Yes, I’m armed. I’m always armed, but I’m not in my territory. I’m in his. And even with the lack of human security, I don’t doubt there are measures I can’t see with my own eyes.
I also don’t doubt this man doesn’t walk away from a fight if his opponent is still breathing.
I kill the engine but stay where I am for a second, taking him in through the windshield.
So this is the man.
The kidnapper. The husband. The father of Teresa’s son.
The future Don.
He watches me with the same lack of warmth.
Good. I trust suspicion more than false charm.
I open the door and get out.
The air carries salt from the water that’s not-too-far from this location, and the cut-green smell of the landscaping.
My boots hit the stone drive. I straighten to my full height and close the door behind me.
Teresa is already moving.
By the time I round the front of the SUV, she’s coming down the steps with a grin on her face that pulls me straight back to a different life.
One with family barbecues in the San Antonio heat when she’d come and visit. Holiday dinners. Despite the eight years between us, Teresa and I became close.
Her home life wasn’t the greatest, so my mom—her mom’s sister—would invite Teresa to stay with us whenever she could.
There was once a version of us before deployments and before Teresa, the little genius, graduated at just fourteen and took off to college on a full ride, before disappearances and whatever the hell this is.
“Adrian.”
She says my name like she can’t help smiling around it.
Then the last couple of steps are nearly a run, and she throws herself into my arms.
I catch her automatically and lift her clean off the ground.
She laughs, and the sound punches the nostalgia right in my chest.
I hold her a second longer, just to feel the proof of her there. Solid. Alive. Not a voice on a phone line. Not a set of records and assumptions. Not an unresolved knot I’ve been carrying around for over a year.
“Hell,” I mutter, setting her back on her feet. “You’re real after all.”
She laughs again and smacks my arm. “You say that like you expected a hologram.”
“I expected a lot of things. Most of them bad.”
Her expression softens.
For a second, it’s just us, and I can see the years since I last had her in front of me. She looks older than she did then, not in any way that steals from her, just in the way that life shows on people.
More settled, more certain. There’s something about her now that seems steadier, surer.
And again, that should reassure me.
It still doesn’t.
