Chapter 22
Travis
Sera was already packed when I managed to get myself downstairs.
Not packed, exactly. Neither of us had brought anything to pack. But she'd wiped down the kitchen, washed the mugs, straightened the couch cushions. The safehouse looked like nobody had been here, which was the exact point of a safehouse.
But the efficiency of it sat wrong in my chest.
"Maude confirmed the route is clean," Sera said. "No activity on any of the corridors between here and the compound. I'll drive."
She said it the way she'd said everything so far this morning. Polite. Competent. A woman handling logistics because logistics needed handling.
I didn't argue about the driving. My side was a little better, but I was definitely not up to regular speed. I got into the passenger seat, and she adjusted the mirrors and pulled out of the garage and pointed us south.
The highway unrolled in front of us. Empty, mostly. Montana in the early morning, all sky and grass and fence lines running to the horizon. Sera drove with both hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road and didn't talk.
I watched her profile and tried to read what was underneath the composure. Last night’s discussion had been heavy. Hell, all of it had been heavy, and I could’ve gotten both of us killed. I was glad she was still around at all.
But something was still definitely off. She wasn't angry. Wasn't cold. She was just operating at a distance that made my chest tight, and I couldn't tell if the distance was about what I'd told her or about something she'd decided while I was sleeping across the hall.
"Twenty minutes to the compound," Maude said through the speakers. "Route remains clear. No anomalies."
Sera nodded without responding. I looked out the window and let the quiet hold.
Neither of us broke it for the remaining twenty minutes. She drove, and I sat with the silence and tried not to read too much into the set of her jaw or the way her hands stayed locked at ten and two, knuckles white against the wheel.
The gate opened and we pulled through, and I waited for the relief. This was my place. My walls, my system, my air. Every surface calibrated, every variable accounted for.
The relief didn't come because Sera's distance had followed us through the gate, and no amount of controlled environment could fix what was wrong in the three feet of space between us.
Maude's voice filled the walls. "Welcome back. All systems are nominal and there have been no security disruptions. The white kitten knocked your coffee mug off the counter fourteen hours ago. I want you to know I handled the crisis with remarkable composure."
The joke should have landed. Any other day, it would have drawn something out of one of us. But the room absorbed it and gave nothing back.
The kittens appeared from wherever they'd been hiding. Gray first, trotting across the kitchen tile with its tail up. The black one followed, cautious, hugging the wall. The white one was already on the chair Sera always sat in, curled into a ball, watching us with detached interest.
Sera's legal pad was still on the counter where she'd left it. A coffee pot half-full of yesterday’s coffee. One lone mug in the dish rack. She must have made herself a cup yesterday before realizing I was gone. The evidence of two people living here was everywhere, woven into the surfaces and the routines, and all of it felt like something that was ending.
Sera went to the coffee machine, grabbed the stale coffee and poured it out and started a fresh pot. When it was done, she poured two mugs, set mine on the counter near my hand, and stayed on the other side of the kitchen with hers.
"I've been thinking," she said.
My stomach dropped. This was it. All of today’s measured silence had led up to this.
"I've been working remotely for the FBI since I got here, but we always knew that was temporary. I need to go back at some point. The model I've built using your data is strong enough now that the Bureau will have to take it seriously. I can hand them something undeniable on Kindt's pipeline. Routes, courier patterns, the logistics structure. Enough to justify a real investigation."
She laid it out clean. No emotion, no drama. She could set up remote access to maintain the analytical work from a distance. She'd do what she could to make sure the Ghost stayed off the FBI's radar. She framed the whole thing as the natural next step, a professional transition that made sense on every level.
"My work here is done," she said. "The model is built. You have the tools. It's time for me to go back to my real life."
Every reason she gave was sound. I couldn't punch a hole in a single one of them because there were no holes. The logic was airtight and perfectly reasonable.
And completely wrong.
"I don't want you to leave."
She blinked. Then recovered. "Travis, think about it practically. I can't stay here indefinitely. I have a job, a life, an apartment that I'm paying rent on."
