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“Be good for Sam and Owen, sakharok,” I told him, straining to keep my voice steady.
“Of course, Mama,” he promised, voice wobbling. “I won’t let you down.”
I pressed my lips to his hair. “I know,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”
Before I could let him go, Elias tightened his grip on me. “I’ll miss you,” he said in a near whisper, like he was a touch embarrassed that he was saying it out loud.
“I’ll miss you too, sakharok. I love you.”
Elias wrenched himself from my arms and marched up to Adrian. His face was set in a serious grimace. He pointed at Adrian with all the menace of a wet kitten. Adrian, smartly, kept his face neutral. “You’ll bring her back safe,” Elias demanded, sounding more mature than I was used to. Where was my baby?
“I will,” Adrian promised.
“I’m going to hold you to that.” Elias’s serious expression broke, and tears glittered in his eyes. He launched himself at Adrian, who let out a little oof as they collided. I saw pain flicker across Adrian’s face, but he hugged my son fiercely. “Promise you’ll both come back,” Elias said.
Adrian looked at me over the top of his head, wonder on his face. He rubbed the boy’s back. “Okay, bud,” he said. “I promise we’ll both come back, safe and sound.”
Elias nodded, and then he was scampering back into the house, not looking back. My chest felt like it would crack open…but I didn’t go after him. We needed to get going if we were going to—and saying goodbye wouldn’t get any easier if we dragged it out. I climbed into the passenger seat and watched through the window as Adrian slapped Owen on the back.
He climbed behind the wheel a moment later, and we were off. We pulled out of the neighborhood, and the road stretched out in front of us.
I didn’t know how to feel. Not having Elias was like missing a limb, but it also gave me nothing to do. There was no one to monitor. No stretch breaks to plan or snacks to arrange. There was just the road and Adrian and the silence between us.
Restless and knowing there were hours of driving ahead of us, I reached into the backseat and pulled out my laptop to give myself something to do. I opened the files I had transferred from Anton’s cloud account and started combing through them, organizing evidence that I needed to be looking for when I got into the Hayes ethernet system. If I had a limited amount of time, I would need to be strategic because I probably would not be able to get everything. So, most damning evidence first: things that, for sure, tied Ian Hayes to crimes he could be convicted for.
“What are you doing?” Adrian asked.
“Organizing,” I muttered, not taking my eyes off the screen. “I want a plan for when we go into the Hayes Group. There’s a good chance I won’t be able to get it all.”
Adrian hummed softly. “Good idea.”
“What’s going to get him the most time? From a legal perspective?”
“Treason,” Adrian said after a moment. “The weapons smuggling is a good start, drugs too, but if we could prove he was acting against the interests of the US government—including endangering American military personnel? That would be the biggest bomb.”
I nodded and started sifting through files. “Anton did a good job compiling all of this,” I said, “but the way he organized the files is dumb.”
“It’s in chronological order, right?”
“Yes, but arranging things by dates isn’t always a good idea. Organizing it by crime would have been more efficient.”
“I guess he must not have thought about that.”
I snorted. “Anton wasn’t known for his critical thinking skills,” I said. “I mean, he voluntarily got involved with Ian Hayes in the first place. It’s not like he just accidentally stumbled on Hayes’s activities; he was a part of them.” And the only reason he stopped was for Elias and me, I thought.
“He must have had his reasons,” Adrian said.
“Money,” I groused back. “I don’t know how you grew up, but we were—” I shrugged. How could I explain what it was like to go days without food? To have the power shut off in the summer because we could “survive without it”?
“I get it,” Adrian said without me needing to explain. “When you have next to nothing, you’ll do just about anything.”
“He helped me pay for university,” I confessed after a moment. “Not everything—I had some scholarships and got a part-time job, but without his help, I’d have had to work two or three jobs, and I don’t know when I would have found time to study. He wanted me to focus on my lessons.” It wasn’t an excuse for what he’d done, but it was true all the same. “When Elias was diagnosed and my husband left, Anton was the first one to start looking for a solution.” I scrolled through the files; the timestamps went back a few years. “I think he was working on this exit strategy for a long time.”
“Sounds like he loved you and Elias a lot,” Adrian said.
I couldn’t deny that. “He did.”
“You miss him.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “Like a limb, am I right?”
