Better When He's Brave

I raised a hand to knock and almost fell into the house as the door swung open under the tapping of my knuckles. The interior was dark, and before I even took a step over the threshold, the metallic and iron scent of blood hit my nose.

I swore under my breath and walked into the house expecting the worst. I got it.

The middle-aged teacher and his wife were sitting on the couch, each with a perfectly round bullet hole in the center of their foreheads. They were still holding hands.

A teenaged boy that couldn’t be any older than Karsen was a few feet away, facedown on the carpet and missing the back of his skull. It looked like he had tried to make a run for it and not gotten very far. I pulled my phone out so I could call the murders in and saw that I’d missed a text from Reeve. I ignored it so I could call the station, explaining that I thought the multiple homicide was directly related to the bomb threat at the school. I wasn’t sure how to explain Roark, so I just told Dispatch that it was all part of an ongoing investigation. One more kid I hadn’t gotten to in time in a pool of blood. Roark really was eating away at the very foundation of what I did and why I did it.

I went outside so that I could go talk to the neighbors and see if anyone had seen anything. As I stepped outside I remembered to look at Reeve’s text. I tapped the screen to open it and frowned at her terse message.

I had to go home.

What in the hell did that mean? She was still at the loft? She had to go back to her place up north where WITSEC had stashed her? She had to go back to her place she had in the city when things went to hell? I wasn’t sure what she considered home and I didn’t like that at all. I shot her back:

WTF does that even mean? Call me NOW! Tied up at work. Triple homicide most likely Roark.

I thought that would get her attention, and I would hear back from her in a split second, but all I got was silence. I didn’t like it, but I had a job to do, so I started knocking on doors. The first neighbor hadn’t seen or heard anything. Of course not. The second took great pleasure in telling me all about what a delinquent the son was. Apparently the kid had a drug problem and had been caught trying to break into various neighbors’ houses. Two houses down, an old lady that had to be in her eighties swore she saw a big silver truck that didn’t belong in the neighborhood pull up in front of the house. She also thought Clinton was still president of the United States, so I jotted the info down without much hope of it leading to anything. Finally, when I spoke to the young couple that lived across the street, I got something that might actually be helpful.

They said they saw a bald guy with a goatee talking to the kid. He had been around a few times when the parents were gone, and the couple agreed he didn’t give off a good vibe. The kid’s drug problem was well known around the neighborhood, so they thought he might be a dealer. I told them thank you and made my way back across the street as the crime-scene crew arrived. I was getting really sick of those guys and the ones with the body bags.

Roark had a full head of hair and was clean-shaven. He looked like a lot of retired military men look. Hard and battle weary but still stuck on the regimen of being clean cut and straightened out. I wondered if the bald guy with the goatee was the infamous Zero, who had shown up on Reeve’s doorstep asking after Roark. It sounded like I had a description of the man Roark had doing his dirty work for him while he pulled the strings safely hidden away.

Once I was done at the scene I started blowing Reeve’s phone up and tried to fight down panic when there still wasn’t any answer. I knew she was smart, but so far Roark had proven smarter than all of us. She knew that all of her protection was tied up at the charter school with Roark’s carefully crafted distraction, and she wouldn’t have left the safety of the loft unless she felt like she absolutely didn’t have a choice. I needed to figure out what “home” meant and I needed to figure it out right now. I called Otis, the marshal, to see if his guys had eyes on her and they could guide me in the right direction.

When he told me where she was off to, my heart dropped and I knew I needed to get to her. She had been taking care of me since the moment she stepped foot back in the Point. Now it was time for me to return the favor.

Chapter 13

Reeve

WHEN BOOKER TOOK OFF after a panicked call from Brysen, I had planned on settling in for the rest of the day and doing nothing. I was getting real sick and tired of doing nothing. I had never had the opportunity to just sit around idle while someone else took care of me, and I didn’t care for it at all. Especially since I woke up alone and bereft every morning knowing that Titus was purposely putting space between us during waking hours. We needed to figure out a way that I could be out in the open that seemed like I was on my own without actually flying solo. I needed to be someplace where Conner could get closer to me. This condo was like a fortress and there was no way he could get his hands on me if I was cloistered behind the impenetrable walls.

I was messing with my hair in the bathroom mirror because I was that bored when the cell phone Titus had given me rang. Only two people had the number, Titus and Booker, so I froze when neither one of those names came up on the display. I thought I knew who would be on the other end, that a deadly and lyrical Irish lilt would hit my ears when I answered the call. I was so surprised to hear a voice I hadn’t heard since my family was whole that I actually went weak in the knees and had to sit down before I fell over.

My mom sounded so much like Rissa over the phone it was like talking to a ghost. I was shaking so badly that I was having a hard time holding on to the cell and her words were getting lost in the rushing of blood through my head.