Page 34 of Travis
Plausible.
But passive monitoring didn’t produce real-time tactical intelligence. A hunch didn’t turn into a five-hour drive through agoraphobic hell. And the man who’d pulled me into that stairwell and run me through alleys and retrieved his car from a hot zone hadn’t moved like someone whose last field experience was four years in the rearview.
But pushing harder meant pushing him away. And standing in Travis Hale’s kitchen, close enough to him to see the greenof his eyes and the bruise on his jaw—another event still not explained—and the way his hands went still when he was choosing his words, I felt the same thing I’d felt nearly the entire time he’d dated my sister: wanting to get closer, but knowing I couldn’t.
He wasn’t mine. He was Naomi’s. He’d been hers when she was alive. He was hers even though she was dead. The code on his gate and door proved it.
But I still couldn’t help not wanting to push him away. So I let it go.
“You got lucky,” I said.
Something shifted behind his eyes. Relief, maybe. Or recognition that I was giving him a pass and we both knew it.
“I got lucky.”
“Okay.” I backed up and leaned against the counter, arms around my waist. “So what now?”
The relief disappeared. His expression hardened into something operational, the shift so clean it was like watching a door close. “You can’t go back to Spokane. Your apartment’s burned. They have your name, your face, your address. Until we build something strong enough to force a response from the FBI or another agency, you’re a target anywhere that isn’t here.”
The words landed one at a time. Each one stripped something away. My apartment. My cubicle. The green badge on its lanyard. The commute I could drive blind. The routine I’d built to hold myself upright.
I had spent three years constructing a life that was small and controlled and entirely my own. Not impressive. Not the life Naomi would have built. But it was mine.
And now it was gone, all of it, collapsed in the span of a morning because I’d poked a hornet’s nest from an FBI terminal without covering my tracks.
The tightness in my chest had nothing to do with my lungs.
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have. Your model is good, Sera. Better than good. Combined with the access I have to Kindt’s communications, we can build something undeniable. But it won’t happen in a week.”
I looked at him standing across the kitchen. He looked back.
It had been three years since the funeral. Three years since I’d stood ten feet from him in a black dress and couldn’t look at him because looking would have told everyone in that room how I felt.
And now I was moving into his house for an indefinite stay, would be sleeping down the hall from him, sharing meals at this table, breathing the same recycled air in a house he’d sealed with my sister’s name.
The universe had a vicious sense of humor.
“Fine,” I said. “Tell me what you need from me and let’s get started. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we’re out of each other’s lives.”
I managed to get those words out as if that was what I really wanted. Yay me.
I called Pratt from a secure line Travis set up. Told him I was taking personal leave due to a family emergency and needed to work remotely on my assigned cases. My boss agreed with the efficiency of a man relieved not to have to deal with me on a daily basis for a while.
Next, I contacted my mother and told her I had decided to take a mini vacation and might be out of range more than not, and I’d check in when I could. She didn’t even offer a reaction to the abrupt departure or ask questions.
Not wanted there. Not really wanted here. Story of my life.
“If I’m going to be here for a while,” I said, “can I see the rest of the house?”
Travis studied me for a moment. Then he tilted his head toward the hallway. “Sure.”
We walked toward the stairwell door at the end of the hall, the one I’d used to find the pool last night.
