Page 27 of Beyond Protection
"Did you figure out how to trust your instincts again?" I asked.
"I'm still working on it." He turned to look at me. "You?"
"Same."
The highway curved. Seattle's lights spread below us, refracted through rain into something almost beautiful.
"For what it's worth," Mac said, "you didn't hesitate today. At the condo. When you moved in front of me before checking if anything was wrong." He paused. "You just moved."
I had. Without thinking. Pure instinct.
"Muscle memory," I said.
"Maybe. Or maybe you're better than you think you are."
I didn't know how to respond to that.
So I drove.
Ma's neighborhood was quiet. Christmas lights on half the houses, bare trees skeletal against the evening sky. I parked two houses down—better sightlines to the street.
Mac reached for his door handle. Stopped.
"Thank you," he said. "For not making me stay at the condo and understanding why I need to be here."
"The house has shit security," I said. "Old locks. A basement window I don't like. No cameras."
"But?"
"But it's full of people who'd hear you scream. Who'd come running." I looked into his eyes. "Sometimes the less secure place is safer."
Mac smiled. Not the public one. The real one that made him look younger.
"Plus," I added, "Ma's already got that basement room set up for me. If I tried to leave, she'd hunt me down."
Mac laughed. "Yeah. She would."
We got out. The rain was light but steady.
Halfway up Ma's front walk, Mac stopped. Tilted his face up.
I watched him stand there—water darkening his hair, running down his temples and catching in his eyelashes. Eyes closed. Breathing.
Present.
Alive.
Beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with cameras or control.
The stalker had documented 847 images in an attempt to capture this.
They didn't understand that you couldn't preserve something that only existed in motion and in the unguarded moment when someone stopped calculating angles and breathed.
When he opened his eyes, they found mine immediately. "I forget sometimes," he said. "That I have a body. That I'm allowed to... feel things."
We reached the porch steps. Light spilled from the windows. Inside, I saw movement—someone setting the table, someone else gesturing as they spoke.
"The condo's safer structurally," I said. "Better locks, harder to access, defensible position."
