Frank smiled — the real one, rare these days. Your mother would have framed the torn pieces, he typed back. How are you feeling?
Tired. Huge. Three weeks! Are you still coming for the birth?
Frank looked out at the glass building across the street — Aegis Secure, brushed steel, frosted glass. Three weeks. The case. The baby. Everything was three weeks.
Wouldn't miss it, he typed. Love you, kiddo.
Love you too, Dad. Don't let anyone tear your ticket again.
He laughed out loud — in the empty diner, alone — and tucked the phone away. Paper doesn't run out of battery, his wife had said. She'd also said: Frank, you're the most stubborn man alive, and I married you anyway.
He was going to need every ounce of that stubbornness.
The drive-by changed everything — and nothing.
Frank installed the detail himself — two marshals, rotating, the best Cross could do on short notice. He walked David through the protocols: perimeters, comms, exits. David — the gentle engineer — absorbed it like a spec sheet.
"Understood," David said. "Perimeter, comms, exits."
Frank liked him more every year.
Carrie was harder. She was angry — not at Frank, but at the situation. At the men in the car. At the world that had followed her father home.
"I grew up with this," she said, on the porch, the night before Frank flew back. "The late calls. The — the not knowing. Mom handled it. I just — I thought it was over. The retirement."
"It was over," Frank said quietly. "I came back for one audit. Routine."
"Nothing about you is routine, Dad."
He couldn't argue. He'd tried retirement — the workshop, the rattles, the quiet. It had lasted eleven months before Cross called. One audit, Cross had said. Routine.
"I'm sorry," Frank said. "For all of it. The worry. The — "
"Don't." Carrie took his hand. "Don't apologize for who you are. Just — " Her voice broke. "Just come home. After. All the way."
Frank held his daughter's hand and looked at the mountains, and thought about Margaret — about the last time they'd sat on this porch, before the cancer, before the after.
"She'd be so proud of you," he said quietly. "You know that?"
"She'd be furious at you," Carrie corrected, smiling through tears. "For the drive-by."
"She'd get over it."
"She never got over anything. She just loved you anyway."
They sat in silence, the mountains gold, the detail's car visible at the curb — protection, Frank thought, that shouldn't be necessary.
His phone buzzed. Ruth: All quiet. Tuesday's set.
Frank typed back: See you Tuesday. Then, to Carrie: "I have to go back."
"I know." She hugged him — hard, fierce, pregnant. "End it, Dad. Then come home."
"I will."
He flew back Sunday night, the rattle in his duffel, her words in his ears: End it. Then come home.
Forty-eight hours, he thought. Then Tuesday.
Chapter 9 — The Grandfather
Frank flew to Denver on Friday — commercial, economy, paper boarding pass clutched like a talisman — for the weekend. The case could wait forty-eight hours. His daughter couldn't.
Carrie met him at the airport — eight months pregnant, glowing, enormous — and hugged him so hard his ribs creaked.
"Dad! The video! You're a meme!"
"I'm a grandfather," Frank corrected. "The meme is temporary."
"There are t-shirts, Dad. 'Son, you have no idea what you just did.'"
Frank groaned. Carrie laughed — the full, bright laugh he'd missed more than he'd admitted.
They spent the weekend the way they'd spent every weekend since her mother died: cooking too much, talking too late, pretending the empty chair wasn't empty. Carrie's husband, a gentle engineer named David, asked about the audit — carefully, the way people asked Frank about work.
"It's going well," Frank said. Which was true, and also the biggest understatement of his career.
On Sunday night, Carrie found him on the porch, looking at the mountains.
"Dad. What's really going on?"
Frank considered. He'd spent twenty-eight years not telling his family things. It had cost him — he knew that now, the way you know a tooth is bad.
"It's bigger than a torn ticket," he said finally. "There's — people are getting hurt. I'm trying to stop it."
Carrie was quiet for a moment. Then: "Is it dangerous?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to be careful?"
"I'm always careful." She gave him a look. "Okay. I'm usually careful."
"Mom would say you're the most stubborn man alive."
"She did say that. Often." Frank smiled. "Carrie — I want to be here for the birth. But I might — the case — "
"Dad." She took his hand — her mother's hands, small and strong. "Do what you need to do. We'll be here." She paused. "But Dad? Come home after. All the way home. Not just the body. The rest of you, too."
Frank looked at his daughter — thirty-four, about to be a mother, wiser than he'd ever been — and felt his throat close.
"I'll try, kiddo."
"Good." She squeezed his hand. "Now tell me about the ticket. Every detail. I want to laugh."
So he told her — Shane, the fee, the tear, the little room — and she laughed until she cried, and Frank laughed too, and for one evening, the fentanyl and the corridor and the deadly all faded.
He flew back Sunday night, the wooden rattle in his duffel, Carrie's laughter in his ears. Come home after, she'd said. All the way home.
He was going to try. God help him, he was going to try.
Monday was preparation — the kind Frank had done a hundred times, in a hundred places.
He walked the corridor once more — in daylight, in the vest, memorizing. Forty yards. The alcove at twenty-five. The doors. The timing.
He checked the equipment — the tracker, the camera, the beacon. He tested the radio frequencies with Ruth, twice. He ate a real meal (diner, meatloaf, the closest thing to home cooking).
And he thought about Shane Kovacs — the kid, the lanyard, the tear. Frank had told him: You're twenty-eight. You've got your whole life ahead of you. He wondered if the kid had listened. Probably not. Twenty-eight-year-olds never listened. Frank hadn't, at twenty-eight.
What was I at twenty-eight? He thought about it — a young operative, full of certainty, in a place with no name. He'd been sure then. Sure about the mission. Sure about the rightness.