Chapter 11
ANDREW
“What do you mean the thief was naked?” Kevin sputtered over the radio.
Andrew hovered in the corner of Ford’s living room, getting out the final details to Kevin, which he’d have to repeat to Steven too.
“That’s what Dalton said. He only saw the quick flash of a naked leg, but he swears it was skin, with the foot covered in plastic to not leave prints. It would explain why there were never any fibers. The blur I saw looked like all one color. I would have guessed a bodysuit, but maybe he’s right.”
“Ew.”
“Agreed, but not stupid.”
“Male or female?
“He couldn’t tell. Just that they had a medium skin tone and were small and slender.”
“Anything else?” Kevin asked.
Oh, there was—the trackers—but Andrew didn’t dare say anything until he knew what it meant. “Not for now.”
“Well, there is something…”
Andrew could tell by the hitch of nerves in Kevin’s tone what he meant: the almost kiss he’d witnessed in the kitchen. “Can we talk about that tomorrow?”
“Sure, man,” Kevin said. “But we’re definitely talking about it. Do I hear yelling?”
And then some.
Ford had dragged Dalton to his building, and Andrew had helplessly tagged along, knowing they had to regroup and talk about this, but also caught up in the family feud currently exploding.
“What were you thinking chasing after them alone?” Ford cried as Dalton once again refused his help in bandaging his bruised and stiff fingers.
“I had to, Dad, it’s my—”
“Don’t tell me it’s your research!” Ford bellowed, unable to look at Dalton without scowling. “It isn’t worth your life.”
“I’ll see you at the office tomorrow, Kev,” Andrew said, moving cautiously out of the corner. “It’s going to be a long night.”
“You are never putting yourself in that type of situation again, do you understand?” Ford growled in a firm, fatherly tone.
“I’m not a kid,” Dalton countered, slowly wrapping his fingers with only the occasional flinch. They looked black and angry and would probably swell. “You can’t ground me and tell me how to live my life.”
Ford smoldered like his eruption was only the beginning, which made Andrew wish he weren’t present for this conversation. “Why is this research so important to you? There will be other opportunities. You can start over. You can move onto something else.”
“No, I can’t,” Dalton said, for once devoid of any smile.
“What does it matter?” Ford pushed. “The research can be recreated. It’ll all still be there weeks, months, years from now.”
“Not for everyone!” Dalton shouted, causing the silence that followed to turn stifling. He didn’t elaborate, but now Ford looked even more conflicted.
“What does that mean?” he demanded.
“I just… I need a minute, okay?” Dalton turned to leave the room.
“Dalton—”
“I’m going to the bathroom! Are you going to follow me in?”
A door slammed in the hallway once he’d left, and the ache in Andrew’s chest stayed present. He was used to this sort of thing between him and Steven, but he’d never seen Ford and Dalton like this before.
He watched in sympathy as Ford gripped the back of the sofa like he wanted to wrench it in two, those blue eyes even brighter when angry, echoed so similarly in Dalton’s, and so very intense when they turned to Andrew.
“I, uhh… I know I should probably leave, catch up with Steve, but… can I say something?”
“By all means.” Ford gestured dismissively.
“You love Dalton.” Andrew moved closer, almost all the way to Ford’s side.
“You don’t want to see him hurt. But you can’t change who he is.
Being your son puts him at risk—period. I know how frustrating that can be.
My entire family was in law enforcement.
My brother still is, at risk all the time.
But you have to accept that Dalton is going to make his own decisions for his own reasons.
You’ll still always do everything you can to protect him. And so will I.”
Agony was a strange emotion to see on Ford’s face when he was usually so controlled. “He won’t tell me why this is so important.”
Andrew was pretty certain he knew, had from the beginning, he just hadn’t realized Ford didn’t or what it would push Dalton to do.
“Then maybe you need to keep trying. Though probably not the way you were acting just now. If Dalton is as stubborn as you are, and I know he is, that’s only going to make him hold back more. ”
“Coz you know me so well?” Ford said with a familiar challenge that Andrew was happy to meet.
“Yeah. I do.”
Ford smirked, but his amusement drained quickly, eyes growing damp. “I’m making it worse, ruining everything like I knew I would. Sooner or later, he’s going to realize I’m not worth his time. I just wanted to keep him safe before that happened.”
“Isaac…” Andrew used his given name before he realized it, moved by his openness.
“It’s cancer research.”
Andrew and Ford whirled around to see Dalton in the doorway.
“What?” Ford asked.
“I’m looking into absolute zero to freeze cancerous cells, freezing time at the subatomic level so that the affected cells can no longer grow or spread, without destroying the healthy tissue. That’s what my research is about. Curing cancer.”
“For your mother?”
“I’m maybe not as okay about her being gone as I pretend.” Eyes already damp like Ford’s, a few immediate tears spilled down his cheeks, and he furiously wiped them away.
“That’s how we became friends,” Andrew said, pulling Ford’s stunned attention back to him. “My mom had just died, and his was in the middle of fighting it. He almost went to med school, but this seemed more viable, so he chose thermodynamics.”
“You knew?”
“I thought you did too.”
Ford sighed, gaze drifting back to Dalton. “Why didn’t you tell me this was all wrapped up in your mother?”
“Because. I was too late to save her,” he said in a small voice.
“A year ago, six months ago, I could have. I kept telling her I would, but I wasn’t fast enough.
For everyone else, every second counts. I know it could still take years for a breakthrough, but if I had just been faster for her…
” He sniffled, tears falling faster, no longer listening to his attempts to still them.
“I tried to tell you, Dad… but I didn’t want missing her to overshadow what we have.
I wanted to be a good thing in your life. ”
“You are.”
Dalton’s mouth twitched with a smile peeking through his tears.
“I don’t know what it’s like to lose a parent who didn’t have a choice in leaving,” Ford continued, meeting Dalton where he stood isolated away from them, “but I do know what it’s like to want something so much, something that keeps slipping through your grasp, you’d do anything to keep it.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Dad. My fingers aren’t even broken, just jammed and sore.”
“That’s not the point. I understand this is important to you, and we will do everything we can to finish this and recover what was taken, but until then, you have to be smarter. Don’t give anyone extra chances to take you away from me.”
“I’m sorry. I promise I’ll be better.”
“Thank you. Any other secrets you need to tell me?”
“Well,” Dalton leaned conspiratorially closer, “if you didn’t know this already… I’m gay,” he whispered.
Ford cracked a smile. Even now, Dalton could joke, and it caused Ford to pull his son in against him, breathing in the comfort of having him close.
“Now, we, meaning me and Andrew,” Ford said once they’d parted, “need to discuss what comes next. You go home. Take some ibuprofen, and if that hand looks worse in the morning, go to Urgent Care.”
“Yes, Dad,” Dalton said like the stereotypical child being scolded, but he didn’t argue, just sniffled back his remaining tears and paused to hug Andrew goodbye too.
“So much for your tracker idea,” Ford said, all business once Dalton had left, without any remaining sparkle in his eyes to betray that he’d been weepy too. “Riley says they never even showed having left the building.”
“Kevin too.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“They’re not faulty. They didn’t leave the building. Not far, anyway. I saw them in a dumpster outside.”
“What?” Ford straightened. “How? The thief didn’t have time to find them all.”
“Not unless they knew they were there.”
“Only we knew they were there.”
“And my team.”
“And mine…” Ford caught on, his expression hardening. He moved around the sofa as the information digested, slumping down onto it, and Andrew joined him. “That’s how they kept getting around security, because they’re in security. The only one we can rule out is Kathleen.”
“No. Not her either. We can’t say for sure if the thief is working alone.”
“One of our people is either the thief, an accomplice, or both, and we have no idea who.”
“What Dalton saw can’t narrow it down either, but none of them know we know about the classifieds. The plan doesn’t change. We wait, find out where the drop is, and we’ll get them.”
Ford nodded solemnly. “In the meantime, we watch our people but don’t tell them anything.”
Deep down, Andrew couldn’t believe it was either of his friends, but Ford trusted his people just as much.
“You never told me how you were able to crack my code,” Ford said.
“Olivia.”
“Don't tell me she's the one I should have been impressed with?”
“No.” Andrew chuckled. “There were just always papers around.
Everything's online these days too, but she still had hard copies of every issue.
One day, I noticed one of the classifieds sounded like details from a recent theft.
Coded, sure, but the location, what was taken, it could all be surmised from what was written there. I chalked it up to coincidence.
“Then I realized it was from an old paper before the theft. I started looking through other issues to see if there were more like it, and I was right. So, I kept my eyes open.”
“And caught me red-handed,” Ford mused. “You were so proud. I couldn’t even be upset.”
“Less proud when I couldn’t prove any of the other thefts.”