The Lucy that met Annie in the lobby at 10 a.m. was very different from the one she'd met only a few hours earlier. She was cleaner, fresher, clad in her uncle's menswear.
Auggie, on the other hand, looked like hell. His clothes were unchanged, he had some stubble coming in, and the bags under his eyes could've anchored a hot air balloon. He raked his fingers through his hair and it stayed that way, brushed off his forehead in a way that was equally adorable and inappropriately boyish. Annie was tempted to reach up and fix it herself, but that would've been unimaginably awkward, partly because his reaction time was way down, and partly because she had no idea how to explain it to his niece.
"Good morning, Andersons," Annie attempted to come across as the person she had to be- the most awake, the most cheerful and the most alert of the three. "I grabbed a couple of things from home for you, Lucy, if you want to try them on. Ladies' room is that way."
Lucy obliged, taking the bag and vanishing.
"They find the piece of shit yet?" Auggie asked, taking a seat on a nearby bench.
Annie joined him. "They've found him and his car, but as long as he's in the car, a couple of agents are just tailing him. One of the mafia members has been taken into custody, but he insists Zhen Yang left with the intel." She pulled a mint out of her purse and pressed it in his hand. "Also, you have coffee breath. You all right?"
"I am the opposite of all right, Walker."
"How come you never told me about her?"
"Because my family are a bunch of meddling midwestern pains in my ass," he said with a smirk. "No, they're fine, but they worry about me. They worried about me when I was deployed- what little they knew about my deployment anyway- and they really worried about me after my accident."
"So you withdrew."
"That's symptomatic of being in the CIA," Auggie laughed. "But I'm the youngest of five sons, all really close in age, and people always kind of fussed over me. I mean, not my brothers, they kicked the living shit out of me when we were kids. But my parents. And when I had my accident, my brothers really didn't know how to handle it. But Lucy was the first grandkid and she and I always had a special bond. She was the only one who didn't treat me different after my accident."
"You should let more people in," Annie found herself saying. The exhaustion was making her bold.
Auggie raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"
"Everyone knows you're more than capable," Annie said in a voice that was stronger than her own. "Lose the fear."
Lucy emerged from the bathroom in a new outfit, and Annie left Auggie on that note. Today, they all needed to lose the fear.