Chapter 29 Michael
MICHAEL
I watched my wife stalk away, saw the fury in her eyes as she held it together.
This kid had no idea the fierce warrior he had in my wife.
She was a force to be reckoned with on the best of days, but add in some pregnancy hormones, and she was bound to go to the ends of the earth to make sure he was okay.
“You and I need to talk,” I said, my tone brooking no arguments.
Glancing at Mav, he tipped his hat and walked away, giving me space with the kid. Sawyer strode over to Mav, probably to fill him in on the details.
Wes shoved his hands in his pockets, giving me the typical teenage look that said he didn’t want to hear anything I had to say, and anything that came out of my mouth would quickly be forgotten.
“Do you want to tell me why you ran out of the hospital?”
In typical teenage fashion, the kid ignored me.
“See, I have this theory that you overheard what I was saying to Blake, and I think you ran because of it.”
He shook his head. “Whatever.”
“Listen, you and I need to get a few things straight.”
“There’s not a damn thing—”
“You’re gonna shut up and listen,” I snapped.
For the first time, his eyes met mine, and they were steaming with hatred. But there was also something else in them. Something that told me I might actually have a shot of getting through to this kid.
“There is nothing I care about more than my family. I would do anything for them.”
“Yeah,” he snorted.
As he turned away, I clapped a hand on his shoulder, forcing him to look at me. “That includes you.”
“I’m not your family,” he hissed. “Stop trying to make me one of you.”
“You’re living with me. That makes you mine to protect.”
“Just fucking stop!” he shouted, stepping away from me. “I don’t know why you’re doing this, but you need to leave me the fuck alone.”
“Watch your tone,” I said, my voice taking on a lethal edge.
“Why are you doing this?” he yelled. “Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone?”
“Because someone has to look out for you. Maybe you don’t like it. Hell, maybe you don’t like me, but I’m not walking away!”
“You will,” he snapped. “Just like everyone else. I’m not stupid. You see me as a charity case for your wife. But she’s your real family. I heard you. Do you think I’m stupid? The only reason you’re doing this is because she’s pregnant, but you don’t really give a shit. No one does!”
“I do!” I shouted, storming forward. “I do fucking care!” I wrapped my arms around his body, pulling him in for a hug that I was sure he desperately needed. He fought me, his fists pounding against me as he struggled to get away, but I wasn’t leaving.
Not if it took a year. Not if it took five. This kid had been left on his own for far too long, and now he didn’t trust anyone. Not even me.
“I know you don’t believe me,” I whispered. “I know you don’t trust anyone, but we’re not going anywhere, and I will do whatever I have to, whatever it takes to prove I’m not fucking going anywhere.”
“You don’t even fucking know me!” he shouted.
Stepping back, I gave him just enough space to breathe. “Then let me in, man. I can’t do this on my own.”
I hoped he would say something—anything to show me I was making progress, but he just stood there, staring off in the distance as if I didn’t exist.
Sighing, I knew we weren’t going to move mountains tonight. For now, I just needed to get him home. “Come on. I need some shut-eye before work tomorrow. And you have school.”
“I fucking hate school.”
“No one likes school, kid. Only the nerds.”
Sighing, he grudgingly followed me, but his eyes kept flicking over to where Wyatt stood by the truck.
“Hold up. I need to find out what’s wrong with the truck.”
Like I suspected, he followed.
“Any idea what’s wrong with it?” I asked Wyatt as he bent over the engine, examining it. I knew a little about vehicles, but not enough to figure out what the hell was wrong.
“Yeah, it’s a piece of shit. You should have retired it a long fucking time ago,” Wyatt grumbled.
“It was making a clanking noise,” Wes said, drawing Wyatt’s attention.
“Doesn’t sound too good,” Wyatt sighed. “I’ll have to get her up on the lift and take a closer look. Can’t see jack shit out here tonight.”
“Wes, go check on Blake,” I ordered, not bothering to look at the kid.
“But—”
“Go.”
Sighing, he walked away, and when he was out of earshot, I went to work. “I need a favor.”
“Not interested.”
Wyatt put up a good front, but he was nothing like his old man. Bailey only had good things to say about him, and that was enough for me. Liam had excellent taste in women, and if she trusted Wyatt enough to work for him, there had to be some redeeming quality to him.
“That kid is interested in cars.”
“And?”
“And I want you to put him to work.”
A slight grin pulled at his lips, but it wasn’t because he was happy. “What the fuck makes you think I give a shit if that kid likes cars?”
“You don’t, but this kid needs some guidance. He’s all over the place, but he seems to be interested in what it takes to fix this. All I’m asking is that you make him work to fix the damn thing.”
“That sounds more beneficial for you than for me,” he answered. “Like I said, not interested.”
He slammed the hood on the truck and started to walk away.
“What will it take?”
His footsteps faltered slightly before he turned back to me. “Give the old man his land back.”
“I can’t do that. It’s not mine to give.”
“You can talk to your Pop,” he snapped.
“And that won’t do any good. We’ve never seen eye to eye. You know that.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
There had to be something I could give Wyatt. Something he wanted more than his revenge on my family. But Wyatt was just like me. Family meant everything, and he wasn’t about to help a Parker unless it benefited him somehow.
Family.
“I can help you find your wife,” I called out.
Very slowly, he turned and narrowed his eyes at me. The anger on his face was palpable. I’d hit a nerve, but that’s what I needed. The one thing that got Wyatt worked up was when anyone mentioned his wife.
Some thought he killed her.
But me…I thought she ran out.
“Don’t fucking talk to me about my wife ever again.”
He turned on his heel and stormed away. As he climbed up into the truck, he eyed me one last time before slamming the door.
“What was that about?” Blake asked, walking up to me.
Glancing over my shoulder, I made sure the kid was out of earshot. “I was hoping he would help me.”
“Well, clearly that’s not going to happen.”
“We’ll see.”
There was still a shot. I’d let him stew on the idea of finding his wife for a while. I had a feeling he’d come around eventually.
Wrapping my arm around Blake’s shoulder, I turned for Mav’s car. “Let’s go home.”
“Is that the last of it?” Mav shouted, hauling the final box into our brand new house through the back door.
I glanced around at our meager belongings and sighed. Before it burned to the ground, we had made the house just how we wanted it. Now…
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Setting the box on the counter, he looked around. “Looks about the same as last time.”
“Yeah, except for all the stuff missing.”
Striding over to the window, he knocked on it. “Reinforced glass. At least we know she won’t be throwing me through any windows.”
“Not yet. It’s Blake. I’m sure she’d find a way.”
Knight strode into the room, his face buried in some kind of electronic device. “You ready to do this?” he asked without looking up.
“Do what?”
“Go through the instructions. Given what happened last time, I made a few upgrades.”
Upgrades. My mind drifted back to the killer robot that nearly killed me. “Knight, I told you I didn’t want anything.”
He snorted at that. “Right.”
“I’m serious. I don’t need that shit out here.”
But he didn’t listen. He walked right past me and over to the thermostat on the wall. “See this?”
“Yes. It controls the temperature in the house.”
Slowly, he turned, giving me a droll look. “That’s cute. This is one of seven control panels throughout the house. Once you set a panel, you’ll need to enter a series of numbers to make any changes, followed by a retinal scan and a blood sample.”
“A what?” I asked, sure I had heard him wrong.
“A blood sample. Do you want someone impersonating you?”
“And who would do that? Knight, we’re in freaking Montana. There aren’t many people out here trying to kill me.”
His eyes were hard, and his tone was dead serious. “It only takes one.” Turning back to the controls, he continued. “Now, once you’ve been confirmed as Michael Benjamin Parker, you will have control over the house.”
Mav raised his hand. “What if I enter the house?”
“Without him?”
Mav shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Why would you enter the house without him?”
“Because maybe he needs something and he asks me to get it.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Knight said.
This was going too far. “Wait, so no one can enter my house without me?”
“Or Blake.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Lethal silence filled the air as he stalked toward me. “Is your safety really so unimportant to you that you would allow anyone to enter your home?”
“I don’t allow just anyone—”
“But you’re willing to let the sheriff?”
“I know him!”
Knight snorted in amusement. “You know him until he decides to plant evidence in your home, incriminating you for a crime he committed.”
“Now, hold on a minute—” Mav cut in.
“Or are you so willing to trust everyone around you?” Knight continued. “Do you not remember what you already went through when you thought you could trust the very people you were deployed with?”
Wow, talk about hitting below the belt. “That was the military. What could Mav possibly pin on me in our small town?”
“Corruption runs just as deep in small towns as it does in a military unit,” Knight said with all the seriousness in the world.
He had a point, and if I was being honest, my trust was still hard to earn. Turning to Mav, I shrugged. “He has a point.”
Mav scoffed. “I’m hurt. Truly, that cuts deep. We’ll see how much I trust you when I finally get married and have kids. Let me tell you something, it won’t be you I pick as the godfather.”
“Anyway, now that the corrupt sheriff is out of the way,” Knight continued, “can we get back to how to operate the system?”
“Okay, just for clarification, I’m not corrupt,” Mav said, trying to convince Knight, which he never would.
“Once you enter the main screen of the system, you can control everything from the fire suppression system to the escape hatch.”
That was a new one. “I’m sorry, the escape hatch?”
Knight sighed, rolling his eyes at me. “You know, this will go a lot faster if you just assume anything I can do, I did do.”
“It’s my house.”
He stared at me. “Sure.” He turned away from me and kept walking. “Now, the escape hatch will lead you to a tunnel that will come out—”
He stopped walking and turned back to glare at Mav.
“What?”
“I don’t trust you. Obviously, I can’t tell you where the tunnel came out.”
Jesus, this was never going to end. “You can trust him.”
“It’s your funeral. The escape tunnel comes out under the falls.”
My feet nearly tripped over themselves as his words reverberated in my head. “You…dug a tunnel underground all the way to the falls?”
“Well, if I dug it above ground, that would be pretty fucking pointless, wouldn’t it?”
“But…how did you even—it hasn’t been long enough for you to dig a tunnel!”
“It’s amazing what money can do. Now, the escape hatch is not reversible. Not from that direction. However, if you go into your shed at the southeast corner of the property, I have another route ready for you. From there, you can access the house. The exit point is in the pantry.”
He strode over to the pantry and opened the door, pointing to the false wall at the back that he easily pushed against to open.
“If everything else has a code, how the fuck did you open that?” I snarled.
He wiggled his fingers at me. “Fingerprints. The whole door is an electronic scanner. Moving on—”
I couldn’t believe I was dealing with this shit.
But I followed him anyway, taking in the guns hidden in the fake wall in the entryway, the scanner at all entrances that would keep anyone from bringing weapons into the house, other than Blake or me, and even the updated killer robot.
But what really took the cake was the final item on the agenda. Just the smirk on his face had me cursing under my breath. There was no way I could handle this. I was positive it would kill me.
“Finally, the last thing you need to be aware of is this,” he said, stopping by the fireplace.
“Why? What does it do?”
He looked at me in confusion.
“Does it shoot flames at anyone who might look dangerous? Is there really an explosive inside that, when the fire is lit, sets the whole house on fire?”
“Why would it do that?”
“As some sort of booby trap,” I snapped.
“Actually—”
“Oh, wait,” I laughed. “Maybe it’s not even a fireplace. Maybe it’s a third escape hatch!” I leaned in and looked up the chimney. “Do I just start climbing? Is there a ladder somewhere?” I asked, jumping inside the massive fireplace to reach the metal rungs.
“Parker—”
“No escape hatch, huh? Well, maybe you built the fireplace so big because it’s large enough to fit a dead body.
That’s it, isn’t it? The final piece of the puzzle.
You’re going to bring your kills here and have me dispose of the bodies, right?
I bet there’s even some button to flip to send the ashes into the earth, right? ”
I felt along the stone wall, searching for anything that might be it. When I found it, I laughed. “Ah-ha! There it is.” I flipped it, but all I heard was a whirring sound.
“So, it’s even quiet. You’ve made it so quiet, no one would realize I was sucking the ashes into some huge ass suction system that will eliminate any and all evidence that anyone was killed here!”
Mav was looking at me questioningly, probably wondering how much of this was true. But Knight…well, he was just staring at me with that ice-cold look in his eyes.
He leaned forward and flipped the switch again. “I was just going to tell you to make sure you stack the wood at the back of the fire. The opening is too big and the chimney isn’t tall enough. The smoke will filter into the house if you’re not careful. Hence, the fire suppression system.”
That…actually made sense. Leaning forward, I flipped the switch again. “And this?”
“It’s a blower run by a generator in case the power goes out.”
I nodded, frowning slightly. “Handy.”