It had been 25 un-assuming years since Costa Rica. The last thirteen of them had been spent in a trailer in Sedona. His charges were two Siberian tigers in an African wildlife park. His legs didn't move as fast but his hands and his senses were as sharp as they had been before the attack.
It was a quiet life, and he never tired of looking at the stars and planets from the folding chair just off his front steps. He stabbed at the fire pit which was slowly crackling out into a soft pile of embers. The perfect darkness and stillness of the evening was broken by the crunch of tires on gravel and a pair of headlights.
Muldoon stood and turned, poker still in hand. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and stepped on it quickly before the driver of the vehicle could glimpse it.
Isabel.
"You've been smoking." She muttered. She had been an air force captain while Muldoon had wardened in Kenya. She was his pub companion and his emergency contact among other things. But those two roles were her most prominent.
"Says you." He replied, smoke pluming out of his mouth.
"How're the kids?" She asked.
She meant the tigers. "Fine. Just fine."
Isabel's visits weren't unexpected. She was always dropping in to make sure he wasn't drinking. He had the collection of chips in his sock drawer to show for it. But that's all they were. A show. And he knew Isabel was wise to it. And she knew that he knew. It was an unspoken agreement between. As long as Robert answered her phone calls and hadn't fallen asleep while cleaning a gun, Isabel was happy.
"Have you been…?" She conjured an imaginary bottle in her hand and mimed tossing it back. Robert curled his lip and shook his head. It was an honest answer. He hadn't had a drink in a few days.
"Good. I have something for you." She had her computer under her arm as she invited herself into the trailer. She pulled out a chair for herself at the table and opened it, taking a few seconds to navigate through the tabs she had opened. Robert was intrigued, but not entirely surprised. Isabel was always showing him things. Periodicals, private documents from InGen lawsuits - but her energy was different. She seemed stressed. Her unease made him anxious and he threw a furtive glance a the cupboard below the sink. She noticed this.
"Don't stop yourself on my account." She said, not taking her eyes from the screen and not pausing from her typing.
Her browser had stopped on a university just outside of Manchester.
"Feeling sentimental are we?" He teased her.
"Are you?" She turned the screen towards him.
The breath that had been caught in his throat for fifteen years seemed to all at once leave his chest. The profile of a young woman in glasses stared back at him. She was wearing a collegiate sweatshirt and held a small cheetah cub in her hands.
"She's the right age Robert."
He put his hand to his mouth, slowing his breathing through his nose. "No." He found himself saying. It was a habit after all these years of searching for the daughter who had disappeared.
"It's her Robert." Isabel said steadily. His lip trembled as he tried to take a breath. He nodded in agreement.
"Yeah." He managed.
It was her. She was older, no longer the little girl whose hair he used to brush, but it was her. The child he had lost. The child whose mother had done the right thing and taken her away from her father who couldn't take care of her. Her name was different, but a parent could never forget their child.