In the last installment…
“OKAY, WE’RE HERE,” Maya said quietly.
I looked out the window. Yangon International shimmered in the late-afternoon heat, the runway bleeding into haze. Planes taxied in slow, indifferent lines, their engines whining against the thick air. To anyone else, it was just another airport. To us, it was the beginning of disappearance.
We never traveled back to the US together. That was rule one. No shared itineraries. No shared manifests. No neat little cluster of American passports moving in formation. We fractured on purpose—different airlines, different departure times, different countries. You left as a team. You returned as ghosts.
My route would take me west first: ten hours from Yangon to Istanbul, long enough to let the adrenaline drain and the cover story settle into muscle memory. From there, a nonstop to Dulles International. Two continents. Two boarding passes. One carefully constructed version of myself ready to step back onto American soil like I’d never left it.
Maya killed the engine. No hugs. No goodbyes. Just a brief look that said what it always did—mission first, everything else later.
They dropped me at the curb with a carry-on and a passport that said I was Jack Cooper, consultant. Then they pulled away toward their own exits, scattering into the city in opposite directions.
By the time I stepped through the sliding glass doors, we were no longer a team. We were separate stories heading home.
I sat in the waiting area, half-listening as the gate agent announced pre-boarding for families and priority status. The terminal hummed with the dull, anonymous noise of transit—rolling suitcases, muted phone calls, the low mechanical sigh of conditioned air. I kept my eyes on the runway beyond the glass, watching heat shimmer off the tarmac.
I almost didn’t register the shift of weight behind me. The scrape of a chair leg. The subtle change in air.
“So was that some kind of warning?”
My spine went rigid before I let myself move.
I turned slowly.
Nathan sat one row back, elbows braced on his knees, eyes locked on me. No smile. No easy charm. Just calculation—and something sharper underneath it.
“Guess you got my message,” I said evenly.
