Terms

Your mother's house in Coral Gables has never once in your life been asleep.

At 4:50 a.m. every lamp in it is on. The coral-stone walls glow gold, the fountain in the courtyard is running, and there are two black sedans in the driveway you don't recognize. Morgan parks behind them, kills the engine and looks at the house for a long, unreadable moment.

"Nice," she says. It doesn't sound like a compliment.

"You can wait in the car."

"I can't, actually." She gets out.

Inside, the air smells like your mother's gardenias and burnt coffee. Celia Prado is standing at the head of the dining table in a silk robe that still looks like a business suit, phone in one hand, reading glasses in the other. Fifty-eight years old and not a single gray hair she hasn't approved. Beside her, your brother Daniel sits in a pressed shirt at five in the morning, because of course he does.

"You're all right," your mother says. Not a question. An inventory, from your sweat-wrinkled shirt to your shoes.

"I'm great. I love being kidnapped by contractors."

"Escorted," Morgan says behind you.

Your mother's eyes go to her and stay. You've seen Celia Prado stare down union bosses, senators and a hurricane. You have never seen her look at someone the way she looks at Morgan Reyes standing in her dining room in black, a little rain on her shoulders, the chandelier light doing unfair things to her face.

"Ms. Reyes," your mother says. "Thank you."

"Ma'am."

"Sit, both of you." Celia sits first. That's how you know it's bad. "Ethan, I need you to listen without interrupting."

"When have I ever..."

"Ethan."

You sit.

"Three months ago," your mother says, "a man from Homeland Security Investigations came to my office. They believe someone has been moving undeclared cargo through Terminal 4 for years. Not a container here and there. A pipeline." She folds her glasses. "I agreed to help them. In six weeks I testify in front of a federal grand jury."

The room goes very quiet. The fountain outside keeps talking.

"You're testifying," you say. "Against who?"

"I don't know yet. That's the point of the investigation."

"Someone in the company."

"Someone with access." Daniel says it to his coffee. "Which is about forty people."

"Including you," you say.

He looks up, cold as the marble table. "Including me."

"Daniel," your mother says, and he goes back to his coffee.

"So someone wants you to stop," you say, "and instead of going after you, they're going after me."

"You're easier to find." Your mother doesn't say it unkindly, which somehow makes it worse. "You post your location to forty thousand people every night."

"Thirty-eight thousand."

Morgan makes a sound that might, on someone else, have been a laugh.

"Which is why," your mother continues, "I've hired Halyard. Ms. Reyes comes recommended by people I trust. She'll be with you at all times."

"No."

"I'm not asking."

"You never ask. That's the whole problem." You stand up. Your chair scrapes. "You had my nanny write you weekly reports. You had my driver count my drinks. You paid my roommate at Northwestern to tell you who I was dating, and you thought I'd never find out, and now you want to put one in my apartment."

"Two hundred dollars a month," Daniel murmurs. "The roommate. I saw the invoices."

"Thank you, Daniel."

"Ms. Reyes." Your mother turns, very deliberately, away from you. "Please explain the terms."

Morgan doesn't sit. She stands at the end of the table with her hands loose at her sides, and when she talks, she talks to you. Not to your mother. That's the first thing you notice and the first thing you hate, because it makes it harder to hate her.

"Protection is twenty-four seven," she says. "I live where you live. I go where you go. If there's a door, I go through it first."

"I'm not living with you."

"You're living with me, or I'm living in your hallway. Your building management will have opinions about that." She lifts one finger. "Second. You'll tell me where you're going before you go. I won't stop you. I'll tell you the risk, and then I'll come."

"And if I don't tell you?"

"Then I'll find out, and I'll come anyway, and it'll be less fun for both of us." A second finger. "Third. Every night I write a log for Halyard. Where we went. Who we saw. Threats. It's standard."

"So, a report. To her." You jerk your chin at your mother.

"To my company. Your mother's contract gives her access to the security summaries." Morgan holds your eyes. "I'm telling you because you should know. You can read every one of them. I'm not going to write anything about you I wouldn't say to your face."

It's such a strange thing to hear in this room that for a second you can't answer.

"How generous," you manage.

"It's not generous. It's the job." She drops her hand. "That's it. Those are the terms."

"Those are your terms. Here's mine." You grab your keys off the table. "I'm going home. To my apartment. Alone. I'm going to sleep for nine hours, and then I'm going to open my bar tonight like a normal person, and if anyone wants to text me creepy pictures, I'll block them."

"Ethan..."

"Goodnight, Mom. Goodnight, Daniel. Goodnight, Ms. Reyes. It was so nice to be managed."

You walk out. You get as far as the courtyard before you realize you don't have a car, because your car is still in the garage under Low Tide, and the only car in this driveway that will take you anywhere belongs to the woman you just walked out on.

She's already behind you. Of course she is.

"I'll drive," Morgan says.

"I'll take a cab."

"You can do that. I'll follow the cab."

You stare at her. The sky over the banyans is going pink. A mockingbird is running through its whole stolen songbook somewhere in the hedge. She's standing in your mother's driveway like she owns the dawn, perfectly patient, perfectly immovable, and you think: she'd actually do it. She'd follow a cab across Miami at five in the morning to prove a point.

"Fine," you say. "Drive. And then go home."

She opens the back door. You get in the front instead, just to be difficult, folding your long legs under the dash. She doesn't comment. She just adjusts the mirror.

Your building, the Marlow, is a needle of glass on Brickell Bay Drive. The night doorman, Esteban, nods at you, then looks at Morgan and forgets to stop looking. In the elevator she stands with her back to the wall and her eyes on the numbers.

"You can stop now," you say. "I'm home. Thirty-one floors of security. Esteban. Cameras."

"Who has keys to your unit?"

"Me. The building. My mother, probably." You laugh, but it comes out wrong.

The doors open. Your hallway is quiet and cool and smells like the lemon cleaner they use on the marble. Your door is locked. You unlock it.

"Wait," Morgan says.

You don't. You're tired and angry and you want your bed, and you push the door open and walk into your own living room, and everything is exactly where you left it. Couch. Plants. The big window full of pink morning and water.

"See?" you say. "Nothing."

She steps past you without answering and moves through the apartment in a way you've never seen anyone move through a room. Fast, quiet, corners first. Kitchen. Bathroom. Closet. She opens the door to your bedroom.

She stops.

"Ethan," she says, and her voice has changed. "Don't come in here."

So of course you do.

Your bed is made. You didn't make it. The duvet is pulled tight and smooth as a hotel's, and in the exact center of your pillow, like a mint, lies a small steel ring with a numbered plastic tag.

You know what it is. You grew up with them in your mother's office, in bowls, on keychains. A container seal. The kind they snap onto cargo doors at the port.

The tag is stamped with two words.

PRADO HARBOR.

Morgan is already on the phone. Her other hand is out, not touching you, just there, between you and the bed.

"Pack a bag," she says.