"You weren't accounting for Dmitri's smoke breaks. He's trying to quit, so he takes an extra minute to argue with himself." I opened my eyes, finding Nathan watching me with that intense focus. "What?"
"Nothing. Just... the way you track details. It's impressive."
"Daddy trained me to notice everything. Said the smallest patterns could save your life or end someone else's." I reached for a box of cereal, the kind with marshmallows shaped like rainbows. "Like how you favor your left shoulder. Old injury, probably a through-and-through GSW based on the movement restriction. About two years healed."
His eyebrows rose. "Two and a half. Bureau op that went sideways."
"Milwaukee?"
"Boston. How did you—"
"You mentioned hating clam chowder. Specific food aversions often link to traumatic memories." I added the cereal to our cart. "Plus, your accent gets slightly more pronounced when you're agitated. Native Midwestern trying to sound East Coast neutral. Boston would agitate that linguistic pattern."
"Christ." He shook his head. "Remind me never to play poker with you."
"I'm terrible at poker. Can't bluff." I demonstrated my 'lying' face, which probably looked like a constipated doll. "See?Gabriel said my transparency was a weakness, but then he'd smile like it was actually perfect. I never understood that."
"He wanted you readable to him but opaque to others." Nathan selected some healthy whole grain nonsense cereal. "Classic manipulation. Keep you off-balance about your own abilities."
"Don't." The word came out sharp. "Don't analyze him."
"Okay." He said it simply, without the pushing I expected. "Then let's analyze the Volkov security rotation instead. What did you make of their Wednesday patterns?"
I latched onto the safer topic gratefully. We worked our way through the store, filling the cart with what Nathan deemed 'actual food' while dissecting the Volkov operation like a frog in biology class. He had a way of building on my observations, adding layers I'd missed, teaching without condescending.
"Their communication protocol is the weakness," he said, adding vegetables I didn't recognize to our cart. "They rely too heavily on cell towers. A localized jammer would—"
"Create chaos but also limit our own intel. Better to intercept and redirect." I picked up a package of strawberries, inhaling their sweetness. "I have a program that can mirror their frequency, make them think they're talking to each other when really they're talking to ghosts."
"You code?"
"Gabriel insisted. Said a modern weapon needed modern skills." I placed the strawberries carefully in the cart. "I'm fluent in seven programming languages, four spoken ones, and American Sign Language. Oh, and I can forge five different signature styles perfectly."
"Of course you can." He sounded amused and something else. Impressed? "What else did Gabriel teach you?"
"Everything. How to walk, how to smile, how to make people see what they expect instead of what's there." Idemonstrated, shifting my posture subtly until I looked younger, more vulnerable. "How to be whatever the moment required."
"And what does this moment require?"
"I don't know." The admission felt dangerous. "That's the problem with being off-program. Without clear parameters, I just... float. Like a doll waiting for someone to pick her up and position her."
Nathan stopped walking, turning to face me fully. "You're not a doll, Bunny."
"Aren't I?" I gestured at my dress, my careful curls, my practiced expressions. "Look at me. Even buying groceries, I'm performing. The cute girl in the sundress who definitely isn't planning to disembowel three men on Tuesday."
"The performance isn't all you are."
"No. Sometimes I'm the weapon hiding under the performance. But that's just another kind of doll, isn't it? Pull my string and I kill. Wind me up and I hunt. Tell me to get on my knees and I do." I laughed, the sound too high. "At least Barbie had multiple careers. I just have multiple ways to end people."
He reached out slowly, telegraphing the movement, and tucked a curl behind my ear. "What do you want to be? Outside the performance and the weapon?"
"I want..." I stopped, the words tangling. What did I want? Gabriel had never asked. Never cared. My wants weren't part of the program. "I want to find him. I want to show him what I became. I want him to be proud. I want to cut his throat. I want him to hold me and say I'm perfect. I want to burn everything he built. I want—"
My breathing had gone ragged. Nathan pulled me against his chest, right there in the produce section, and I let him because the alternative was shattering.
"It's okay," he murmured. "Wanting contradictory things is human."
"I'm not good at human."
