Into the Shadows

by Carolyn Crane

  The small bear had a big forehead and open mouth. A character from a cartoon, maybe. He wondered if Benny was old enough to have favorite cartoons. Thorne held the bear on his lap, feeling strangely bereft. This was what other people did—they created families. Innocent beings depended on them. They gave them toys.

  Thorne couldn’t remember his toys, or really much of anything as a kid. Well, there really wasn’t a point to remembering.

  With Nadia as a mother, Benny would have a childhood worth remembering. Just the sunny look on her face whenever she saw Benny was huge. He touched the little bear’s head, smoothing the fur so it was all going in one way, and wondered what it was like to feel that kind of love. Because he’d seen how she looked at Benny, the way love transformed her face. She really lived in another world now. She deserved that world, that happiness. A mother of her own.

  He looked up and caught her watching him anxiously in the rearview mirror.

  He shoved the bear next to the car seat. She didn’t even want him messing with the kid’s toys. How could he blame her? He was Hangman. His world bled darkness and death. No mother in her right mind would want him anywhere near her kid.

  Richard pulled up in front of a Radisson hotel thirty miles out of town. They had two hours before they had to get in position for hijacking the truck. Thorne would stick with Nadia and the kid while Kara took some downtime and Richard grabbed the supplies. Including masks. Thorne had volunteered to do the supply run, but Richard had insisted.

  “Try the masks on first,” Thorne said. “I want peripheral vision.”

  “Got it,” Richard said.

  “Rubbery,” Thorne told him, “in case we need to enlarge the eyeholes. You can’t cut the hard plastic ones. It fucks them up.”

  “Thanks, because I wouldn’t think of that,” Richard said. “I’ve only led about a hundred of these things.”

  Thorne shut the Jeep door without reacting and looked up at the towering hotel. “What floor?”

  “Fifth,” she said.

  He grunted in disapproval.

  “Kara picked it,” she snapped. “Come on.”

  “Whose credit card is on here?”

  “Nobody’s. Richard has a secret one,” she said. “We’re not that stupid.”

  Kara let them into the suite, seeming frazzled and worried. “What the fuck?” she whispered. “You’ve been gone for twenty-four hours.”

  “Sorry, Kara,” Nadia said, setting her cane against the wall; Richard had found her one after all. “It’ll be over soon.” She went across the room to Benny, covering her limp.

  “It’s okay,” Kara said, eyeing Thorne. “Just…God. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Nadia pulled Benny out of his crib, moving normally, going without the cane, even though it had to hurt her. She wanted everything to be normal for him.

  “What happened?” Kara whispered.

  “Shot in the leg. Mostly muscle damage—she’ll be fine if she works it,” Thorne said.

  “Again? Nadia!” Kara exclaimed.

  “Shhh!” Nadia said from across the room. “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine when you’re…” she mouthed the last—shot.

  “And now I’m good.”

  Thorne frowned.

  Benny pointed at him and said something—truck, maybe—and clapped his pudgy little hands, one on top of the other.

  “He wants to show you his truck,” Kara said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “I just can.” Kara nudged him. “Go on.”

  Thorne hesitated. The kid was pointing at him, but Nadia looked nervous.

  “Go on. He needs fresh meat,” Kara said. “Put your finger out. He likes to grab fingers. It’s his way of shaking hands.”

  “He knows baby sign language, too,” Nadia said. “He’s amazing.”

  Thorne loved the pride he heard in her voice. And that open, friendly smile—she seemed to be giving him permission to come closer.

  Thorne went over and put out a finger, and his heart did something funny when the kid grasped it.

  “Sign language,” he said. “You’re way ahead of anybody I hang out with, kid.” Benny was saying something, or at least trying. He seemed to want something.

  “It’s a big honor that he wants to show you his truck,” Kara said from across the room.

  “Can’t say much for your taste.” Thorne knelt. “But I bet you’ve got a hell of a truck there.”

  Nadia winced.

  Right. You weren’t supposed to teach kids those words. “Sorry, that was a fuck-up. Wait—sorry.”

  Nadia widened her eyes, looking like she was about to laugh. “Don’t put any energy around it and it won’t be a big deal. He senses when there’s energy around a thing.”

  Thorne nodded. “Sorry, kid. Nothing to see here.”

  Nadia pointed. “Show how the truck works, Benny!”

  Benny led him over to where a plastic dump truck sat under the desk. He rolled it back and forth.

  “Hey, wow,” Thorne said. “Check you out.”

  Benny made zooming noises.

  He didn’t really know what to do. What did the boy want? But fuck it, he was a kid. He didn’t have specific plans. He wanted to play.

  Thorne lay on his side. “Vroom,” he said, making a throaty noise. The kid rolled the truck up and down the wall now. Thorne supposed that required extra horsepower, so he made extra noises. “Vrrom, vrrrrrrrroom.” Benny laughed and looked at him. He did the wall again. Thorne did the wall vroom again.

  He wished he knew sign language. And he wished he knew what Kara and Nadia were arguing about at the door. He didn’t like to see Nadia distressed.

  “Vrroom,” he said again. Benny understood the vrooms that different truck moves got him. He was fun, this kid. And smart. Thorne never spent time with kids; you had to know somebody with a kid in order to hang around with one. Unless you wanted to get arrested.

  He abandoned himself to playing, and in that instant, there was nothing else but this perfect kid. If this feeling was a tenth of what Nadia felt on a given day, well, he didn’t know what.

  He continued on with the sound effects, wondering again who the father was. Was it possible he knew the guy? Because, thinking back when he’d asked her, there was some energy around the father. Just like she’d said about Benny, how Benny could tell when there was energy around a thing. He could tell, too.

  She’d said Benny was a bit over one year old, which meant she’d gotten together with somebody after he’d left. Maybe he could quiz his P.I. on who was sniffing around after the implosion of Victor’s empire. The idea of Nadia with another man turned his stomach. It was unfair, of course, to begrudge her that, because Benny had come out of it, and Benny was obviously her world.

  And having a kid wasn’t exactly in the cards for Thorne.

  Benny put his little hand on Thorne’s knee, a fresh, pink starfish on worn denim, and said a word that might be truck.

  The trust in his eyes nearly broke Thorne apart.

  Thorne was so used to people looking at him with fear, wariness, and distrust, but here was this kid full of smiles and acceptance. His pulse raced.

  Thorne had always thought that having a kid was for other people, not for him, but looking into Benny’s eyes, he realized something strange—that Benny wouldn’t think that he was a bad person, not fit for a family.

  It was a kind of revelation.

  Hell, if things had been different with Nadia, he could have a boy just a bit older than Benny. It seemed mind-blowing to even think it.

  Benny was back at it, running the truck up a chair leg.

  “Vrroom,” he said, voice cracking.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “I might get a massage,” Kara said. “Massage and lunch.”

  “We just need you back in two hours,” Nadia said absently, watching Thorne and Benny. She didn’t know if it was the best thing in the world or the worst thing in the world, seeing them together l
ike that.

  “Oh, my God. Tell me you’re not fucking him,” Kara said.

  Nadia swung her attention back to her sister. She hadn’t wanted her to know. She pushed Kara out the door and closed it behind them. “Leave it.”

  “Leave it? Dude, he’s in Hangman!”

  “I know. He’s not in the picture. Except for helping to get Yana.”

  “What if he wants to be in the picture?”

  “It’s under control,” she said. More than under control. She replayed his words—I’m the brute and the asshole who will never deserve you, but I’ll always protect you.

  He’d given her so much last night, and she’d given him nothing. It killed her not to tell him how she felt.

  “Be careful.”

  Nadia wasn’t sure whether Kara meant to be careful with her heart, or to look out for her safety.

  “Benny is running out of stuff, and he really wants the goose and his rover thing.”

  “This’ll be over soon,” Nadia said.

  Kara rooted through her purse. “There’s a park he likes across the street. It has a giant sandbox for the trucks. We spent a million hours out there yesterday.” She spun around and took off.

  Nadia went back in to the room and shut the door. Benny didn’t take to a lot of people, but he took to Thorne almost magically.

  She wanted more than anything right then to tell Thorne that Benny was his. She wanted it deep down in her heart.

  They always said to trust your heart, but in this case, her head had a pretty good argument. Thorne was a killer. Part of her dad’s world—with twice as many enemies.

  But what about what her heart was telling her? She wished she had somebody to ask besides Kara or Richard. They were too close to the situation, too invested. She wished she had her mother to ask.

  “There’s a park across the street,” she said to Thorne. “With a sandbox.”

  Thorne looked up. “Yeah?” he asked excitedly, which cued Benny to get excited.

  “We’ll bring a notebook and make plans out there.”

  “While Benny—”

  “He’s a self-sufficient kid.” Like his dad, she wanted to say.

  They took the elevator down because of her leg. “Only for you,” he said as the doors slid shut.

  “You’re welcome to take the stairs,” she said.

  He stabbed the lobby button, as though the notion of separating from them for his own peace of mind disgusted him beyond words. It was a rush, him playing the role of protector and champion.

  Thorne had a code inside all that chaos. He always had.

  “We’re on the fifth floor,” she said. “I mean, at some point it makes sense to take an elevator, right?”

  “To stand in a little box with no exit and a door that can open to anybody? And you don’t control its movement? It never makes sense to take an elevator. No matter what floor. But at least I’m here.”

  She stifled a smile.

  Benny stretched up his little arm, wanting to hit the buttons.

  “Can he?” Thorne asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He picked him up and pointed to the lobby button, and Benny hit it over and over.

  Thorne grinned and she looked away, because it was Benny’s grin. He couldn’t see himself in the boy? She saw him there every day. Benny hit the button some more. “That’s enough,” she whispered, taking him.

  The day was sunny, and the park was lovely, with trees and a fountain and things for kids to play on. They sat at a picnic table, and Thorne drew a semi-trailer truck for Benny. While Benny played in the nearby sandbox, he used the drawing to talk about how the job would go. Just like him to slide seamlessly into criminal activity.

  “That’s why you were asking my advice that night. For when you’re scared.”

  “Yeah,” she confessed.

  “Did it help?”

  “A little. Not really.”

  He turned to her. “Is that how you got shot?”

  Her face filled with heat. “Kind of. It’s more that I hesitated. I had a clear shot at his back, and I couldn’t shoot a guy in the back. But then he turned—”

  “He tagged you.”

  “Tagged might be putting it lightly.” She watched Benny drive his truck through the sand. “I choked. I know I should’ve just shot. I fucked up.”

  “No, baby. Call it what it was. You had the right instinct—you were in a war scenario and you knew what to do, but you let your socialization override it. You’re a good person, Nadia. That’s what gets people killed.”

  “If you’re a good person, you’re a shit fighter?”

  “No, you can be both. You just have to be straight on what you’re dealing with.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “It is, in a way. It wasn’t a fighting problem that you had; it was a thinking problem.”

  “Might go deeper than that.”

  “No, listen—I wouldn’t take you out if I didn’t think you have what it takes. You’re Victor’s girl, and I know that’s a whole lot of bad right now, but you can take the good out of it, too.”

  She snorted derisively.

  “Yeah, he destroyed a lot of people. But he was fierce about his family, just like you,” Thorne said.

  “Fierce? Sometimes I don’t even know why he wanted to take me out of that brothel.”

  “He loved you, Nadia, he just didn’t know what to do with it. And look who he got to guard you—do you have any idea of the fortune it cost him to pull Richard out of Vegas and make him a bodyguard?”

  She looked over. She’d never considered that.

  “You’re a fucking warrior for your family. You’ve got nerve and good aim. You could outshine Richard and me if you wanted.”

  For a second she could almost believe it, as though anything was possible. She watched him watch Benny and imagined sliding the back of her hand down his whiskery cheek. “Thank you. Not just your expertise at all this. I mean, it feels good to have you here. Like this is how it should’ve been. Finding her was always our project.”

  He nodded, betraying no emotion.

  “Sometimes…” She looked away. “Sometimes I worry that she won’t be right in the head.”

  “Nadia,” he said.

  “After what she’s been through? What if she’s mentally damaged from her captivity, gone in a way where I can’t make it up to her? I want her to have pleasure in life.”

  “It won’t matter what state she’s in,” he said. “Because you’ll love her, and that’ll be so fucking amazing…”

  He trailed off. She followed his gaze to a point beyond the sandbox. A boy of maybe four was approaching. Thorne watched over Benny like a hawk. She loved him for that. For all his bit about being raised by scorpions and not knowing what was normal, he was pretty tuned in to things.

  He scowled when the older boy climbed in. The kid went for Benny’s truck.

  She put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay. He likes playing with older kids,” she said. “You can’t get involved in every little thing with a kid. It’s how he learns.”

  They watched the interaction evolve. Benny and the other boy were playing together soon enough.

  “What do you think they’re making?” he asked.

  “Some project where the goals are only known by them. Kids are cool—you get into this whole world. I feel like I have this chance to get it right.”

  “He must’ve done something right in his last life to have you as a mom, Nadia. Saved some whole village by impaling himself on something.”

  “You think that’s how it works? That you get the parents you deserve?”

  “In a way,” Thorne said.

  “Fuck that. Like you were some asshole in another life, and you got the parents you deserve? You think you can look at any kid and think he’s not innocent?”

  Silence. Did Thorne see himself as guilty from the start? She laid a gentle hand on his scruffy cheek. Thorne. Un-groomed, untended, uncared-for. But not unloved
. Never that. “You’re a good man,” she said.

  He watched the playground darkly.

  What if she told him? Richard thought she should.

  He frowned. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed another man approaching the sandbox; she didn’t like that kid-to-adult configuration, but before she could go there, Thorne was heading over.

  She stayed on the bench, resting her leg, watching them.

  He nodded at the other man and stood there like a sentinel, full of quiet strength and threat, staking out his territory. He crossed his muscle-bound arms, all scorpion tattooey and badass, putting everything out there on behalf of Benny.

  It was as if the universe had closed around him and made this place for him as Benny’s dad.

  What if she told him? Fucking raised by scorpions, but she loved him.

  Little shouts rose up from the kids. A new one was throwing sand. Thorne was already in there, hoisting Benny and his truck in his arms and out of the way. Her heart swelled up and a grin split her face as he walked over with him.

  “Hey, you two.” She took the truck from Benny’s hand.

  “He wants to go on the swings,” Thorne said. “And I feel like that’s a fine idea.”

  “Can you take him over?”

  “Of course.”

  “Put him in the little boy swing,” she said. Thorne wouldn’t know that.

  Benny screamed in delight as Thorne hoisted him up in the air. They headed over.

  She wished they could stay like this forever, in this fantasy opposite world in a suburb where nobody knew them, and where they could be a family.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Thorne cheated a little at the swings, copying the mom next to him for how to set Benny in and how high to push.

  “This is Tyler,” she said. It took Thorne a bit to get that she was introducing her kid.

  “This is Benny.”

  She smiled. “Hi, Benny!” Benny gave her one of his beautiful smiles.

  “Hi, Tyler,” Thorne said, feeling weird, like a father impostor.

  Tyler was focused on the horizon.

  “How old?” the mom asked.

  “One and some change,” Thorne said, repeating what Nadia had told him.