Very Bumpy Christmas
MEL: Be safe. Don’t do the thing where you make me famous on the news.
Copy. No news.
An hour and change into the watch, a stone-gray jacket appears at the end of the walkway. Mercer. Hat low. Casual stride that’s confident in its own lie. He keys into a door on the south side, third from the end. I note the number, the sightlines, the escape paths. He drops his duffel on the bed without closing the blinds all the way. Rookie move or deliberate? He sits. He pulls out a phone that’s not the one he uses in public. Burner. He dials. He doesn’t talk for twenty seconds. He’s listening.
I don’t hear the other side. I do hear the tone of a man who thinks he has time.
“Recon only,” Duke’s voice reminds me in my ear. “Do not collect the piece.”
I don’t. I watch. I record in my head like I’m back in training: tempo of his movements, where his hands go when he’s thinking, whether he opens the window before or after he checks the door. He wipes the surface he touched, and he misses the switch plate. I smile without humor and file it underhuman.When he turns on the TV and cranks the volume too high for a man who likes his own thoughts, I tag it asnoise for coverand consider what that means about what he usually hears.
I break the watch only when I know his rhythms. When I peel off into the cold, my phone buzzes again.
DUKE: Good pull. We’ll run his comms pattern and the number block. Back off for now.
GUNNER: You hungry? Because I am starving and I assume you’re a camel.
I need to check on Mel.
GUNNER: I knew I liked you. That was a test, you passed.
I drive home through a town that’s wrapped itself in lights to make the dark look intentional. The wedge will be under the door. The tree will be quiet in the corner. Two women I care about will be arguing about which of the seven cheeses counts as dinner.
The case is a knot I can untie. It will take time, and discipline, and the ability to sit still while someone thinks he’s the hunter. I can do all of that.
The other knot—the one labeled January—I’ll learn. I can build a life the way I clear a room: methodical, with good backup, with the kind of care that makes the next moment possible.
For now, I turn onto her street and feel my shoulders drop at the sight of her window lit warm. I’m not leaving this bubble. I’m thickening its perimeter.
18
Melanie
It’s after midnight, the kind of quiet where the fridge hum sounds like a song. The tree’s glow spills down the hall, soft and gold. I pad into the kitchen in socks, because sleep took one look at my brain and said “no thanks.” I put on the tea kettle even though I won’t wait for it. I just like the promise of it.
The wedge is still under the door. I’ve made peace with it. It's our little triangle of control in a world that refuses to be linear.
Lucas appears in the doorway, low sweats, no shirt, sleep-tousled hair, the careful way he fills a room without setting off any alarms. He checks the hallway with that glance that looks like nothing and sees everything, then leans against the doorframe and watches me pretend to wrangle a tea bag.
“Insomnia?” he asks, voice low.
“Just thinking,” I say, then roll my eyes at myself. “Okay, spiraling.”
He steps in, takes the mug from my hand, adds hot water like it’s an intervention. “Hydration,” he says, because it’s our bit now.
“Captain Safety,” I murmur back.
We stand shoulder to shoulder, listening to the tiny pops of the heating pipes and the faraway swoosh of a car on wet road. My reflection in the window looks steadier next to his.
“What’s in your head?” he asks after a while, soft and easy, like a question I can set down without it breaking.
I toy with a lemon slice. “Everything. Mercer. The appointment. One centimeter.” I hold up a finger like I’m trying to show him what one centimeter looks like even though I’m not even sure. “Also… January.” The word tilts the room.
He doesn’t flinch. He just sets the mug down, turns me so I’m facing him, and braces his hands on the counter behind me like he’s making sure the kitchen doesn’t try to run away.
“Denver scares me less than loving you wrong,” he says.
The line lands between us like a carefully placed brick—solid, true, not heavy in the way that hurts but heavy in the way that holds.
