The Motel’s Thin Walls
The travel from Killian’s penthouse office, Mercer Tower to isolated motel, border county consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The sedan’s headlights cut through the moth-swarmed darkness of the motel parking lot, illuminating cracked asphalt and a neon sign that buzzed like a trapped insect. The vacancy light flickered between blue and dead in a rhythm that suggested the owner had stopped paying for repairs years ago.
Killian killed the engine and sat for a moment, his hands still gripping the wheel at ten and two. The dashboard clock read 11:47 PM. They’d been driving for three hours, taking back roads through county lines where traffic cameras were sparse and gas stations didn’t ask for names.
In the back seat, Jace had fallen asleep against the window, his breath fogging the glass in small, even clouds. His lashes were dark crescents against his cheeks—Nova’s lashes, Killian noted. But the set of his jaw, even in sleep, was pure Mercer.
Nova hadn’t spoken since they’d left the city. She sat in the passenger seat with her arms crossed, her gaze fixed on the motel’s peeling façade. She looked smaller than he remembered. Thinner. The years had sharpened her cheekbones and dulled something behind her eyes that he couldn’t name.
“This is the place,” Killian said, more to fill the silence than to inform her.
“I can see that.” Her voice was flat. “It’s a dump.”
“It’s off the books. Flynn uses it for extractions.” He opened his door, and the dome light clicked on, casting a pale yellow glow across the interior. “We don’t stay long. Just until I can arrange transport north.”
She didn’t move. “And then what? We spend the rest of our lives running?”
“You should’ve thought about that before you hid my son for eight years.”
The words hung in the air between them, barbed and final. Nova’s jaw worked, but she said nothing. She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to wake Jace with a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Baby. We’re here.”
Jace stirred, blinking against the light. His eyes found Killian first—a brief, searching glance—before flicking to his mother. “Where’s here?”
“Somewhere safe,” Nova said, but the words sounded hollow even to Killian’s ears.
He grabbed the single duffel bag from the trunk—the only luggage they’d had time to pack—and led them across the lot. The gravel crunched under his shoes, each step a countdown he could feel in his chest. The motel was a two-story L-shape with rusted railings and windows that reflected the parking lot like black mirrors. Room 14 was at the far end, where the building met a chain-link fence overgrown with kudzu.
The key card Flynn had arranged was waiting in a magnetic lockbox attached to the railing. Killian punched in the code—0314—and the box clicked open. Inside, the card sat on top of a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it and read Flynn’s blocky handwriting:
*Two rooms. Adjacent. Kitchenette in 14 has a back window that opens to the fence line. Car will be gassed and waiting behind the Dumpster at 5 AM if this goes sideways.*
*—F*
Killian pocketed the note and slid the card into the door’s slot. The lock blinked green, and he pushed the door open.
The room was exactly what he’d expected: threadbare carpet the color of cigarette ash, a queen bed with a floral bedspread that had seen better decades, and a laminated sign on the nightstand listing the rates by the hour. The air smelled of bleach and something floral trying desperately to cover the mold.
Nova stepped inside and did a slow turn, taking in the room with an expression that hovered between exhaustion and disgust. “You’re sure this is safe?”
“Safer than the alternatives.” Killian set the duffel on the dresser and pulled back the curtain an inch, scanning the parking lot. Empty. “We’re not in Flynn’s system. No credit cards, no reservations, no digital footprint. Silas’s people will be watching airports and train stations. They won’t think to look here.”
“They found your office.”
He turned to face her. The accusation in her voice was a blade, and she wasn’t hesitating to use it.
“They found my office because Dorian Pemberton has been building a surveillance network for thirty years. He owns half the judges in the city and a third of the police department.” Killian’s voice was measured, controlled. “But this motel is owned by a man who owes Flynn a debt from a previous life. It doesn’t exist on paper. Neither do we, for the next twelve hours.”
Nova’s arms were still crossed. She stood between him and the door, a barrier of coiled tension. “And after twelve hours?”
“We cross the border. I have contacts in Montreal. They’ll keep you both until I can neutralize the threat.”
“Neutralize.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You sound like you’re planning a military operation.”
“I’m planning to keep my son alive.”
“He’s my son too.”
“Then you should’ve told me he existed.”
The silence that followed was punctuated by the hum of the window unit AC, struggling against the summer heat. Somewhere down the hall, a television played a static-laced version of a late-night talk show. The walls were thin—thin enough that Killian could hear the couple in the next room arguing about a lost paycheck.
He could feel Jace’s eyes on him. The boy had stationed himself by the door, his small hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie. He looked too young for the wariness in his gaze, too careful for a child who should have spent his evenings building LEGOs and watching cartoons.
“Jace,” Nova said, her voice softening. “Why don’t you go check out the other room? It’s connected through that door. You can pick which bed you want.”
The boy hesitated, his eyes moving between his parents like he was calculating odds. Then he nodded and slipped through the adjoining door, leaving it open a crack.
The moment he was out of earshot, Nova turned on Killian. “Don’t you dare use this crisis to rewrite history. You don’t get to play the wounded father.”
“I’m not playing anything.” He kept his voice low, aware of the thin walls. “I’m stating a fact. You made a decision that affected three lives without consulting me. That’s not something you get to spin.”
“I was nineteen years old.” Her voice cracked, and she pressed a hand to her chest as if she could physically contain the emotion threatening to break free. “I was nineteen, and my mother was dying, and you were in London closing a deal that would have put you on the cover of Forbes. What was I supposed to do? Call you and say, ‘By the way, I’m pregnant with your child, hope the merger goes well’?”
“You could have tried.”
“You would have come back.” She said it flatly, an indictment. “And then what? You would have put me in a penthouse and hired a nanny and visited on weekends when your schedule allowed. Jace deserved more than being your quarterly obligation.”
Killian felt something shift in his chest, a tectonic plate grinding against its neighbor. “You don’t know what I would have done.”
“I know exactly what you would have done.” Nova stepped closer, close enough that he could see the faint scar at her eyebrow—a childhood accident she’d told him about once, in a different life. “Because I knew you, Killian. I knew the man who didn’t answer his phone for three days because he was restructuring a shipping conglomerate. I knew the man who forgot his own birthday because he was in arbitration. You would have tried. But trying wasn’t enough for my son.”
“He’s our son.”
“He’s mine.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she turned away, facing the window. “I raised him. I held him when he had night terrors. I taught him to read. I sat through parent-teacher conferences and doctor’s appointments and every single fever that spiked at two in the morning. You don’t get to walk in after eight years and claim equal footing just because you share DNA.”
Killian opened his mouth to respond, but the words died in his throat. Because she wasn’t wrong. Not entirely. And that was the part that cut deepest.
The adjoining door creaked.
They both turned. Jace stood in the doorway, his face pale in the dim light. He was holding a stuffed dinosaur by the tail, its stitching frayed at the seams. A comfort object, Killian realized. Something the boy had grabbed from his room before they’d fled.
“Are you getting a divorce?” Jace asked.
The question landed like a grenade in the center of the room. Nova’s hand flew to her mouth, and for a moment, Killian saw the nineteen-year-old girl she’d been—the one who’d cried at airport gates and left voicemails she never sent.
“No, baby.” Nova crossed to him, crouching down to his level. “We’re not getting a divorce.”
“But you’re fighting.” Jace’s voice was small, measured. “I heard you through the wall. You were shouting.”
Killian watched Nova’s composure crack. Watched the tears well in her eyes before she could stop them, tracking down her cheeks in silent trails. She pulled Jace into her arms, burying her face in his hair, and her shoulders shook with the force of a sob she was trying desperately to contain.
The boy’s arms came up around her neck, slow and deliberate, like he’d done this before. Like he’d been comforting his mother for years.
Killian stood frozen, a spectator to a life he’d been excluded from. There was a version of this night in some parallel universe—the one where Nova had called him, where he’d gotten on a plane, where he’d been there for the first steps and the first words and the thousand small moments that built a childhood. That version of him would have been part of this embrace.
Instead, he was on the outside, watching through a window he couldn’t open.
He crossed the room slowly, each step deliberate. When he reached them, he knelt beside Nova, close enough that Jace could see his face.
“We’re not getting a divorce,” Killian said, his voice rough. “We’re just… figuring things out.”
Jace pulled back from his mother’s embrace, his eyes—Killian’s eyes—searching the older man’s face with a gravity that didn’t belong on an eight-year-old. “Figure them out fast, okay? I don’t like it when she cries.”
The words hit Killian like a physical blow. He nodded, not trusting his voice.
Nova wiped her face with the back of her hand and stood, her composure a fragile thing held together by willpower. “Come on, baby. Let’s get you settled. You need to sleep.”
She guided Jace back into the adjoining room, her hand on his shoulder. The door clicked shut behind them, leaving Killian alone in the flickering half-light of the motel room.
He stood there for a long moment, the silence pressing in around him. Then his phone vibrated—a single pulse against his thigh.
He pulled it out. The screen displayed a message from Flynn:
*They found the address. Silas’s men are thirty minutes out. Get ready to move.*
Killian’s blood went cold. He crossed to the door in three strides, pulling it open just enough to scan the parking lot. Still empty. But somewhere in the darkness beyond the neon glow, headlights were cutting through the night, carrying men who would not hesitate to hurt a child to get to him.
He turned and knocked on the adjoining door. Soft, so as not to wake Jace if he’d already drifted off.
Nova opened it. Her eyes were red, but her face was composed. She read his expression before he could speak.
“How long?”
“Twenty minutes. Maybe less.” He stepped past her into the second room. Jace was sitting on the bed, still clutching the dinosaur, his legs dangling over the edge. “We need to go. Now.”
They moved in silence—Nova grabbing the duffel, Killian pulling Jace to his feet. The boy didn’t ask questions. He simply held his father’s hand and followed.
They were halfway to the back window when the footsteps stopped outside.
Not the parking lot. The hallway. Just on the other side of the door, close enough that Killian could hear the rasp of a breath through cheap particleboard.
The world narrowed to a single point of focus. The doorknob. The lock. The thin barrier between them and the men who had come to take his son.
Nova’s hand found Jace’s shoulder, pulling him behind her. The boy’s eyes were wide, but he didn’t make a sound.
Killian moved between them and the door, his body a shield. His hand closed around the nearest heavy object—a lamp, its base ceramic and solid. Not much against whatever waited on the other side. But it was something.
The seconds stretched. The lock held.
Then a voice, low and muffled through the door: “Room’s empty. Check the next one.”
Footsteps retreated, fading down the hallway until they were swallowed by the hum of the AC unit.
Killian didn’t lower the lamp. He stood there, counting the beats of his heart until he reached thirty, until he was certain the footsteps weren’t coming back.
“We leave now,” he said. “Through the window. We stay low and we don’t stop until we reach the car.”
Nova nodded, her face pale in the dim light. She guided Jace toward the window, helping him climb over the sill into the darkness beyond.
Killian followed, the lamp still in his hand.
“Daddy?” Jace said, pulling at Killian’s sleeve. “Is the scary man going to take me away?”
Killian knelt and held his son’s small shoulders. “Not while I’m breathing, kid.”