Dad, Is That You?
The travel from office desk to motel hideout consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The marriage license cost forty-seven dollars. The ceremony, if it could be called that, took four minutes inside a county clerk’s office that smelled of stale coffee and recycled air. A woman with a badge and a laminated sign on her desk read the vows from a laminated card while a security guard watched from the corner, his hand resting on a holster that had never been drawn in anger.
Evangeline wore a simple white sundress she’d bought from a gas station boutique—a term she used loosely, given that the entire inventory hung from a single circular rack between the beef jerky and the motor oil. Gideon wore a black button-down he’d had in his go-bag. Jace wore his Spider-Man sneakers and a look of solemn confusion as he watched two adults promise their lives to each other with the urgency of people fleeing a burning building.
Which, in a sense, they were.
“I now pronounce you—” the clerk glanced at the paperwork, “—married. You can kiss.”
Gideon leaned in. Evangeline met him halfway. It was not their first kiss, but it was the first one that counted in the eyes of the law, and there was something terrifyingly permanent about the way his lips pressed against hers, quick and functional, like a man sealing a letter he didn’t have time to read.
“Congratulations,” the clerk said flatly. “Next.”
They were in the parking lot when Cole’s voice crackled through the earpiece Gideon had tucked behind his ear. “Movement. Two blocks east. A white panel van matching the Covington pattern.”
Gideon’s hand found Evangeline’s elbow, steering her toward the sedan. “Jace,” he said, his voice calm and unhurried, the tone of a man discussing the weather, “get in the back. Keep your seatbelt on.”
“But we just got married,” Jace said, climbing in with the practiced speed of a child who had learned not to ask too many questions. “Don’t we get cake?”
“We’ll get cake,” Gideon said. “Later. Cole, we’re moving.”
The sedan tore out of the parking lot, gravel pinging against the undercarriage. Isadora was already in the passenger seat, her phone pressed to her ear, her knuckles white around the device. She was not a woman built for running. She was a woman built for wine tastings and gallery openings and conversations that didn’t involve ballistic analysis. But she had refused to leave Evangeline’s side, and Gideon had learned that some loyalties were stronger than common sense.
“The van’s turning,” Isadora said. “It’s following.”
“I see it.” Gideon’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. The van was maintaining a steady distance of four car lengths, lingering just long enough to be noticed but not long enough to be accidental. “Cole, we’re going to need that decoy.”
“Already rolling,” Cole’s voice came through the earpiece. “Two blocks ahead, black SUV. It’ll peel off at the intersection. You go straight, keep your speed moderate. Let them commit.”
Gideon watched the intersection approach. The black SUV was idling at the curb, its engine rumbling like a sleeping animal. As the sedan passed, the SUV pulled out, sliding into the lane between them and the van. The van hesitated, then accelerated.
“They’re following the SUV,” Gideon said.
“Good,” Cole replied. “Take the next left. I’ll have a room ready.”
— —
The motel was called the Desert Sage Inn, a name that suggested a rustic charm it did not possess. The paint was peeling in long, dry ribbons. The neon sign flickered between VACANCY and VACAN_Y, the missing C having been stolen by the wind or a souvenir hunter. The lobby smelled of cigarette smoke and the faint, chemical sweetness of industrial cleaner.
A man with a name tag that read GERALD and a face that suggested he had given up on life’s surprises checked them in without looking up from his phone. The room was on the second floor, at the far end of the walkway, a deliberate placement that gave them sightlines in both directions.
Gideon unlocked the door and let everyone file in before stepping inside himself, scanning the room with the quick, methodical sweep of a man who had done this a thousand times. Two beds with floral bedspreads that had seen better decades. A window with a curtain that didn’t quite close. A television bolted to the dresser. A phone on the nightstand, its cord coiled like a sleeping snake.
“Home sweet home,” Isadora said, dropping her bag on the floor. She sat on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap, her posture betraying her exhaustion. “How long do we stay?”
“One night,” Gideon said. “Maybe two. Cole’s arranging a new route. We’ll move when it’s clear.” He checked the window, pulling the curtain aside a fraction of an inch. The parking lot below was empty except for a pickup truck with a camper shell and a sedan with a dented bumper. “Isadora, can you watch the door? Give us a few minutes.”
Isadora nodded and rose, her heels clicking against the linoleum as she made her way to the door. She stepped outside, pulling it shut behind her with a soft click.
Gideon turned to find Jace standing in the middle of the room, still in his Spider-Man sneakers, his hands clasped behind his back. The boy was looking at him with an expression that was far too serious for an eight-year-old, a searching quality in his eyes that made something in Gideon’s chest tighten.
They had told Jace the truth, or a version of it. That there were bad people after them. That they had to hide for a while. That Gideon was a friend of Evangeline’s who was going to help keep them safe. It was the kind of simplified, sanitized explanation you gave a child to keep them from asking the questions that had no good answers.
But Jace had never been a child who accepted simple explanations.
“Gideon?” The boy’s voice was soft, tentative, as if he were testing how the name felt on his tongue.
“Yeah, buddy?”
Jace took a step forward, then another. He stopped just in front of Gideon, looking up at him with those serious, searching eyes. “Is it true?” he asked. “What you said to the lady? That you’re my mom’s husband now?”
Gideon crouched down, bringing himself to eye level with the boy. “Yes.”
“So that makes you my dad?”
The question hung in the air, heavy and fragile, a glass ornament balanced on the edge of a shelf. Gideon felt the weight of it, the weight of everything that had come before and everything that would come after. He looked at Evangeline, who was standing by the dresser, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes glistening.
She nodded. A small, tearful nod.
Gideon reached out and placed a hand on Jace’s shoulder. “Yes, Jace. I’m your dad. I should have been here sooner. I didn’t know about you, and I’m sorry for that. But I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Jace’s lip wobbled. It was the only warning before the boy launched himself forward, wrapping his arms around Gideon’s neck with a ferocity that nearly knocked him off balance. Gideon caught him, pulling him close, and felt a warmth spread through his chest that had nothing to do with the desert heat pressurizing the room.
“I always wanted a dad,” Jace whispered into Gideon’s shoulder.
Gideon’s throat tightened. He held the boy tighter, his chin resting on top of Jace’s head. “Me too, buddy. Me too.”
When he looked up, Evangeline had turned away, dashing a hand across her cheek. She was trying to be strong, trying to hold it together for her son, and the sight of it broke something in Gideon and put it back together all at once.
— —
They gave Jace the bed closest to the wall, a position that offered the most protection from potential entry points. Gideon pulled the floral bedspread up to the boy’s chin, then sat on the edge of the mattress, his back to the headboard, his body angled toward the door.
Jace did not fall asleep immediately. He lay there, his small fingers picking at a loose thread on the bedspread, his eyes fixed on the water stain spreading across the ceiling like an inverted map of an unknown country.
“Are you gonna stay?” the boy asked.
“I’m going to stay,” Gideon said.
“Forever?”
Gideon paused. It was not a word he used lightly. Forever was a concept he had never been able to embrace, a horizon that always seemed to recede as he approached it. But here, in this cramped motel room, with the boy’s small hand reaching out to rest on his arm, forever did not seem impossible.
“Forever,” he said.
Jace’s eyes fluttered closed. His breathing slowed, deepened, and settled into the steady rhythm of a child who felt safe enough to sleep. Gideon watched him for a long moment, then let his own head fall back against the headboard, exhaustion pulling at the edges of his awareness.
The clock on the nightstand ticked. The air conditioner rattled in the window. The distant sound of a semi truck downshifting on the highway drifted through the thin walls.
Evangeline moved from the other bed, sitting down beside him on Jace’s. She was close enough that her shoulder brushed against his arm. She smelled like gas station soap and the sweat of a long day, but also like something else, something that reminded him of the first time he’d met her, in a city far away, in a life that no longer existed.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For telling him the truth.”
“I couldn’t lie to him. Not about that.”
“I know.” She reached over and took his hand, her fingers lacing through his. “I’ve spent eight years lying to everyone. I don’t want him to grow up that way.”
Gideon squeezed her hand. “He won’t. I’ll make sure of it.”
They sat in silence, the weight of the day settling around them like a tide going out. Outside, the neon sign flickered, casting alternating shadows across the curtain. A lone car passed on the highway, its headlights sweeping across the room before fading into darkness.
Then the phone on the nightstand rang.
The sound was jarring, violent, a loud electrical shrill that cut through the quiet like a blade. Gideon was on his feet before the second ring, reaching for the phone, but Jace stirred, his small hand reaching out blindly, grasping for the receiver with the foggy instinct of a child half-lost in sleep.
“I got it,” Jace mumbled, bringing the phone to his ear.
Gideon froze. He did not breathe. He did not move. He merely watched, his heart hammering against his ribs, as Jace’s sleepy face twisted into a frown.
“Hello?” Jace said.
There was a pause. A long, terrible pause.
Gideon could hear a voice on the other end, low and murmuring, but he could not make out the words. He saw Jace’s eyes go wide, his small body straightening, alertness cutting through the sleep like a knife through fog.
Then the boy’s gaze found Gideon’s, and there was something in those young eyes that made Gideon’s blood run cold. It was not fear, not exactly. It was recognition. The recognition of a name he had never expected to hear again, spoken by a stranger in the dead of night, a message meant to pierce the veil of their hiding.
Jace put the phone down slowly and whispered to Gideon, “The man said to tell Daddy that the drone was a lullaby. The next song comes for you.”