I pulled a mug from the cabinet. Opened the next cabinet and found the box of chamomile tea behind a row of energy drink cans and a bottle of ibuprofen, and I made her a cup without thinking about it. Bag in first, then the water just off boiling, steep for four minutes. No sugar.
I set it in front of her and she stared at it.
“You have chamomile tea.”
“Apparently.”
“I figured you’d only have black coffee. That’s what Naomi—” She stopped. Recalibrated. “Naomi used to give me a hard time about the tea. She said it tasted like someone boiled a field and gave up halfway through.”
That sounded like Naomi. Exactly like Naomi. I opened my mouth to say something and found that I had absolutely nothing, so I closed it again and turned back to the counter and poured myself coffee that had been sitting in the pot since before I’d left for the mission. It was brutal. I drank it anyway.
“I don’t know why I have it,” I said, because she was still looking at the mug like it contained a question she didn’t know how to ask. “Probably grabbed it by accident.”
She wrapped her hands around it and took a sip and didn’t push further.
“How are your parents?”
“They’re fine.” She said it the way people saidfinewhen the answer had rooms they weren’t opening. “My mom’s redecorating again. My dad retired from teaching last year. They’re... fine.”
“And you’ve been at the FBI for how long?”
“Almost three years. Contractor, not agent. Green badge, not blue. I do pattern analysis. Data work.” She tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear. “What about you? What have you been doing out here?”
“Consulting. Tech infrastructure. Remote work.”
“That sounds like you.”
“It does.”
She nodded like that was a complete answer, and I let her because it was all I had. Two people sitting in a kitchen at three in the morning, both offering the version of the past three years that could survive a conversation.
Hers sounded like a quiet career in a cubicle. Mine sounded like a quiet life behind a computer. Neither of us was lying, exactly. We were just leaving out every part that mattered.
She coughed. Tried to suppress it, couldn’t. It deepened into something that pulled her forward in the chair, one hand pressed flat against her sternum.
“Do you need your inhaler?”
She looked up. Surprised that I remembered, probably. “It’s in my bag. In the car. I’m fine.” She took a slow breath, held it, let it out through pursed lips. Again. The third one came easier. She sat back in the chair. “Sorry. The cold air and then the warm water and the temperature change—my lungs just have opinions.”
“Your lungs are allowed to have opinions.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“I know it’s not. Everybody has limitations. You manage yours. That’s what’s important.”
She looked at me. A beat where something shifted behind her eyes, and then she turned back to her tea.
I wanted her out of my house. Not in the morning. Now. Back in her car, back on the highway, back to whatever life she’d built in Spokane where she was somebody else’s problem and my compound was mine again.
But it was three in the morning, and she’d driven hours to get here, and I wasn’t the kind of man who put a woman on the road in the dark, no matter how badly I needed her gone. The guest room was the compromise. Not hospitality. Containment.
“Look, it’s good to see you and everything. But I’ve got to get to bed. I can’t keep my eyes open,” I said. “Whatever you came here to tell me, you deserve me being awake for it. There’s a guest room down the hall. Get your bag from your car, and we’ll get you settled.”
“Okay.”
I held the door open for her as she ran out to her car. I thought about shutting the door. I could have Maude change the code before Sera even made it around the house. I could pretend like she’d never been here. She’d have no choice but to leave eventually.
I was tempted. I truly was. But it was a shit thing to do. This was Sera for God’s sake.
