Of course, things get even more complicated when you actually care about all of them.

Getting out of Miami was easy. It's always easy to hit the road when the options are what like yours - abusive father, unhappy childhood. Anything's got to be better. And you're inured to the bad stuff, so you can handle anything. You're used to locking yourself and your emotions away, so you make good fodder for the people who want men and women who can be anything, be anyone.

Anybody else has to be better than being you.

Being in Miami is infinitely harder. There are memories that hit you every once in a while, that make old scars pulse with fresh blood beneath them and bruises and broken bones ache where they've healed and knit. Childhood sucks for a lot of people. Revisiting it is a lot like hell. Especially in the Miami heat.

"So, your teachers tell me you're a smart little shit."

Michael doesn't look up from the door lock as he turns it. He knows the sound of this voice. It's different from his father's usual, which is just accusing and suspicious. This voice is hard and cold and smells like something stronger than the beer that usually accompanies Monday Night Football.

"Did they really say shit? Because I'm guessing they didn't."

"I told them the only thing smart about you is your mouth." He gets to his feet and walks over toward the door. Michael knows the drill. He learned it almost as soon as he could walk, and certainly as soon as he could sneak the hell out of the house. His father is taller than him, though not by much any more, and he's got the same wiry frame that Michael's growing into, though his father's sags with the weight of age and beer.

"Well, Dad, they say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

The fist tightens in his collar before he can draw a breath, twisting until the cotton fabric is tight against Michael's windpipe. "That's where you're wrong, boy. Because I am smart. I know what you do and what you say, and I let you get away with a lot of shit because it amuses me. But don't think you do it without my knowledge, my consent."

"Yssss." It comes out like a hiss, all he can manage with his limited supply of air. His father smiles, tightening the shirt further and Michael feels it cutting into his skin. "Ysss, ssssr."

He releases him, shoving hard as he does, sending Michael sprawling against the door. His head hits the glass hard and Michael winces, though the pain dissolves into a small, knowing smile. He's careful not to raise his hand, not to rub the pulsing skin, not to feel the line cutting into his flesh. His dad doesn't look at him; just turns around and heads back to his chair and his booze. "Get the hell out of my sight."

Michael nods and makes his way out of the room and up the stairs to his bedroom. Nate's been there, that's obvious from the fact that things are scattered across Michael's desk instead of neatly arranged. He locks his door behind him and cleans up, waiting until he hears the TV shut off and the lights go out before he turns off his own light, lies down on the bed and presses his hand against his burning throat.

You never get involved in cases that hit too close to home. You learn that the hard way, sometimes more than once. The problem is that everything affects your judgment, especially when you've got more on your mind than the case you're working. Not that you should have more on your mind, but it's hard when the other stuff you've got on your mind is your life, your death and the difference between the two.

Still, fathers and sons play a role in most everything you do. Every guy is either somebody's father or somebody's son or sometimes both. Fathers get the choice to be disciplinarian or buddy, bastard or bartender. Sometimes they meld the two and other times you get an trip to the emergency room, seventeen stitches and you steal a car to get you to the recruiting center before they close.

Running away isn't leaving. It's surviving.

Michael's an expert at survival, even in high school. He's nice enough and good looking enough and slightly dangerous enough that the girls help him with his homework when he needs it, and other things when he doesn't. He's got enough of an edge that, after blackening a few eyes and bloodying a few noses, he gets left alone and there's a very small list of things Michael fears.

The garage is one of them.

His father bought the charger for fifty bucks and a few owed favors, and he pulled back the drop cloth like he was showing Michael the gold he'd just heisted from Fort Knox. It was a gift in name, and a chain in theory. A way to force Michael to spend time with him, to provide him with a captive audience and a moving target.

They rebuild the engine and make modifications, which is his father's way of saying he screwed up, but he won't admit it, so Michael has to figure out a way to make it work regardless. Michael gets to be an expert in putting things together and taking them apart, refiguring them to work in ways they're not meant to. He doesn't think of it as training. He just thinks of it as staying where he can see the wrench.

It's the spark plugs that do it. They blow out set after set, and Michael can't figure out how to make it work the way he wants it, the way it should. He can sense his father's growing annoyance and smell the whiskey when he drops the nearly empty bottle. Michael's inured to fumes by now, so he just keeps working, half an eye on the toolbox on the workbench next to the car.

It doesn't keep the hood from slamming down against the back of his head and laying him out against the engine. His father's quicker than he should be for as drunk as he is, but maybe Michael's under-estimated just how angry he is at the engine. Or maybe there's something else.

"Another goddamn teacher called today."

Michael's beginning to resent people trying to help him out. It never seems to go well for him.

His father grabs him by the back of the shirt and tugs him off the car, shoving him against the wood frame of the closed garage door. His words ring twice through Michael's ears and he shakes his head, which he realizes as a tactical error about two seconds after he makes it, or about as long as it takes his father's eyes to widen. "You calling me a liar, boy?"

Michael shakes his head again and almost laughs, the sound strangled as his father presses his hand against Michael's windpipe. "You're a lot of thing, sir, but you're not a liar."

"What is it you think I am?" His father's voice gets low and dangerous, and Michael smells the whiskey on his breath.

"I know what you are." Michael reaches up and wraps his hand around his father's wrist, digging the thumb against the soft flesh just behind it. "A bully. A drunk. A failure. An asshole." His free hand reaches out, grabbing at the first thing he can find, a Maglite hanging from the wall. It's hard and heavy in his hand and comes down hard on his father's forearm.

The resultant howl and snap of bone is the briefest victory as his father jabs his hand hard against Michael's throat, stealing his breath and causing him to choke. Michael drops the flashlight and grabs at his father's arm, trying to find the break in the bone. His father grabs his hand and bends it back, snapping the wrist and effectively immobilizing Michael's arm, jerking it hard and bringing Michael to his knees.

"You want to know what you are, kid?"

"What's that?" Michael's whole body feels on fire from the bruised line across his ribcage to the ringing in his ears to the hot throb of blood pulsing in his wrist.

His father leans in, stinking breath, anger and triumph. He leans down and grabs the flashlight, smiling as Michael spits at him, wiping the wetness away with his good hand. The Maglite is hard and black and dangerous in his hand. Michael prefers to watch his father pull it back to swing rather than the smile that curls his father's lips back. "You're just like your old man."

You have three choices in life: Be who you are, be who they made you, or make something up as you go along.

With the first you have to persevere against everyone who thinks they know better than you. Have to hold fast to what you want and what you believe in and damn the rest. Screw nature and screw nurture. Isn't always easy.

With the second you don't get a say in who you are or what you do, but you've got a scapegoat. It's always someone else's fault. All your failures rest at someone else's feet, but your triumphs are never your own.

The third is what you do when you're in covert ops, when you're a spy. Never the same guy twice. You leave nothing behind but a reputation and a healthy respect for what you can accomplish. Keeps you in business, and if you're good, it keeps you alive. When you're burned, you're always the same guy, same circumstances. Nowhere to run from who you are and who they made you.

Which is why you fight like hell, because even being a ghost, being no one, is better than being who you're afraid you might become.