Tío Rafa

You fall asleep with the phone on your chest and her last message still glowing.

You don't remember what time it was. You remember the conversation more than the words: the strange, flat calm of her texts, how they looked so much like her face. It's the first time since the photo that you've slept without dreaming about balconies.

At 4:58 a.m. someone knocks on your bedroom door.

"Go away."

"You said you run," Morgan says through the wood. "It's in your file. Five miles, Tuesdays and Saturdays."

"It's Wednesday."

"I know. I want to see your route before someone else does."

You open the door with the full intention of slamming it again. She's in running gear: black shorts, black tank top, hair braided tight, a phone strapped to her arm. You've seen people who look good. You've photographed models for a magazine shoot on this very roof and spent a whole afternoon telling them where to put their chins. None of them looked like Morgan Reyes at five in the morning, completely uninterested in being looked at.

"You can't be serious," you say, to her face, and also to the universe.

"Shoes, Ethan," she says.

She runs the way she does everything. Steady, unhurried, a pace you can hold if you don't talk, so of course you talk.

"Where'd you learn to do this?"

"Fort Leonard Wood."

"Is that a person?"

"It's Missouri." The bay goes by on your left, pink and flat, pelicans sitting on the pilings like old men at a bar. "Military Police school. Then a few other places."

"What places?"

"Places with sand."

"Was it awful?"

She's quiet for half a block. "Some of it."

You run the Rickenbacker Causeway to the bridge and back. At the end she takes you, without asking, to a ventanita in a strip mall off Coral Way, a walk-up coffee window with a fogged pane and a hand-lettered sign, where a woman with silver curls takes one look at Morgan and starts making something before she orders.

"Two cafecitos, Mirta. And a croqueta for this one, he looks like he's dying."

"I'm not dying."

"You're gray."

Mirta passes the coffee through the window in tiny plastic cups. Thick, sweet, so strong it hits the back of your skull like a brass band. You make a noise you didn't plan to make. Mirta laughs at you. Then she looks at Morgan, sly.

"You bring someone, finally?"

"Work, Mirta."

"Mm. Work." Mirta looks you up and down, approving. "Work is very handsome."

Morgan pays in cash and doesn't look at you, and you stand on the sidewalk with powdered sugar from the croqueta on your fingers, sweating through your shirt, trying not to smile.

"You grew up around here," you say.

"Hialeah. Twenty minutes west."

"I've never been."

"I know." She tosses her cup in the trash. "People from Brickell don't."

There it is. The thing under her calm, cool and flat as a blade. You think about saying something sharp back. You don't. You're not sure why.

At ten, your mother summons you to the office, which she calls asking you to stop by.

Prado Harbor Group occupies the top six floors of a glass tower on Biscayne Boulevard, all windows facing the port, so that from your mother's office you can see the cranes at Terminal 4 lifting containers like a child playing with blocks. You've hated this building since you were seven. It smells like money and carpet glue.

Daniel meets you at the elevator. Navy suit. Tie clip. A face like a closed spreadsheet.

"She's in a call," he says. "You can wait in my office."

"Can't wait to."

His gaze slides past you to Morgan. It lingers a beat longer than it should, which seems to be happening to everyone, and then turns cool. "Ms. Reyes. We need a list of everyone your company has cleared to know my brother's movements."

"It's a short list, Mr. Prado," Morgan says. "You're not on it."

You almost choke.

Daniel's mouth tightens. "I'm his brother."

"You're also one of forty people with access to Terminal 4." She says it politely, like reading weather. "Nothing personal."

"Everything's personal in this family," Daniel says, and walks away.

"Wow," you breathe.

"Was that bad?"

"That was the best thing I've ever seen."

She almost smiles again. You're starting to collect those almosts.

And then a big warm voice booms down the hallway, the voice of every birthday party of your childhood.

"There's my favorite troublemaker!"

Rafael Ibarra comes at you with his arms open. Sixty-one, silver hair swept back, a crisp white guayabera, a gold watch that glints when he moves. He smells like cigar smoke and expensive cologne. He's been your godfather since before you could walk, and he's the only adult in this building who ever snuck you candy during board meetings.

"Tío Rafa." You let him hug you. He holds on like he means it.

"I heard about the roof. And the pillow." He pulls back and reaches up to put his hands on your shoulders, the way he has since you outgrew him at fifteen, his dark eyes wet with worry. "Cariño, if someone wanted to scare you, they picked the wrong family. We'll find them. I promise you."

"Mom thinks it's about Terminal 4."

His face flickers. Just once. "Your mother sees conspiracies in her coffee. She's under a lot of stress." His eyes move to Morgan and slowly travel up and down, a man pricing something. "And this is the protection."

"Morgan Reyes," she says.

"Army?"

"Yes, sir."

"I can always tell." He smiles at her, a big generous smile, and then turns his back on her to talk to you. "Listen to me. You don't need a soldier following you to the grocery store. It makes you look scared, and it makes the family look scared. I've got men at the terminal who can keep an eye on you without moving into your apartment. Discreet. Professional." He squeezes your arm. "Let me talk to your mother. We'll get rid of the Army girl."

Behind you, Morgan says nothing at all. You can feel her saying it.

"I'll think about it," you hear yourself say, and you're surprised to find you don't mean it.

"That's my Ethan." He kisses your forehead. "Come. Walk me down. My car's out front."

You walk him down. Morgan follows a step behind. In the lobby, through the glass doors, a silver Mercedes idles at the curb. The driver is leaning against the hood, scrolling his phone. Tall, broad, sandy hair, sunglasses, the kind of easy grin that belongs on a billboard for something you shouldn't buy.

He looks up as you come through the doors. He sees Ibarra. Then he sees Morgan, and his grin gets wider.

Beside you, Morgan stops walking.

It's tiny. A half-step hitch, like missing a stair in the dark. But you've spent eighteen hours watching her move, and you have never seen Morgan Reyes miss a step.

"Something wrong?" you murmur.

The driver opens the back door for Ibarra and tips two fingers off his sunglasses at her. A salute. Lazy. Mocking.

"Sergeant Reyes," he calls. "Small world."

Morgan's voice, when it comes, is so quiet only you hear it.

"Kade Brennan."