I don't answer because the truth is classified, even from myself. The way she moves through space like she's fighting gravity. The way her scent has invaded everything until I taste vanilla when I breathe. The way she looks at me sometimes, like I might be more than the soldier assigned to keep her breathing.
Asset. Mission. Nothing else.
Midnight arrives with her pacing getting worse, the manic energy curdling into something darker.
"I can't do this." Her hands rake through her hair. "I can't be here. Can't be still. Can't be sober. Can't close my eyes because every time I do, I'm back there. In that room with Gabriel and…"
She stops. Realizes what she's saying.
"Marisol. What happened with your brother?"
"I need air."
She bolts—not for the front door but up, toward the roof. I follow because that's what I do now. I follow her into nightmares and onto rooftops and through the wreckage of whatever she's surviving. My hand checks the Glock. Instinct. Always instinct.
The pool glows under the moon, perfectly still water she never touches. She stands at its edge, arms wrapped around herself, and the tactical part of my brain notes the vulnerability—open rooftop, multiple sight lines, impossible to secure. The other part, the part I'm trying to silence, just sees her. Trembling. Breaking.
The water is perfectly still, moon painting silver across the surface. Miami sprawls below us, all neon and promise, but she only has eyes for the water. The chlorine scent mixes with her vanilla perfume, with the salt air from the bay.
"My mother taught me to swim," she says without looking at me. "In the ocean. Every morning before sunrise, when I was little."
I wait. Let the words come. The cool night air raises goosebumps on her bare arms.
"She said water was where she felt closest to God. That's why she named me Marisol. Sea and sun. She wanted me to be both."
"You don't swim anymore? When did you stop?"
"When she died." Her voice cracks. "Eight years ago. Eight and a half, actually. The water felt like her, and being in it felt like… drowning with her ghost."
"And you haven't been in since?"
"No."
"But you still live here. Still come up to sit by the pool."
She shrugs. "I thought someday I'd be brave enough. But every time I look at it, I see her face. And then I see…"
She wraps her arms around herself, and something in my chest pulls tight. Distant traffic hums below, the city that never sleeps providing white noise to her confession. She wraps her arms tighter around herself, and I see it building—the panic, the spiral, the break.
"What else do you see?"
"Nothing."
"You said Gabriel in your sleep. You said there was a girl."
"Stop."
"You said you helped him fix something, Marisol?"
The words rip from her throat: "Yes." The words fall like bodies. "And what we did… what I helped him do… I CAN'T!"
She breaks. The words come out in a rush, like water through a dam.
"My perfect, beloved brother who everyone loves, who my mother praised with her dying breath, and I can't talk about this, I CAN'T—"
The panic attack hits like a storm. She's gasping, hyperventilating, hands clawing at her chest like she's trying to tear through to her lungs. She staggers, nearly falls into the pool—I catch her, pull her back, but she's gone, lost in whatever horror lives in her memory.
"I can't breathe—Gabriel—I can't—she wouldn't wake up—"
