He didn’t wait for a response. He just smirked and walked out into the cool Ohio night. She My nails dug so deep into my palms that I felt the skin break. There was only one person in my world who used the word course to describe my life. Margaret Louise Miller, my mother-in-law, a woman who lived behind a glass wall of old money and upper Arlington pedigree, watching the rest of the world struggle through a telescope of judgment. My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out, my heart skipping a beat when I saw the name on the screen. Mike, my late husband’s younger brother.
“Maisie, my god, I just heard. Is Abby okay?”
Mike’s voice burst through the receiver, sounding breathless and frantic. Too frantic.
“I heard there was a situation at Polaris. I’m jumping in the car right now to come get you guys. Just stay put.”
I froze. My internal deception indicators flashed red. I hadn’t called Mike. The police hadn’t released any names to the press yet. We had been in this station for less than 45 minutes. How did he know we were at Polaris? How did he know there was a situation? The concern in his voice didn’t sound like love. It sounded like a script being read by a man who was terrified of missing his queue.
“How did you know, Mike?”
I asked. My voice is flat and cold as a grave marker.
“I uh someone posted something on Facebook. A woman in a uniform. I just had a feeling,”
he stammered, his bravado crumbling into a weak, pathetic stutter. I closed my eyes and suddenly I wasn’t at the police station anymore. I was back at the Miller estate last Thanksgiving. The dining room was a sea of white linen, fine china, and silver that had been polished by people Margaret didn’t know the names of. I was sitting there in the only class A uniform I owned, having rushed there straight from the base. Margaret sat at the head of the table, her pearl necklace gleaming like beared teeth. She hadn’t looked at me once during the prayer. When the turkey was carved, she finally spoke, her voice cutting through the festive hum like a razor blade.
“God created women to keep the fire in the kitchen, Maisie, not to carry a rifle in the mud,”
she had said, her eyes fixed on my callous hands.
“David’s death, it was the price of your pride. You chose a career over your husband. You chose to be a soldier instead of a wife. And look where it got him. Buried in Arlington while you play hero.”
Mike had been sitting right next to me. He just stared into his pumpkin soup, his shoulders hunched, his silence a heavy, suffocating weight. He didn’t defend me. He didn’t look at his mother. He just ate his soup while she dismantled my soul in front of the entire family. General Patton once said that moral courage is the most absent characteristic in men. Looking at Mike that night, I realized he was the living embodiment of that void.
“Mommy.”
Aby’s voice pulled me back to the present. She was looking up at me, clutching her worn teddy bear. Her eyes were searching mine for a lie, for a sign that everything was actually fine.
“What is it, sweetie?”
I whispered, stroking her hair.
“That mean man. The one in the bathroom,”
she hesitated, her voice trembling.
“He smelled like Uncle Mike’s car, like mint and those smelly cigarettes.”
The world tilted on its axis. mint and tobacco. It was the signature scent of the Miller men. But Mike was the only one who still smoked those imported clothes. A tiny detail, sharp as a shard of glass, pierced through the lies. Hartman hadn’t just followed us. He had been sitting in Mike’s car. My brother-in-law hadn’t just heard about the incident. He had helped coordinate it. I looked at the phone in my hand, still glowing with Mike’s missed calls. The glass wall was starting to crack, and behind it, I could see the faces of the people I once called family. They weren’t coming to save us. They were coming to finish the job. I stood up, my resolve turning into a block of black ice. The hunt was far from over, but now I knew exactly who the wolves were. Mike burst into the police precinct like a man auditioning for the role of a hero in a low-budget soap opera. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his breathing was jagged, loud enough to echo in the sterile lobby.
“Maisy, Abby, thank God you’re safe,”
he cried out, his voice cracking with a frantic energy that felt entirely manufactured. He lunged forward, his arms open as if to scoop Abby into a grand protective embrace.
“I didn’t think, I acted.”
I stepped into his path, my body becoming a solid wall of militaryra muscle and bone. I pulled Abby behind me, my hand resting firmly on her shoulder, my eyes locked onto mics. In the army, we are trained to look for deception indicators, the subtle tells that the body gives when the mind is lying. I saw them all. His pupils were blown wide, a sign of a massive adrenaline spike born of fear, not love. His hands were trembling, and he pointedly avoided my gaze, looking instead at the floor tiles or the vending machine in the corner.
“How did you get here so fast, Mike?”
I asked. My voice was a flatline devoid of the warmth he expected.
“I uh I just had a gut feeling,”
he stammered, his lips curling into a crooked, sickly smile.
“Call it a sixth sense. I was just so worried.”
A gut feeling or a notification from Brian Hartman saying the plan had gone south. I didn’t say a word. I just watched him squirm under the weight of my silence. The good uncle act was failing and the stench of his guilt was stronger than the cheap cologne he used to mask his clover cigarettes. I told Mike to drive us home so I could pick up my own car. The ride back to my small suburban house was suffocating. Mike tried to fill the silence with mindless chatter about the local Buckeyes game and how dangerous the world was getting. I sat in the passenger seat, a silent observer in my own life, practicing the art of counter surveillance. When we pulled into my driveway, Mike jumped out to open the gate. As he moved, the tail of his expensive wool coat caught on the seat belt. A small slip of yellow paper fluttered from his pocket and landed on the floor mat. I reached down and snatched it up before he could turn around. It wasn’t a grocery receipt. It was a wire transfer confirmation from a local Chase branch. The recipient, Hartman Investigative Services. The amount, $5,000. The memo line read,
“Project Polaris, initial retainer.”
My world didn’t just crumble. It turned to ash. $5,000. That was the price of my daughter’s safety. My own brother-in-law had paid a predator to stalk us in a public restroom. He had sold out the woman who had carried his brother’s casket for 5,000 pieces of silver. I tucked the paper into my pocket, my heart turning into a block of black ice.
“Everything okay, Maisie?”
Mike asked, leaning back into the car, his face a mask of false concern.
“Fine,”
I replied, my voice as sharp as a bayonet.
“Just tired.”
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