"Now boarding: flight number 367 for Detroit."
It wasn't our flight, but across from me, Woods and Ellie stood like they had somewhere else to be. "It's for Detroit," I told them, thinking that there had to be a mistake. We were headed for Boston so that we could catch a private flight back to Virginia.
They didn't have much—one bag each. The pair looked like they were ready to take on the world, but there was something beneath the bravado and the strength. Beneath the superheroes were two women who just wanted to go home. "We know," said Woods. "That's why we're boarding."
And maybe my poker face wasn't as good as I thought it was, because Ellie took one look at me and decided to explain. "It's still not safe," she said. "Anyone who knows the truth about the Dubois family is too dangerous not to take seriously."
"So you're still going to run," I concluded.
I turned back to Woods, and there was a look in her eye that I hadn't seen in a while. For a moment, I was back to being a predictable sophomore, and she was back to being some sort of omniscient mind reader. "Don't worry, Goode," she said. "I've got a feeling that we'll see each other around."
And before I had time to even process that, Ellie was bounding back into the conversation. "And," she said, waving my mother's journal. She hadn't taken her eyes off of it since we'd picked up Matt and Scout from the safe house. "This time, we're not going to screw ourselves over by relying on guesswork. We've got pages full of identities in here—if they want to send someone after us, they're going to have to send someone we don't know."
That, at least, made it seem like they stood a chance. Even if they didn't.
The voice called over the speaker one more time, droning and bored. "Final call for flight 367."
After a hug from Mom, the pair of them took off, and it was harder than it should have been to watch them go. They each held their bags over their right shoulders, perfectly in step as they laughed about a joke that I was too far away to hear. My focus was on Charlotte Woods—the last of the Dubois line—wondering if she would ever find an end. I wondered if she would ever feel resolved and then I wondered how she'd do it. How she would let herself live after a lifetime of keeping herself dead.
Maybe I was overthinking things. Maybe it was a trick of the light or a trick of the distance, but as she turned a corner, I could have sworn I saw her look at me. I could have sworn I saw her give me a firm, military nod. I don't know what made me think it, but for a very brief moment, I was sure that everything would be okay.
That was when Luke decided that he would sit next to me.
There was no longer any part of me that hated Luke Collins, but there were many, many parts of me that were angry with him, and I didn't make much of an attempt to hide it. "I'm sorry," he said.
"She's your sister."
"I'm sorry."
"Your honest to god sister."
"Tell me how to fix this and I will," he pleaded. "Tell me how many times I need to apologize and I'll do it. How many times do I need to say—?"
"I don't want apologies, Luke," I told him. I had meant for it to sound harsher, the way it always did with him, but it came out as exhausted and scared. I didn't hate Luke, but I hated myself, and I hated how easy it was to break me. "I want answers—how long?"
He paused, that crease cutting into his forehead. "How long has she been my sister?"
"How long have you known she was alive, Luke?"
"As long as you have," he said confidently, but when my eyes went flat and I shot a bullet of disbelief in his direction, his shoulders rolled forward. "Give or take a few days."
I still wasn't buying it. "You literally ran into an explosion to tell her—"
"I ran into the explosion because there was a chance that she was in there," he said, stronger now than before. "But it doesn't matter, because I didn't find her. I just yelled in there and told everyone to get the hell out, because there was a chance she was in there. I didn't know for sure."
"You expect me to believe that?" I said.
"Do you know why I go around telling the truth all the time?" he asked, but he didn't wait for an answer. He just watched me, making sure that I was paying close attention when he said, "It's so that people believe me when I need them to. I need you to believe me right now, Morgan. It's the only way this is going to work."
"Well I don't," I said. "I'm sorry, but I don't believe that you would run into a building that you knew was going to blow, just because you thought she might be in there."
"So you're telling me that if Matt were in there, you would have stayed back?"
And, well, I couldn't argue that point. We already knew, without a doubt, exactly what measures I would have taken to get Matt out of that cabin, because I had taken those measures to get Matt out of that cabin. The proof was right there.
"You could have told me," I said instead. "You should have said something as soon as you suspected—"
"I did say something," he said. He wasn't exactly angry, but he certainly wasn't backing down. He certainly wasn't going to let me win this one and, to tell you the truth, I was glad for it. I hoped he never let me win—not now, not ever. I hoped that Luke Collins and I kept fighting for a very long time. "After Romania, I told Agent Baxter everything I knew and she told your dad. Your dad probably told everyone else because by the time I started working with your mom, she was pulling me along on missions as an inside source."
"That's why they let you go everywhere," and suddenly I felt stupid. Of course that was the reason. Even without his sister, he was a valuable informant—Captain of the Gathering and a longtime apprentice to Blake Hughes. Add his sister into the mix and he was the perfect source. "God, I should have seen it."
"I'm sorry I didn't fill you in sooner," he said. "I should have told you that night, in front of the fire. I wanted to, but I just—you called me Luke."
"What's that got to—?"
"Everyone else calls me Collins," he said, brown eyes stuck on me. They were glass again—it was always glass or stone with him, never in between. "Everyone else looks at me and they see her. They see my parents. But you call me Luke."
And just like that, it clicked. "And you call me Morgan."
A smile, not even halved this time. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I call you Morgan."
Not Maggie. Not Goode. Morgan. To him, I was Morgan, and I wasn't my father's daughter, nor was I the descendant of Catherine Goode. I had the sudden urge to curl up against him and never leave, desperate to erase the words of Blake Hughes from my mind. Oh boy, are you ever her granddaughter.
"I'm not crazy," I said.
He didn't miss a beat. "I know."
"I'm nothing like her."
He already knew who I was talking about. "I know."
"What if she wasn't the bad guy?"
This time, there was a pause. This time, he didn't answer straight away and I knew—I just knew—that he was thinking it too. I knew that Lily's words were fresh in his mind and that there was a chance that we were on the wrong side of everything.
"My parents killed a lot of people," I said.
"A lot of bad people," he said back, but in that moment, the boy who told only told truths didn't sound all that sure.
"Yeah," I said, because I was allowed to lie, and Luke has a far easier time listening to lies than he does telling them. "Of course. Bad people."
"Now boarding: flight 455 to Boston," said the voice above us.
And what else could we do? The two of us could spend hours in that airport, debating the finer morals of good versus evil, or we could get on our plane and do our damn jobs. We could gather our things and we could move on.
So that was what we did. Luke grabbed his bag, I grabbed mine. Scout carried both his and Matt's while Matt complained to Alice about how he was an independent guy and he didn't need his boyfriend to do all the heavy lifting. Alice just smiled—that same smile she always wore whenever Ellie left—and she listened ever so patiently to one of her oldest friends.
Mom lead up the rear and let her arm fall around my shoulders. "You doing okay, kiddo?"
I smiled up at her, but all I saw was the word responsible scribbled across her forehead. "I'm doing just fine—did you get ahold of Macey?"
She shook her head. "No, but they're going to be okay. Macey's good."
"Macey's really good," I agreed.
"They'll be fine," she said again, and I think she really meant it. Some part of Mom, deep, deep down, believed that things like international terror and lifelong grudges really did work out in the end. Some part of me, deep, deep down, really wanted to believe her. "We're all going to be just fine."
I looked up to Luke. Maybe he agreed with her and maybe he didn't. It was hard to get a read on him, but either way, I laced my fingers through his. I walked through the gates with my mother's arm around my shoulders and with Luke's hand in mine and I thought, just for a moment, that maybe Mom was right.
Maybe we were going to be okay.