Chapter 24
24
ISAAC
“Sir? Mr. Webber?”
I barely hear that shout. I’m too busy yelling at the double of someone I love.
“Stop hurting Joe.”
Fuck finding my inner lion, or thinking I’d ever accessed its roar. The real deal thunders from me the second I leave one defeated person inside a prison to see Joe wearing the exact same expression.
He’s as crushed as Mum, and if I could bring fiction to life I wouldn’t only roar. Right now, I’d breathe fire for him. Incinerate every single person who makes him feel less than perfect, starting with his brother. I’d spit fire and leave cinders for Joe. Snatch him up, unfurl leathery wings, and fly him away from a family who have no idea that he’s the best of all of them. I have to settle for roaring again.
“Stop fucking hurting him. You’ve done that enough already.”
Traffic roars too, and so does the blood in my ears. It spreads to my vision. A red haze filters this view of pain in progress. I’m only stopped from switching places with Joe and then taking a swing at a da Silva with a black soul by what I lip-read from a twin with a snowy white one.
Joe mouths a name.
Noah.
I can’t process why he says that. Can’t do anything but lurch to shove his twin further away from him until Joe’s arms lock around me, and I guess that’s a choice made.
He’s protecting his brother.
I can’t even blame him. It’s only what I’ve spent the last year doing, and what I’ll need to do for even longer now Mum has officially set legal wheels in motion.
I’m still furious for Joe. Still spitting fire and only wanting to leave ashes. Or I would be if Joe didn’t manhandle me against his chest, hands rubbing my back as if I need comfort instead of restraining.
It’s confusing.
So is his brother asking, “I hurt Joe?” with so much disbelief it sounds authentic.
I’d list examples for him if Joe didn’t confuse me again by saying, “Noah! What are you doing here? You okay, mate?”
My blood-red haze recedes once a different shade of red comes into focus. Noah sprints like I did moments earlier, only he doesn’t dodge inner-city traffic. He runs from a bus stop with something fluttering in his hand like I last saw bunting do at Glynn Harber.
Noah shoves what he’s carried all the way from Cornwall into my hands.
“Mr. Webber. Got you something for Lenny.”
I clutch a page torn from a scrapbook, but this map Noah has followed step by step to end up here isn’t what he wants to give to me. Yes, it led him to us, but Noah roots in a backpack to pull out another gift he’s brought to the city—a mud-stained envelope. There’s mud under his nails too. It’s as red-tinged as his freckles, and I’m no forensic expert like Joe’s brother, but even I can guess that’s Cornish soil, and that Noah has dug up the contents of a time capsule.
He looks between Joe and his brother, perhaps trying to tell them apart. Joe makes that easier for him by nudging up one sleeve, only Noah doesn’t hand that envelope to him or to Mum’s new legal counsel, who crosses the street to join us.
Noah thrusts it at someone I’d rather push over a cliff than trust with anything important.
Josh doesn’t take it. His gaze is locked on me, and for someone who Joe describes as his bossy older brother, he sounds way younger. “I’d never want to hurt Joe.” He finally takes the envelope and peers inside. His tone shifts abruptly to all business. “Who does this phone belong to?”
Noah spits his own questions. “Joe said you’re a digital forensic expert, yeah? That there isn’t anything you can’t extract from a SIM or hard drive. That true?”
Josh glances Joe’s way, then nods.
Noah isn’t done yet.
“And he said the reason kids like me keep getting knifed or burned or worse is because there’s no proof. No trail leading to who gave those orders. No hard evidence for a court case.”
I’d hate those true-crime stories if Noah’s version didn’t have the potential for a happy ending.
“If you need evidence, the SIM in that phone should have plenty.”
We won’t all fit in the back of a pursuit car.
We don’t need to—those blue lights will flash for Joe’s twin and carry away a phone that might not only place an attempted murderer at the location of Noah’s stabbing. In the hands of an encryption expert, it could prove that Mum wasn’t responsible for all that Class A hidden in her kitchen.
“It can’t be me who does that,” Josh says. He eyes me. “Not because I wouldn’t want to. I’d do anything for him.” That sounds as bruised as anything I’ve ever heard from Joe.
Mum’s legal counsel agrees. “Any conflict of interest could jeopardise a prosecution.”
“But there’s nothing to stop me from advising.” Josh takes that lawyer with him, leaving three of us to watch those blue lights flash until they’re swallowed up by the city.
The moment they’re gone, Joe gets busy. The first thing he does is make a promise I never wanted to believe more.
“It’s going to be okay.”
He pulls out his own phone next and questions Noah. “You must have left the farm early. Did you let your brother know where you were headed?”
Noah shakes his head, paler now than ever.
“How about the school? Ah...” Joe reads a message already waiting for him. “Your headmaster wondering if I know where you might be.” He texts a quick answer, then places a call to Noah’s brother and hands his phone over to him.
Joe backs away then.
I don’t, and like earlier this morning, it doesn’t matter that we’re on a busy street and in the way of people. I get as close to him as I can.
Fuck it. I hug him.
He hugs me back. “You... You came out fighting for me.”
“Course I did.” That urge still floods my system. “Everyone should.”
“If you mean Josh, I think he did. Fight for me, I mean.” His voice has an edge of wonder. “He always has been. If there’s anything on that phone, Josh will help them find it.” He sounds disbelieving. Stunned. “He’s been gathering proof. Has been for years. Even when he couldn’t talk about these.” Joe touches old scars. “Made his mind up when I was still recovering and hasn’t stopped since. Everything he did was for me.”
If I wasn’t still fizzing with fight, I’d tell him that I get it. That I understand. That I’d hunt the same way for him. “Still want to hit him,” slips out instead, and Joe laughs.
“He has that effect on a lot of people.” How the hell he finds some humour in this helter-skelter situation only adds to why I love him. So does the care in his next question. “She’d definitely decided to plead guilty?”
I nod. “Keir didn’t advise it. Mr. Brodie, I mean. Her legal counsel. Mum won’t change her mind about keeping her lips zipped.”
Joe repeats his promise. “If there’s proof, Josh will help to find it. Your mum got caught in the middle of something he never meant to happen. He was after whoever gave the order to hurt me.”
Now that sword hanging over my family might not fall at all because of a kid who holds Joe’s phone to his ear and pales even further.
Joe reacts to that the same way I did at seeing his heartbreak from the far side of the street—he comes out fighting for Noah the same way I came out swinging at Joe’s twin. He takes over the call, reassuring a big brother first, then he does the same for Noah.
“Your brother’s only clucking because he cares.” Joe does some mother-henning of his own by carrying Noah’s backpack for him and by making a promise to the one person who might just save my mother, “Yes, he’s spitting feathers about how you went about it. About you not communicating your plans. You still did a good thing.”
“Yeah. You really did.” I should say more than that. Right now, I can’t find the words. All I can do is get into the cab Joe hails and listen to his rough but gentle pep talk.
“I’m taking you someplace safe. Your brother knows where and is on his way. Mr. Lawson will talk to you tomorrow.” He’s even gentler. “But I’m wondering if either of them are who you’re worried about right now. Are they?”
Noah shakes his head.
“I’m guessing that you’re worried about what this means for your trial. About what happens now and what will come next?” He doesn’t need Noah to nod. Joe tells him what he needs to hear the most. “We’ll find out together. I’ll be with you every step of the way, mate.” His leg presses against mine, and this sounds like a question. “All of us will be?”
It’s easy then to set fight aside and listen to a story that Noah tells once we reach a safe place that turns out to be a family home where a nursery needs more colour.
That’s where I get a glimpse of my future, I hope—Joe’s dad could be him, only with deeper care lines and all of his twin’s abruptness. His eyes are a reminder of someone else who Joe mentions when his phone next rings.
“Hugo? Yes, Noah’s safe. I’ve got him.”
Like the padre, Joe’s dad sees straight into my soul. “If you’re the reason he keeps running off to Cornwall, how about you keep him there?” He closes a door on Joe’s phone call, then brings Josh’s gruffness to a whole new level by asking Noah, “You think you’re in trouble?”
Noah nods.
“Trust me, people worrying about you is good. Means you’re important to them. Want to know what’s important to me?” He hands Noah a roller. Gives one to me as well. Picks up a third for himself and tells us. “Getting this finished early so my daughter-in-law won’t keep climbing ladders.”
He pours paint, and everything Noah has held in pours out too once his hands are busy.
I’m meant to be a storyteller. Noah blows me away with his, and each twist stops my heart like a knife almost stopped his own from beating.
“Then what happened?” Joe’s dad inspects Noah’s paintwork, not making eye contact, which I think helps him to keep going.
All three of us cover drab grey with sunny yellow as Noah describes a stairwell splashed with scarlet. “Didn’t know I had that much blood in me.” He sets the scene for a stabbing that ended with a phone falling down a stairwell. “The screen smashed but it was the same make and model as mine. One of my mates found it. Got it to me in hospital. Mine had already been taken as evidence, so I knew it could only belong to one other person. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I hid it in my schoolbag and tried to forget about it.”
Joe’s dad rollers more sunshine over greyness. “How’d that work out for you?”
“It didn’t. I kept trying to forget and couldn’t. Got even worse when we heard from the court about the trial coming up soon. Then Joe turned up, and I recognised him from Wintergreen. I must have seen his brother. His twin.”
He hangs his head and crosses his heart the same way I once saw Joe do under a full moon when he’d thought he was all alone on that beach. When he was sure even the sight of him wasn’t welcome. Now Noah describes someone praying for a happier outcome.
“That’s what I saw him do outside a tower-block flat. He crossed himself before going inside. Did it over and over like he was desperate to have a prayer answered or something. The door was all smashed in and splintered, so I guessed Joe was police. I couldn’t talk to him, even when I found out he wasn’t. Sorry.”
He nods at Joe in the doorway whose call with Hugo is over, and I saw heartbreak from him earlier, but I don’t have a name for this expression that so closely mirrors Noah’s.
His dad does.
“You felt trapped. Kept your mouth shut about that phone to protect your family.” The close confines of the nursery mean I get to see this land for the two people who need to hear it. “Trust me on this: Family would always rather hear tough stuff than let you struggle. I think that every time I see Joe’s scars. What a mess.”
Joe closes his eyes, and I come close to lashing out for the second time today until I see the mess his dad means—his hand must have shaken to paint a line this wobbly. I can’t say his voice is much firmer as he corrects his mistake.
“That’s when I miss his mother the most. She would have talked Joe’s ear off until he spilled who scarred him. Could have got him and Josh talking sooner too after that happened. And she definitely would have stopped him from heading down that road in the first place. All he had was me. The best I could do was teach him how to keep his guard raised. Still would have done anything to save him from hurting. Me not doing that?” He shakes his head, more paint going off course. “Worst moment of my life.”
My heart has clenched so many times lately. It squeezes the hardest to hear Joe’s reaction.
“That’s why you can’t look at me?”
“Why else?” His dad sets down his roller, and Joe rocks as his dad clasps one of his hands to trace old wounds with paint-spattered fingers. “Getting to see and hear you help those schoolkids so they don’t have to be as brave as you were? That was my proudest.”
Hours later, we get back to Joe’s place, and he repeats what his dad told him.
“Never knew he saw me that way.” It’s almost midnight when he whispers, “Thought he was ashamed.”
Wintergreen is visible in the distance through the gap in his curtains, spotlit by circling police helicopters. He turns his back on the view of where things went wrong for so many of us and circles back to what else his father called him.
“Brave,” he snorts softly.
I don’t know how anyone could see him as anything but. A lifetime of reading about dragons pays off. “You burned but survived. I’ll give you a clue what that makes you: It starts with the letter H .”
I’d tattoo hero onto the skin I uncover for our second shower of the day if it wasn’t already marked by plenty of reminders.
Joe lets me wash him again, and I want to spend a lifetime getting to do that as long as it comes with him rewriting his own story like he does in this steam-filled bathroom.
“Josh changed course for me. Could be earning a fortune in some corporate computer role. Switched to digital forensics to hunt down who ordered this to happen.” He traces long-cooled lava while I dry him. “Never said a fucking word, and tonight I finally heard why.” His voice thickens like the steam that once swirled between us on a station platform when I couldn’t reach him.
I can now. More than that, I get to wrap my arms around him in bed the same way he did to me this morning in his kitchen. My damp chest almost presses against his back until Joe finds my hip and pulls me closer, and his voice rumbles through where we connect.
“Josh would never agree to switch places with me at school. Wouldn’t take my tests for me. Way too black and white to break the rules.” He snorts again even more softly, a yawn chasing close behind it. “Tonight he finally told me about the one time he did. A top boy mistook him for me. Tried to give him gang-related work that could have got me locked up for life. Josh pretended to be me. Told them where to go, hoping it would get me kicked out. Got me punished instead.”
The last of my fight fades when he repeats a confession from a protective big brother.
“Says the guilt almost killed him. Overwhelmed him the same way Noah got swamped by his own secret. Stole his voice. Did it again tonight when we were talking. Think he had more to tell me, but couldn’t.” He’s quiet for a long moment. “The only way he could see how to fix it was by making them pay. He’s been bringing down their business brick by brick. Tracking their suppliers. Locating where they stashed their product before they could sell it. Locking down their access to cash so they couldn’t buy more. That arrest was going to be the end of them.”
He turns to face me, concern battling tiredness. “He wants to explain all of that to your mum. She got caught in the middle. He had no idea she wasn’t bailed. None of that was intentional. He doesn’t know if it’s forgivable. I think that’s what he always wanted. My forgiveness.” Joe closes his eyes, and this is so quiet I almost miss it. “He doesn’t know where to start explaining that or if she’d even want to listen.”
Helicopters hover outside, searchlights slicing through knife crime central.
They don’t need to keep watch over Joe while he sleeps. Neither does his brother.
I’ll do it until we can find a way to tell her that story together.