6. Chapter 6
After Sid left, I wanted to take Owen and run on instinct. Despite his saving us and his lecture, I still didn’t trust him. It wasn’t like killers were upstanding citizens and didn’t lie. Hell, he could’ve trapped me here just to make my death appear like a suicide, just as he’d intimated earlier. Make it seem like I died by accident or from suicide. A car chase and shooting weapons were messy… his words.
Sid had always been an asshole as a kid, too. He’d always been aggressive and cruel. But upon reflection, I remembered seeing a broken boy when he let his walls come down a bit. He hadn’t dropped them for long, but you couldn’t miss it, seeing how unhappy he was mixed with some fear there, too, both of which had very little to do with me.
Instead, I listened to him and stayed put. For now, I’d use him to keep Owen and me safe, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t keep my gun under my pillow and sleep with one eye open.
I looked around the house as Owen slept, trying not to stress about him at that moment. Sid kept his place neat, with comfortable furniture that was light and airy. The walls were painted a cream color, while the wood trim around the doors and windows was stained walnut. The kitchen had been upgraded with modern appliances and quartz countertops. It didn’t matter how nice it looked, though. It wasn’t Sid’s home. The place was completely barren of personal effects and touches. It appeared completely unlived in.
I tried to get into the basement, but Sid kept it locked, and only a keypad and fingerprint scanner could open it. That must have been where the security room was located and where Sid kept his weapons.
“Daddy! Daddy!”
The sudden belting scream had me rushing up the stairs and shoving the door open to find Owen sitting up, looking terrified, tears streaming down his face. His hazel-brown eyes were wide and confused, being in such an unfamiliar place and unable to find me.
My heart broke for him. He was too young to have faced such violence today, never having seen his dad shoot at someone before.
“I’m here, Little Man. ”
He held his arms open, reaching up. I swept him off the bed to hold him. “I’ve got you, kiddo.”
Thank god he wasn’t afraid to reach out to me. I worried he would be.
“I was scared, Daddy. I couldn’t find you.”
“I’m here. We’re at a friend’s house. We’re safe now.”
“Who were those people? And you… you…”
“Shhh… We’re safe now,” I said again, rocking him in my arms. “I’m so sorry I scared you.”
God, I felt like such a fucking failure. I chose to be an analyst to keep my family and me safe, and here I was, risking our lives. In the end, all that work hadn’t mattered. No, I couldn’t think like that. It wasn’t my fault someone betrayed me. It wasn’t my fault Speaker Rush chose to be a monster. If I had ignored that to keep my son safe, I would have been complicit.
“Are you hungry?” Owen snuggled into me and nodded on my shoulder. “Let’s see what we can find.”
I carried him downstairs and tried to sit him down at the kitchen table, but he clung to me tighter, not wanting me to let him go. Fuck, his fear was visceral and gutted my soul. I held him and dug around in one of the bags I’d brought that held some snacks for him. I couldn’t do much else until Sid came back with groceries.
Owen sat on my lap at the kitchen table, munching on fruit snacks as I stared out the window. The mountains cast a blue hue in the distance, and the trees were thick with green leaves. Soon, the leaves would change, and fall already hung in the air.
The land was so beautiful, so incongruent with the cruelty of humanity. There were many good people in the world, but too many didn’t care who got hurt on their way to the top. We witnessed too many horrors in the world because they were more newsworthy than all the good. And for years, I’d seen how bad people could be. Now I was on the run, and my son was in danger because of them. Sometimes I struggle to see and experience the good while being surrounded by so much bad. I saw what people could do to each other firsthand. It could be difficult to brush aside when I got home from work to put on a happy face for my son.
The back door to the kitchen swung open, and Sid came inside, hauling several grocery bags. “I got enough to tide us over for several days,” he said, a bit out of breath, setting the bags on the floor.
Owen suddenly whimpered and literally tried to crawl inside me. “Shhh… it’s okay, Little Man.”
“He’s bad!” he wailed.
I looked up at Sid with a frown on his face before he started putting groceries away.
“Owen, he’s not bad,” I lied. “His name is Sid, and we used to go to school together when we were kids. He’s here to help us. He protected us today.”
Owen peeked out from where he buried his face in my chest to look at Sid, who stopped messing with the groceries to give my son a small smile and wiggled his fingers at him.
“Hey, Owen. Your dad and I used to be friends,” he said, which was also a lie, but it calmed Owen down.
“Friends?”
“Yep,” I agreed. “We were friends all through high school.”
“B-but you… I saw you angry with that man, Daddy. ”
God, children were so intuitive. I looked at Sid, who still frowned.
“Yes, I was angry at first because I didn’t recognize Sid. We haven’t seen each other for a very long time. He looks different. But I remember him now. We’re safe, and he’s safe, okay?”
Fuck, I hated lying to him like that.
Owen was still nervous, but at least he wasn’t as clingy.
“I’ve got something for you,” Sid said, running out of the house. He came back in shortly with a McDonald’s Happy Meal , placing it on the table.
Owen didn’t smile, but he visibly relaxed as he dug into his chicken nuggets.
“Now, I don’t know what sauce you like, so I got them all.”
But Owen was more interested in the toy inside. He dug around until he found Bowser Kart from Super Mario Kart , which he rolled around on the table as he dipped a nugget into his favorite barbecue sauce.
“Thanks,” I said.
Sid rubbed his neck and shrugged before he went back to putting away the food.
“I’m a pretty good cook,” he said. “While I’m no Gordon Ramsay, and he’d probably tell me I stink, I make mean braised short ribs. I’ll make meals that allow me to freeze leftovers, so we’ll have plenty to eat.”
“Awfully domestic for someone like you.”
He grinned back at me and winked. “What can I say? I’m multi-talented. Besides, even people like me still need to eat. ”
He had a strange sense of humor, something he’d never had when we were teens. Sid sure had changed, though not necessarily in a good way.
Sid pulled out a box and slid it across the table toward me. I picked it up to see it was a child monitor. I looked up at him, and he just shrugged. “Just in case.”
“Thanks.” It was strangely empathetic of someone who used to not only be a bully but was now a killer. No matter what, I still trusted Sid as far as I could throw him, which wasn’t at all.
When I came downstairs after getting Owen to sleep for the night, I carried the other monitor into the living room and sat down on the comfortable sofa. Sid sat in a cushioned chair next to the cold fireplace, scrolling through his phone before he looked up at me.
“We need to talk about what we do from here,” I said.
“Do you have the data on you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make copies?”
“Definitely.”
“Do you trust me enough to talk about it?”
“Fuck no.”
Instead of taking offense, Sid’s smile grew broad. I had a hard time getting used to it. I couldn’t recall seeing him smile once throughout high school .
“I can’t help you unless I know everything. We need to analyze it and talk about it to figure out where we go from here and how to get your life back. I can’t do that blindly, Dalt.”
I said nothing, debating on how much to tell him. He was right that he should learn the details if he planned to truly help me. But this could be his way of getting information out of me and learning how much I knew before he killed me and ran off with everything.
And what would happen to Owen if I died? Would Sid kill him, too? Was he that cruel? My gut told me no, but I struggled to trust anyone as things stood.
Sid stood and walked over to a bar tucked into a corner. “Can I get you a drink? I figured we could use some winding down, and we’re safe here for now. I’ve got a security system that reaches across my five acres of land. Anything that sneezes will send me an instant notification.”
Maybe the place was safe, but was I safe from Sid? Still, I could really use a drink after everything, so I chose to trust him for now.
“Do you have any bourbon?”
“ Makers ?”
“Sure, with ice.”
Sid walked over and handed me a tumbler filled halfway with the amber liquor and one large, square cube stored in the small refrigerator.
“Is it poisoned?” I asked, only half joking.
“Well, that would be murder. If I want you dead, it would have to appear accidental.”
“I feel so much better…” I took a sip, anyway, letting the warm burn travel to my stomach.
Sid sat next to me on the couch, crossing his legs and also taking a sip of his drink.
“Dinner was good,” I said.
“Told ya.”
I exhaled a humorless laugh, stretched out my legs, and rested my head on the back of the couch, holding the tumbler on my chest. “Why are you helping me, Sid? If that is, in fact, what you’re doing. I still have my doubts.”
He rested his ankle over his knee, staring across the room at the bookcases filled with books that looked unread. “I have my reasons.”
I rolled my head to glance at him. “But you’re not going to tell me.”
“It’s a long story,” he said with a sigh. “But aren’t all personal stories long?”
“You’re so different from how you used to be.”
He looked at me with a twinkle in his denim-blue eyes. “I know.”
“You used to hate me.”
“I know,” he said again.
I took a hard look at Sid. He’d always been attractive as a teen, but because of my intense dislike for him, I hadn’t been into him until the kiss that night. Kissing a boy for the first time had changed everything. Seeing his pain had changed my view of him. I hadn’t forgiven him, but I’d been willing to give him a chance to do better.
Sid’s light brown hair was neatly cropped, shorter than mine. He wore thick scruff that glinted hints of gold from the softly lit lamps. And he was huge, broader than I remembered. He definitely didn’t have tattoos back then. Now he had tons of them. I could see them more clearly when he was wearing only a T-shirt. Both of his arms were covered in them, like sleeves made of art.
“What changed?” I asked. “Better yet, what happened to you after that night? I never saw you again. Admittedly, I thought about you a lot in the beginning, wondering where you’d gone and what happened between us at the party.”
Sid held up his glass, also holding some bourbon, and stared at it, huffing a laugh. “I was so fucked up back then, Dalt. Very few people learned about my past and what happened to me.”
“In other words, you won’t tell me.”
He looked over at me, frowning but giving nothing else away on his face. “No, I’ll tell you because I need you to trust me, and you have to trust me so we can get your life back. Getting your life back will hopefully allow me to get mine back, and I don’t need your mistrust hindering things. Just understand that I’m going to tell you this begrudgingly. There’s nothing I enjoy less than rehashing my past from hell.”
I said nothing, waiting him out as he stood and walked over to the window, staring out at the dark night, sipping his drink.
“Everything fucking changed that night. Leaving the party… I was so confused, yet, for the first time in my sorry life, I had a flicker of hope. You gave it to me like a goddamn gift I didn’t deserve. No matter how poorly I treated you, you were still willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and a chance to redeem myself. No one had ever done that for me. It was like you saw through me and recognized something good in me, something I didn’t recognize in myself. So, I drove home that night, imagining ways to fix my life, but I didn’t know how. My life was so fucked up. All I understood was that I wanted to kiss you again, and I would do anything to get that. You were the only one willing to. You were the only one unafraid of me.”
He tossed back the rest of his bourbon and poured himself another before coming to stand in front of me. “Now, I’m going to tell you some things. I need you to put away that Boy-Scout-cop brain of yours, Reed. Telling you these things will not only put me at risk, but it will put you at risk, too… more than we already are. Is that understood?”
I looked up at him and nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”
“I mean it.”
“Yes, you have my word. I will try to be… open-minded about this.”
“I don’t need you fucking open-minded, Dalt. I need to be sure you won’t use it against me legally. You have enough people who want you dead.”
I paused at his words, but nodded again. It was time to trust. It could also be used as leverage. Sid wanted to give me something that could be used against him before I handed over my only source of protection.
“I swear,” I said.