Chapter 13
Thirteen
I wore this outfit yesterday, but since I’m going different places today it’s okay to wear it again.
—Eddy to Nettie
Weaver
“I have a few things for you.” Apollo popped into my line of sight.
I blinked tired eyes at him.
I’d stayed at the hospital until I’d absolutely had to leave for work.
My back was absolutely killing me from lying crossways across several hard, plastic chairs in the hospital waiting room.
And my left finger was numb fifteen minutes after prying myself out of the chairs.
“Where did you come from?” I muttered as I walked stiffly down the hospital corridor. “And how did you know where I was?”
I had to be at work in thirty minutes, and I still needed to get home to change before going.
“Here,” Apollo said as he handed me a coffee.
I practically inhaled it.
“I knew where you were because I pretty much have control of every single camera in this area, and great computer programming that has even better facial recognition software,” Apollo answered.
“I feel like y’all are my little ants. I keep an eye on every single one of you from morning until night sometimes to make sure you don’t die out here on your own. ”
I rolled my eyes.
“Your fake wife is out of surgery and responding well despite the obvious,” Apollo said. “They’re very hopeful since she made it through the night.”
That made me happy to hear.
Since you could only have one person back in the ICU at the time, Nettie had gone. And I hadn’t argued. Because what right did I have to demand that I go instead of her own sister?
She’d said that she would update me and I could go home, but I hadn’t wanted to leave, just in case.
It wasn’t like I could do anything for her if shit hit the fan, but I almost felt like my presence here was required…just in case.
“That’s good,” I rasped. “Thank you for figuring that out.”
“She had over a thousand stitches,” Apollo said. “Did they tell you that?”
“They did,” I said. “They were able to set her arm well. She’ll be in a cast all the way up to her armpit for the next several weeks, if not months. Her concussion wasn’t a concussion at all. But they’re still watching that just in case.”
“That’s what I read from the medical reports,” Apollo said.
“As to the reason I came down here, I decided that I needed to find the information myself. I have to be in their house to do that, though. And what better way to get them out of their house than to use this perfect opportunity of a hurt child?”
I hated that he was right.
“You’re going to sneak into their place?”
“I’m going to set fire to it.” Apollo’s eyes gleamed.
I blinked. “What?”
“Set fire to it.” He paused. “Which’ll then get firefighters involved. We’re going to have the lady behind call it in when she sees smoke.”
“Okay.” I shook my head. “What ever happened with the stuff they were burning?”
“They never got to light it because the old lady a house over from theirs reminded them that you couldn’t burn in the city limits.
So they took everything back inside.” Apollo rubbed his hands together.
“This place is so great for my brain. Y’all are coming up with so much shit that I get to deal with.
I never get to do stuff like this at home. ”
I would’ve glared at him had I had the energy.
As it was, I was barely putting one foot in front of the other.
Nine hours of sleep over three days was really fuckin’ with my head.
“Before you go.” Apollo stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “We need to talk about your sister.”
I stopped and turned fully to him. “What?”
“She’s been digging around a bit in your death,” he said. “Enough that it makes me think that she thinks you’re still alive.”
I gritted my teeth.
What the hell was wrong with her?
Neither one of us had been in a good position that day in that underground bunker. Why the hell couldn’t she just leave it alone? I had a lose-lose choice to make, and I made the one that would hurt my heart the least.
She lost her man, sure. But she got to keep her life.
She got to keep our parents. She hadn’t lost years of her life in prison.
She hadn’t had to make the decision between her fiancé and me.
She hadn’t had to go through months of an undercover operation that involved her fucking daughter being violated.
And she certainly hadn’t had to lose her own goddamn kid in all of this.
Hell, she was helping raise my kid while I hadn’t gotten to see her in an entire year.
Every day I woke up and I felt like a piece of my heart was literally gone.
I’d buried myself in work so I didn’t have to think about all the ways I’d failed as a parent.
When Stanton had come to me to tell me he suspected that Sonny Gibbons, the tech millionaire who’d lived in our town, had been suspected of grooming young girls, I’d been skeptical.
What would a man like Sonny Gibbons need and or get out of young girls when the whole world was his oyster?
But then Stanton had shown me the evidence that’d piled up against Sonny with his STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—camps and his lecturer stint at college campuses and school districts around the county, and I’d started to really understand.
However, none of that had been nailed home quite like hearing that Sonny had done the same thing to my own sister from the time that she was a girl around my daughter’s age.
To make matters worse, Sonny had locked onto my daughter because she looked so much like Pippa. Pippa, his star protégé, whom he’d groomed and built into the amazing computer tech guru that she was.
It was disgusting to think about Pippa having had to deal with Sonny to get to where she was today.
And even worse when I thought about how I’d not only missed the signs in my sister, but my own daughter.
“I’m watching her closely, as you would expect. But something is giving me the vibe that she’s on to us. She won’t ever find you…but that’s why I’m suggesting that you stop communications with your parents.”
With my parents as well as my daughter.
Those three people alone were what was left from my old life.
I’d discussed my new life in length with my parents and my daughter. And all of us together had decided it would be best for me to disappear and not involve them in my life. All because of Pippa.
Pippa would never let me live free again.
She would fight tooth and nail to make sure that I was never happy in life. Would never get to watch my daughter grow up. Would never get to experience love firsthand.
She only saw the murderer who’d killed her fiancé. The love of her life.
She’d never envisioned the impossible decisions I’d had to make, even though she was there when I’d had to make them.
It was as if a part of her brain had been rewired in those moments that she’d watched me kill her fiancé, and she only saw that I’d been a murderer.
Not that I’d been a man with two impossible decisions.
Watch my sister get raped and murdered, or kill her fiancé.
That day, when Sonny had left my sister and me there to bask in the aftermath of my shooting her fiancé, Pippa had made a promise. I would never be happy for the rest of my life.
She would move heaven and earth to make sure that I didn’t ever see my daughter again.
And she had.
She’d lied. Cheated. Stolen.
Hell, she’d been so angry at me that she’d practically given Sonny a get out of jail free card.
And he had gotten out of jail time.
Luckily, Sonny had sunk himself by being the dumbest smart person I knew, and Sonny was currently rotting away in a frozen prison in Vermont.
“She’s not good with computers like you are,” I said.
“She’s in tech, but only the components of tech.
She doesn’t have the skill set to circumvent all the work you’ve put in to get me here…
but if you truly think that she’s going to make waves, I’ll stop talking to my parents and Bossy.
But only after I tell them what’s going on. ”
God, this was going to kill Bossy.
Boston was my ride or die for the first half of her life.
It was only me and her from the very beginning.
Her mom, a woman that I’d met while being on leave in Italy, had died during childbirth.
I’d taken emergency leave from the Navy and had eventually separated completely a few short weeks after her birth.
From the moment that we’d first laid eyes on each other, we were inseparable.
And now, we’d been separated just as long as we’d been together.
It was killing both of us, and it looked like it wasn’t going to get any better ever.
“Sorry, man.” Apollo winced.
“Not your fault,” I admitted. “Thanks.”
Apollo nodded and held back as I walked out to my truck, even more impossibly tired than before.
The first person I called when I got into my truck was Bossy.
“Hey, Daddy!”
I drew in a deep breath, even though it hurt to do.
“Hey, Bossy,” I said. “How’s school?”
She groaned. “Not good. Every year around the anniversary, things start to get difficult. But you know how it is.”
The anniversary of when everything had gone down between Sonny, Pippa, Stanton, and me.
And the rest of the feds.
“Anyone giving you any trouble this year?” I asked.
“Not since you got Grandma and Grandpa to start me in jujitsu. Everyone leaves me alone now since I put Tommy Long on his back in the middle of lunch.”
My lips twitched at that.
I’d gotten to watch it over the school’s cameras after I’d begged Apollo to find the video for me.
I watched it every now and then when I was having a bad day.
Hell, after today, I might watch it a hundred times.
“Anything new with you?” Bossy asked.
I hesitated.
I usually told my girl everything.
It’d been a long time since she was a little kid.
She’d grown up pretty fast during the Sonny situation.
But this time, I would have to tell her about someone that I’d grown to actually like. And I didn’t want Bossy to get upset.
But I should’ve known better. My Bossy was the best girl on the planet with the biggest heart.
“I met a woman a couple of days ago,” I said, sparing her the details of her parents. “I liked her a lot.”
“What happened?” she asked. “Did you sleep with her?”
I snorted. “Not that that’s any of your business but…”
“So that’s a yes.” Bossy snickered. “It’s okay, Dad. I know that it happens. I’m almost sixteen.”
She was.
Which fuckin’ sucked.
That meant she was two years from being an adult.
That’s when I knew she would come here and leave her old life behind.
It would break my parents’ hearts, but they’d understand.
Apollo had already talked to me about getting Bossy a new identity.
And there was no love lost between Pippa and Bossy.
Bossy actually loathed Pippa and made no bones about letting her aunt know how she felt.
But it would raise a red flag if Bossy went missing before she was old enough to be leaving without a trace.
I did not want Pippa digging any further.
She had enough friends who might be willing to help her for the right price, and I couldn’t do that to my girl, let alone my friends who were also here living a secret life.
“Anyway,” I sidestepped. “She was attacked by a bear yesterday afternoon.”
Bossy inhaled swiftly. “Is she okay?”
Was she?
“She’s got several broken bones. They said they put over a thousand stitches in her, and they also had to treat her for rabies.”
“Shit,” Bossy said. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“But she’s alive,” I assured her and myself. “I haven’t gotten to see her yet, but if all goes well today, they’ll be moving her to a step-down unit that she can stay in while she heals.”
“Well, I’ll pray that she gets better quickly.” Bossy hesitated. “But that’s not why you called, is it?”
She knew me so well.
“Your aunt is doing some digging.”
“Fuck,” Bossy said.
“I think we need to halt calls for a while,” I said. “It’s obvious that she thinks she knows something, and I don’t want to do anything that’ll have her investigating further.”
“I hate her,” Bossy said. “I hate her with every fiber of my being.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m so sorry, B.”
“I wish she’d died instead of Stanton.”
I inhaled swiftly.
She’d said it before, but not with this much vehemence.
I’d been able to talk her down before, but it was obvious I wouldn’t be talking her down this time.
“I don’t want to be here anymore, Daddy.”
My stomach sank.
“We don’t have any choice,” I pointed out.
“I wish she’d take those pills she is always threatening to take.”
I closed my eyes, which was dangerous seeing as I was driving down the middle of a switchback.
When I opened them again, I said, “Two more years, Bossy.”
“I’m not waiting two years to talk to you,” she stated emphatically. “I refuse. She’s stolen enough of our lives, Dad. No more.”
I tended to agree, but I wasn’t going to be the one to steal that from my daughter.
“I’m going to talk to Grandma and Grandpa. We’ll figure this out.”
“Love you, Bossy.”
“Love you, too.” She hesitated. “I hope your lady friend gets better. She sounds pretty special if you were willing to tell me about her.”
I smiled. “Have a good day at school.”
“I’ll try.”
I hung up in a better mood than when I went into the phone call.
By the time I arrived at home, showered and changed, I was already late for work.
My boss didn’t seem to notice or care, and only handed out assignments for the day.
I would be putting a couple of new meters in and installing a new telephone pole.
All pretty mundane, routine work, but work, nonetheless.
The entire day, I did nothing but think about Bossy and Eddy.
At the end of the day, though, there was only one of the two that I could actually see.
So I headed to the hospital for another night of no sleep.