***
At dawn, I woke to the sound of a tow truck. I rolled over and watched her get dressed—no drama, just efficiency, the same way she worked through a neural network bug or a half-collapsed data cluster. She looked at me, caught the stare, and smirked.
“Help me drag him outside?” she said.
We hauled Holloway, still bound and leaking blood, to the edge of the driveway and left him in the shadow of the mailbox. When the tow truck jacked Holloway’s car, we watched from the porch, arms folded, two outlaws with nothing left to hide.
The driver looked at the scene, saw the blood, the cords, the ruined face, and shrugged. “He owe you money?” he asked.
Seraphina smiled. “Something like that. Drop him and the car at the FBI office on Rodeo Park.”
The truck rumbled off, Holloway rattling in the passenger seat, and we listened to the engine fade down the mountain.
She turned to me, eyes clear and hungry. “What now?”
I shrugged. “We ride.”
She nodded, and that was that. We packed up, hopped on the bike, and let the road do the thinking. The wind was sharp, the sun barely over the horizon, the world waking up for another round. Her arms wrapped around my waist, tight and sure, and I opened the throttle, the machine roaring under us, the sky wide open ahead.
As we hit the first turn, she leaned in, lips to my ear, and said the thing we’d both been avoiding.
“I love you, you know.”
It hit harder than any punch. I squeezed the throttle, grinning into the wind, and let the bike carry us into the future, whatever the hell it had in store.
We didn’t look back. Not even once.
