12. Rory
Chapter 12
Rory
“Ryan? Wake up sweetheart.”
“Rory?” Ryan mumbles, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“What’s wrong? Is he back?”
“No, baby. He just left in a helicopter. You and I need to try and sneak out of here. Are you with me?”
“How?” he questions, sitting up in the bed.
“I got a plan, but I need you to get up and get dressed, baby. Can you do that for me?” I ask him. Ryan doesn’t answer but he does get up and immediately grabs the clothes I laid out for him.
I hope I’m doing the right thing. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing—I just know I have to do it. If I leave now, my brother won’t have had time to lock in excess security. Wolf went with him, which is good because there’s something about that man that tells me he’d be hard to get away from. Sanchez is here, but when I snuck into King’s office, Sanchez’s bedroom door was locked. I know there are security cameras, but I don’t care if King can tell if I’ve been in his office and I could care less if days later he sees me taking money out of his wall safe.
It doesn’t matter, because I know the codes to his alarm. I’ve been sneaking and watching as he types them in. He’s careful; I could only see him typing a couple numbers here or there. That might have been bad, except that as smart as my brother is, he’s also an idiot—which I guess is an oxymoron… or maybe he’s just a moron. Whatever the case, the two numbers stuck in my head until finally tonight it hit me what they were.
King’s alarm codes stand for the day he killed our father. There’s a twisted justice in that I suppose, at least to his warped mind. I grabbed three hundred dollars out of the safe. It was disappointing, but there wasn’t much more than that in there. Mostly the safe just had papers. I started to take those, but he’ll already be pissed, I didn’t need to add fuel to the fire—just in case he did get a hold of me again.
The tricky part will be getting out of this house. I do have a plan. There’s a pool outside and I have the code to that, because Tony gave it to me. I don’t know if King realizes I have it, but that doesn’t matter. There’s a fence around the pool, but I found a hammer in the mudroom and I’ll use it to open a section of large white vinyl fencing. I don’t know if the hammer will work, but it’s all I have and there are no other options.
“Ready, Rory,” Ryan whispers, and I take his hand in mine.
I lean down to the foot of the bed and grab the small backpack I fixed. It just contains a change of clothes and pajamas for Ryan. If ever there was an occasion to pack light… this is definitely it. I sling the small backpack over my shoulder, bend down to make sure Ryan’s shoes are on the right feet and adjust the Velcro. I reach up to ruffle his hair.
“It’s going to be okay, Ryan,” I tell him, trying to reassure him—and maybe myself.
“Are we going to Daddy?” he asks, and I ignore the sudden pain in my chest.
I swallow down the hurt and paste a smile on my face.
“Eventually. We have to be careful. We have to make sure King doesn’t follow us. I do need to get a message to him.”
“You could call him,” Ryan says.
“His phone doesn’t seem to be working,” I whisper, walking us toward the door.
“We could call Uncle Crusher, I know his number. Daddy made me memorize it.”
I stop and blink down at him. Most kids at five barely can memorize one number, and yet Ryan knows at least two. It breaks my heart that his life has made it so that was something he needed to do, but at the same time I’m grateful.
“Then we’ll call him soon as we get free,” I reassure him.
“Great! And you can tell Daddy where we’re at and he’ll save us,” Ryan says, his confidence in his father strong as ever.
“Let’s get going then. Be really quiet, okay? And only talk when I tell you that you can.”
“Got it, Rory,” he says. “You can count on me,” he says. My smile becomes a real one.
I love this kid…