Safe in the Shadows
The travel from office desk to motel hideout consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The room smelled of bleach and old cigarettes, a combination that no amount of air freshener could fully mask. The motel sign outside buzzed with a dying fluorescent hum, casting the parking lot in a sickly orange glow that made everything look like a crime scene photograph.
Adrian stood with his back to the window, one finger hooked through the curtain’s edge, watching the lot. His body was angled toward the door, toward the only exit besides the one he’d already mentally mapped. The habit was old, older than the empire he’d built, older than the secrets that had torn them apart. It had kept him alive when he’d had nothing. It would keep them alive now.
Vivian sat on the edge of the bed with Milo curled against her side, his small body finally still after the frantic drive. The boy’s eyelashes fanned against his cheeks, his mouth slightly open, one hand clutching the corner of her jacket like a lifeline. Even in sleep, he held on.
“He asked if you were a superhero.”
Adrian turned. Vivian’s voice was quiet, careful, the way someone might speak in a library or a hospital waiting room. She didn’t look at him. Her fingers moved absently through Milo’s hair, stroking the same patch of dark waves over and over.
“I heard.” Adrian let the curtain fall back into place and crossed the room, his footsteps deliberately light on the thin carpet. “He said my car should have rocket launchers.”
A ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “He’s seven.”
“He’s got ambitious expectations.”
“Where did you take him? When you left the library.” Vivian’s voice remained even, but he caught the slight strain in it, the careful way she formed the question. “I saw the black car pull up. I thought—”
“I know what you thought.” Adrian crouched in front of her, bringing himself to eye level. The years fell away for a moment, and he saw her as she’d been at nineteen, terrified and defiant, her hand pressed flat against her stomach as if she could protect what grew inside her from the whole goddamn world. “I took him to get ice cream. He asked for vanilla, then switched to chocolate when he saw the menu, then cried because he couldn’t decide. He still does that.”
Vivian’s breath caught. “You remembered.”
“You used to do the same thing at every restaurant we went to. I always ordered both and let you steal whichever one you didn’t pick.”
A beat of silence stretched between them, taut and fragile as spun glass. Doris’s warning about the danger of overusing facial expressions burned in the back of Adrian’s mind. He focused instead on the way the motel’s cheap clock radio displayed 11:47 PM in stark red numerals, the sound of Milo’s even breathing.
“He has your jaw,” Vivian said finally. “Your stubbornness. He refuses to wear anything but his red sneakers, and he will not eat the crust off his sandwiches, and he always, always asks questions until the adults in the room run out of answers.”
“Apple didn’t fall far.”
“No. It didn’t.” She looked at him then, really looked, and Adrian felt the impact land somewhere behind his sternum. “You found us. How long did it take? After you—