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Elias hmm-ed softly. “That makes sense,” he said. “If the good guys always won, we wouldn’t have to worry about those men who keep attacking us. Right?”
He was a perceptive kid; I’d give him that. “Don’t worry about all of that, sakharok,” Nataliya said. “That’s for adults like Adrian and me to deal with.”
He obviously didn’t like that answer, but he didn’t push back either. “We won more than we lost,” I said, trying to distract him. “Some of the best moments of my life happened while I was on a mission.”
Elias perked up. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah. I went from being alone to having brothers,” I said, “and I’ve gotten to meet and help people all over the world.”
I spent the next hour telling them some of the best moments on missions. Details were still mostly classified, so I couldn’t give specifics of names or places, but I could give them the broad strokes as long as I kept it general—the time I got to literally rescue a princess, the time the team and I traveled through countless countries in a seventy-two hour window and nearly laughed ourselves sick at the jetlag, the time we got to surprise Nate’s mom with a visit before she passed.
“You’re a real-life hero,” Elias said. “That’s what I want to be when I grow up.” He said it in that decisive way children do, like he’d made up his mind once and for all.
Nataliya made a soft sound in the back of her throat. How hard must it be for her whenever he made those kinds of statements, knowing what she did about the life expectancy for children with his disease? “When you’re eighteen,” I said, “you and I can talk about it again, all right? Let’s not give your mom a heart attack until then.”
She laughed, and it was a wet sound as if she was barely keeping herself from sobbing, but she mouthed thank you at me. Before I could say anything in return, both our cells shrieked. She pulled hers out. “It’s an Amber—” The color drained from her face.
The alarm turned off. “An Amber alert?” I prompted. She didn’t say anything. “Nataliya? What’s wrong?”
The music playing on the radio cut off mid-song. The DJ came back on: “We just got word at the studio that a child has been kidnapped who might be traveling through our area. Reported missing by his father, the eight-year-old boy, Elias Koza, was last seen with his mother, Nataliya, and an unknown man traveling east in—” The DJ rambled off the make and model of our car and the license plate number.
Fuck. I reached out and clicked the radio off. Stunned silence roared through the car. Beside me, Nataliya’s breath came out in sharp pants. “Elias’s father left us ages ago. We’re divorced—he hasn’t even seen Elias in the past two years. I don’t…I don’t understand. Why would he just show up like this out of nowhere?” Her voice was tight with fear. Even more so than when she was attacked outside the diner back in St. Francisville. She’d been so strong up to now, through every new problem, that it was startling to see her so rattled—but at the same time, it made sense. Elias was clearly the center of her world, the one she’d do anything to protect. Of course the prospect of someone taking him away from her was what would scare her the most.
“He can’t come back like this, right?” Elias demanded from the back. “He can’t just come here and take me, can he?” The boy was terrified, and for once, his mother didn’t have anything comforting to say. She was shaking in her seat, lost in her own fears.
I put my hand over hers, and she clutched at my fingers like they were a lifeline. “It’s not his dad,” I said. “It’s Hayes. He used me to find you, but now that he doesn’t have a tracker on us anymore, he’s trying to use the system to put eyes on us—get other people looking so they can find us for him. The good news is that if he’s taking this step, it means he doesn’t already know where you are.”
“How did they know all that information about my car?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Best guess is that there may have been security footage of that parking lot behind the diner he got ahold of.” I squeezed her hand. “What’s important now is that we get off the road, okay? We need to get somewhere we can lay low and regroup without being seen.”
I wracked my brain for a second, and then I remembered: we were nearly in Tupelo, which meant Nate was staying nearby. I grabbed my phone from the cupholder and found “Shaw” in my contact list. “Hey, man,” the younger man answered after enough rings that my heart had started to crawl out of my throat. “What’s up?”
“We need help,” I said.
Nataliya
The car bumped and swayed over the gravel road, and my stomach rolled. You can’t throw up now, I reprimanded myself. Elias needed me to be calm. He hadn’t said a word since Adrian had started following Nate’s instructions to the supposed-safe cabin the Shaws were renting.
“Almost there,” Adrian said. His hand was still wrapped in mine. Maybe I should let go, but it was…nice to have that little bit of comfort. Ever since Elias and I had come to the US, I had felt so incredibly alone. I had to be strong at all times for Elias, and I would happily do that for the rest of my life if it meant I got to keep my baby with me, but with Adrian sitting beside me, I wasn’t alone in shouldering the fear that could so easily cripple me.
We cleared a curve, and a small house came into view. A man I recognized from the video call yesterday—Nate Shaw—stood on the porch with a woman and a little boy. Adrian pulled in alongside the other car.
We realized we would have to let go of each other at the same time, and he cleared his throat and unthreaded his fingers from mine. I looked over my shoulder. “Do you need help, sakharok?”
Elias unbuckled himself. “I’m okay, Mama.”
We climbed out of the car, and Elias and I hung back as Adrian stepped up to greet his friend. “Nataliya,” he said, “this is Nate Shaw, his wife Emily, and their son, Matthew.” The little boy beamed, and I thought of what Adrian had told me in the car about how Emily and Nate had adopted Matthew.
Biologically, the little boy was actually Nate’s half brother, and the two of them were initially raised by their shared parent—a single mother. But two years ago, their mom was fatally injured in a car accident. Her dying wish was that Emily, who was Matthew’s nanny at the time, would adopt the boy so Nate wouldn’t have to leave the Navy and his career as a SEAL. Matthew was only two at the time, Adrian explained, and he’d quickly grown used to thinking of Emily as his mom, but Nate being his dad was a new development. When Emily had needed some help with medical expenses a few months back, Nate had offered a marriage of convenience so he could put her and Matthew on his insurance. Living together as a married couple, they’d found themselves falling in love, and they’d made the decision together to make their marriage real—and for Nate to adopt Matthew, also.
I tried to smile, but I wasn’t entirely confident in how it came out. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “Though I wish it were under better circumstances.”
The woman, Emily, had a lovely smile. “Trust me, I’m not a stranger to iffy circumstances.” Her eyes dropped to Elias, who was leaning into my side. “Hello,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Elias,” he said.
The little boy at Emily’s side puffed up. “I’m Matthew. I’m almost five.”
