by Alyssa Day
"Don’t think we won't be calling on you, young lady." She waved a serving spoon at me. "You're much closer to understanding this new math than we are."
I laughed. "I bet Uncle Mike has forgotten more math than I ever learned. I just needed to know enough to run a business, not design time machines."
"Farm equipment, dear. What would we do with a time machine? Here, put the beans on the table, and I'll get the potatoes and the pasta salad."
Jack and Uncle Mike walked back in with a tray of grilled steaks, and we all got settled and dug into a really excellent dinner. I know it's not very sophisticated for a twenty-six-year-old woman to spend Friday night with her family, instead of out clubbing or partying or whatever, but it suited me just fine. Especially after how vulnerable seeing my dad had made me feel.
Jack ate his first three steaks before coming up for air, and Uncle Mike put down his steak knife and stared at him. "Where do you put it? I swear, you must have an extra stomach somewhere."
"He does weigh around five hundred pounds in his other form," I reminded my uncle. "Not that I understand, still, where the extra … Jack … goes when he's not a tiger."
Jack stabbed a fourth steak off the platter. "Pass the rolls, please?"
Aunt Ruby handed him the bread basket. "You ignore them and eat as much as you like, Jack. You're a growing boy."
Uncle Mike snatched a roll before Jack could take the last two. "Boy grows any bigger, and we'll have to buy a bigger house."
"Speaking of houses, what do you think about the roof on Jeremiah's place? I'm thinking I need to have it redone," Jack said, which got Uncle Mike off the subject of Jack's appetite and onto home repair, one of his favorites.
Discussion of roof tiles and new windows got us through the rest of dinner, but by the time Aunt Ruby brought out the pies (apple, peach, and blueberry) and the ice cream, the conversation had slowed. Everyone was dancing around the elephant—father—in the room, so I figured it was time to bring him up.
"Do you know where he is?"
Uncle Mike shook his head. "No. He gave me a phone number, but it just rings and rings and doesn’t go to a voicemail or anything. He told us that he was in trouble, and he needed to get out of the country for awhile, but he wanted to say goodbye to Tess first."
He frowned and reached over and patted my hand. "I'm sorry, honey. I know this hasn’t been easy on you. If it helps, you don't have any other missing relatives that we know about."
"A few cousins on my mother's side," Aunt Ruby said, looking thoughtful. "But we never associated with that side of the family, so they probably won't show up now."
I put my head down on my arms on the table and started laughing. What else could I do? Cry? I was tougher than that.
Jack smoothed my hair away from my face, and when I looked up at him, his expression was completely unguarded for once. A rarity for him. And what I saw made my breath catch in my throat. It was … caring.
He really cared about me, and the emotion blazed in his beautiful green eyes for a long moment before he caught himself and blinked, his face reassuming its normal calm expression.
But it was too late. I'd seen it.
Now I just needed to know how to feel about it.
Part of me wanted to jump into his arms, but part of me wanted to run away. Jack scared me—no. It wasn’t that Jack scared me. It was that the idea of what we might be together scared me.
And now wasn't the time to think of any of it.
I sat up and shook my hair out of my face
Uncle Mike pointed at Jack. "Touch that pie, and you die."
Jack froze, spatula hovering over the last slice of blueberry pie.
"You already ate half of it, and I only had once piece," my uncle said. "Hand it over."
Jack made puppy-dog eyes at Aunt Ruby. "But tigers love blueberries."
She wagged a finger at Uncle Mike. "You don't need another piece of pie. Remember what the doctor said about your cholesterol. Let Jack have that one."
He snatched the pie pan right out from under Jack's spatula. "Over my dead body."
Jack leaned in and grinned, showing a lot of teeth. "That can be arranged."
Uncle Mike looked at me. "Did I mention I bought new shells for the shotgun?"
I rolled my eyes. "You two need to behave, or I'll—"
Jack suddenly shot up out of his chair so fast that it crashed into the wall behind him.
Uncle Mike looked at him, looked down at the pie, and then back at Jack. "Well, if you feel that strongly about it—"
"Somebody's on your porch," Jack snapped. "And it didn't sound friendly. Stay here."
Naturally, we all followed him. Uncle Mike stopped to grab his shotgun out of the spare room on the way. Jack pointed at me and made a 'stay back' motion that I obeyed instantly, pulling Aunt Ruby with me. Neither she nor I had been soldiers, and I was smart enough to know when I was out of my element.
I was a pawnshop owner, not a fighter.
Uncle Mike took up position on the other side of the door, shotgun at the ready, and nodded at Jack. Jack flung the door open and then snarled something under his breath that sounded like he was swearing in a language I'd never heard.
"Tess. It's your father. Get him in the house and call the sheriff and maybe an ambulance. I'm going to look for whoever did this to him." With that, he shoved open the screen door, leapt over the huddled, bloody heap that was my father and all the way off the porch. By the time I got to the door, he was nothing but an orange, white, and black-striped blur racing off into the distance.
I fell to my knees on the porch and touched my father's sleeve with a shaking hand. He was so badly beaten that I couldn't even tell if he was alive or dead. I could hear Aunt Ruby on the phone to get the deputy and an ambulance, and I saw Uncle Mike put himself and the shotgun between us and anyone who might be lurking behind the trees or out by the barn.
But I didn't care about any of it. I only knew that I might have lost my father before I even got a chance to know him.
"Daddy?"
He opened his eyes.
12
The sheriff came out, and he refused to speak to her.
The ambulance came out, and he refused to let them take him.
My father—my stubborn, wounded father—refused to go anywhere or do anything but lie on the couch, holding tight to my arm. Even as injured as he was, though, he was careful not to touch my bare skin, and I was thankful for that. Knowing what I knew now, I especially had no desire to see how he'd die.
Susan pulled Jack aside and they talked, glancing over at me, but I ignored them, and then she left. The EMTs talked to Aunt Ruby and left some pain meds, after they'd cleaned up the worst of the injuries, but they were very unhappy that he wouldn’t go with them.
The one in charge, a curvy woman with high cheekbones, red lipstick, and deep brown skin, told the tall, pale guy who worked with her to take the stuff out to the rig, and then she stopped and looked at me.
"If he starts to convulse, he needs to go to the hospital. If he loses consciousness, he needs to go to the hospital. If he spikes a high fever—"
"He needs to go to the hospital. Got it," I answered.
She pursed her lips. "No, clearly you don't get it, or you'd be encouraging him to come with us."
I squared my shoulders. "Under normal circumstances, I would. But whoever did this to him might be coming back, and I can't protect him—or any innocent bystanders—in the hospital."
"We have security," she shot back.
I pointed at Jack and Uncle Mike. "I have them."
She'd seen Jack shift from tiger back to man, and she took a long look at them both, then finally nodded. "Noted. Just give him fluids, get him to rest, and I hope for all your sakes that this kind of trouble doesn't come looking for him again."
"From your mouth to God's ear," Aunt Ruby said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms and shivering.
Uncle Mike noticed and put his arm around her and le
d her down to the kitchen to make tea, murmuring to her as they went. I hated that my father had brought his trouble here, to them, but there was no way I was letting him go back out into the night, unprotected.
“What happened? Did O'Sullivan do this to you?”
He closed his eyes and turned his face away.
“You're going to have to tell me, one way or another. You brought this to us, and now we have to deal with it.”
His eyes snapped open. “No, you don't. That's why I was leaving. So none of this ever touched you. I just wanted a chance to say goodbye, in case—"
“In case this happened?” Jack walked over and stared down at him, and there was no pity in his expression. “In case he killed you?"
"Maybe I deserve it," Thomas muttered.
"But does Tess? You know he's after her, right?”
My father came up off the couch, in spite of how much it must hurt, rising to a sitting position. "What are you talking about?"
"Oh, so that got your attention, Thomas O'Malley." Jack's voice dripped scorn. "Didn't it occur to you that a man as careful and thorough as O'Sullivan would research a place before he followed you to it? And what's the most interesting thing a news search would turn up about Dead End? Tess Callahan, Oracle of Death."
I inhaled sharply, and Jack winced.
"Don’t ever call me that again."
"I didn't. Or, rather, it's just one of the things the press called you back when that first incident occurred," he said, regret darkening his eyes. "Tess, no matter how much they want your father, you are almost as interesting. You can tell them how someone will die. Just imagine how useful the average scum-sucking mob boss would find that talent to be."
My father's eyes darted around the room, as if looking for an escape. His face was swollen and bruised, and one eye was trying to swell shut. His lips were split, and bruises ringed his throat.
Those were just the bruises I could see. Based on how he moved, they'd hurt him just as badly elsewhere. Maybe broken ribs, the EMT had said.
And he'd refused treatment.
Why?
"Why didn't you want to go to the hospital?"
He sighed and moved a little bit, wincing. "You were right. I'm safer outside of the hospital. Sully has killed more people in hospitals than most diseases. And it's not like the Orlando hospital system is prepared for what a man like him can bring to rain down on them. New York, maybe, but he still gets to them there—his enemies. Here? I'd be dead within the hour."
Jack sat down and pulled me up off the floor, where I was kneeling next to my dad, and down onto the loveseat, next to him.
"Maybe not," I said slowly. "I'm guessing that whatever he wants, you still haven't given to him? Or you'd be either free or dead?"
My dad winced again, but this time from what I'd said. "Yeah. I didn't—I can't. I mean, sure, I'll give him the money, now that he found me. But I can't give him the … other thing."
"We know," Jack told him. "You stole the information about his new planned merger. With the shifters."
"What?" Thomas sounded truly terrified now. "You can't—how did you know that? This is the kind of knowledge that gets people killed. I didn't want Tess to be anywhere near it!"
"Then why did you bring all this trouble to Dead End?" Aunt Ruby's voice was sharp and a little bit shrill. "How could you put Tess in danger?"
Uncle Mike put a tray of mugs of hot tea down on the coffee table. "I'm ashamed to call you my brother, sometimes, Tommy," he said, quietly. "First, you abandon your dying wife to go climb in a bottle, then you abandon your child. All these years, we never heard from you once, and now here you are. Bringing your criminal colleagues to Dead End. To Tess's front door. And now, they're after her for her ability?"
He suddenly turned and slammed his fist against the wall, shocking all of us, except Jack, I think, who studied him with calm eyes.
"Mike," my father said. "I never would have put her in danger. I just wanted to see her—"
"I, I, I," Uncle Mike said bitterly. "It was always about you. I see two decades plus hasn't changed that. What is it you have that they want so much? Files? Some kind of ledger?"
"An encrypted thumb drive. There's no way I could open it without it self-destructing or destroying the data or something, but I'm sure the FBI has people who could figure it out." Thomas reached for a mug, but then groaned in pain. I handed him the tea and then took one for myself.
Plenty of sugar, as I'd expected. A serious crisis is always time to bring out the sugar.
I took another sip and then blew out a shaky breath. "Okay, we need a plan. Jack, Alejandro can't get here until tomorrow evening, so what do we do until then?"
My dad looked from me to Jack and back again. "Who's Alejandro?"
"Special Agent Alejandro Vasquez, with the P-Ops division of the FBI," Jack said. "He's a friend."
"You're friends with someone from P-Ops?" Disbelief was harsh in my dad's voice. "How did that happen?"
"How it happened is Jack's reputation is so stellar that Alejandro actually wanted Jack to be his new partner," I snapped. "He's helped us out before, and after I played him the recording of O'Sullivan threatening me—"
"The what?" Uncle Mike shouted.
Aunt Ruby, who'd been pacing, suddenly collapsed into her reading chair with a soft cry.
We filled them all in on everything that had happened since we'd first run into the mobsters at Beau's.
"So, now, you tell us where that thumb drive is, so we can give it to Alejandro and crush these people," I concluded.
But my dad was shaking his head. "No. Not until I hear what they're offering. Tess, you don't understand. I could go away as an accessory to so many of his crimes, but I was just caught up in it. It wasn't my fault. After your mom … after she died, I went on a six-year bender. When I woke up, I was in debt to some of Sully's gang, and I had no way to pay it. They were going to collect or kill me."
He cleared his throat and looked anywhere but at me. "I started working for them, to pay my debt. Not bad stuff—no violence," he hastened to add. "Just low-level bookie stuff. I was strictly small time. But recently … Recently I started to see things that were so bad I couldn't hide my head in the sand any longer. I couldn't look the other way one more time. And if this shifter plan comes to pass, it will be the worst thing that could ever happen to the entire northeast part of the United States. Maybe worse, because others will take their cue from Sully's success and try to do the same thing elsewhere."
He reached out a hand to me. Let it fall. "I just wanted to make a difference. Do something you could be proud of, for the first time in my life. So I could finally come home and get to know my baby girl."
I shoved the mug at Jack, jumped up off the couch, and ran down the hallway, never stopping until I was on the back porch. Seconds later, Jack flipped off the porch light and followed me out into the dark.
"I'm sorry, Tess. You can't be out here alone, and the light spotlighted you for any long-range scopes. We don't know where O'Sullivan and his men are now. Your dad told me that they dumped him out of the truck about a mile down the road and told him to get the thumb drive or they 'd go after you, next."
I tried to laugh, but only a croaking noise came out. "Would he even care? Is he even able to care about anyone but himself?"
"Tess—"
"No! It's true. And he's my father. What if I'm like him? What if I turn out to be a weak, selfish monster?"
Jack pulled me into his arms and refused to let go. When I leaned against him and started to cry, he stroked my back and held me closer. It was so tempting to lean into his strength—to just stay there forever.
But we had plans to make.
"If he won't let Susan take him into protective custody," I began.
"You know he won't."
"Then we have to protect him until Alejandro gets here."
"Agreed. Your house has the most defensible position, since it's back at the end of that dirt road. I can ca
ll the boys, too."
I took a deep breath. "Okay. Now comes the hard part."
"Convincing your father to come with us?"
"Convincing Uncle Mike to stay here."
13
In the end, Jack convinced Uncle Mike to stay home by the simple method of pointing to Aunt Ruby, who was pale and a little shaky, in spite of doing her best to keep her strong face on for me.
"I need you to protect her here, so I can focus on Tess, sir. The boys are coming out, and you know who they are and what they can do."
Uncle Mike reluctantly nodded. He knew about our friends in the swamp, all of whom had served in the military. All of whom had come home from the Middle East with various forms of PTSD. They had a good swamp boat tour business going now, and things were getting better for them, but they were loyal to a fellow soldier and would do anything for Jack.
Other than the slight upside-down-into-the-gator-pit problem, I knew they'd do anything for me, too. So did Uncle Mike.
But he wasn't happy about it.
He pulled me into a fierce hug. "You stay indoors and stay safe, you hear me? We can't lose you."
"You're not going to lose me," I promised. "And I have the rifle you gave me."
He snorted. "Except you can't hit anything you shoot at with it."
"Wrong."
He looked at me, and then at Jack.
Jack nodded. "She's been practicing. She's damn near a sharpshooter at twenty-five yards, and you can be sure I won't let anyone get closer to her than that."
I hugged Aunt Ruby, who promised to look after Lou for the night, and then we began the painful process of getting my injured father out the door.
We took Jack's truck, and the drive was tense.
"Like clowns in a circus," I murmured, and both of them looked at me.
"In tents. Get it?"
Neither of them laughed. I must not have told it right.
By the time we got to my house, I was ready to jump out of my skin. We hadn't seen anybody on the road, but Jack assured me that Lucky and the Fox twins were following us in stealth mode.