Average Joe Solomon

“Want me to take her?”

Rachel’s head bounces upright, midway through her latest round of nodding off. When she catches her consciousness, the rest of her body resumes her usual routine of rocking the chair, cradling Cameron, trying anything to get the baby to sleep. One arm is pulled free from a Georgetown hoodie, scrunched over her shoulder to leave room for Cameron to nurse. Cam shows no interest in cooperating and instead continues to lean into her expertise—crying like Rachel is killing her.

“I’vegother,” Rachel mutters through heavy lips, barely keeping her eyes open.

Matt leans in the doorway of the nursery, spine drooping, limbs heavy. If this is how he feels, he can’t imagine the weight on Rachel. She’s needed in a way he never could be, not by anyone, not ever. “Why don’t you let me take her?”

“She has to eat,” Rachel replies, voice as steady as the back-and-forth motion of the rocking chair. “And unless you’ve recently gained the ability to produce milk…”

“Nah, you would’ve heard about that,” he teases, but he ain’t surprised when she doesn’t laugh. “C’mon, there’s a bag in the fridge. I’ll use that.”

“That’s for emergencies.”

“You’ll make more for emergencies.”

“I’m having a hard enough time stocking up as it is.”

He takes one, two tentative steps past the threshold, careful in the truest sense of the word—that is, full to the brim with all the care he can muster and all the care she calls for. “I think if you took a break, it might help—”

“I can’t take a break,” she snaps, and she’s shouting to be heard over Cam’s red-faced screaming, which only makes the words that much sharper. “I can never take a break. This is it. I just have to be her mom until I die, or she dies, or we both die. I am never not going to be a mom again.”

They’ve had a conversation similar to this one, almost a year ago when they first saw that faint little plus sign appear on Rachel’s fourth consecutive pregnancy test. At first, Rachel had to hold the idea of motherhood in her head, running it against all her tests and hypotheticals. She had all sorts of hesitations that kept her from taking to the news as naturally as Matt did. But after a few days, a few weeks, a few months, Rachel seemed to come around to the permanence of it, reasoning that all her time taking care of Abby and Henry had prepared her to add another person to her rarely expanded list of loved ones.

The conversation sounds different this time around, completely overwhelmed by dread. “You’re right,” he says, because Rachel’s in no state to hear otherwise. “But if you let me take her, you could be a mom in a shower.”

“A shower?” This, of all things, sends her voice wavering as weary tears creep into the corners of her eyes. “Why, because I stink?”

One, two more tentative steps. “Because you like showers,” he reminds her. “And you’re exhausted.”

“You don’t think I can do this,” she concludes.

“I didn’t say that,” he promises.

“Well I can. Do this.” She’s trying to convince herself, more than she’s trying to convince him. “Normal people do this all the time.”

He asks, “Normal people?”

Too late, he realizes this is the wrong question. “I’m a genius, Matthew,” she says, bouncing, and rocking, and fussing. “I’m literally a genius—and a lot of important people say that, among my particular brand of geniuses, I’m the most genius. The best in my field. A formidable and trusted confidante. I’m, like, so smart.”

“Ain’t gonna hear me argue against that.”

“I’m so, so smart,” she says again, but her resolve shatters when she looks back down at Cameron. “So I should be able to figure this out. I should be able to do this. I should be able to get her on a sleep schedule, and build up a back stock of milk, and get her to stop crying and—and—and—”

Both of his girls are crying in the nursery now. Rachel descends into full sobs that shake at her shoulders, still holding Cameron close, still rocking to that steady rhythm. It ain’t like the crisp, clear tears she gets when she’s angry or the ones she fights off when she’s frustrated. These are the helpless, hopeless, breathless kind of tears that someone like Rachel only gets once or twice in their lifetime.

“Okay,” he says, officially stepping in. “You know what?”

When he takes Cameron from her arms, Rachel doesn’t resist. Cameron, on the other hand,  puts up plenty of fight, just like she has since the hospital. He ignores this for now, setting her in the crib with no blankets, no pillows, on her back, just like all the books say. 

“She’s not ready for the crib yet,” Rachel weeps. “The bassinet—”

Matt returns to Rachel, sinking down to his knees until he’s right at her front. She looks smaller than ever, hunched and heavy. Her stomach is still round and taut with dozens of silver stretch marks. The edge of a bandage reaches beyond her elastic waistband, in need of changing, and her crewneck is all kinds of disheveled. As his first order of business, he threads her arm back through the limp sleeve, then tenderly pulls the sweater’s hem down and around her torso where it belongs. Once that’s taken care of, his hands land on either side of her face, wiping away tears as they come. Strands of hair stick to her cheeks, straight and dark, her usual curls left somewhere in her first trimester. “C’mon.” He’s quiet and soft, unlike anything else in this house. “Five minutes.”

“She’s crying,” Rachel protests.

“So are you,” Matt points out, climbing to his feet. “But she’s going to keep crying no matter what I do. So I’m starting with you.”

For all her arguments, Rachel doesn’t have much fight in her.  When Matt takes her hands and pulls, she eases up to meet him. It’s slow goin’s as she anchors against his steady frame, rising against all the stiffness in her body, but she gets to her feet eventually. He doesn’t mind waiting. Not for her. And anyway, she’s already better than she was in those first few nights home. By his measure, this is a stark improvement.

One step at a time, he leads her across the dark hall where she lands on the edge of their unmade bed. The short journey seems to wipe out what little reserves she has. She just sits there, dazed, truly thoughtless for the first time since he’s known her. In the time it takes Matt to fluff up her pillows, sobs turn to stuttering little sniffles—too tired to cry, even.

“Lean back, baby,” he mutters, helping her lift her feet onto the mattress. It’s one of the only times Rachel follows his orders, instead of the other way around. “Easy does it.”

In the adjoining bathroom, Rachel’s hospital package is kept separate from Cam’s, lovingly prepared by the nursing staff at GW before she was discharged. Pads, diapers, bandages, and little orange bottles made out to Rachel Ann Morgan. Matt plucks a clean washcloth from the linen closet on the way in, then wets it in the sink. On his way out, he grabs a handful of pills and the last of the long, adhesive patches of gauze. 

Rachel’s still crying when he rejoins her, trading out stuttering breaths for silent, streaming waterworks. Her freckles ain’t out like they usually are, cheeks rosy and blotched as tears roll steadily into the pillow at her back. “I’m just not good at this,” she whispers to the ceiling.

Matt’s fairly sure he’s not supposed to hear this, so he resists the urge to disagree. It wouldn’t do much good anyway. For now, the best thing he can do is change her bandage, then go tend to the screams coming from across the hall. He finds his place at the edge of the bed and hands her the pills, then quietly tends to a wound Rachel doesn’t have the energy to tend herself.

He starts at her waist, rolling the elastic over itself one, two, three times until the entire bandage is exposed. It’s clean, which is a relief. The first time he changed this bandage, splotches of red and brown bled through the backing, gnarlier than any cut he’s ever had to patch up before—on Rachel or anyone else. Clear white gauze is one of those small signs that she’s on the mend, and might get back to a more familiar version of herself one day.

Maybe that’s why he’s so shocked when he pulls the adhesive back. Her bleeding has slowed, no doubt about it, but the bruising is sharp, and deep, and vast. Black, upon blue, upon purple, wrapped around a puckered scar that slices across her entire abdomen. Throughout his life, he’s seen plenty of people take plenty of hits, but he’s never seen a bruise this bad. He can see it stretch down through each muscle, based on the surface alone.

He uses every ounce of training he’s got to keep his face neutral, not sparing an inch of pity for Rachel Morgan—she ain’t never needed it before and she don’t need it now. But as he softly, gently wipes the warm cloth across her cut, then applies a fresh bandage, Matt’s heart aches for the woman he loves, in a way he doesn’t even understand himself. Like he misses her. Like he’s mourning. Like he knows she’ll never be the same again.

Down her nose, Rachel watches each of his movements, eyes grey and absent their usual attentive gleam. “I don’t think I even love her,” she admits. “I’m trying. I am. But I don’t feel the way the books said I would. Bliss. Instinct. Devotion.”

Matt’s not sure these words are meant for him either, spoken just below her breath. But he leans in anyway, catching her gaze, because he wants her to hear him when he says, “That doesn’t mean you don’t love her.”

“What if it does?” she asks in terror.

“Rachel.”

“What if I missed my chance to bond with her? In the hospital?”

“Rachel.”

“What if I never love her?”

This inspires a whole new wave of tears, the thought twisting her features into something pained and wanting at the very same time. Next to her, Matt certainly ain’t the smartest person in the room, but he’s smart enough to know that nothing he says is gonna make her heart any less heavy. So he does the only thing he can do—he crawls up into bed beside her and wraps her up in all the ways he knows how. Arms tight around her shoulders. Hand in her hair. Legs overlapping. 

“I wish it hadn’t gone this way,” she sobs into his chest. “And I wish my mom was here. And I wish we had help. And I wish we never had this baby, or maybe I just wish I was better. I wish I was better. I wish I was better. I'm just not good.”

"You don't gotta be good," he says. "You've just got to try."

"I'm trying so hard."

"And that's good enough."

"I wish I had more. I wish... I wish I wanted it more."

As she whispers all her wishes straight into his heart, Matt just holds her as steady as he can, falling absentmindedly into the same soothing rhythms he does with Cameron. Rocking, and shushing, and holding her close. Kissing the crown of her head. Leaving loop-de-loops up and down her arm. Rachel’s cries mix with Cam’s, alike in all but the years that separate them, until Rachel runs out of tears and starts snoring softly against his stretched and stained shirt.

And it’s not so bad, laying here with Rachel. For a moment, it feels the way it used to, seven days and a thousand years ago. For a moment, Cameron’s cries seem to fade and Matt blinks. Once. Twice.

The next time he blinks, a block of dawn stretches through the bedroom window. His first thought is how lovely the light looks, flooding the townhouse in a rare winter warmth. His second thought is how lovely Rachel looks up against him, washed in a golden glow as sunlight splits her dark hair into whites, and oranges, and purples.

His third thought is that Cam ain’t crying anymore.

Just as he thinks it, Rachel blinks awake with him and the two lock eyes within the same instant. Their breaths catch, panic setting in, as they gasp out a simultaneous, “The baby.”

Matt leaps out of bed, with Rachel not far behind. She moves at a decent pace, considering she still can’t walk up and down stairs without help, both of them bolting across the hall and tearing open the door to the nursery.

There are some fears that come natural with parenthood. Infection. Illness. Are they sleeping enough? Are they eating enough? Worrying, he’s learned, is just part of the gig. But there’s a whole new set of fears for parents who spend their lives in the shadows. Who have made enemies both foreign and domestic. In comparison, the usual parenting concerns don’t hold a candle to the fear that someday, one of Matt’s shadows might find his kid.

His very worst fear is realized the moment he opens the door to an empty crib.

Without trying, his mind runs through the possibilities—maybe Rachel moved her. Maybe Matt moved her in his sleep and doesn't remember. Maybe Rachel Morgan’s baby is smart enough to sprint past every milestone to sit up, climb out of the crib, and crawl downstairs at only seven days old. 

But Rachel was in his arms all night, and Matt’s never been much of a sleepwalker, and no amount of genius could get Cam up and moving that quickly. Another option gnaws at his stomach and even though he knows his instincts aren’t at their sharpest, he can’t help but think this is it. After years on their tail, the Circle are finally retaliating. They’ve been playing the long game and now the Circle of Cavan have Cameron.

Ice radiates down his center, crystalizing from his core outward. “Call your dad,” he tells Rachel. “Call Henry, right now.”

“Matt—?”

“Call him.”

Henry has warned Matt for years that one day, his professional life would bleed into his personal. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that they would come after him now, when his guard is down, when he’s at his most exhausted, and overwhelmed, and distracted. He should have prepared better. Should have locked the whole damn house down. Should have had camera, after camera, after camera installed, just like Henry did at the Estate.

He’ll know what to do. Henry has to know what to do.

As Rachel rushes into the bedroom to place the call, Matt starts looking for evidence to relay. He glances toward the nursery windows. Locked. They took a blanket with them. Left everything else. He doesn’t waste any time before barreling down the narrow staircase, landing at the front door. He checks this, and it’s locked, too. No sign of entry. No sign of exit. Whoever broke in didn’t leave a trace.

Panic bubbles in shards at the base of his throat, shredding through every breath he takes. She’s gone. She’s gone, and they have her. He searches the foyer, the kitchen, the dining room, desperate for any start to a trail gone cold, until he finally rounds the corner into the living room and—

Quiet moments are few and far between, and they’re usually spent staring distantly at the nearest wall, waiting for the next round of crying to begin. The rest of the time, Matt and Rachel operate like a two-man surveillance crew, alternating watches so the other person can eat, and shower, and maybe, maybe get some shut-eye. They haven’t said more than five consecutive words to one another since arriving home. 

Has she eaten? Yes. 

Did she sleep? No. 

When was her last change? Ten minutes ago.

Did she ever stop crying? No.

Everyone from here to Timbuktu told him the newborn stage would be hard, but even so, it’s been wildly undersold. Matt does hard things for a living and before that, he spent a childhood doing hard things on the farm. This ain’t hard. This is impossible.

At least, that’s the conclusion he comes to during his third—or, maybe, fourth—wall-stare of the day. Rachel’s upstairs with the baby, using some sort of motherly magic to coax a ten-minute nap out of the afternoon. Matt tries to make the most of the moment by brushing his teeth for the first time in three days, downstairs in the kitchen, because they already learned the hard way that the bathroom pipes make too much noise in the nursery.

This is the longest break he’ll get for the next twenty-four hours, so he sinks into it. Unwinds the tension in his muscles and settles his shoulders back to the place they’re supposed to sit. The back-and-forth motion of his brush against his teeth serves as a steady rhythm after days of constant chaos.

His brief peace is immediately shattered the moment Abigail Cameron bursts through his front door.

For a woman who was born and raised into a covert lifestyle, Abby sure knows how to make an entrance. She leads with a kick, which leaves a shoe print right next to the deadbolt, then marches in with balloons, teddies, chocolates, and a gift-wrapped bag featuring the word B-A-B-Y written out in wooden blocks. She tops it all off with a delighted, excited, “The cool aunt has finally arrived.”

This, unfortunately, is met with more crying. 

“Shit, sorry,” says Abby, dropping her voice to something that’s shaped like a whisper, but ain’t actually that much quieter than her true voice. “I forgot about baby rules. Is it nap time?”

Matt hangs his head over the sink. He gives up on brushing, which is just as well, because he’s just now realizing he forgot the toothpaste anyway. “Hi Abby.”

She lumbers into the kitchen with all her goodies in tow, dumping everything onto the kitchen table. Her stuff joins the mountain of formula, diapers, blankets, creams, and everything else in their small arsenal of baby supplies. “Sorry I’m late,” she says. “The Peruvian government really makes a stink when they catch you trying to smuggle guns across their border.”

“The trip went well, then?” Matt asks.

“As well as sting operations ever go when there’s a hundred automatic rifles involved.” She gives a casual wave of her hand as she sits, crossing one nyloned leg over the other while a tall red pump bounces with Abby’s trademark restlessness. “How’s the baby—can I see her? Hold her? Squeeze her cheeks, etcetera, etcetera?”

He turns to face her, leaning against the counter to stay upright against his own exhaustion. He’s suddenly all too aware of the scruff on his jaw, the stains on his shirt, and the smell of indeterminate baby fluids lingering on some indeterminate part of his body. “Rachel’s trying to get her down,” he explains. “You’re welcome to wait until she wakes up from her nap.”

Abby’s face twists, like it always does when she doesn’t get her way. “I’m between ops,” she says. “Langley wants me debriefed and on another plane in the next twenty-four hours, so I don’t exactly have a lot of time to spare.”

Matt has to work hard not to laugh right in her face. “You won’t need it,” he says. “The way this kid sleeps, you’ll just need an extra ten minutes.”

By some miracle, Rachel’s managed to reign in the crying a second time, old DC floorboards squeaking overhead as the nursery’s rocking chair rolls over each one, back and forth, back and forth. He eyes Abby, wondering if she knows how lucky she is to experience the quiet twice in such a short amount of time. 

She must not, or else she wouldn’t talk right through it. “I suppose if anyone’s worth waiting for, it’s my niece,” she says. “But she better be cute.”

“Ridiculously cute.”

“Yeah?”

“Even cuter when she’s not crying.”

“Isn’t that kind of what babies do?”

Matt shrugs. “So I’m told.”

“So parenthood is everything you’ve ever dreamed of,” she concludes.

“It’s good,” he says. “Glad to have her home.”

A beat. Abby studies him, in that way only Abby can, and Matt’s too tired to figure out what it means. “That’s great,” she says. “Do you wanna say that again like you mean it, or do you wanna tell me how you actually feel?”

It’s a quick and efficient reminder that before there was Rachel, there was Abby, and those Cameron sisters have always, always been able to get a clean read on him. No sense in hiding from someone who already knows all his covers. “This is torture.”

She smiles, satisfied. “This isn’t torture. You’ve actually been tortured.”

“Not like this,” Matt insists. “This is something else.”

“Weren’t you detained by some Russian mobsters a few years back?” This is phrased like a question, but Abby ain’t looking for an answer. Instead, she says, “You’re telling me your newborn is tougher than the literal Russian mob?”

“At least the Russian mob gave me beans and rice,” he says. “My last three meals have been Wonder Bread straight out of the bag.”

It’s pity, or sympathy, or maybe disgust when she says, “Oh, Matt.”

“The one before that was peanut butter, still on the knife, because Cam started crying before I could make a full sandwich.”

In her eyes, he sees himself once mighty and now fallen. “Get it together, dude.”

“This is what I’m talking about.” He slugs toward the table one heavy footstep at a time, opting to join her rather than waste all that energy standing. “We’re not eating, we’re not sleeping. We haven’t had a normal conversation in days. I’ve been pooped on too many times to count—swear to God, it’s like this little girl’s never even heard of the Geneva Conventions.”

“Hold on,” she says, putting a hand up. “First of all, she’s six days old, of course she hasn’t heard of the Geneva Conventions. Get a grip. Second of all, are you trying to say that getting pooped on by a baby is a war crime? Is that really the claim you’re trying to make right now?”

Matt starts to recite, “Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment are and shall remain prohibited—”

“I know the Geneva Conventions,” she says. “But you seem to have forgotten you’re not currently a prisoner of war.”

“I’m a prisoner of something.”

“Matt.”

“I’ve met actual dictators less oppressive than this.”

“Matt.” She’s as playful as always, but there’s a stern undertone to this particular scolding. “Listen, I don’t have a maternal bone in my body, but even I know you’re not supposed to compare your baby to dictators.”

A lot of folks think espionage is all about gadgets, and stakeouts, and sneaking around. Those things have their place, for sure, but relationships are the real heart of it all. Matt can spot an ally before he even learns their name, and he always knows exactly how to win them over to his side. It’s all about the inflection in their tone, the ease of their laughter, the one little thing that makes them trust him over anyone else for just one fleeting moment.

After years in this business, Matt’s gotten real good at spotting when someone’s on his side. But it doesn’t take years of experience to see that he’s losing Abby quick. 

So he breaks his gaze, backtracking with the shake of his head. “You’re right.”

“I usually am,” she replies.

“It’s the sleep thing,” Matt says, twiddling near his temple. “It’s giving me Dad Brain.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t envy you that.” He spots a tentative allowance in her eye as she slowly comes back around to him. “But it’s worth it, yeah? One look at your kid and you’re, like, the happiest you’ve ever been or whatever?”

Matt’s too tired to name the exact emotion this makes him feel, but it’s something close to shame, something close to guilt, something close to disappointment. While he knows in the deepest parts of his chest that he loves his little girl, would do absolutely anything for his little girl, Matt’s not actually sure he likes his little girl all that much. He can’t blame Abby for asking the question—after all, he’s supposed to feel happy about his own kid—but in the absence of paternal bliss, it sends up his defenses. Makes him feel short and hot. “Sure,” he says. “Yeah. All worth it.”

Abby doesn’t buy it, skepticism written in her features, but she doesn’t press. Changes the subject instead. “How’s Rachel handling everything?” she asks. “Has she cataloged the onesies, yet? Charted the baby’s sleep schedule by the minute?”

All Rachel’s managed to do since the hospital is keep the baby alive. It’s one hell of an accomplishment, but a far cry from the logistical, meticulous, cataloging version of Rachel that Abby has in her head. This ain’t their usual dog and pony show. They’re not the same people they were a week ago. For Matt, the crying has become a steady thrum that sends him into autopilot, but it’s doing something different to Rachel. It’s playing with her instincts, sending her nerves fraying until Matt’s walking on eggshells with someone who never used to crack. 

“She’s,” he begins, searching for the words, “not doing great.”

Abby perks up at this, uncrossing her legs to lean forward. “What do you mean?”

“She seems, I dunno. Frazzled.”

“Rachel doesn’t get frazzled.”

This is true, or at least it was before the baby came. Matt worries, secretly, that it’s still true and frazzled ain't a strong enough word. The books mentioned this sort of thing could happen—discontentment, depression, even psychosis. Throughout her pregnancy, Rachel had insisted that she had too strong a will to succumb to any of it. Now, watching her with Cam, Matt ain’t too certain.

“Maybe not frazzled,” he admits. “It’s normal, I think. Turns out hormones keep messing with, well, everything. Even after the baby’s born.”

"Don't tell me we finally found the one thing Rachel's not good at."

"I'm not kidding."

"Neither am I."

"Well then, that ain't a nice thing to say."

Abby's smile fades, gently admonished. "Right," she says. “But she’s okay?” 

Matt wishes he had an answer for her. “She’s just… down.”

Abby considers this, weighing his words behind a scrutinizing squint. She must come to some conclusion because she stands, that Cameron resolve settling into the set of her jaw. “Well,” she says. “Nothing a little sisterly bonding can’t fix.”

Matt knows first-hand that no one can make Rachel happier than Abby can. At the same time, no one can make Rachel angrier than Abby can. That’s a fifty-fifty chance Matt just ain’t willing to take right now, which is why he stands to reach after her. “Abby—”

She starts toward the stairs. “Matt, trust me,” she says. “There are some things only a sister can understand.”

He calls after her again, trying to keep his voice down. “Abby, don’t.”

Abby has no such regard for volume, climbing up one, two, three steps. “I don’t expect you to know—”

“Abby, either you sit back down at the table or you leave.” He doesn’t mean to raise his voice. Hopes to God it doesn’t reach the nursery. He drops back down to a hiss when he says, “Those are your options.”

She turns back, literally looking down on him with an expression she’s only worn once or twice before. Decades of specialized training assess his position, his mental state, his intensity, his words, running through her head like a checklist. Back home, he might just say she’s sizing him up. Trying to decide if she could win whatever fight they’re about to have.

Except Abby ain’t gonna fight him. Abby almost never does.

Instead, she sways back down the steps until they’re eye-to-eye. “Alright, big shot,” she says with a wicked grin. “I’ll stay down here.”

Matt’s gotten better at staring contests with Abby, but he still can’t come close to winning them. He’s the first to drop his gaze. “Thank you.”

“And instead,” she goes on, brushing past him. Her heels click against the hardwood. “You’re going to tell me what’s got you this worked up.”

Matt ain’t an angry guy, but Abby’s got one Hell of a gift for drawing it out of him. “I just told you,” he says, trailing behind her. “Wonder Bread. Geneva Conventions. Frazzled. Can’t a guy get worked up over a hard week?”

“Sure you can,” she says. “You aren’t, but you can.”

“Abby, I’m not sleeping. I’m not eating.”

“So you’ve said.”

“The baby only stops crying when she sleeps, and she only sleeps when she’s not crying.”

“Must be tough.”

“My record for consecutive hours without getting puked on is two.”

“Uh-huh.” She finds a spot on the countertop this time, popping herself next to the microwave. “And what about Joe?”

Matt stops in his tracks. “What about Joe?”

“You’ve got a long fuse, my friend,” she says, drawing an imaginary wire through the air with red-tipped fingers. “And Joe’s the only one who can cut it this short.”

Matt and Abby have been friends for nearly a decade. He’s saved her life. She’s saved his far more. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that she can reach inside his head, root around, and pluck out the one thing he’s not willing to talk about. But every time she does it, he’s still caught flat-footed. “Joe’s fine. He’s fine—he’s…”

Abby drops her chin, leveling him with a single look.

It doesn’t leave him with much wiggle room. “He’s missed a couple of call-ins.”

Abby nods, long and slow. Without the sucker she used to carry around, she bites her bold red lip in thought. “How many is a couple?”

“Two,” Matt admits.

“Joe’s missed two call-ins,” she repeats. “Has that happened before?”

“He’s missed one,” says Matt. “Never misses two. He’s too good for that.”

“So let me get this straight,” she says. “You’ve got a baby that won’t stop crying, a wife who isn’t herself, and your best friend has missed two call-ins.”

She lays each point out on a finger, landing on three total. When she lays it all out, he sees a birds-eye view of his life for the first time in days—and it ain’t pretty. As someone who’s had a lot of hard weeks in his lifetime, this one might just be the hardest.

Rather than own up to the overwhelm, he shifts the focus back to her. “Yeah, maybe, except you’re my best friend.”

“No. You’re my best friend,” she corrects. “But Joe’s your best friend. Nice try.”

This has more truth to it than he cares to admit, but she doesn’t say it with any hurt. It’s a fact, plain and simple, like she’s reciting it from a book. Matt, for his part, would rather not linger on it, so he ping pongs back to himself. He realizes too late that this is probably exactly what she was aiming for. “We got into a, I dunno—a tiff. Before I left.”

“Before you left…?”

“For DC. We were running an op and right from the start, I told him that if Rachel needed me—”

She stops him again, hand held against the center of his sentence. “You were running an op when your wife was thirty-nine weeks pregnant?”

“Rachel had one of your dad’s jets on standby in Frankfurt—”

“You were on a mission in Germany when your wife was thirty-nine weeks pregnant?”

“It was her idea. She had this whole plan to get me back once she started having contractions.” Matt now knows that plans mean nothing when it comes to delivering a baby and has a newfound appreciation for all the angels that made sure he was on time to his kid’s birth, despite the eight hours between them. “We were following up on a lead she had to drop when she went on maternity leave.”

“I will never understand your relationship.” She shakes off her bewilderment and gets back to the matter at hand. “So you and Joe had a fight?”

“A tiff,” Matt insists. “Just a little spat. But it felt—it’s just that I didn’t leave things on a good note. Left in a hurry. And now he’s missing call-ins.”

Missed call-ins are the ghost stories of the spy world. They’re one of the few things that can truly spook the international spooks of the world. Every agent has a story about a phone call they were supposed to get, then didn’t. The unlucky ones also have stories about the funeral that followed, usually kept quiet, always without a body—and that’s if there’s a funeral at all. The worst cases get caught up in the seven years it takes for MIA to become KIA, waiting to be put to rest. It’s nasty business, and it all starts with a silent phone on the hook.

Matt always suspected Joe would go out in silence, but he thought they’d be a little older when he did. Then again, maybe they’re not young men anymore. Maybe the years have finally caught up with them.

“If it helps,” says Abby, “my dad says you don’t have to worry until number three.”

“Yeah?” says Matt, looking for any reason not to worry. “Three’s the magic number?”

“I don’t know about magic,” says Abby. “But statistically, three’s the nail in the coffin. If they miss the third one, it’ll take a miracle to get them back.”

Joe’s third call is scheduled for tomorrow morning and Matt’s not sure what he’ll do if the phone doesn’t ring. Before he has a chance to figure it out, Cameron starts to cry again.

From upstairs, he hears Rachel call out, “Matthew.”

The doctors tear her away too soon, leaving Matt with the rushed sense that he’s missed his first fatherly responsibility. Cameron is clearly waiting for his instruction, for his say-so, and now he’s missed his shot at telling her this one little obligation of the human experience—you’ve got to breathe, kid.

But she’s out the door before Matt has a chance to say it. “Where’s she going? Where are you taking her?”

Everyone in the room is wearing a mask, so he doesn’t know who says, “NICU.” All he knows for certain is that he’s split in two, stuck between his girls, and he doesn’t have backup. Abby’s plane is still in the air. Joe’s still somewhere in Germany, right where Matt left him. His mama and his pops are back in Hay Springs, waiting by the phone for a call he hasn’t had the chance to make yet.

And the one person he trusts to handle this situation with the utmost grace, and presence, and poise is unconscious on the operating table, not even stitched back together yet.

This wasn’t supposed to happen so quickly and he was supposed to have a team at his back when it did. His own promise rings in his ears, swearing to stay at Rachel’s side, but their baby isn’t breathing and his mission objective cracks straight in half. Should I stay or should I go—lyrics echoing through a busy mind, nerves buzzing like a gritty, overdriven riff. 

Rachel’s bare hand is still clutched in his gloved one, exactly where it’s been the entire time. He glances back to her, hoping she saw this coming. Surely she prepared for this moment, the same way she prepares for everything else, and she’ll somehow reach beyond the anesthesia with an answer. But they’re well beyond Rachel’s plans and this is his operation now.

It’s a hard call, except it ain’t. Not really.

It took years for Matt to refine his field instincts, but his parental instincts take less than a minute to kick in. He’s shocked by how quickly and how starkly this little girl trumps everything else. She trumps the manners his mama taught him, as he shoves through doctors and nursing staff. She trumps every rule he was given before entering the operating room, calling for a cool head and slow, steady movements. She even trumps his wife, laying in pieces at his back as he leaves the operating room behind. The shift is instant, and it’s everything, and it’s her, her, her.

Matt’s never been a quick runner, but a person wouldn’t know it by the way he dashes down the long, hospital hallways. Every five feet, someone tells him to slow down. Every five feet, he ignores them, right up until the moment he finds a fully staffed nurse’s station. He shoves past an older gentleman to ask, breathless, “Morgan. Baby Morgan. Where—?”

“Matt?”

Matt catches a full three breaths before he realizes he’s standing next to Henry Cameron, dressed in a suit and tie. His NSA badge is still clipped to his belt, which Matt reckons could be some sort of national security concern, but this is one of those rare moments when national security ain’t a concern for either of them. 

“I came as soon as I could,” Henry says, and it’s a stark relief to share the urgency with someone. “What is it? What’s going on?”

When Matt debriefs him, it’s easy. Practiced. They’ve done this before, a couple dozen times over, diving into the latest Circle findings over the years. Matt anticipates his questions and knows how to convey every detail in a way Henry understands. They speak with an unexpected shorthand and Matt realizes, for the very first time, that Henry’s love looks an awful lot like Rachel’s. “...and Rachel—”

“I’ll see to Rachel,” Henry insists, and Matt knows it’s true. “You take care of your little girl, and I’ll go take care of mine, understood?”

He’s one of the few people Matt would trust with the task. “Yessir.”

One of the nurses, dressed in playful pastel patterns, offers to escort Matt to the NICU. Matt thinks this is a mighty generous offer, until he realizes she probably just doesn’t want him to take off down the halls again. She keeps a much slower pace down the length of the hospital until finally dropping him off at a great, wide window.

He looks inside to see a handful of incubators, each holding a different newborn. He scans the room, certain he’ll know which baby is his, but maybe his instincts ain’t as instant as he thought. They all look tiny, and vulnerable, and still. Some have tubes stuck into their throats, others have bright blue lights shining in their faces. All of them are hooked up to wires and monitors, with clipboards hanging nearby.

The nurse, kindly, points toward the room’s newest addition, rolled into place by another nurse in another pair of pediatric scrubs. They stick pads to her chest and loop a tag around her ankle—or at least, they try to, but she kicks and fusses the whole way through, face still scrunched up in a cry. Matt can’t hear her through the glass, but takes solace in the fact that she’s traded lavender cries for rosy cheeks. “Looks like she’s putting up a good fight,” says the nurse. “You can stay as long as you like, but the doctors will tell you when it’s safe to visit.”

He tries not to look too shocked by the idea of visiting his own daughter. Of needing permission to access a moment that was supposed to be a given. He always knew fatherhood would come with its fair share of surprises, but he never expected it to start out with one, after another, after another.

When the nurse steps away, Matt realizes he hasn’t said thank you, and further realizes he couldn’t if he tried. Words are replaced with a worry that has him rooted to this spot, eyes stuck on the NICU’s newest admission. Right then, he’d do anything for that little girl. Yet all he can do is watch, in the same way angels must watch, protecting from a distance and wishing with the might of God that they could reach out. It’s the sort of single-minded focus that leaves him vulnerable to the rest of the world, and Matt finally understands something Henry told him years ago about young men who don’t know how quickly the world can go wrong.

Matt ain’t much of a young man anymore. Hasn’t been for some time, at least not in any way that matters. Any lingering doubts on the subject are washed away by the sight of the new generation, laid out in neat rows before him.

He’s not sure how long he stands there. Long enough for his back to ache. Long enough to see doctors come and go through the window. Long enough for Cameron to settle into the warmth of the incubator, silent and still, quick breaths rising and falling at her small sternum. Matt reckons he could stand here forever, until a hand falls to his shoulder.

He hears Henry’s voice, but keeps watching on. The guardian of the NICU. “I’m going to get us something from the cafeteria,” he says. “What would you like?”

Matt just shakes his head. “Rachel and I had burgers before we came.”

“That was quite some time ago.”

“M’fine.”

“Let me put it this way,” says Henry. “I am getting you something from the cafeteria, and unless you’d like to eat a prepackaged Caesar salad with chicken that is who-knows-how-many days old, you had better tell me what you'd like.”

Matt mutters something about chicken and fries and silently wishes for his mama’s home cooking instead, the way he always does when life feels heavier than usual. Henry nods, lands two pats on Matt’s shoulder, and says, “She’s back in the room, if you’d like to see her. Sleeping for now, but due to wake up soon.”

They’ve both made a career out of leaving things unsaid, which is how they both hear the implication in Henry’s words. She’s due to wake up soon, and someone should be there to meet her. Matt should be there to meet her.

For the first time, Matt breaks his gaze from the babies to meet Henry. Somehow, he looks older, too. “The doctors have things handled here,” Henry promises. “You’re needed elsewhere.”

For a moment, Matt wonders what happens when guardian angels decide to look away. But when a new shift of nurses walk into the room to check Cameron’s chart, Matt reckons he doesn’t have to be the only angel on duty. Right now, he has to be a husband, and Henry’s got far more wisdom than Matt on that particular subject.

So Matt leaves Cameron behind, navigating back to Rachel’s room to find his seat in the hard, leather recliner tucked at her bedside. She’s even paler than usual, lips chapped with dark circles beneath her eyes. She’s missing her gentle snore. This sleep is sickly, forced, absent her usual soft atmosphere, and maybe she needs a few angels of her own looking on.

So Matt joins the ranks, watching her breath come and go in slow, shallow waves. Watching her monitors pulse alongside her heart. Watching every little thing he can, right up until the moment he watches her eyes slip open.

“Matthew?”

She doesn’t see him yet. Rather, she just expects him to be there, the way he said he would be. In an instant, he leans toward her, speaking so he’s easier to find. “Hey,” he says, quiet and calm. “Hey, right here.”

He takes her hand, just like he had it in the operating room, and brings it to his lips. She’s cold, even more than usual. “What…?”

Matt’s not exactly sure what the protocol is for this situation. Doesn’t know if he should comfort, or debrief, or if maybe she’s the type of woman who would find comfort in a debrief. So he starts with, “Everything’s okay,” and measures her response before deciding to say, “The C-Section went okay.”

There’s an uncharacteristic daze to her, as she finds the moment. “Where’s the baby?”

Matt hoped he’d have some time to beat around that particular bush, but Rachel sees straight through him, even in this state. “The baby is just fine,” he assures her. “But there were some complications. Breathing troubles. It only took a few seconds for the doctors to decide on the NICU and they’ve been taking good care of—”

“Complications?” It’s disorienting to see her lag, when she’s usually the one leading every conversation. When the word finally does land, she blinks fiercely, as though trying to wake herself up. “What do you mean? What kind of—?”

“It’s all taken care of,” he promises, though it seems to do little to soothe her soul. “I’ve been down there for a while, and everything seems to be settling down. Things just went a little quick in the operating room, is all.”

This is the wrong thing to say, as evidenced by the fact that Rachel tries to physically sit up. Matt’s no expert, but he’s still got a crystal clear memory of Rachel’s insides being on the outside, so he reaches toward her. Tries to steady her as she asks, “What do you mean, a little quick?”

Matt’s hand finds her arm, her shoulder. “Just that there were some quick judgement calls,” he says. “But really, Rachel. I know it wasn’t our doctor, but the team was great. It’s all handled.”

“Was there skin-to-skin?”

“No ma’am.”

“Did they wait to cut the umbilical cord?”

“No ma’am.”

She tries to sit up again. Matt tries to stop her. “How long has it been?” she asks. “Is there time to breastfeed? You’re supposed to breastfeed in the first hour—”

“Rachel.”

“No.” Finally, she falls back into her pillows, but her hand shoots up, stern and halting. “Don’t do that. Do not do that. There is a right and a wrong way to do this. These things are important. These things have to happen in a specific order, at a specific time.”

“They went to the NICU immediately after delivery,” he tells her, desperately hoping to catch her up. “There wasn’t time for—”

“We have to get a nurse,” she snaps. “We’re already behind. The baby is already behind. We won’t be able to bond correctly.”

“She’s going to bond just fine—”

Rachel’s breath catches. “She?”

It’s a solemn reminder that maybe Rachel is right. Maybe she is behind. “Cameron,” he confirms, gentle. “Cameron Ann Morgan.”

There ain’t many things Rachel can’t handle, but this must be just a little too much. Hospital lights catch on the tears of red-rimmed eyes. Her jaw pulses against it own set as she swallows down a cry. “I want to see her.”

Matt nods. “The doctors will tell us when we can visit.”

More frustration, visible and vicious. “Visit?” she says. “I want my baby. I want to see my baby, now.”

It’s the same confusion he first felt when he heard the word. He wonders if he showed this much outrage, and fury, and fear, or if this is just the sort of thing that comes with newfound motherly instincts. “As soon as we can. I promise,” he says “But right now, we need to make sure she’s breathing right, before we can worry about breastfeeding, and bonding, and counting all the fingers and toes.”

There’s a logic to his words, and she’s fine-tuned to hear it. Still. That doesn’t mean she has to like it. “This isn’t how any of this was supposed to go.”

“I know.”

“This isn’t how I wanted it to go.”

“I know.”

She swipes away a tear as it streams down her cheek, then rubs at her other eye before another can fall. He wants nothing more than to crawl into bed beside her, crawl into her and take all the hurt for himself. She looks helpless, and Matt feels helpless to help her, so the two of them sit helpless together. They soak in their worries, and their pain, and their disappointment for how the day has gone. Just when Matt thinks they’re changed forever—that some small part of their spirit will never be lifted again—they hear a knock at the door.

“Special delivery,” says a nurse, “for Mr. and Mrs. Morgan.”

And Matt was right. The two of them are changed forever. But one look at the plastic bassinet rolling into the room is all it takes for Matt to realize that he was wrong about how.

Cameron is out of her incubator, swaddled in a striped blanket with a pink cap covering her head. Matt cranes to get a better look, closer than he ever was at that window, and he feels a weight fall from his shoulders, just at the sight of her. The nurse explains the details of her treatment and Matt stores them away in the back of his mind, saving room at the front for this beautiful, heart-warming, fighter of a little girl.

Rachel still isn’t at her full capacity, but she’s aware enough to accept when the nurse offers to help her hold the baby. It’s a clumsy, lovely sort of affair as the two jostle the fussy bundle of blankets and something about his baby in Rachel’s arms feels too good to be true.

The nurse dutifully answers every question Rachel has—and there are plenty of questions. She even helps Rachel with the snaps at the top of the gown until Cameron’s cheek is right against Rachel’s chest, skin-to-skin. “I just don’t want her to fall behind,” Rachel explains.

Cameron’s fussy noises get louder and more demanding by the second until finally, for the very first time, Matt hears his little girl cry.

Rachel’s handled live bombs with less panic in her eyes. “Is she okay?”

Three nurses look up from their station, dressed head-to-toe in green and blue scrubs. One waves him over, which is the only cue he needs to dash across the waiting room and blurt out every piece of intel he has. “Her water broke twenty-three minutes ago and her contractions are four minutes apart—”

“Matthew.”

“—but she’s been having them for a couple of hours now and insisted we stay home until they were closer together—”

“Matthew.”

“—and then we stopped for Little Tavern on the way over because we heard you guys don’t let her eat once she’s admitted and she’ll be damned if she’s going to deliver this baby on an empty stomach—”

“Matt.”

He almost forgets Rachel is there at all, which is maybe a little ironic given the reason for today’s visit. Even at thirty-nine weeks pregnant, she weighs next to nothing in his arms. The last time he had this much adrenaline in his system, he was scaling a Lithuanian embassy in the dead of winter without any cleats. 

“Take a breath,” she orders, starting a low, long inhale. Matt follows her lead on the exhale. “Good,” she says. “Now put me down. It’s a baby, not a broken leg.”

Matt’s been trained to take orders in high-pressure situations, especially when Rachel’s the person doling them out. The husband part of his brain gives in to the part that serves at the pleasure of the president and answers to a rigid chain of command. “Yes ma’am.”

He guides her legs to the floor, holding her steady as she searches for her ever changing center of gravity. When she finally finds it, her hands fall away from his neck and she stands tall as ever. Matt still keeps a hand at her back, even though she doesn’t need it.

“Now then,” she says, approaching the nurse’s station. “My husband has all of the information you need for my admission paperwork and, given that my water is broken, I trust you won’t need to check for dilation before admitting me to a room. I’ve already called ahead for Doctor O’Brien, who is on call this evening but expected to arrive within the next hour. My husband and my sister will both be in the delivery room with me—though, my sister is on a plane from Peru and may be a while. Since I’m a first-time mother, I expect we still have some time before that becomes an issue.”

If Matt weren’t so wound up, he might let loose a laugh when a nurse’s jaw actually drops. He knows that look. He’s worn it plenty. In his head, he silently calls it the Rachel Morgan effect—the moment someone is struck by the absoluteness of Rachel’s cool, easy command. She has a plan for everything, and being a first-time mother won’t stop her from being the smartest person in her own delivery room. She’s read all the books. She’s done all the research. Like everything else, she knows exactly how this is supposed to go.

Blind to her own influence and impatient for an answer, she looks around at the stunned nurses. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Were there questions, or…?”

This seems to snap the nurses into action. One of them sputters out a, “No,” and rounds the desk. “No, you’re just very—first time, you said? Let’s get you into a room Mrs…”

“Morgan,” Rachel answers, and the name is still new enough that it sends a joyful jolt across the frayed edges of Matt’s nerves. “Mrs. Rachel Morgan.”

Matt swears it only takes a wave of Rachel’s finger for the EMT to return, this time with a wheelchair. Matt thanks him, apologizes for the nose, and follows close behind as a nurse pushes Rachel past a set of swinging doors. 

“Matthew?”

“Right here, Ace.”

Rachel’s perfectly at ease as he leans in to listen, voice even and classy as ever. “If I don’t have drugs in my system in the next ten minutes,” she warns, “I am going to burn this entire building down, do you understand?”

It’s immediately clear that these aren’t the words of a laboring woman. These are the words of a trained operative who knows all the finer parts of arson, and ain’t far from denouncing her allegiance to all things good and just. “Understood.”

He relays this sentiment to the nurse, using a friendlier tone than Rachel might opt for. Truthfully, it ain’t much different from their usual operation—Rachel keeping the mission objectives front and center, while Matt charms informants into allies. In some ways, they’ve done all this before.

“We’ll have to see how far along she is before we administer an epidural,” the nurse tells him. When Matt insists, the nurse replies, “Really, Mr. Morgan. It shouldn’t take long.”

“More or less than ten minutes, do you think?” he asks.

“Definitely more than ten minutes,” says the nurse.

Matt glances toward Rachel, calm as a wheatfield before a storm, and gets the impression that the winds are about to shift. He spots a name typed across the nurse’s swinging badge and tries a different angle. “You’re the boss, Julie,” he says. “But if I could make a recommendation, as a fool who doesn’t know anything about all this, but knows his wife pretty well?”

Matt read all the same books Rachel did and is every bit as prepared, but what Julie don’t know won’t hurt her. She perks up with a slim smile when Matt calls her the boss, happy to be the expert in an environment that rarely treats her like one, and somewhere between the midwest accent and his own humility, she decides to like him. “I’m listening,” she says.

“The closer we can get to ten minutes,” he says, “the better this is gonna go for everyone involved.”

Years ago, when they first started living together, Joe agreed that Matt’s greatest gift was his ability to disappear into a crowd. In the same breath, Joe also said that his second greatest gift was his likability, and that he’d only waste it by asking questions about how it happens. Like every other bit of advice Joe’s ever given him, Matt lives by this. It’s why he doesn’t question the glint in Julie’s eye. He doesn’t question the way she trusts him just a few minutes into knowing him, or why she feels so inclined to help him. “I’ll see what I can do,” she says.

When it comes to people, Matt doesn’t need to work hard. Never has. And it might have been one of the great mysteries of his life, had Joe not seen it coming a mile away and insisted Matt not waste his time on wondering. As things are, Matt uses every drop of natural-born talent to make Rachel’s life a little easier during what’s sure to be an awfully hard night. “You’re a saint, Julie.”

He doesn’t question the way she smiles at him, the same way everyone does when they think he likes them back.

They roll Rachel into a private room and, true to her word, Julie makes quick work of her assessment. They’re joined by an entire team of nurses, each moving with confidence as they put Rachel in a gown, lift her into bed, prep their instruments, and place heart monitors for mom and baby both. Someone sticks a clipboard in Matt’s hand, burying him in a list of check boxes. Matt dutifully adds Rachel’s name, social security number, date of birth, and everything else Langley would usually redact.

He breezes through the forms. Rachel made flashcards of her family history in week nine, and Matt’s been studying them ever since. Right after he details Diana’s cancer and just before he can check off Henry’s history of headaches, Julie calls out, “Mr. Morgan?”

Matt snaps his attention upright, keying into the room the way Joe taught him. Two windows, sealed shut. Four nurses, all attending to Rachel. A heart rate of 115 and a glance from Julie, sitting at the foot of the bed. Her lips are in a tight line. Her brow is furrowed. A sheen of sweat starts to form along her hairline.

Something in Matt’s training sends his heart straight into his stomach. 

Julie waves him over, trying to keep her features steady. It’s a valiant effort, but ultimately made pointless by Matt and Rachel’s combined decades of experience reading people just like her. People who do hard work and sometimes have to deliver hard news.

Matt joins Julie at the end of Rachel’s bed. She lifts the gown from Rachel’s knees to reveal a growing spot of blood against white sheets. “That’s normal, isn’t it?” he asks her, because he’s pretty sure he read about this. “To bleed a little?”

Her answering look makes it instantly clear that all his books and research are gonna be just about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. He suddenly wonders if any of his intel will hold up in the field. In a hushed tone, Julie says, “I wouldn’t classify this as a little, Mr. Morgan.”

From the top of the bed, Rachel listens in. “What?” she says, eyes glancing toward Julie, then landing on him. “Matthew, what is it?”

All at once, Matt loses any kind of desire to be a voice of authority. He feels like every bit the fool he claimed to be earlier—though one truth still resonates. Matt still knows Rachel, better than he knows just about anything else in the world. And he knows Rachel is at her best when she’s sure, certain, confident.

So he does his best to spare her this uncertain pit sitting at the base of his own stomach. “You’re bleeding.” He presents it like the simple truth it is, the way she taught him to. Composed. Withdrawn. “The nurses are trying to figure out why.”

“Bleeding is normal,” Rachel replies and to untrained ears, she still sounds like an expert. But to him, she sounds anxious, with a jagged edge poking at the end of her sentence. She’s leaning on facts, trying to find the answer to a question she doesn’t even know yet. “Spotting is common.”

Matt glances back down at the blood. It ain’t spotting, and he tries not to notice if the stain has gotten bigger. “You’re right,” he says, landing all of his attention back on Rachel. “Some bleeding is normal. I’m sure it’s fine.”

Julie lets Rachel’s gown fall. “Regardless, Mrs. Morgan,” she says, “we’re going to do an ultrasound, just to check everything for the doctor.”

Rachel nods as though she expects nothing less, but her heart monitor gives her away as her pulse inches up from 118, to 120, to 122. Matt finds a place at her bedside and takes her hand in his, lifting her fingers to meet his lips. He plants affection along every icy knuckle.

She looks up at him, curls spiraling, ringlets starting to stick to her temples, her neck. “You have a terrible tell.”

“So I’ve heard,” he mutters across her skin. “Mostly from you.”

“What’s wrong?” she needs to know. “What is it?”

He sighs softly, breath rolling across her hand until he lowers it once more. “I don’t know, and that’s the truth of it,” he says. “Could be nothing.”

“But it could be something?”

“Yeah,” he admits. “It could be something. But if it is, you’ll know what to do.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t gotta,” he promises. “I know you.”

Without warning, her features twist against a contraction and all the surrounding monitors pick up their pace. Nothing resembles an alarm, so Matt doesn’t worry just yet. Instead, he joins Rachel for a fresh breath, letting her squeeze the absolute Hell out of his hand. 

“I thought we had an understanding,” she grits, “about my drugs.”

“On their way,” Matt assures her, and he steals a glance at Julie to keep him honest. Only problem is, Julie ain’t looking at him. Julie’s looking at an ultrasound monitor, and that furrow in her brow is back. 

She cuts him a glance, stands, then leaves the room. When she comes back with a doctor, white coat and stethoscope included, Matt gets the feeling that everyone in the room knows something he doesn’t. Spy training or not, that’s a bad place for a fella to be. 

The doc examines the image frozen on the ultrasound. Consults the nursing team. Not even Matt, with all his training can make out the words as the man mutters back and forth with frenzied staff. He starts to think maybe spies have met their match in doctors.

Finally, the doctor raises his voice above the clatter of the room. “Mr. Morgan,” he says, glossing over Rachel’s presence entirely. “I understand you’re still waiting for your doctor to arrive, but I’m afraid we’re facing a fairly significant complication.”

Rachel beats Matt to the first question on his mind. “What?” she says, sitting up straight—or as straight as anyone can expect, given the circumstances. “What kind of complication?”

The doctor explains something about placenta, and compromised oxygen, and premature detachment. Matt doesn’t catch it all, distracted by the taste of rust along his tongue, dropping in like an old friend—but he thinks it’s odd anything could be premature when Rachel’s already carried to full term. He hears Rachel chasing down answers, the way she always does, and Matt finds the conversation just in time to hear the doctor say, “We’re recommending an emergency C-Section under general anesthesia, immediately.”

“General…” Rachel starts, but she can’t find the end. “No. No, it’s supposed to be an epidural. We just had an appointment the other day to confirm our birth plan.”

“I understand,” says the doctor, and Matt realizes he doesn’t even know this doctor’s name. “But that’s not a possibility any longer. A vaginal birth could take hours. An epidural could take up to thirty minutes to take effect. Every moment we don’t take action is another moment your baby isn’t getting enough oxygen, and it’s another moment you spend bleeding out.”

“Bleeding is normal,” Rachel argues.

“Mrs. Morgan,” says the doctor. “This is not normal. You’re hemorrhaging.”

“I can handle a little bl—”

She doesn’t finish the thought before the monitors pick up their pace again, another contraction building. Her jaw tightens against the noise, her hand squeezing Matt’s tight once more. Her breath doesn’t come as easily this time, and Matt thinks she might be even paler than usual.

With Rachel out of commission, the doctor turns to him. “I’m afraid it is a matter of life and death. For both of them.”

Matt deals with life and death on the daily, but he’s usually got Rachel in his ear, taking in the world from the top down, watching out for all the corners where death lurks. It’s where she likes to be. Rachel makes the calls. Rachel always sees the road ahead.

But she’s too close to this one. Matt can see it, even from his place down in the dirt. This is going to be one of those rare occasions when Matt has to look at the whole map and make the final call.

All it takes is one nod from Matt for the nursing staff to move in, and he figures Langley could learn a thing or two from how seamlessly this team flows, code words flying back and forth, trained hands working without hesitation, one nurse supporting the next, supporting the next, supporting the next. They operate like a stealth team deep in enemy territory, no one soldier complete without the other.

Hands overwhelm Rachel’s body, adjusting monitors, prepping for IVs, clearing the remnants from her ultrasound. She pulls away at each touch, defensive and raw. It’s lucky for everyone that she’s not operating at her full capacity, otherwise the whole room would be brought to their knees in a matter of seconds. Her words are sharp, her protests vicious, but the nurses carry on through the trenches.

Not getting anywhere with the nurses, Rachel promptly turns to Matt and begins to plead her case. “This isn’t part of my birthing plan.”

“I know,” he says.

“I have a plan. I have a birthing plan—”

“I know. I know you do.”

“My doctor isn’t here. Abby isn’t here. Abby’s on a plane.” There’s an urgency to her, needing to be heard. Begging to be heard. Her heart rate climbs as her wide eyes meet his own. “This isn’t how this is supposed to go.”

Matt reckons she’s had nightmares like this, where the whole word seems to stray from her perfectly laid plans. He sees the way it plays out in her stuttered breath. Feels her panicked grip along his arm. Matt’s been trained to read people, which means he sees every speck of hurt on his wife’s face as the moment she’s planned months in advance finally arrives, betraying her with each passing second.

So he reaches for her, holding her face in his hands and hoping it blocks out every other unwanted touch. His forehead presses into hers when he says, “This is how it’s going.” She’s burning up. He feels it in his palms, in the way her heat settles into the lines along his hands. “And you are—look at me—you can do this. You do hard, unexpected things all the time.”

She shakes her head, tears breaking at the corner of each eye. “I’m supposed to be awake. I want to be awake.”

“They’re going to take good care of you,” he reminds her. “I’m going to make sure they take good care of you, and the baby.”

“I’m supposed to be awake.”

“You’re not going to be awake for this.”

“Matthew—”

“I’m going to take care of you.”

“Matthew.”

“Let me take care of you.”

“I have a plan.”

He leaves a kiss at the crown of her head, then catches her gaze. Forces her to really look at him. To listen, the way she’s made him listen so many times. “And now we have a new one,” he says, putting on his best Rachel Voice. “But I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be right here the whole time, even if I have to break down the door to the operating room, alright? That much is still part of the plan.”

Her grip is still wrapped around his arm, growing weaker. Pulse slowing. Her eyes skip between his, searching for a way out, before she finally says, “Don’t let them ruin me.”

It’s the first and only sign in the entire nine months that Rachel is really, honestly scared of what’s to come. Matt can hardly blame her. When it comes to Rachel, one moment is never just one moment. This one moment changes how she planned to meet her child. It changes how she planned to go home, how she planned to care for a new baby, how she planned to get back in the field when all is said and done. With Rachel, one moment leads into the next, over and over again until one ruined moment becomes a ruined lifetime, everything she ever wanted tied back to her expectations for here and now.

“They couldn’t if they tried,” he tells her. “And I’ll be damned if they get a chance to try at all, okay?”

Another one of those code words bounces between the nurses, setting more movements into motion. All at once, they lift the locks on Rachel’s bed and begin to roll her away. She reaches for Matt’s hand once more, but she’s already too far gone.

Joe’s already at his front, pulling the bow tie from Matt’s neck with the same sort of precision he pulls a trigger. He tucks this into his jacket pocket, right next to the rings, then unloops the half-Windsor around his own neck. Matt’s collar is popped, in a way Rachel explicitly prohibited when he asked months before, but Joe makes quick work of wrapping the new tie into place, tying it into a neat knot, then tucking Matt’s collar back into place. It’s not a bow tie, but it’ll do.

Joe takes his place at Matt’s back once more, tie-less and without enough time to redo his top button before the room turns slowly toward the towering floral wedding arch. Rachel’s halfway down the aisle when Matt looks back up and, not for the first time in their lives, her beauty strikes him straight on.

She’s a fresh snowfall on Christmas Eve. She’s the crystalline frost on the window, catching rays of winter sunlight. She’s angelic. She’s godly. She’s divine.

On her arm, Henry locks eyes with Matt and mimes a subtle tuck into the front of his suit jacket. With a quick glance, Matt realizes the tail of his tie hangs free and quickly tucks it behind his buttons, just in time for the photographer to snap a picture.

_____

The George Peabody Library is the sort of place where a woman like Rachel Cameron deserves to get married, even if she is marrying a farm boy from Nebraska. 

It’s all black-and-white tile, gold-leafed columns, and old wood shelves brimming with books that smell like a stack of newspapers. It’s twinkling lights strung from five stories of intricate iron balconies. It’s low, golden sconces lighting up a crowd of elegant evening wear and it’s a private stringed quintet playing from the second balcony.

This is a prestigious enough event to be covered by the local papers—which is a tricky sort of affair given that half of their attendees are deep in the world of covert intelligence, but Rachel navigates this with ease, and everyone here knows how to dodge a reporter if need be. The invitations had been embossed with real gold, tucked into parchment envelopes sealed with golden wax and addressed to the most important names in Maryland High Society. The governor is in attendance. Both senators. Multiple members of the Secret Service, all of them off-duty, given that the Vice President and Second Lady regretfully declined. Sports stars, and business moguls, and socialites. Rachel Cameron’s wedding is the undisputed event of the season.

Matt forgets about all of this, the moment Rachel smiles up at him.

That’s all it takes. From her, it never takes much. Rachel is made from carefully restrained might, always looking for an avenue to escape. When it finally finds a place to land, it strikes in these dense, controlled bolts of intention, and Matt reckons he could spend a lifetime on the receiving end. One look from her, done up in white, is all it takes to steal him away. To notice her, and only her, even as he stands in a gorgeous venue among a gorgeous crowd.

She’s lace, hand-sewn into her bodice. Satin trailing at her back. There are pearls around her neck, hanging from her ears, wrapped around her wrists. Daisies, daisies, daisies done up in braids, reminding him of the first time he truly met the real and ruthless Rachel. The woman he’s come to love.

It’s them. Only them, right up until the moment Rachel passes her white rose bouquet to Abby and Joe passes a pair of golden rings to Matt. 

Do you, Rachel? “I do.”

Do you, Matthew? “I do.”

Her lips break into a wide smile when they kiss. The strings, and the lights, and the applause all come second to her. _____

As two of Langley’s best and brightest, Matt and Rachel know how to sneak away from a crowd, and they make quick work of it as their cocktail hour comes to a close. The day so far has been a blur of travel, timelines, dresses and ties, and more posed photos than he can count. Finally, finally they find an intimate moment in the chaos, slipping between the fifth-floor stacks appropriately labeled Romantics.

Matt’s only want in the world is to grab her, pull her in close, and steal a moment just for himself. Except his hands are otherwise occupied with two armfuls of satin and lace. “Love of my life,” he says, with some exasperation. “It’s time to change your dress.”

Rachel runs her fingers along the spines of leather-bound books, train trailing as she goes. “Says who?”

“Says you, four hours ago,” he reminds her. “And for the past week. And for the last three months, when you said under no circumstances were you to wear the same dress to dinner that you wore to the ceremony.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she says, scanning the shelves. “Three dresses is a little ridiculous, don’t you think?”

It’s a quick and efficient reminder that this is only her second dress of the night, and the two of them will do this all over again with a third, smaller dress moments before the dance floor opens to the room. Matt doesn’t mind. So far, this small sliver of a shared moment is the best part of the best day of his life.  “I do think,” he replies. “And said so, when you were first fitted for them, but I was told it was rude to decline designers when they offer you a free dress. And also, I was outvoted.”

“By Abby.”

“By you and Abby,” Matt says. “And by your dad who, in my book, counts as five votes.”

“You shouldn’t be worried about my father.”

“M’not worried about your father,” he insists. “I’m worried about you, six weeks from now, when we get our photos back and you’re not in the right dress.” “Because you’d never hear the end of it?”

“Because from here on out, it’s my job to make sure you’re never disappointed again.”

Her wandering finger freezes, casting a long shadow through dim library lighting. The golden glow of the stacks hugs her cheekbones, her jaw, her neck as she tosses a glance over her shoulder. “You really are very sweet, you know.”

He shrugs, and the movement brings fifteen pounds of fabric with it. Arms growing tired, he hangs Gown Number Two from one of the shelves, in a way that would almost certainly make a librarian cringe. “I’m a catch,” he agrees. “Now please let me put this dress on you.”

She studies him, in that harsh, glaring way only she can. He’s come to love that glare. He married her for that glare. He must have seen this exact look a hundred times over and he’ll probably see it a thousand times more—but never again from Rachel Cameron. No sir. Her severity belongs to Rachel Morgan now.

Maybe she feels the shift too, because she softens and nods, collecting her cascading curls to pull them over her shoulder. Her back is exposed, shoulder blades sitting just along a lace seam and casting a shadow like wings. 

Dress Number One is held in place by no less than twenty individual buttons, so he doesn’t waste a breath. He meets Rachel at her back, methodically unlooping one satin button after another, the fabric smooth and stiff along his thumbprint. Inch by inch, the corset falls away and he spots another layer of buttons as he goes—but these ones can’t come undone. These buttons are bright and red, pressed into her skin, following the lines along her back. A full wedding day, etched into her spine, promising to stay through the evening.

He lets his touch linger along the ridges, confirming their phantom existence, and Rachel’s shoulders melt.  She lets go of a breath that she’s been holding all night.

“The poets were wrong,” she says.

With the last button undone, her dress drops into a puffy puddle, wrung around her ankles and revealing the silk slip she wears below. He catches a preview of the garter he’ll remove later, holding up sheer white stockings that stretch to her thigh, then takes her hand to hold her steady. “About what?”

She steps out of the ivory pile, landing square at his front. Her gaze cranes upward when she says, “About love,” she says, surrounded by Keats, and Shelley, and Byron, and Blake. “About how it feels.”

Dress Number One is left abandoned on the tile, while Matt dutifully fetches Dress Number Two. This one trades buttons for ribbons and he helps her step into it before lacing her up. “Is that right?”

He threads and pulls at silk, relishing in the fact that he’ll get to undo these same knots later. Rachel glances over her shoulder once more and says, “I’ve never read a single sonnet that made me feel the way I feel with you.”

And it ain’t fair, the way she looks at him. Like she’s somehow known the whole time. Like she knows everything, and he’s got a lot of catching up to do. Fine, then. He’s more than happy to make up for lost time, and he starts with a kiss—not their first as husband and wife, but certainly their best so far, with plenty more to follow.

They’re late to dinner, but Rachel Morgan seems to glow when she finally enters the ballroom in her second gown of the night. The room cheers, Abby gives a speech, and Matt’s pops says a prayer before dinner.

_____

“Dance with me.”

“Not much of a dancer.”

“You’ll dance with me, though.”

When it comes to Abigail Cameron, there’s not much Matt won’t do. Unfortunately, no one knows this better than Abby herself. She’s smiling that monumental smile of hers, hands falling to either side of his lapel as she steps into time and pulls him right along with her. Together they fall into the sway of an Elton John song, not quite a ballad, not quite rock and roll.

Their practiced ballroom steps feel familiar after spending so much time dancing across the world. “This is the part,” she says, “where you tell me how pretty I look.”

“You do,” he says, and he means it. He’s always thought so, since she first strutted into his life. She’s a good looking girl in a good looking dress, every part of her carefully curated to draw the eye. “I like the dress.”

“It has pockets,” she points out.

“Very handy,” he says.

“Matt, we’re family now,” she says. “You’re going to have to get more excited about my dress pockets. It’s what family does.”

With nothing more than the shape of her step, Matt senses a twirl coming on and he sets her up with ease. He spins her not just once, but twice, because Abby always likes to go for a little extra flair. “We’ve been family for a while now, I think,” he says, pulling her back into their shared frame. “I think you knew, even back then.”

“Back when you were a true-blue farm boy who’d never seen a woman before?” she says with a doting look. “I’ll take credit for a lot, but I can’t take credit for that one. Truth be told, I expected to burn through you as quickly as I burned through all the others. I had no idea what you’d eventually mean to me. To her.”

Abby doesn’t say her name, but even so, Matt can’t help but glance toward Rachel, standing on the far side of the room and chatting with the Secretary of Transportation. The whole night has been like that—finding Rachel, wherever she may be. Landing on her. Lingering.

It must be the same for her because she turns, as though she feels his eyes on her. Catches his glance. Beams.

“When was it?” he asks, prying his eyes back toward Abby. “When did you know?”

Abby studies him, debating. Matt is trusted with Pentagon secrets and espionage of the highest international order, but still she searches his features as though she’s not quite sure he’s ready to hear the truth. “Long before either of you,” she says. “That’s for sure.”

“Abby—”

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I have a sisterly duty to uphold a longstanding tradition between bridesmaids and groomsmen.”

“There’s only one groomsman,” Matt reminds her. “And it’s Joe.”

“Isn’t that interesting?”

“When did you know?” he tries again, grabbing hold of her arm before she can step away, and again, she holds her tongue. Tests the answer in her head.

Finally, she lets a softer smile slip. “The first time you called her, instead of calling me.”

There’s something bittersweet in her tone, which Matt only hears because it’s Abby. He’s known her longer than just about anyone here, enough to know that she wants to be wanted. That she stands with the sort of confidence that comes from other people, rather than someplace deep within herself. For Abby, Matt is the one who got away—not in the traditional sense, but rather, in the sense that Matt stopped needing Abby before she stopped needing him. 

Him, getting away from her. What a world.

So he says, with a smile all his own, “Thank you for trying to burn me, way back when.”

She tuts, a manicured hand reaching toward his cheek where she leaves two farewell pats. “Anytime, hot stuff.”

From the surrounding speakers, Elton John turns to Cindy Lauper. Matt is quickly left in the dust as Abby squeals, turns toward Rachel, and races across the room to pull her onto the dance floor next. The two of them find the center of a dance circle made entirely of women, screaming along to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” 

_____

Matt slides a glass of good scotch across a bar top. “Thanks again,” he says, “for flying my folks out.”

Henry Cameron catches the scotch at the bar’s end. He doesn’t spare a glance for it, too caught up in watching his girls dance. “A mother should get to see her only son’s wedding,” he says. “And your mother, in particular, is a delight—is it possible my guest room is somehow cleaner than it was the day she arrived?”

“Yessir, that’ll be my mama,” Matt says, ordering a glass of scotch for himself. “I appreciate the accommodations.”

“She may stay as long as she likes,” he says. “And your father was asking about some of the memorials. I thought I might take them downtown while they’re here, if that’s alright with you?”

His parents have a three-week stretch in DC and while he knew the Cameron Estate would take good care of them, he never expected the man of the house to personally show them the sights. “Yeah,” he says, a little too quickly. “Yes, absolutely—you should know, though, that my pops has a hard time walking long distances. He won’t say anything about it, but he’s had a limp since he first came home and he’s never managed to shake it. And my mama—”

Henry lifts a single hand, finally shifting his gaze to Matt. “Rest assured they’ll be well taken care of while you’re away,” he says. “I have a connection or two, when it comes to touring the Mall.”

Matt’s got no doubt. If there’s one thing he’s learned about Henry over the past few years, it’s that he has a connection for everything. “Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”

Henry’s attention falls back to his girls. The space between them seems to grow as Matt runs out of words, opting instead to take a sip from his drink as it arrives. Their relationship begins and ends with the Circle of Cavan, and this hardly seems like the time to talk strategy.

“I suppose it’s the least I can do,” Henry finally says. “You make my girls happy, and for that I owe you a great deal.”

Matt follows his look across the dance floor to find the sisters now dancing arm-in-arm to a ballad, talking and giggling through the slow waltzy rhythm. Rachel swipes dirt from Abby’s dress. Abby fixes one of Rachel’s wayward daisies. They both laugh at a joke Matt can’t hear from this far away. “They make me better,” he admits. “They’ve taken care of me. And I reckon it’s my turn to take care of them.”

Henry nods, in that sage way he passed along to his eldest. “I know that,” he says. “I know you’re going to try, anyway.”

This catches his ear. “Try, sir?”

Henry sips back the last of his drink, letting the glass land hallow on the bar. “Have you given any thought to how you’re going to keep your lives separate?” he asks. “Your life with her”—he casts a glance toward Rachel, then swiftly shifts towards Joe—”versus your life with him?”

Little does Henry know, Matt’s been asking this same question since stitching up Joe in an Italian bathroom, but he’s right. Matt feels it, too. There’s a disconnect between his dreams—between wanting to keep Joe out of his past, and diving straight into a future with Rachel. No matter how many times Matt turns the options over in his head, they end up overlapping. “Every night,” Matt tells him. “Right after I close my eyes, and just before I fall asleep.”

Familiarity creeps into Henry’s expression, and Matt can’t tell if that’s a good thing. “That feeling,” he says, “never, ever goes away.”

For years, Henry has served as Matt’s barometer for what this case can do to good men after chasing it for a very long time. By and large, all those extra years come with benefits—contacts, authority, expertise. But every so often, Matt spots a shadow below Henry’s eyes, signaling some bone-deep exhaustion that feels more and more inevitable every time Matt sees it.

“Promise me this,” says Henry. “Promise me that no matter how long this goes, no matter how close you get—you prioritize her. You make sure she’s safe, above all else.”

Matt considers this. Nods once, definitive. Seems like a fair enough request. Taking the final sip from his own glass, Matt promises, “‘Til death do us part.”

_____

“You know,” says Matt, voice raised over the roar of turbine engines. “My pops gave me all kinds of grief about taking a private jet.”

“What’s the matter?” Rachel calls back. “Haven’t the people of Lake Hayfield ever seen a private plane?”

“I dunno about Lake Hayfield,” says Matt, taking her roller bag to carry up the steps. “But I’ll tell you what, the people of Hay Springs sure haven’t.” 

In a career where jetsetting and globetrotting are commonplace, the only real vacation is spent at home among familiar sights, sounds, and textures. Rather than spend their honeymoon looking over their shoulders in a foreign country, Matt and Rachel decide to keep things domestic, where they can afford to be entirely single-minded about the next few weeks. Someplace safe. Someplace they don’t have to think about.

The apartment, they decided, was out of the question. While Joe may be a discrete and quiet roommate, Matt intends to do some downright indiscreet things to Rachel that will make her anything but quiet. And because he also has no desire to do so under Henry Cameron’s roof, her place was booted off the list just as quickly. 

“Your father’s flown private before, hasn’t he?” she asks.

Matt doesn’t know how to break it to her, that normal people don’t ever see the inside of a private jet. “Not unless you count an Army flier.”

This sends her lips into a puzzled frown, and Matt just wants to kiss them straight.

After some back-and-forth, Matt convinced his folks to spare the one and only home he’s got left. It’s a trade, of sorts. His parents finally make a long-awaited trip to DC, courtesy of the Cameron Estate, while he and Rachel take the ranch. All he had to do was promise to watch the wheat and let the animals out every morning.

Rachel was less enthusiastic about the animals, but Matt’s certain she’ll come around when she sees the first sunset across the plains.

“We should send him back on the jet,” Rachel offers.

“I love you,” he says, “but my pops would sooner die than show up back home in one of these things.”

Matt’s only proven right when he steps into the cabin, finished with fine woods and leathers. A bottle of Champagne waits for them on ice, the label written in French and the vintage starting with an eighteen. The smell of steak fills the air, which is a relief to his grumbling stomach because even though he paid for most of the wedding food, he somehow didn’t eat much of it. It’s the last taste of luxury they’ll have for the next few weeks, so he vows to enjoy every second of it.

He stows her bag, then his. Pops the Champagne, then pours both of them a glass. She holds out her flute toward his, crystal chiming as their glasses clink, and they sip. Take a breath. With the taste of grapes on his lips, he kisses her the same way he has all night, just so damn lucky to be here.

“You know,” he says, barely pulling away. “I’ve always wondered—”

“Matthew,” she scolds.

“I haven’t even said it yet.”

She falls into her seat, digging for the buckle to strap herself in. There’s a subtle edge to her foreboding glance. The one that begs him to challenge her. “You didn’t have to,” she says. “It’s an eight hour flight. We can wait.”

“I’m not saying we have to go for the home run,” he teases, dropping to his place just at her front, down on his knees for her, just as he always seems to be. “Just that if you let me warm up my throwing arm now, I might be able to pitch a perfect game later.”

She laughs, short and haughty and delighted. Her hand falls into his hair, scratching warm streaks into his scalp. “You hate pitchers,” she reminds him.

“I’ve got a third-base metaphor I could use instead.”

“Matthew.”

“Alright, alright,” he says. She’s still wearing her final dress, the shortest of the three. It was made for dancing, and the alternative benefits are a nice bonus. “I can scrounge up a golf metaphor instead.”

“You,” she says, taking another sip of Champagne, “are a smartmouth.”

“Agreed,” he says, just as his fingertips find the lace on her stockings. His lips follow close behind, landing along the hem as his wide eyes search for her answering smile. “So how about we see what else my mouth can do, hmm?”

Another laugh. A lifetime of her laugh. It sends his stomach twisting in all the best ways.

Two of her fingers find his chin, lifting his head up to look at her properly. “Buckle up, so we can take off,” she tells him. “And when we’re in the air, you can help me get this dress off. Fair?”