Chapter Text
“For the last time, Parker,” Eliot said through gritted teeth. “I can go to the bathroom by myself.”
“J.B. said I shouldn’t let you walk without your crutch,” Parker said.
Eliot threw a hand toward the door. “I’m going twelve feet. I don’t need a crutch.”
“J.B. says you do.”
“J.B.’s a medic. He has to say that. But I’ve done a lot worse on a damaged leg than walk across a hall, all right? I’ll be fine.”
Parker’s eyes widened. “Did you remember something?”
Damn. He hadn’t meant to bring that up, but it was too late to take it back, and he couldn’t lie to her. The truth was bad, but somehow, to her, a lie would be worse.
Deflection it was.
“Give me that,” he grumbled, gently jerking the crutch out of her extended hand. He limped to the bathroom, barely resisting the urge to slam the door behind him. It had been three days since the explosion—the latest explosion—and his patience decreased with every passing hour. Rest, they kept telling him, and he was trying, but he couldn’t just lie in bed all day until J.B. decided he was well enough to be a person again.
He set his hands on the bathroom counter, glaring at his reflection in the mirror. No, that wasn’t the problem—not the whole problem, anyway. If he was going to get through this, he had to be honest with himself. Recovery was irritating, but he’d been through worse, and he did enjoy the quiet moments when Sophie came to sit with him, or when Nate gave him summaries of their previous jobs, or when Hardison worked silently at the desk in his room while he dozed, or when Parker napped curled up at the foot of his bed like a cat.
The problem was the memories.
Most of them came in his dreams: fragments of images stitched together with bursts of fear, of anger, of pain. He woke in a panic, hour after hour, not sure if he was in an interrogation cell or a South American jungle or a frozen, isolated cave.
If the blood he imagined on his hands was his own, or someone else’s.
Hardison and Parker had taken to sleeping on an air mattress beside his bed, and he tried his best not to wake them, but the night before he’d jolted awake in the early hours of the morning to find Hardison tapping on his computer with his back against the bed. He didn’t say anything—didn’t even look Eliot’s way—but he was sure Hardison had heard him.
He’d already put them through so much. He didn’t want to add this burden as well.
Sighing, he turned on the faucet and washed his face in cold water, savoring the sharper sensation against the warmth and comfort in which he’d been wallowing. A deep-rooted, unconscious instinct warned him that he couldn’t afford to get soft, that it was dangerous to get complacent, and it chafed at him every time someone told him he should be relaxing. He wanted to—wanted to ease their worries and prove that he was getting better, that he could pull his own weight—but each new memory made him withdraw further into himself, afraid to show his vulnerability.
Eliot ran his left hand through his hair, careful to avoid the still-healing cut in his scalp. This couldn’t continue. He needed to get a hold of himself, figure out how to process his issues, and move on. He needed to be useful again.
First: a good night’s sleep. He’d tried to be on his feet as much as possible today, hoping to wear himself out before bed, and he was feeling the strain in his muscles. He finished washing up and changed into a new pair of sweatpants and a clean shirt—Hardison had gone to buy him extra clothes, and to replace the ones he’d ruined of Sunny’s—and stumped back to his room.
Parker was already tucked into the space between the air mattress and the bed, submerged beneath a pile of blankets Sunny had crocheted the winter she’d slipped on the ice and broken her foot. “Took up every new hobby I could find to keep myself from goin’ stir crazy,” she’d told Eliot the day before. “I still have my hooks and yarn in the basement if you want to give it a try.”
He wasn’t quite that desperate, but it was getting close.
Carefully, he turned off the light and leaned his crutch against the end of the bed. Maneuvering into it without stepping on Parker was a little tricky, but he managed, letting out a little sigh as his sore muscles relaxed against the mattress.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Parker said, her voice muffled beneath the blankets. “Was it?”
“Why sleep on the floor when you’ve got an air mattress right there?” Eliot countered.
“I don’t like how it dips when Hardison isn’t there.”
Hardison was still downstairs, but he’d be up in a few hours, if the last few nights were any pattern. Whether or not he slept on the air mattress was another matter. He had the first night, but the second, he’d spent as much time at the desk as the mattress. The night before, Eliot wasn’t sure he’d slept at all.
“You sure you’re comfortable?” Eliot asked, peering doubtfully over the side of the bed.
Parker poked her face out of the covers. “Yep. It’s cozy.”
Eliot laid back, closing his eyes against the light from the open door. “You don’t have to go to bed now,” he said. “Everyone else is still awake downstairs. I can handle a few hours on my own.”
“I’m tired,” Parker said.
He considered that. She’d been sleeping almost as much as he had over the last few days, and he had no idea whether that was normal for her. Her voice had been cheerful enough, and there was nothing to make him think she was lying—but he did, suddenly, inexplicably. Or maybe not lying, but... withholding.
Like he was.
“Parker?” he said, quietly, listening to the sound of her shuffling the blankets again.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
She hesitated just a second too long. “Yeah.”
“Because if you’re not...”
“I am,” she said. “Are you?”
“...Yeah.”
“Okay, then.” She settled back into her burrow of yarn, and he let her. He had no right to force her to talk, and he preferred to leave the offer open rather than keep digging on his own. He wanted to think she’d come to him eventually, if something was bothering her.
He laid back, resting his right hand on his stomach and folding the other behind his head. “Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
The hours passed in stretches of restless dozing, punctuated by bursts of wakefulness when the dreams started. They weren’t as disturbing tonight—no faces in his crosshairs, no bones breaking under his hands—but several times he woke and had to check to see which injuries he still had and which had healed long ago. Hardison came in sometime after the fourth nightmare, and he sat with his back to the desk and the glow of his laptop lighting his face as he worked on who knew what. Eliot rolled to his side, then his stomach, then his back again, finding he slept better when the faint computer light touched his eyelids. Hardison hummed a few times, the melody low and soothing, and Eliot listened for it each time he woke.
He’d just faded off to a wordless rendition of “Imagine” when a wrenching cry ripped him awake. He shot upright, swinging his legs for the side of the bed before he remembered his healing gunshot wound, and pain knifed up his thigh and down to his foot. He froze on the edge of the mattress, hissing in a breath through his teeth, listening.
“Parker,” Hardison said softly. “Parker, look at me.”
Eliot blinked in the laptop light until he could make out the shape of Hardison kneeling on the air mattress. Parker was still bundled under her blankets, and the whole pile trembled as she shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said, breathless. “I’m sorry, Eliot. Go back to sleep.”
Eliot relaxed his grip on the bed, breathing out through his nose to soothe the pain still pinching his leg. “What happened?”
“Nothing—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
A frown pulled at his eyebrows. Already regretting the movement, he slid to the end of the bed and eased over the side, settling onto the air mattress as carefully as he could without showing how much he hurt. Parker was still buried in her blankets between the air mattress and the bed, but she lifted her head when Eliot sat beside her.
“Move,” he said.
She did, shuffling her crocheted mountain out of the way so Eliot could push the mattress against the bed. Then he sat, clenching his teeth together to hold in his pain as he bent his right leg, and patted the space beside him.
“I’ve been having nightmares,” he said, without preamble, without emotion. “Memories. Some of them are—a lot. It’s all a lot. I wake up sometimes and don’t know where I am.”
Somewhere under the blankets, Parker sat in the space he’d indicated and drew up her knees, wrapping her arms around them.
Hardison settled on her other side. “I’ve been afraid to sleep,” he admitted in a low voice. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up back at the hotel, after we talked to the medical examiner. If I wake up and you’re not there...” He cleared his throat and tipped his head back against the bed. “So I’ve been coming in here and working on stuff, just... keeping an eye on you. Making sure you’re still here.” He tilted his head to look at Eliot and flashed a wan smile. “Is that creepy?”
“Yes,” Eliot deadpanned, and Hardison’s smile got wider.
Parker leaned forward to put her chin on her arms. “I know they’re just dreams. I don’t need you to tell me it’s not real.”
“It is real,” Eliot said. He didn’t look at her, but when he saw her turning toward him in his peripherals, he leaned his shoulder against hers. “Whatever you dreamed about might not be real, but the emotions are. You still have to deal with them.”
She pulled a blanket tighter around her back. “How?”
“Dunno. ‘M still working on it.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Hardison asked.
Eliot turned, not sure if the offer was for him or Parker. He didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to open up the wounds he was still trying to examine himself, but he could hardly encourage Parker to share her problems if he wasn’t willing to do the same. All he had to bargain with was himself, but if the last few days were any indication… that was all she wanted.
He opened his mouth, but Parker shifted against his arm and let out a long, loud sigh. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” she said. “I want to go back to just feeling happy when I’m with you, instead of being afraid something will take you away. Is that... will that ever go away?”
He looked over her head at Hardison, who reached out to wrap his arm around her shoulders. “Come here, girl,” he said, but pressed himself closer instead of pulling her toward him. “This all... this is still fresh. A new wound. It’s still bleeding.” His eyes were on Eliot, and he lifted the hand on Parker’s shoulder to touch Eliot’s as he went on. “It’s gonna hurt for a while. All we can do is keep it covered while it heals.”
“Covered with what?” Parker asked.
“New memories,” Hardison said. “Good ones. Ones to go over the hurt, until it doesn’t hurt so much.”
Eliot closed his eyes. Most of his memories were new right now, so he had the benefit of extra perspective. And as much as he appreciated—and agreed with—Hardison’s suggestion, he wondered if something familiar might be better tonight.
“I remember meeting you,” Eliot said. He kept his eyes shut, but he could feel their gazes on his face. “That first job we all did. Nate set up the meeting, and I thought... I don’t know, I was curious. I wanted to know what you two could offer that I couldn’t do on my own.”
“You mean besides your nonexistent computer skills?” Hardison asked.
Eliot let out a huff of laughter. “The geek stuff, yeah. Jumping off buildings. But Nate was right, about us being able to do more together. About being better together.” He tilted his head and opened his eyes. “It isn’t just during jobs.”
Parker bumped her arm against his. She didn’t say anything, but he could hear her meaning as clearly as if she’d spoken out loud, as clearly as he’d heard her when he’d thought she was gone.
He pressed against her, passing the message back, and she exhaled.
He woke an hour later, still sitting on the air mattress, with Parker’s head on his shoulder and Hardison lying across their feet. His back ached from the awkward position, but Parker and Hardison were breathing softly, and he wasn’t about to risk waking them just to get more comfortable. With a sigh, he stretched out his neck, settled his cheek against Parker’s hair, and went back to sleep.
It was getting better, and it was getting worse. He could tell what was real, most of the time—when he woke up in a jumble of emotions and images, he could place them like map pins in his mind. One was from his second tour, another from his third job with the team. The first dish he cooked after meeting Toby. His high school girlfriend. His first kill. His first disobeyed order. Moreau. Nate. Hardison buried alive. Sophie walking away… coming back. Parker trapped by the Steranko. He lined them up like books on a shelf, like numbers in a ledger.
Like notches in a gun.
It was pain that pulled him out of sleep this time; he’d slept almost dreamlessly for the first time in a week, but his leg burned under its bandage. The sky outside his window was dark. Hardison snored on the air mattress, with Parker tucked between him and the side of the bed, her face relaxed in sleep. Eliot lied still for a few moments and listened to their breaths in the silence.
Then he rolled to the edge of the bed, careful not to step on the air mattress as he stood and crept from the room. His crutch leaned against the wall beside the door, and he was sore enough to use it as he made his way into the hall. The house was quiet, but he didn’t want to lie in bed any longer. His hands itched to do something productive, something other than resting and recovering and talking about his feelings.
Slowly, keeping near the wall and avoiding the squeaky spots he’d discovered over the last week, Eliot eased down the stairs and limped into the kitchen. Sunny had left the light over the sink on, and it was plenty bright enough to find a wash cloth and soap. He started with the obvious surfaces—table, counters, stove—but Sunny kept a clean kitchen, and only ten minutes had passed by the time he finished. A tougher job, then. He moved on to the oven, pulling out the racks, scrubbing off the baked-on messes, the grease stains, the spills. That took a while longer, and by the time he finished, it was after 6.
Eliot tossed his hair out of his face and surveyed the kitchen. Cleaning was numbing, methodical, almost compulsory—but it wasn’t enough. He needed to fix something, build something... create something.
He looked down at his unbandaged hand. Old scars covered the knuckles, and he could see the evidence of poorly healed breaks in some of the fingers. Tools of violence, bearing the marks of fights he couldn’t remember, fights he doubted he’d be able to separate even after his memory returned. What could he make with such hands?
“Teach me to like stuff.”
Eliot’s fingers twitched. Parker’s voice preceded the full memory, echoing like a half-remembered song, and he let it play through his mind as he stared at the scars on his hand.
He pushed a plate toward her, but she looked up at him and shook her head. “It’s just food.”
“It’s not just food, all right? Some people could look at it and see just food, but not me. I see art. When I’m in the kitchen, I’m—I’m creating something out of nothing.”
He opened his eyes. He’d come to appreciate the way his body had held onto the skills he needed to make it back to the team—muscle memories built through hundreds of fights, earned through sweat and blood and loneliness. But there were other hints coming to the surface, flashes of insight too quick to examine. Knife handles held loosely, his wrist rolling with easy movement as he chopped instead of stabbed. Tender leaves and herbal smells under his fingertips. Tactile memories that, for once, had nothing to do with pain.
Hardison had said he could cook. If his body could remember how to destroy, couldn’t it remember how to make?
A quick search of the kitchen yielded a few promising results—flour, sugar, eggs—and he found a mixing bowl and spoon in the cupboards and drawers. He mixed flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt with eggs and butter and vanilla extract, and then, when he couldn’t find any heavy cream in the refrigerator, made a buttermilk substitute from milk and vinegar. The motions felt familiar, even with his left hand, and he let himself fall into the rhythmic scraping of spoon against bowl, over and over and over in the quiet kitchen.
“What are you doing?”
Eliot flinched. He registered the voice as Miguel’s half a second after he reacted, which was half a second too late. He took a moment to compose his expression before he turned, hoping his face didn’t look as red as it felt. “Cooking.”
Miguel stood in the doorway, and the quirk of his lips said he’d noticed Eliot’s response. “Why?”
“You don’t eat?” Eliot said, making a vague gesture with his spoon.
Miguel’s face twitched, and Eliot got the impression he was repressing a smile. “Why are you cooking so early?”
“I was up.”
Miguel moved to the counter beside him and took the empty pot from the coffee maker. “I guess that thing about 90 minutes was true, then. Hate to see what you could do when you’re fully rested.”
“Didn’t figure you’d want to see me at all after this,” Eliot said.
“Hmm.” Miguel glanced at the brace on his wrist and then back to the coffee pot. “I don’t. But I think maybe Sunny wouldn’t mind if you came to visit.”
“I won’t be going anywhere for a few days yet,” Eliot muttered, leaning heavily on his good leg. He sprinkled some flour on a cutting board and pressed the dough into a rough circle. Miguel filled the pot at the sink and scooped coffee into the filter. When the water started percolating, he leaned his back against the counter and nodded at the cutting board.
“What are you making?”
Eliot cut through the middle of his dough and answered without looking up. “Scones.”
“Where’d you learn to make those?”
The question was innocent, just casual conversation, and Eliot was relieved to feel nothing worse than impatience when he didn’t have an answer. He fell back on J.B.’s line.
“Picked it up a ways back.”
Miguel snorted. “You two should put that on t-shirts.”
When the coffee was finished, Miguel poured two cups and set one on Eliot’s left side. “I never learned to cook,” he said, cautiously, like he was expecting Eliot to mock him for the admission. He had no interest in that, but it seemed like Miguel wanted to talk, so Eliot flicked his gaze up to show he was listening and went on cutting the dough.
“Sunny tried teaching me a few times,” Miguel said. “But I was never any good. Don’t have the patience for it.”
“You’ve been with her a long time, huh?”
“On and off since I was a kid.” Miguel took a sugar bowl out of the cupboard, then moved to the fridge and poured some milk into a creamer. “The others don’t stay as long. This isn’t a real shelter—not anything registered—so Sunny doesn’t get any resources to keep it running. She just helps the people she can, the ones who can’t go anywhere else. People with pasts. Dangerous people. And maybe it’s wrong of me,” he added, with another hesitant glance at Eliot. “But I don’t trust most of them. Not everyone knows not to bite the hand that gives them food.”
“Nothing wrong with being careful,” Eliot said.
“I’m worse than most of the people she takes in,” he said, shrugging. “Can’t go to the shelters because of my record, can’t get a real job… on paper, I don’t look like I can be trusted either.”
“It’s hard to fit a man’s whole life on paper.”
Miguel flashed him a grin. “That’s what Sunny says. She always welcomes me back, puts me to work fixing something. The railing, the sink, whatever. Sometimes I think she breaks things just to give me something to fix. Something good to do, instead of whatever trouble I might get myself into.” He shot a shrewd look at Eliot as he placed his scones carefully on a baking sheet. “With that money your friends helped her find, she won’t have to worry about finding things to fix no more. She’s always talked about buying a bigger house, something with more rooms, more resources. She’ll be able to help a lot of people.”
“And you?” Eliot asked.
Now that he’d unleashed it, Miguel’s smile was quick and bright. “I suppose I’ll keep busy.”
“Sunny will need some help herself,” Eliot said, keeping his voice casual. “A lot of people will want a piece of what she’s got now.”
“They’ll have to go through me.”
Eliot slid the scones into the oven. “Then there’s nothing to worry about.”
They were silent then, drinking their coffee and enjoying the smell of the baking scones. Eliot limped over to the little table after a while so he could sit, and Miguel waved him down when the timer went off and pulled the scones out of the oven himself. “Some of those people Sunny helps,” Miguel said, tossing the dish towel he’d used as an oven mitt onto the counter. “They come to her when they’re lost. Sunny has a way of orienting people, putting their problems in perspective.”
“She took me in when she had every reason not to,” Eliot said, meeting Miguel’s gaze across the table. “And I won’t forget it.”
Miguel picked a hot scone off the stove and blew on it. “That’s good. She seems to like you, for some reason.”
“There’s no accounting for taste,” Eliot said.
Miguel grinned. “She likes me, too.”
“Like I said.”
With a short laugh, Miguel took another scone and sauntered out of the kitchen. “You better make more,” he said over his shoulder. “I like a big breakfast.”
Eliot drained his coffee, got up, and started another batch.
The goodbyes were harder than he expected.
They made them in the yard under a picturesque blue sky, with the morning stretching out before them like a beginning, which helped. Over the last ten days, Sunny’s little house had started to feel more confining than safe, and Eliot was ready to go back to his own kitchen, his own bed, his own clothes. Nate and Sophie were already waiting in the van, and Eliot had left Parker and Hardison with J.B. and Miguel so he could give Sunny his final words of thanks.
He’d told himself to stay cheerful, but when Sunny reached out to hug him, he felt the first prickle of regret since J.B. had said he was well enough to travel. Everything he’d wanted to say fled his mind, so he lifted himself up to kiss her cheek and held her tightly when she sighed into his hair.
“You saved my life,” he murmured.
Sunny squeezed his back. “Oh, sugar. Someone had to.”
Eliot laughed, and Sunny held him out by his shoulders and looked him over, her eyes shining above the yellow scarf he’d crocheted when his boredom grew unbearable. “Now you keep out of trouble,” she said sternly. “I don’t want to hear anything about you being reckless again.”
In a show of excessive restraint, he kept the words “yes, ma’am” off his tongue and nodded instead. “As long as you promise the same,” he said.
“Me?” Sunny said, offended. “There’s nobody left to bother me that Miguel can’t take care of. And J.B. is still in the neighborhood.”
Eliot looked across the sidewalk to where J.B. stood shaking Hardison’s hand. “He’s leaving, then?”
“In a few days,” Sunny said. Her gaze followed his, and a smile touched her lips. “I don’t think he’ll go far, though. The boy can’t brew a decent cup of coffee to save his life. He’s already bought me some extra to keep on hand for when he comes to visit.”
Relief poured through him. He’d wanted extra support for Sunny, true, but he had a feeling J.B. needed her just as badly. “You’ll call if you need anything,” he said, keeping his tone just shy of an order.
“As long as you promise to visit,” she countered.
“I will.”
“Good,” Sunny said, her eyes crinkling in the corners. “I know you keep your promises.”
He tore himself away from her to shake Miguel’s hand, reminded J.B. to take it easy for a few weeks now that he’d collected his pay check for the Lancaster job, and followed his team to the large black van parked in front of the house. Lucille, his memory supplied, after a few moments of grasping for the name. He didn’t remember why Hardison was so attached to the thing, but he was pleased to have something to start with. It was getting better, slowly, and he was content to let his memory trickle back in bits and pieces as long as the others were there to fill in the gaps.
“Ready?” Hardison asked, looking at Eliot in the rearview mirror as he settled into the back seat. J.B. had made him bring his crutch along, but he’d left it on the floor between the door and the seat while he’d said his goodbyes. The rest of his things—the clothes Hardison had bought him, mostly, since apparently he didn’t travel with luggage—were packed with the others’ in the back, and the cooler full of sandwiches and drinks that Sunny had sent along with them was tucked behind the passenger seat.
Eliot settled back and stretched his right leg out in front of him. “Ready.”
From the passenger seat, Parker waved out the window as they pulled away from the house, shouting goodbyes until they turned the corner and Sunny, J.B., and Miguel were lost from sight. Then she squirmed around in her seat and tore the lid off the cooler, digging through with one hand while Hardison cast her concerned looks from behind the wheel.
“You just ate breakfast,” he said. “You can’t need a sandwich already.”
“Sunny packed some cereal for me.”
“How are you still hungry?” Hardison pressed. “Between Eliot’s pancakes and Sunny’s eggs, I don’t think I’m ever gonna eat again.”
Parker sat up with a bag of cereal in her hand, grinning. “It’s a road trip! You’re supposed to have snacks.”
“Not thirty seconds down the street!”
In the seat beside Eliot, Sophie leaned forward to set her hand on Hardison’s shoulder. “Let her enjoy this. It’s been a while since you’ve driven anywhere long distance.”
“Easy for you to say,” Hardison muttered. “You’re gonna miss it all.”
Eliot closed his eyes, enjoying the sounds of their voices in the small space, and started a few of the leg stretches J.B. had told him to do on the ride. They’d be dropping Nate and Sophie off at the airport before making their way to the highway, and then across the country back home to Portland. It wasn’t worth the drive, in Eliot’s opinion, but Hardison had refused to let anyone bring Lucille back without him, and Parker insisted that Eliot’s leg would explode if he tried to fly.
“It’s not going to explode,” Eliot had grumbled back at the house, rolling his eyes and waiting for J.B. to back him up.
But Parker had evidently gotten to him first, because he’d just sighed and said, “Yes, because of the... uh, air pressure. Flying would be far too dangerous. I recommend driving.”
Eliot had glared at him, but J.B. only shrugged and mouthed, “She scares me,” before abandoning him to a 26 hour drive with absolutely no hint of remorse. Nate had come in two minutes later with the news that he and Sophie would fly so they could “get things ready” for Eliot’s return. He figured they just didn’t want to be trapped in the van for three days.
“All right,” Parker bubbled as soon as Nate and Sophie were safely at the airport. “J.B. said we should stop every four hours to let you stretch—”
“Hell no,” Eliot said. “It’ll take us a week to get there!”
“—so I found some places we can go,” Parker continued, ignoring the interruption. “There’s a cowboy museum here in the city—”
“No,” Eliot and Hardison said together.
Parker glared at them. “Not to visit. To steal from.”
“What do you want to steal from the cowboy museum?” Hardison asked.
“Well, I probably won’t know until I see it,” Parker said. “But if you don’t want to go there, we can pick another place. Like—what about the UFO Watchtower in Colorado? Ooh, or the Flaming Praying Mantis in Las Vegas!”
Hardison shot her a look. “The what?”
“It shoots fire!”
“Is this how it normally goes?” Eliot asked.
Hardison glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Uh… kinda depends. We stop more when Nate isn’t in the car. He makes us drive straight through.”
Eliot eased back and closed his eyes. “Pretend Nate is here then.”
But apparently in the Republic of Lucille, Parker’s vote held the most weight. They ended up stopping at half a dozen dusty roadside locations, and Parker insisted she and Eliot get out to explore each one while Hardison stayed in the car to nap. They wouldn’t let Eliot drive, and Hardison claimed it was safer for everyone if Parker didn’t take a turn behind the wheel, so Eliot grudgingly accepted the stops to give Hardison time to rest. Maybe he enjoyed some of them—or at least, he enjoyed Parker’s reactions to them—but he kept that to himself. She didn’t need any encouragement.
The rest of the time, Eliot was quiet, and they let him be. There were things he needed to sort through—emotions dug up by memories he wished he could have left buried. Questions. Worries. Anger. Grief. They cycled through him as the long hours ate away at the distance between them and Portland, as their destination took on details in his mind. He remembered a brew pub, a menu he’d helped design, the local suppliers he’d gotten to know. He remembered telling Anne and Rafe, the cooks who ran the kitchen when he was gone, about the new dishes he wanted to introduce when he returned from this job. He remembered chatting with the regulars who kept coming back for his meals, and remembered grudgingly admitting to himself, if not to Hardison, that he enjoyed the challenge of managing a gastropub.
He missed it. The closer they got, the more anxious he was to be back.
It was late when Hardison parked outside the brew pub, and Eliot was tired, but they’d driven through supper and were hungry enough to go inside instead of continuing on to their own homes. Sophie and Nate were waiting for them, and they’d kept the kitchen open so they could all order. Normally Eliot would have just thrown something together for them, but he was grateful for the chance to hobble around the tables, pretending to inspect the space while he stretched his legs. He ached—everywhere—but a sense of rightness settled over him as the familiar smells and sounds seeped in. Parker launched into an excited retelling of their roadside adventures while Hardison helped himself to Nate’s fries, and Eliot paused in front of a menu on the wall to listen.
His hand drifted to his pocket. It was late in Portland, and it would be even later by Sunny. Past midnight. He should wait until morning to check in, he knew he should, but he pulled out his phone anyway, found her number, and typed out a quick message.
We made it back to Portland.
He turned to rejoin the others, but before he could take a step, his phone vibrated in his hand.
How was the drive?
Eliot’s gaze drifted to where Parker was imitating the Flaming Praying Mantis statue. It was fine, he answered.
A few moments slid by, but he waited for the message he knew would come. The screen lit up just as Parker made an eerily accurate metallic screech to accompany her waving, imaginary-fire-covered arms.
I’m going to try that pancake recipe you gave me tomorrow, Sunny said. I might have a few questions.
A smile pulled at his lips. I’ll call you in the morning.
Talk to you then. Good night, sugar.
“Food’s ready!” Hardison called. Eliot looked up, still smiling at his phone like an idiot. He didn’t even care. Good night, he typed, sending off the message and tucking the phone back into his pocket as he went to rejoin the others. Parker stopped mid-way through her description of the mantis’s forelegs and shot him a measuring look. He winked at her. She grinned and launched back into the story.
Eliot ate with one hip hitched against the bar, half-turned toward the door so he could keep everyone in view while they talked. It was comfortable, the way they all settled back into themselves, and it worked something loose in Eliot’s chest as he chewed. He had that feeling again—like home was less a place and more a collection of the faces and voices that dominated his returning memories. Like he could sit there for hours and just listen to them laughing; like he could believe them when they said he wasn’t alone. The proof was in the empty-but-full brew pub, and the texts on his phone, and the list of treatment instructions in his bag. Given the kind of person he was—had been—a part of him still couldn’t believe that he’d managed to find a single friend, let alone a family. The rest of him thought it didn’t matter how it had happened.
He was just thankful it had.
The call came 10 months later.
Actually, Eliot missed the call itself, and she hadn’t left a message—instead, he found two texts in the early morning hours after a long night out on a con.
Can’t talk. There’s trouble. Can you be here tomorrow?
Then, immediately after that one:
Please come.
Eliot waited just long enough to call Nate, who assured him that they’d be able to wrap up the rest of the con without him, and then Hardison, who got him a ticket on the next flight to Oklahoma City before he reached the airport. He’d called Sunny—no answer—and J.B.—no answer—and even Miguel—but it was before 6 a.m. there, and Eliot hoped that was the reason he couldn’t reach them.
He didn’t want to think about the alternative, but he’d spent most of his life doing what he didn’t want to do, and the worst scenarios filled his mind as the airplane sped too slowly through the air. Sunny’s newfound wealth was common knowledge now—she’d done interviews about it, highlighting the historical importance of the find and even donating some of it to local museums. She’d talked about the new shelter she was building thanks to the funds. Lancaster’s company had collapsed, but there were other thieves who would be more than willing to take advantage of a single, kindly woman.
And Eliot knew better than most how easy it was to make a death look like an accident.
The minute his plane touched down, he called again, leaving a string of increasingly aggressive voice mails when he failed to reach anyone. He checked in with Nate as he waited for a cab, swallowed his anxiety when Nate repeated that everything was fine on their end, and spat out Sunny’s address to the bewildered driver as his mind whirred through various plans of attack.
The car pulled up outside Sunny’s house, and Eliot dropped a wad of money in the front seat and tore out onto the sidewalk before they’d stopped moving. The house was quiet. Nothing moved inside as Eliot sprinted up the steps, and no one came to answer his barely controlled knocking. Eliot checked his phone again—still nothing—and lowered his shoulder to break down the door.
It opened a few seconds before he threw himself forward, which left him standing awkwardly off-balance as Miguel peered at him from the entryway. “You made it!” he said, blinking in combined surprise and, surprisingly, pleasure. “When we didn’t hear back from you, we thought—”
“Where’s Sunny?” Eliot demanded. He stayed where he was, adrenaline warring with cautious relief at Miguel’s presence.
Miguel tilted his head. “At the opening. It starts in an hour—I just stopped to pick up her cellphone. It died overnight, so she left it here to charge.”
“Then… she’s all right?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Miguel asked.
“I got a text from Sunny saying she was in trouble.”
Miguel blinked. “Oh. Oh, you thought—” He let out a bark of laughter, which had the contradictory effect of both comforting and irritating Eliot’s nerves. “No, everyone is fine. You misunderstood the text.”
“I did not misunderstand the text,” Eliot gritted out. “She said there was trouble and asked me to be here today.”
“I know what it said,” Miguel said. “I sent it.”
Eliot stared at him until he sighed and opened the door wider to let him in. “Come on. There’s some coffee left, and we have a little time. I’ll explain.”
Grudgingly, Eliot followed him into the house and sat at the familiar tiny table in the little kitchen. He let Miguel pour him a cup of coffee and then sat back in his chair, demanding answers with his silence.
“Okay,” Miguel said. “Sunny’s shelter is opening today, and she’s got a little ceremony planned; reception, press, everything. She sent you an invitation weeks ago, but we never heard back.”
“I didn’t get it,” Eliot said.
Miguel shrugged. “You’re out of town a lot, we get it—maybe it got lost in the mail or something, I dunno. Anyway, Sunny was going to call you about it, but she’s been trying to get things finalized for the opening, and the city council hasn’t been making it easy.” He broke off, his expression sheepish. “She asked me to get ahold of you.”
“And you thought 2 a.m. the day before the opening was the best time?” Eliot tried to keep the growl out of his voice, but the faint smirk on Miguel’s lips said he hadn’t quite succeeded.
“I forgot,” he said, swirling his coffee in his cup. “I didn’t remember until last night, and since I didn’t have my phone on me, I used Sunny’s. But hers was almost dead, so I only had time to send a text.”
“That mentioned nothing about the ceremony,” Eliot said.
“Well, I figured you knew about that,” Miguel said. “I know Sunny’s told you about it, even if you didn’t get the invitation. And I explained that Sunny couldn’t talk on the phone because she was dealing with some issues with the city.”
“No.” Eliot drew out the word, his eyes hard. “What you said was ‘Can’t talk, there’s trouble, can you be here tomorrow?’”
Miguel laughed. “Man, you’re even more paranoid than I remember. It’s not my fault you assumed…”
Eliot opened the message and held out his phone, and Miguel trailed off as he read it. “Hmm,” he said, glancing up when he finished. “Maybe I was a little vague. I was distracted.”
“I thought she was hurt,” Eliot snapped.
“But it got you here in time, didn’t it?” Miguel said brightly. “That’s the important part. Hurry up, we still have work to do.”
Eliot took his time with his coffee, making Miguel wait while he called to tell Nate Sunny was safe. It wasn’t much in terms of payback, but the impatient tapping of Miguel’s fingers on the counter was somehow more gratifying than annoying.
“Take your time,” Nate was saying, and Eliot brought his attention back to the call. “We’re all finished up here. No sense in rushing back.”
“Okay.” He glanced at Miguel and set his mug on the table. “Have Hardison look into our mail.”
“Why?”
“Sunny sent an invitation. Might’ve just gotten lost, but…”
“Right.” Nate was silent for a heartbeat, thinking—weighing Eliot’s paranoia against his own. “I’ll have him check it out.”
“And tell Parker not to touch the cookie dough in the freezer,” Eliot added.
“I’ll tell her.”
“Or my baker’s chocolate.”
“Fine.”
“Or—”
“Eliot,” Nate said. “I’ll keep her out of the kitchen. Don’t you have an opening to go to?”
Eliot sighed and ended the call. “All right,” he told Miguel, finishing his coffee. “Lead the way.”
The Elizabeth Classen Homeless Shelter stood on a freshly mown lawn, its doors open, its walls covered in welcome banners. A crowd of reporters waited outside, talking and posing and doing mic checks. Eliot looked them over as he followed Miguel to the door, filing away details that probably didn’t matter.
Habit and residual anxiety kept him from dismissing them completely.
Miguel led him into a reception area, and there, finally, was Sunny. She was on the phone at a large desk, her back to the door. “I sent that permit weeks ago,” she said, her tone stiff and impatient. “I have my own copy right here. Yes, I can bring another down to the office tomorrow morning, but I’m not delaying the opening. We’ve done everything we needed to do, and I won’t keep people out of a perfectly good building just because you lost my paperwork. No. No, I will not. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She slammed the phone down and sighed, then turned when she heard their footsteps. “Miguel, where have you been? I sent you for one thing—”
Her eyes widened when they met Eliot’s, and a smile as bright as her namesake broke over her face. She wore a pale blue dress with a cream jacket, and his yellow scarf was tied neatly at her throat. She looked tired, but her voice was as strong as ever. “You made it!”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Eliot said, shooting a glance at Miguel as he stepped forward to give Sunny a hug. She wrapped her arms around him, but something in the way her fingers gripped his shoulders made him pull back. “Is everything okay?”
“Now that you’re here?” Sunny said, beaming. “Everything is perfect. It’s good to see you, sugar.”
Eliot gave her a squeeze and stepped aside so he could talk to her while keeping an eye on the door. “Problem with the permits?”
She scoffed. “Nothing important. Just, every time I turn around, there’s another piece of paperwork missing, or a signature I need to chase down, or some problem with the mortgage. But it’s not stopping us. We’re opening today, paperwork or no.”
That brought his suspicion roaring back, though at least now he didn’t have the helpless anxiety to distract him. Sunny wasn’t alone. Hardison could take care of the paperwork from Portland, and if anyone tried to interfere with the opening, then…
Well. That’s why Eliot was there.
“Where’s J.B.?” Miguel asked, handing over Sunny’s phone.
She hooked a thumb back toward the door. “He’s out corralling the media. Seems like we’ve got every news station in the state out there. Must be a slow week.”
“I’ll give him a hand,” Eliot offered, and Sunny grinned.
“That might be a good idea. He was losing his patience when I left him.”
Eliot laughed to hide a burst of alarm. If J.B. was on edge, then there was a good chance there was more going on than Sunny was saying—possibly more than she knew. He left Sunny and Miguel at the desk and scanned the lawn as he reached the door, his gaze jumping between groups of people until he found a solitary man standing near a podium. It was set up before the largest welcome banner, and the reporters had started arranging themselves in a semicircle before it. Eliot slipped through the door and walked unhurriedly away from the crowd, circling around the building to come at the podium from behind.
J.B.’s attention was on the press, and the stiff set of his shoulders confirmed Eliot’s suspicions.
“Expecting trouble?” Eliot asked quietly.
J.B. turned his head, grinning at Eliot without looking at him. “Guess Miguel got ahold of you after all.”
“Came as soon as I could.”
J.B. nodded, sobering. “Glad to have you. Sunny doesn’t think there’s a problem, but I’m not so sure.”
“Does it have anything to do with her disappearing permits?” Eliot asked.
A reporter noticed Eliot’s arrival and motioned to her camera man; J.B. lowered his voice. “It might.”
“Anything else?”
“She’s been getting threats,” J.B. muttered. “Letters, phone calls—nothing traceable. She only told me this morning, but I guess it’s been going on for weeks.”
Anger twisted through the worry in Eliot’s stomach, fraying the edges into something harder to control. “What did they say?”
“She wouldn’t tell me all of it.” J.B. made a scoffing sound and turned his head, cutting off the reporters’ view of his lips. “But she gave me the latest letter. It warned her not to go through with the opening, that this area isn’t safe, and that there will be consequences if she ignores them again.”
“Who do you think it’s from?”
J.B. hitched a shoulder. “Kind of seems like someone wants us to think it’s gang-related. Sunny said there were a few mentions of turf wars and weapons, but Miguel doesn’t think that’s credible. He has a few connections, and he says none of the gangs are interested in the shelter except as that—a shelter.”
“Then who?” Eliot pressed.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
Eliot didn’t need to ask if J.B. thought the threat was real—his stance told him that—and he made another surreptitious glance around the crowd. It was a usual collection of reporters and camera operators, with a handful of suits, probably local government staff, rounding out their numbers. Nothing obviously amiss, but the buzz of adrenaline running under Eliot’s skin told him not to let down his guard.
His pocket vibrated, and he pulled out his phone just long enough to read Hardison’s message—No issues—before the crowd turned to watch Sunny stepping out of the building with Miguel at her side.
“Do you want the front or the back?” J.B. murmured.
Eliot stuffed his phone back into his pocket. “You see anyone who looks like trouble?”
“No,” J.B. said. “But I got a bad feeling.”
“Me too. I’ll stay up here.”
J.B. nodded and slipped out into the crowd as Sunny made her way forward, smiling and waving at a handful of people she must have recognized. Eliot stepped back to make room for a man in a blue suit, who met Sunny at the podium and shook her hand enthusiastically.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the microphone, beaming as he drew Sunny forward. “As the head of the Homeless Alliance, I’m so pleased to welcome you here today. This building represents months of tireless work by many people, but no one has put in more time or effort than this woman here. Please allow me to introduce June Davidge, founder of the Elizabeth Classen Homeless Shelter, and the reason we’re all standing here today. Miss Davidge!”
He shook Sunny’s hand again and yielded the podium while the crowd clapped politely. Miguel moved aside and sent Eliot a questioning look behind her back.
“Thank you, Mr. Brackett,” Sunny said. “And thank you to everyone with the Homeless Alliance. I’m grateful for your support in making this dream a reality. It’s been a long time coming, and truth be told, I’m relieved the day is finally here. If I have to sign one more form, I think I’ll cry.”
The crowd laughed, and Sunny straightened a little pile of notecards on the podium and cleared her throat. “I want to thank the Homeless Alliance and all the folks with the Key to Home Partnership, as well as everyone at the Governor’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, for all your support in helping to build this shelter. You’ve all made the process so much easier, and I’m grateful for your hard work.”
More applause, which Sunny accepted with a nod. “Most of all, though,” she said, turning to reach a hand toward Miguel. “I want to thank my boys.”
Miguel tried to dodge, but she caught his arm and dragged him forward. “First,” she said, trapping him against the podium with one large arm. “My Miguel, for standing by me through everything, and for all the help and comfort you’ve given me all these years. You’ve been the heart of this operation for a long time, and I never would have been able to do this without you.”
Amid the ensuing cheers, Miguel wrapped her in a hug and kissed her cheek. “Ay, jefa,” he breathed, squeezing her hands before backing up to stand by Eliot again. “Anything for you.”
She beamed and turned back to the podium. “I also want to thank J.B.,” she continued. “For being a friend when I had so few to lean on, and for keeping me safe when you had no reason to step into my problems. Without you, we wouldn’t be standing here now.”
From the back of the yard, J.B. ducked his head and shoved his hands in his pockets. Eliot tried and failed to keep a smile off his face.
Until Sunny turned to him.
“And finally,” she said, her voice softened by the distance she’d put between her and the microphone. “For his sizeable donation to the construction of this shelter, and for all the help he gave leading up to this moment, I want to thank my very dear friend…”
A blur of movement over Sunny’s shoulder drew Eliot’s attention, and the rest of her words faded out of his hearing. A car had turned the corner, its tires squealing, light flashing off its tinted windshield.
The barrels of two guns stabbed through the open windows.
Eliot’s arms were around Sunny before she realized anything was wrong. The crowd flinched, and in his peripherals, he saw J.B. turning to face the street as he pulled Sunny down behind the podium.
The guns went off together, one shot following the other in almost the same moment. Someone screamed—Sunny gasped against his shoulder as he stretched out to cover her—Miguel hit the ground beside them. Another pair of shots split the air. Eliot lifted his head, scanning the walls of the building.
Smooth.
Miguel’s hand joined his on Sunny’s shoulder, a wordless promise to stay with her, and Eliot leaned back to see around the podium.
“J.B.,” he called.
Across the yard, J.B. was the only one still on his feet. “I heard it!” he yelled back.
The car sped past, both guns still firing, but Eliot stayed where he was and took in every detail he could before the car disappeared around the next corner.
Then he looked back at the crowd. In seconds he found what he was looking for—the disruption in the pattern. Where everyone else had sprawled over the grass with their hands over their heads, one woman was on her knees and facing the podium.
She noticed Eliot’s attention and looked away, but it was too late. He’d seen everything he needed to.
J.B. jogged toward him, his phone in his hand. “Sunny?” he asked.
“Miguel's with her.”
“I’ll call the police,” J.B. said. “Did you get the plates?”
“Yep.”
“You got this?”
Eliot nodded at the woman. “Yep.”
“Then I’ll leave the rest to you.”
The people around them were starting to sit up, calling out to one another, asking who was hurt. Eliot ignored them and made his way toward the woman. She was still on her knees, smoothing out the pencil skirt of her grey business dress, her eyes on the grass. Eliot stopped before her, folding his arms, waiting for her to look up.
At that point, there was no ignoring him. She raised her head cautiously, her face flushed. “Are they gone?”
Eliot tilted his head. “You tell me.”
“I don’t—” she sputtered. “How should I know?”
“You were the only one who didn’t go flat when the shooting started,” Eliot said.
Her eyes flashed. “You didn’t either. I saw you standing there when the car went past—you didn’t even try to get out of the way.”
“Didn’t need to,” he said. “There was no echo.”
The people nearby had started muttering, and a ring was forming around them. The woman scoffed and brushed at her skirt again. “What echo?”
“Those shots were blanks,” Eliot said. The murmurs grew louder, but when Eliot didn’t try to talk over them, they quieted to listen. “Me and J.B. can tell the difference in the sound of the report, but that’s not something I’d expect most civilians to be able to hear. How’d you know there wasn’t any danger?”
“I didn’t,” the woman insisted. She stood, and Eliot put out a hand to help her up before folding his arms again. She jerked out of his grasp and glared at him. “I couldn’t! And it doesn’t make any sense—why would the shooters use blanks? We know there’s a growing gang presence here. It’s a dangerous neighborhood, and—”
“Dangerous?” Eliot repeated. He turned his head until he found Brackett, the blue-suited head of the Homeless Alliance. “Is there a gang presence here?”
The man looked bewildered. “I wasn’t aware of any—”
“This is my ward,” the woman interrupted. “I know what’s happening here better than anyone.”
Eliot lifted his eyebrows. “Really? Then you serve on the city council?”
“I do,” she said proudly.
“Did you know that Sunny’s been getting threats?” Eliot asked. “Someone tried to pass them off as gang-related, but our contacts say there’s no connection. Why would a gang want to stop someone from opening a homeless shelter?” More questions rippled around them, but Eliot ignored them and went on. “The timing’s a bit suspicious, too—just this morning, Sunny had to deal with another paperwork issue that should’ve been handled weeks ago. Don’t suppose you know anything about that?”
The woman was silent.
“And her mail’s gotten lost,” Eliot went on. “She sent out invitations to the opening, but I never got mine. I already had a friend of mine check that our mail wasn’t the problem.” He held up his phone, showing off Hardison’s No issues text. “For an event as big and as personal as this, you’d think there’d be a few more of Sunny’s friends, but all I see are reporters. Did anyone here get their invitation in the mail?”
His question was met with confused stares and shaking heads. Eliot looked back at the woman. “Not a single invitation was delivered? Sure seems like someone’s been trying to delay the opening. Maybe someone on the city council?”
“I didn’t—” she tried, but her voice came out in a whisper. She glanced at the cameras, which were now trained on her, and turned back on Eliot. “I didn’t do anything.”
“A gang wouldn’t have used blanks,” Eliot said softly. “But a councilwoman… she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to get hurt. She’d’ve just wanted to make Sunny rethink opening the shelter here. Maybe you had plans for this property. Maybe you’d have even offered to buy Sunny out after the shooting, huh?”
The woman paled, and Eliot lowered his voice. “Too bad for you—Sunny don’t scare easy.”
“Sarah,” Brackett said, his expression pained. “Is this true?”
“You have no proof,” she said. Her voice was strained, and she cast around once more for support.
She found none. The lawn was silent—silent enough to hear sirens fast approaching, growing louder with every passing moment.
“I want a deal,” she said at last.
“That ain’t my department,” Eliot said, his voice too soft for anyone but her to hear. “You tell me no one else will bother Sunny, and I’ll make sure you get to the safety of a police station. You don’t, and I’ll tell the people you’ve been hoping to pin this on exactly what your plan was.”
Her eyes went wide, and after a moment of panicked stillness, she nodded.
The reporters went wild. A frenzy of questions rose up, but Eliot ignored them, ducking his head to avoid the cameras until the police arrived. Then he handed her over without a word and made his way to the podium, where J.B. was waiting with Sunny and Miguel. Miguel had his hand on Sunny’s arm, but a glance at her face told Eliot it wasn’t for support.
“Her secretary swore we’d open today,” Sunny snarled. “She didn’t even have the guts to lie to my face about it. Why would she do this?”
Eliot clicked his tongue and readjusted her scarf, which had gone askew when he tackled her. “The locals will get it out of her. She’s hoping for a deal.”
“She doesn’t deserve one.” Sunny drew in a long breath, watching the arrest with narrowed eyes. “If you weren’t here…”
“J.B. heard the same thing I did,” Eliot said. “You’d have been just fine. Miguel, did you get a look at the car?”
Miguel nodded. “I know all the rides the big players use in this area… that car wasn’t one of ‘em.”
“You may have to put that in writing,” Eliot said apologetically.
“Eh.” Miguel shrugged, his hand still on Sunny’s arm. “Better me than you. They’re gonna start questioning people soon. You might want to find another place to be.”
Sunny sighed and reached out to pat Eliot’s cheek. “He’s right. Don’t leave without saying goodbye, though, all right?”
“I’ll stick around,” he promised.
She smiled and stepped back, gesturing to J.B. “You go along, too. Make sure he sees it.”
Eliot shot him a questioning look, but he just salulted and ducked behind the podium, leading the way around the building to a back door, through the lobby, down a hallway, and finally into a wide room filled with tables. It was bright and clean, exactly the way Eliot expected a cafeteria run by Sunny to look, and he smiled.
“Not bad,” he said, craning his neck to see into the kitchen beyond a serving counter. “What kind of appliances did she—”
He stopped, blinking, as he took in the words painted in bold letters over the counter.
Spencer’s Kitchen
Eliot swallowed, then swallowed again, and J.B. folded his arms and leaned his shoulder against the wall. “Pretty nice, huh? I did the brushwork myself.”
“I don’t understand,” Eliot said.
J.B. raised an eyebrow. “I thought your memory had come back. Now you don’t recognize your own name?”
“That’s not what—I didn’t—” Eliot broke off, glaring at the grin on J.B.’s face. “Why?”
J.B. waved around the room. “The money from the Classen find got us started, but it wasn’t enough to fund the whole project. Your donation got us the rest of the way.”
“That wasn’t just me,” Eliot said. “The others helped, too—Nate, Hardison, Sophie, they all sent money, and Parker—I mean, Parker dropped off a bag of diamonds, but we got that straightened out, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, that was fun.” J.B.’s smile widened. “But Sunny’s been talking to Nate about this for months. We wanted it to be a surprise. Nate thought it would be best not to use your full name, and since we knew you as Spencer first...”
Eliot shook his head. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” J.B. said. “It’s just a wall.”
But it wasn’t just a wall, and J.B. knew it. And Sunny knew it—and Nate knew it, or he wouldn’t have agreed to keep it secret when Sunny brought it up. J.B.’s eyes were still on him, and there was a part of him that bristled at the knowledge that he was so known, but he resisted the urge to withdraw.
There was nothing to hide from here.
“A lot of us don’t get monuments,” he said at last.
J.B.’s expression softened. “That’s what I told Sunny. She put my name on the shelter’s clinic, and I said there were others who deserved the honor more. She told me I didn’t get to decide what she named anything, since it was her building, and that she’d honor whoever she wanted to honor. And if I didn’t like it, I didn’t have to look at it.”
Eliot laughed. He copied J.B.’s stance, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, and breathed out the rest of the tension still coiled in his muscles. “What’d Miguel get?”
“Men’s dormitories,” J.B. said. “And I went ahead and painted Sunny’s name on the women’s hall when she said she was going to reuse Elizabeth Classen. Nate said not to put anyone else’s names on the building or the paperwork—he didn’t want any connections leading back to your team—but I hid a few things in the trim work. A diamond for Parker, a laptop for Hardison. Intertwined hearts for Sophie and Nate.”
Warmth pooled in Eliot’s chest. “Didn’t know you were a painter.”
“Sure,” J.B. said. “Picked it up a ways back.”
They stayed in the building while the police questioned the witnesses outside, drifting through the rooms and finishing up any chores they could find to do. When the lawn cleared and Sunny and Miguel came inside, Eliot accepted Sunny’s offer of a tour and happily followed her back through the building, basking in the pride in her voice as she described each room’s features. He even managed to thank her for the kitchen without embarrassing himself in front of Miguel, who bragged about his larger wing of rooms until Sunny told him to stop talking. J.B. trailed them like a shadow, inspecting vents and windows and hidden spaces and nodding at Eliot whenever Sunny turned away. When they were both satisfied that the building was safe, Eliot offered to cook a celebratory meal, and they returned to Sunny’s house in a tangle of relief and laughter. The worry that had obviously been weighing on Sunny was gone, along with J.B.’s anxiety and Miguel’s work load, and Eliot was ready to just enjoy their company without the fear of something bigger hanging over their heads.
They bundled into the tiny kitchen, refusing to leave when Eliot tried to claim the space for meal prep, and ended up pressing between and around one another as they divided up the tasks. Eliot put together a list of ingredients for Miguel to pick up, and Sunny washed vegetables for J.B. to chop while Eliot measured out flour and butter. When Miguel returned, he sat at the table and watched unashamedly as the others worked, until Eliot set a bowl of salad ingredients in front of him and told him to mix. Miguel complained, J.B. teased, Sunny threatened to kick them all out—and Eliot listened in contentment as he cooked. They ate in the kitchen, Sunny and Miguel at the table with Eliot and J.B. leaning against the counters, enjoying platesful of chicken florentine, steamed asparagus, garlic bread, and salad. Miguel insisted the salad was the best part of the meal. Eliot just looked at Sunny and smiled.
Later that night, when the kitchen was clean and the rest of the house was dark and quiet, Eliot sat on the bed in his room—“Always yours, sugar, any time you need it,” Sunny had told him—and dialed Nate’s number.
Nate answered on the first ring. “How’d the opening go?”
“A little excitement,” Eliot answered. “There are some things I’d like Hardison to keep an eye on before I’m ready to leave.”
“I’ll tell him,” Nate said. When Eliot didn’t answer, he added, “Is there something else?”
Eliot leaned forward to rest his left elbow on his knee. “The kitchen.”
“It was Sunny’s idea.”
“You went along with it.”
“Yeah.”
Eliot sighed. “I appreciate the sentiment. Really. But I didn’t do—”
“Eliot,” Nate said, and then paused as he thought through whatever he’d been about to say. He cleared his throat and went on in a slightly strained voice. “We talked about a funeral. Sophie brought it up, back when—when we found out about the bodies in the LanCast building. Sophie said you deserved to be honored.”
Eliot inhaled, straightening, but Nate wasn’t done. “You’re not likely to get that,” he continued. “I’ve been thinking about the talk we had, about what to do if things go bad on a job. About leaving your body behind.”
“You promised,” Eliot said sharply.
“I know.” Something that sounded like glass clinked against a table on Nate’s end. “I will. I don’t know when it will happen, or how, but you were right. It will probably be bloody. And depending on how bad it goes, you may not get a funeral.” He broke off, and Eliot could hear him swallowing. “Or a grave.”
“I don’t care about that,” Eliot said.
“No,” Nate said. “I know. But the others do. And if they can’t go to your grave—if they can’t say goodbye that way, then at least they can go to Sunny. They can go to a cafeteria with your name on it, and they can stand in the kitchen you helped build, and they can watch it feed the people you helped provide for. They deserve that… and so do you.”
The house settled, its pipes creaking in the soft, relenting way of a man letting out a long breath. Eliot was completely still. “And you?” he rasped.
Nate let out a dry chuckle. “Not me. I’m going first, long before the rest of you.”
Eliot heard the words he didn’t say, heavy in the silence: I can’t go through that again.
He closed his eyes. “I’ll be home in a few days.”
“Good.” Nate took a breath, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded almost normal. “Say hi to Sunny for us. And try to relax, all right?”
An uneven smile quirked up one side of Eliot’s mouth. “All right. You too.”
“Us too.”
Eliot hung up and laid back on the bed, letting his legs hang over the side as he stared up at the ceiling. His body was tired after the travel and anxiety and lack of sleep, but he wanted to stay awake and listen to the silence of the house and the distant traffic. In the morning, they’d go back to the shelter to welcome its first occupants, and Eliot would christen the kitchen with its first meal. He imagined the words on the wall, his name painted painstakingly by hand over the place where hundreds would eat, and thought about the symbols J.B. had hidden throughout the building.
It wasn’t bad, as far as legacies went. Eliot closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of clean sheets and the lingering scents from the kitchen, and allowed himself to rest.
The End