Chapter 186
Chapter 185: The Thread:
Logan POV
“The current position is quiet,” he said. Routine established, no active counter-measures have been added to their houses. If you want to move forward with the next phase, the conditions are as favorable as they’re going to get p>
I thought about that word. Favorable.
Three months ago, sitting in a motel room in Seattle, I’d made a call I’d then canceled. The cancellation had cost me the deposit and a conversation I’d rather not have had because I was in an emotional state, being frustrated and furious that all my plans to reconcile was being met with a brick wall.
I wasn’t in that state now.
I was in my home office at seven-fifteen in the morning, first coffee, weekly briefing on the screen, thinking clearly about a problem that needed solving.
The problem was Dante Wells.
Not Sedona. Sedona was the goal, not the obstacle. Sedona was in Seattle building something that included Dante Wells in ways I’d been watching develop across three months of information from Reeve and from this other source who didn’t ask questions and didn’t share opinions and reported what he observed. And what I had observed with my own eyes when I was still in Seattle trying to make it up to her.
Dante Wells was the obstacle.
He’d been in Seattle longer than any reasonable circuit-related excuse. He’d been at the hospital every day during treatment. He’d been walking with her in the neighborhood, the two of them and occasionally the small boy who’d noticed surveillance vehicles that trained adults had missed. He’d been at the party. He’d been in the garden.
Dante had redirected my arm in a garden in front of my wife.
I thought about that moment for weeks after it happened.
He’d put himself between me and Sedona.
And then he’d stayed between us, in the specific way of someone who’d decided that was where he was positioned and had no intention of moving.
The custody case was moving through the system slowly, the way these things moved. My lawyer was fighting the jurisdiction question, buying time, making everything as complicated as possible because complicated favored the party with more resources and I had more resources. But even with the delays, it was going to resolve eventually, and when it resolved the landscape of what Sedona could offer Nick was going to be part of the court’s assessment.
Right now that landscape included Dante Wells.
A stable partner, the court might conclude. A man with his own child, an established career, a connection
14
The Thread
to Sedona that predated the marriage. Evidence of ongoing involvement-the hospital visits, the daily presence, the specific way he’d stood in a garden and made clear that he was not moving.
Remove him from the landscape and the picture changed.
That was the logic.
CAIT
I knew it was the logic. I’d been sitting with the logic since Seattle, since the motel room, since the night I’d made the call and then made the cancellation call twenty minutes later.
“Not yet,” I said.
A pause. “Timing p>
“I need to be more established before anything moves,” I said. “I’ve been back in Chicago for weeks. I need the routine to be solid. I need to be visible-at the company, at events, with Nick. A man who is present and stable and unconnected to anything that happens in Seattle.” I paused. “Six weeks. Maybe eight p>
“That extends the window,” he said.
“I know p>
“The conditions could change in six weeks,” he said. “Counter-surveillance could resume. Variables shift p>
“I understand the risk,” I said. “The timing is the timing. Eight weeks p>
Another pause. “The target’s circuit schedule starts in January. He’ll be traveling. Less stable routine, different locations, different patterns.” He said it without emphasis, just information. “That’s a different operational environment p>
“What are you telling me?” I said.
“I’m telling you that if the window is this month or next, the conditions are favorable and the target is in a known location with a known routine,” he said. “If the window is January or after, the target is on the circuit and the window to take him out permanently is more complex because it would not be easy to get to him when he is at home than when he is on the circuit with other team players p>
I thought about Dante Wells on the professional tennis circuit.
Top fourteen in the world, traveling eleven months of the year, surrounded by coaches and managers and support staff and security in the specific way of professional athletes at his level. Different cities every week. Different facilities, different hotels, the constant movement of a life lived in transit.
This month he was in Seattle, in a rental property, with a routine that had been mapped.
“December,” I said. “Not immediately. Middle of December p>
“That’s workable,” he said.
“And clean,” I said. “I said it before. Clean p>
“Understood p>
“The boy,” I said. “He’s four. He’s already-” I stopped. “The boy doesn’t see anything. That’s a condition, I will not have the kid traumatised on top everything. Just take him out p>
24
The Thread
“Noted,” he said.
tended the call and sat in the home office.
The weekly briefing was still on the screen. The coffee was still in my hand, slightly cooler now. The ordinary Monday morning of a man in his home office at seven-fifteen.
I set the coffee down.
Middle of December.
Claim
Six weeks, roughly. Six weeks of being visible in Chicago, at the company, at Nick’s school pickups, at the social events Sherry had been scheduling since I’d come home. Six weeks of establishing the pattern of a man who had moved on, who had come home, who was getting on with his life.
After December, the picture would change.
I thought about what Sedona would do, when it happened. How she’d manage it. She was resilient-I’d watched her be resilient across three years of a marriage that hadn’t given her much to work with, and she’d managed. She’d grieve this. She’d be devastated.
But she’d also be alone.
Her family would be there, Cameron and the parents, the woman Rachel with her husband and the baby. But the specific person who’d been positioning himself between us, who’d been building something with her-that would be gone.
And grief made people need things.
And I knew what Sedona needed when she was at her lowest, because I’d been there for three years, even if being there hadn’t looked the way it should have. I knew the specific things that reached her.
I’d know them again.
Nick.
That was the thread I was keeping. However this went, however the next months unfolded, Nick was the thread. He was six years old and he was calling her and she was calling him and that was happening in my house without my full knowledge, which my lawyer had noted was relevant to the case-the contact being established without going through the proper channels, without legal sanction.
It was also, and I could see this even through the anger, evidence that she still had attachment to him.
I’d use that.
Not against her, exactly. Not in the way of using something as a weapon. More in the way of using something as a door. If she still had attachment to Nick, then the thread between them was something I could be present alongside. Something that required my involvement to maintain.
Nick needed to see his mother. I needed Sedona to need me for that to happen.
Scouting See 1
Florence
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.