“Car accident. My parents. I don’t remember them very well. I was young, and I didn’t have my memory yet. Not the way it became later.”
“Your eidetic recall developed after?”
“The doctors thought it might be connected. Some kind of neurological response to loss.” She shrugged. “Or maybe it was always there and just hadn’t been tested yet. I was eight. I wasn’t exactly cataloging my cognitive abilities.”
Lincoln nodded slowly. “I’ve memorized code structures, security protocols, entire system architectures. I’ve built companies by seeing patterns other people couldn’t perceive.”
Morgan looked at him.
“I’ve also told people things they didn’t want to hear because the data was accurate and I didn’t understand why accuracy would be unwelcome. I’ve corrected teachers in front of classrooms and wondered why everyone was angry. I’ve explained to dates exactly why their logic was flawed and been genuinely confused when they didn’t call me back for another date.”
His hands were steady on the wheel, but his voice had dropped. Quieter. More careful.
“I’ve been calledtoo muchtoo. Different reasons.”
He didn’t saysame result. He didn’t need to.
“Bear and Derek used to run interference for me,” Lincoln continued. “When I was a kid. I mean, they still do. But back then, they’d see me about to say something that would get me in trouble, and they’d distract the other person or change the subject or just physically steer me away.” A ghost of something crossed his face—not quite a smile. “Derek once tackled me to prevent me from telling our great uncle that his investment strategy was statistically likely to fail.”
“Was it?”
“Yes. He lost forty thousand dollars the following year.” The ghost faded. “But apparently there are social contexts where being right isn’t the point.”
“I never had someone to run interference for me.” She watched another mile marker pass. “Ms. Delacroix tried to teach me when to stay quiet. When to pretend I didn’t remember something so people wouldn’t feel threatened.But by then, I was already in high school, and the patterns were set.”
The name hung in the air between them. Ms. Delacroix. The letters. The reason they were driving into potential enemy territory.
“That’s why you stayed in Montana,” Lincoln said. “After you aged out. You wanted to be near her.”
“She’d retired to a little house outside Kalispell. Close enough that I could visit on weekends.” Morgan watched the mountains growing larger through the windshield. “When I got the job at the Whitefish library, it felt like everything was finally clicking into place. I had work I loved. I had her nearby. I had a home that was actually mine for the first time in my life.”
“And then she died.”
“When I was twenty-two. Heart attack. No warning.” She kept her voice steady. “I thought about leaving after that. Starting over somewhere new. But her letters were in my apartment. My books. The shelves I’d built myself. It was the only proof that I’d existed somewhere, to someone, as more than a case file number.”
She could feel him listening. That particular stillness he got when something mattered.
“I keep thinking about what happens if I can’t get them back.” Morgan’s voice dropped. “If Randall’s people destroyed everything. Or the police took it as evidence. Or?—”
She couldn’t finish. The possibility was too vast.
“We’ll get them.”
The same words he’d said last night. The same certainty.
The miles passed. The landscape grew more familiar. Morgan found herself pointing out landmarks without meaning to—the diner where she’d eaten her first mealafter aging out of the system, the turnoff to the hiking trail where Ms. Delacroix had taught her to identify wildflowers.
Lincoln listened to all of it. Asked questions. Not performing interest. Actually cataloging.
“Tell me about your parents,” Morgan said, somewhere between one landmark and the next.
“Blake and Quinn Bollinger, although Dad’s been calledBabyhis whole life.” Lincoln’s voice warmed on the names. “He was dyslexic. Hid it from everyone and didn’t learn to read until he was an adult. Thought he was stupid for most of his childhood because no one understood what was happening in his brain.”
“That must have been hard.”
“He doesn’t talk about it much. But I think it’s why he was so patient with me when I was struggling with things other kids found easy.” Lincoln adjusted his grip on the wheel. “Social cues. Emotional recognition. Knowing when to stop talking. He never made me feel broken for not understanding.”
“And your mother?”
