Locke arrived at Sacramento International Airport forty minutes early.
Not from eagerness. From habit. Early arrival meant time to assess the environment, identify patterns, establish baselines before variables introduced themselves.
He parked in short-term lot C, third level, where he could see the arrivals terminal through the concrete support columns without being easily visible from ground level. Old instinct. Positioning that provided observation without exposure.
He sat in the rental car and watched.
Security personnel rotated on predictable intervals. Foot traffic flowed in recognizable patterns—business travelers moving efficiently, families clustering around luggage, rideshare drivers holding signs with passenger names. Three exits. Two service corridors. Emergency protocols visible through signage and architectural design.
He cataloged it all automatically.
Then stopped himself.
This wasn't an operation. Wasn't a target assessment. Wasn't anything requiring tactical analysis.
His daughter was arriving for a college visit with friends.
Normal. Civilian. Unremarkable.
It shouldn't feel like preparation for engagement.
It did anyway.
---
Sarah's flight landed at 14:47, six minutes ahead of schedule.
Locke moved from the parking structure to the arrivals area and positioned himself near the baggage claim where her text had said to meet. Not too close to the exit flow. Not isolated. Just present.
The wait stretched. Fifteen minutes. Twenty.
Then she emerged.
Three girls moving together—Sarah in the middle, flanked by friends whose names he'd forgotten from the brief introduction Emily had provided weeks ago. Laughter. Easy familiarity. The kind of comfort that came from shared history he wasn't part of.
Sarah looked older than he remembered.
Not physically—a week wasn't enough time for dramatic change. But something in her posture, her expression, the way she navigated the space with casual confidence suggested emotional development he'd missed entirely, or never bothered to notice.
That distance hit harder than expected.
She saw him. Recognition without surprise. She'd known he'd be here because he'd said he would be, and Damien Locke didn't make commitments he couldn't keep.
"Dad," she said.
"Sarah."
They hugged briefly. Stiff. Polite. Careful not to presume more intimacy than actually existed between them.
She stepped back and gestured to her friends. "This is Madison and Jess. Guys, this is my dad."
Locke shook hands with both. Firm grip. Eye contact. The appropriate level of warmth for meeting teenagers who were trusting him to facilitate their safety in an unfamiliar city.
"Nice to meet you," he said.
"You too, Mr. Locke," Madison said. The taller one. Confident speaker.
Jess nodded, quieter but observant.
The interaction was polite. Cordial. Slightly too formal.
Locke realized he didn't know how to be casual with Sarah anymore. Didn't know how to transition from the restrained professionalism that governed their interactions into something resembling normal parent-child dynamic.
The framework didn't exist. Or it had eroded so completely that rebuilding it required skills he'd never developed.
---
The drive to the hotel took twenty-three minutes.
Small talk filled the car. Madison asked about Sacramento—what there was to do, where to eat, whether the campus tours were worth the time. Jess contributed occasionally, mostly observations about the architecture visible from the highway.
Sarah answered when spoken to directly. Offered brief responses. Never volunteered information.
Locke listened. Tried to construct understanding of who she'd become through the fragments of conversation. Her interests. Her sense of humor. The way she interacted with friends versus strangers.
He failed.
The data was there. But data wasn't the same as knowing someone. Wasn't the same as being present for the accumulation of moments that built into personality and preference.
He'd cataloged Sarah the way he cataloged everything else—through observation, analysis, pattern recognition.
But she wasn't a pattern.
She was a person.
And he didn't know her.
"How's school?" he asked during a lull in conversation.
Generic question. Safe. The kind of thing parents asked.
"Fine," Sarah said. "Busy."
"Applying to colleges?"
"Yeah. Not sure where yet."
Madison jumped in. "She's being modest. She got into the honors program at—"
"It's not a big deal," Sarah interrupted quietly.
"It is though," Jess added.
Sarah shrugged. Changed the subject by asking Locke about traffic patterns in Sacramento.
The deflection was smooth. Practiced.
Locke recognized the technique because he used it constantly. Redirecting attention away from personal territory. Answering questions without revealing anything meaningful.
She'd learned that from him.
The realization settled uncomfortably.
The hotel was clean. Safe. Centrally located near the UC Davis campus and downtown Sacramento.
He'd chosen it carefully. Researched reviews. Verified security protocols. Confirmed proximity to hospitals and police stations in case emergencies arose.
Too carefully.
The level of preparation appropriate for protecting an asset, not hosting his daughter and her friends for a college visit.
But he didn't know how to do this differently.
They gathered in the lobby while Locke checked them in. Three rooms—one for Sarah, one for Madison and Jess, one he'd reserved as buffer space in case complications arose.
He handed over the key cards and cash. Six hundred dollars. More than necessary for meals and incidentals over four days.
"For food, transportation, whatever you need," he said.
Framed as practical. Necessary logistics.
Not an apology. Not compensation for absence. Not an attempt to purchase connection through resources.
But it felt like all of those things.
Sarah took the money without looking at it. "Thanks."
"The campus tour is tomorrow?" Locke asked.
"Yeah. Morning session at ten."
"Text me when you're back. Let me know if you need anything."
"We will."
Professional. Transactional. The way they always interacted.
Madison and Jess moved toward the elevators, talking about unpacking and finding dinner.
Sarah lingered. Just for a moment.
A brief window where they stood alone. Where the noise of the lobby provided cover for conversation that might be more than logistical coordination.
Silence stretched between them.
She looked like she might say something. Her expression shifted—uncertainty, maybe. Or the kind of hesitation that preceded difficult questions.
She didn't speak.
Locke almost did. Almost asked how she really was. How school felt beyond "busy." Whether she was excited or anxious about college. Whether she needed anything beyond money and hotel rooms.
He didn't.
Habitual restraint overrode instinct. The same discipline that kept operational details contained prevented personal questions from forming.
The moment passed.
"I should go," Sarah said finally. "They're waiting."
"Right. Yes."
"Thanks for picking us up."
"Of course."
She turned toward the elevators. Took three steps.
Stopped.
Looked back.
"Dad—"
"Yeah?"
Another pause. Whatever she'd been about to say reorganized itself into something safer.
"Text me if you need anything too."
The offer was small. Symmetrical. But it carried weight she probably didn't intend.
Recognition that distance worked both directions. That absence wasn't something only he imposed.
"I will," Locke said.
Sarah nodded once and joined her friends.
The elevator doors closed.
Locke stood in the lobby for fifteen seconds.
Then returned to the parking garage alone.
Sat in the car without starting the engine.
Realized he hadn't asked how she'd been. Not really. Not beyond generic questions that could be answered in single words.
Realized she hadn't asked how he was either.
The symmetry hurt.
Not because it was unfair. Because it was accurate. Because the distance he'd constructed so carefully had become mutual. Had taught her the same restraint he practiced.
Had made her competent at not needing him.
Which was what he'd wanted. What he'd told himself was protective.
But sitting in a parking garage in Sacramento, watching the hotel entrance where his daughter had disappeared into an elevator, the protection felt like loss.
He started the engine.
Pulled out of the garage and merged into afternoon traffic.
Told himself she was safe. The hotel was secure. He'd fulfilled the obligation he'd agreed to. Had provided transportation, accommodations, resources.
This was enough.
It wasn't.
The acknowledgment sat heavily. Not as emotion—he'd spent too many years suppressing emotion for it to surface cleanly. But as fact.
As evidence that the methodology he'd applied to personal relationships had produced exactly what it was designed to produce: distance. Safety through separation. Protection through absence.
And the cost of that protection was knowing his daughter without understanding her. Was being present without being connected. Was fulfilling obligations without meeting needs he couldn't identify because he'd never been close enough to learn what they were.
Locke drove back to the apartment.
Parked. Sat in the car for another moment before going inside.
The mission waited. HYDRA waited. The facility embedded somewhere in Sacramento's civilian infrastructure waited to be identified and infiltrated.
That was what mattered operationally.
That was what he'd come here to do.
Not to pick up his daughter from the airport. Not to provide hotel rooms and cash. Not to stand in lobbies experiencing the quiet ache of failing at connection.
He told himself that.
Repeated it until the tactical framework reasserted itself.
But the weight remained.
The knowledge—more certain than any intelligence briefing, more reliable than any tactical assessment—that he was failing at the one role he wanted more than any other.
Quietly.
Without witnesses.
Without the dramatic confrontations or tearful admissions that marked failure in ways people could recognize and address.
Just the slow, steady accumulation of moments where he should have asked and didn't. Should have offered and couldn't. Should have been present in ways beyond physical proximity.
And Sarah, learning to expect nothing more than logistics and distance, was becoming competent at the same isolation he'd mastered decades ago.
Locke entered the apartment and closed the door.
Sacramento continued outside. Half a million people moving through their evenings. Rowan somewhere in the city, probably at home after her shift at the library. Sarah and her friends unpacking in their hotel rooms, planning dinner, laughing about something he'd never be part of.
The mission framework waited on his desk. Zoning maps. Permit records. The geometric symbol burned into his memory.
He sat down and returned to work.
Because work had clear objectives. Measurable outcomes. Success criteria that didn't involve understanding people or building connections or being anything more than functionally competent.
Work didn't require him to be a father.
Just an operator.
And that—despite everything he'd rebuilt, despite the honest self-assessment and the disciplined training and the acknowledgment that his old mythology had nearly killed him—
That was still the only role he knew how to perform without failing.
The rest was just distance.
Carefully constructed. Strategically maintained. Operationally justified.
And utterly insufficient for anything that mattered beyond survival.
But he didn't know how to be different.
Didn't know how to bridge the gap between who he was and who Sarah needed.
So he did what he always did when faced with problems he couldn't solve:
He focused on the problems he could.
The maps spread before him.
Sacramento waited to be understood.
And somewhere in this city, HYDRA had embedded themselves so thoroughly that finding them would require seeing what everyone else overlooked.
That, at least, was something he knew how to do.
Even if it meant overlooking what mattered most.