The flashlight beam danced across the printed emails, the words swimming before my eyes. Brenda’s voice faded to a dull roar in the background.
Leo. My son. Paying Brenda.
The sum was clear: $15,000. For the server drives.
“Dad won’t listen.” That phrase echoed in my head, a raw wound. I had pushed him away, convinced that his idealism would make him a target. Convinced that my silence was his only protection.
Brenda wasn’t a federal assassin. She wasn’t an agent, or a blackmailer working for Kincaid.
She was just Brenda. My neighbor. Desperate, yes, but not the enemy I had constructed in my mind.
She was taking Leo’s money because Leo believed I was in imminent danger. He believed federal hit teams were coming. And he had hired the one person he thought could get to me.
My paranoia, the fortress I had built around myself, had blinded me. It had twisted every interaction, every perceived threat, into a confirmation of my darkest fears.
Brenda, now closer, peered into the darkness. “What do you have there, Marcus?”
I looked at the emails again, at Leo’s desperate plea. My son, trying to save me, had put his faith in a stranger. A stranger I had nearly attacked.
The irony burned. I had misread her entire motivation. Brenda wasn’t trying to sell me out; she was trying to save me. Or, at least, save what Leo thought needed saving.
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