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“I’m eight.” Matthew drooped a little, as if he thought an eight-year-old wouldn’t have any interest in spending time with him. “We can still play, if you want,” Elias offered before he glanced up at me. “Right, Mama?”
I ruffled his hair. “Sure,” I said. “Just be careful, okay? No running around.”
Elias followed Matthew into the cabin. “What does he have?” Emily asked. “Matthew has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.”
Something in my gut relaxed. She gets it. “Loorer’s,” I said.
“Want to come have some tea?” she offered. “Let those two figure out what comes next?”
“Absolutely.”
Emily and I sat at the table, sipping from ceramic mugs and watching as our sons navigated a game of Candy Land together. It was unbearably cute to see Elias walking Matthew through the rules and letting him cheat when he didn’t quite understand.
Emily was wonderfully easy to talk to as we compared notes about what it was like being a single mom with a sick kid. Nate had really come through for her, thankfully, and Matthew was doing well now, but I could still see an edge of anxiety in the way she kept an eye on him. It takes a long time to stop being afraid for your child. Maybe it’s the kind of thing you never fully get over.
Adrian and Nate came inside after too long. “We can’t go on with your car,” he said.
I figured that was going to be the best course of action. “We’ll have to get a new one, won’t we?”
“Not brand new—but you’ll have a good, solid car,” Nate said. “We’re going to swap with you.”
“What about the license plate?” I asked, worried. “I don’t want you getting pulled over because of the Amber alert.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Nate assured me. “We’ll get another license plate before we get on the road with it. And in the meantime, Hayes will have no way of connecting Emily’s car to you. You’ll still have to be careful if you stop anywhere, but at least you won’t have to worry about people calling the police if they see you on the highway.”
“Thank you.”
“Dad?”
We all turned; the two little boys had obviously grown bored with their game. “Yeah?”
“Elias says that you and him,” he pointed at Adrian, “are superheroes.”
Nate’s face split into a grin. “I wouldn’t say superheroes.”
“But you can do stuff,” the boy insisted.
“Stuff?”
Elias nodded, absolutely solemn. “Hero stuff,” he said. Both of the former SEALs chuckled, and my heart fluttered. Elias had never had the opportunity to look up to a man before, aside from my brother. And while he’d adored Anton, his uncle had been more of a playmate rather than a hero. The look on his face now was beyond precious. “You should show us some hero stuff,” Elias suggested.
Adrian looked to me. “What do you say? Can we show them ‘hero stuff’?”
Elias gave me his best puppy dog eyes. “Please, Mama!”
“Okay, okay,” I conceded. “Adrian can show us some heroics while Nate works on getting a new license plate.”
Adrian got his gun out of his bag, and I followed behind him and the two little boys as we went outside to scope out a safe spot to show off some “hero-level” shooting. The property was large, from the looks of it. Adrian walked a good way away from the house so we weren’t in danger of hurting anyone.
“Okay, boys,” he said. “You stand back and watch, all right?” He took the safety off his handgun and checked the clip. “Do you see that knot in the tree over there?”
When the boys nodded, Adrian aimed and squeezed down on the trigger. The spot he’d pointed out exploded. The boys practically danced with excitement.
Adrian showed them a few more shots that got increasingly harder with each target before he turned to me. “Do you want to learn?” he asked. “Just in case?”
I couldn’t hold in my scoff. “Did you forget I come from a country that hasn’t had a stable government in my parents’ lifetimes, let alone mine?” I shooed the boys even farther back—while I was confident I wouldn’t shoot my own foot, I was not confident enough to let the boys anywhere near me while I held a weapon. I’d been a decent shot when I was younger, but it had been years since the last time I’d handled a gun. I certainly hadn’t had one since coming to America. Even when Elias and I had first gone on the run, it still hadn’t seemed safe to buy one. I hadn’t wanted to run the risk of a gun dealer doing a background check and realizing my ID was a fake.
Stepping closer to Adrian, I held my hand out. He checked the clip again, popped the one in the chamber out, and clicked the safety on before handing it to me.
