Page 18 of Beyond Protection
I set the phone down. Face-down.
Eamon touched his beard. Three fingers, left hand, smoothing over his jaw in a gesture that appeared subconscious.
Michael caught me staring. Raised an eyebrow that saidReally? Now?
Eamon moved to the window. Angled himself to see out without being framed in the glass.
"Still clear," he said to Michael.
"You think they'll come back?"
"Won't know until they move again." He focused on me. "The timeline in the message—three weeks until intervention—that's a deadline. But it's also a promise. They're not impulsive."
"Which means Mac needs to maintain routines without giving them evidence he's deteriorating," Michael said.
"Every time you look exhausted or scared or broken, you confirm their narrative," Eamon said directly to me. "They're building a case for extraction. Documenting why you need saving from your own life."
Saved from your own life.
"Then what do you need from me?"
"Access to your phone. Full message history. Background on anyone who might fit this profile." He paused. "And I need youto not lie about how scared you are. I can protect a real person. I can't protect a highlight reel."
Ma refilled my coffee. Her hand rested on my shoulder a moment—warm and steadying and everything my mother's hands had never been.
Michael's phone buzzed. "Security company. I need to take this." He headed for the living room, leaving us alone.
"You don't follow sports," I said.
"No."
"Michael told you who I am, though."
"He told me you're his cousin. That you're in danger." His hands hung loose at his sides, but his posture read coiled spring. "The rest doesn't matter to me."
"The rest is my entire life."
"No. Baseball is what you do. Your life is what's happening right now—someone documenting you, planning extraction, and treating you like a specimen instead of a person." His voice remained calm. "Your life is deciding whether you trust me enough to show me who you are underneath all the performance."
His words touched something raw inside.
Ma announced she was going upstairs to make beds. The stairs creaked under her weight—a familiar sound dating back to my childhood.
Eamon brought a manila folder to the table. Set it between us like evidence.
"I can't protect you if you spend the entire time pretending this isn't as bad as it is."
"I don't know how not to follow a script," I said quietly. "I'm an athlete. That's what we do."
Eamon sat across from me. Folded those scarred hands on the table and looked at me with his winter-water eyes.
"We'll work on this as a team. You know how teams work."
He opened the folder.
Inside: my life as evidence. Printouts. Screenshots. My face caught at Ma's window yesterday—terrified and trying to hide it. The hiding wasn't working.
"This is what the stalker sees," Eamon said quietly. "Not screen-ready you. This."
