Chapter 32
FELIX
Dove holds my hand on the drive through the city, weaving backstreets and quiet roads all the way to the gas station where Alex was sighted.
Not once does she let me go.
Should I be enjoying this?
With everything weighing down on both of us, the relief that Dove doesn’t blame me is intense enough that part of me just wants to lie down and sleep.
I’m exhausted.
Bone-deep exhausted.
Everything I knew for the past fifteen years of my life has been a lie and Dove still has the kindness to forgive me.
It’s got to be some kind of special treatment because she likes me, although I can’t quell the little voice in the back of my mind that tells me she’s only acting like this because she’s using me to get her son back, and once they’re together again, she’ll vanish.
If that’s the case, I won’t be mad.
After everything she’s been through, both back then and now, I can’t find it in my heart to be anything but sympathetic toward her.
Dove’s grip tightens as we draw into the gas station and Bree’s men have barely pulled the car to a stop before she’s flying out of the car without a care in the world.
“Dove!” I launch after her with Toph bringing up the rear. The parking lot is absent from any other vehicle with only a sickly yellow light radiating from inside the station. Dove spins on the spot as she scans around herself, then she races into the gas station with me hot on her heels.
“Hey!” Her bark makes the attendant jump out of their skin. “There was a boy here, right?”
“Excuse me?” The man adjusts his square glasses and glances nervously past Dove to me, then his eyes dart south to the counter as if contemplating hitting some kind of silent alarm.
“I’m asking you a question!” She reaches the counter, grabs the man violently by the collar, and half-drags him over the counter until he’s face-to-face with her.
“Hey lady!” The man, who can’t be any other than twenty-five, looks ready to cry at Dove’s aggression and he blinks rapidly. “What the hell? Let go of me!”
“Dove,” I warn softly, not wanting to tell her what to do, but this situation could rapidly decline before we get any answers.
She ignores me. “I’m looking for my son. He’s about my height, thin for his age. Dark hair with curls. Has a broken arm and the cast will probably look pretty fucked up by now. Have you seen him?”
“I said let go!” He grabs her forearm with both hands and begins struggling so hard that he kicks several boxes of cigarettes off the shelves behind the counter. “Let me go!”
“Dove!”
She snarls and releases him with a shove. “Tell me the truth!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady,” the guy gasps as he stumbles backward. “But you better get the hell out before I call the police.”
“No need for that. Terry, is it?” His skewed name tag dangles low on his work overalls. “Look, we’re just looking for a missing kid. Have you seen anyone by that description?”
Before Terry can answer, one of Bree’s men finally joins us within the gas station. “Terry, you know the McCarthys, don’t you? Your brother works for us and I know you got the call about what we’re looking for or we wouldn’t be here.”
Terry’s eyes widen. “Oh shit, yeah. Yeah I know. Why didn’t you just say so?” His eyes narrow at Dove and her lips part, but she quickly closes them as if swallowing an insult.
“I got the call,” Terry continues, adjusting his clothes. “I saw that kid on the CCTV that’s why I called back.”
“You saw him?” Dove’s already at the counter and Terry flinches back, visibly wary.
“Yeah. Only on the CCTV though. I was out back restocking. I saw him take a bunch of shit but before I could get out here, he put money on the counter and left.”
“Let me see,” Dove demands.
Terry glances past both of us to Bree’s security, then sees something that makes him nod and he jerks his head sideways. “It’s all set up out back.”
As we follow Terry through the gas station to the back room, Dove’s hand slips back into mine and grips so tightly that her nails cut into the soft flesh on the back of my hand. I welcome the pain. If this is how I can support her then I’ll take all the pain she can give.
On the flickering, grainy CCTV footage, a wobbling image of Alex appears on the screen and Dove immediately gasps. She covers her mouth with her hand and shakes her head. True to Terry’s words, Alex grabs some food and snacks, then leaves money on the counter and vanishes.
“How long?” Dove asks hoarsely. “How long ago was he here?”
Terry taps the date and time on the screen. “A couple of hours ago.”
Dove lifts her worried gaze to mine. “He could be anywhere by now.”
After thanking Terry for his help, we head back outside and Dove releases my hand. She walks away from me, lifting both hands into her hair and gripping the strands tightly.
“You saw him,” she says as she walks toward the gas pumps. “He looks tired. It’s been so long. Too long. I should have done more. I should have gotten away from Caterina sooner.”
“You couldn’t,” I remind her as gently as I can. “Neither of us could. But Alex looked fine. Alive. He was moving fast and wasted no time. You taught him well.”
Both her hands drop to her lower back as she stops walking, then she turns to me with tears glistening in her eyes.
“We used to make a game of it. You’re right.
I never truly left and I taught him to survive because I knew we never could leave.
And I turned it into games for him so he’d think it was normal.
Hide and seek in the city. Sometimes I’d give him money, drop him off somewhere and promise him something great if he made it home in time.
I always followed him of course but…” Her voice wavers and her head drops.
“You did the best you could.” I approach slowly. “And it’s paying off. He’s evading Caterina and Bree, everyone who is out looking for him.”
“Got harder when he got older,” Dove murmurs, kicking at the ground. “How do you keep these games up with a teenager smart enough to ask too many questions?” After a beat of silence, she lifts her head. “They won’t find him because they don’t know where to look.”
“So where do we look?” I jerk my head toward the car. “We have the car and we have protection. Let’s go.”
She meets my gaze and hesitates as if there’s more to say, but she holds herself back and after a moment, her gaze hardens as if coming to a silent decision with herself. Then she nods and walks toward me.
“Okay. I know where to look.”
The first stop off is an abandoned fire station on the edge of the city, completely boarded up and empty.
At least at first glance.
Dove finds a loose panel on a broken window and after we force ourselves inside, it’s clear Alex was here for a short while.
Mold on the pizza boxes and the stink of stale piss suggest this was his first stop.
“He left willingly,” Dove murmurs as she picks up something small from on top of a cushion. Approaching her from behind, I peer over her shoulder to the tiny folded paper star in the palm of her hand.
“A sign?” I ask.
She nods. “When hide and seek would get extreme, we would leave these for each other as a taunt but I think this is a sign that he left here of his own accord. If he was taken, he wouldn’t have had time.”
“Smart kid.”
“Look at his parents.” She turns and gazes up at me. “He’s got the smarts of both of us.”
“That’s… still so weird to think about.”
“I know.” Her lips press together. “I wish things had been different in that regard. Maybe life would have been different for him.”
“From what I’ve seen, you did a better job raising him than anyone else. And I stand by what I said. It’s amazing to think that he’s mine and I have a chance at being a father but it’s your choice.”
“And his,” Dove murmurs. “In the end, I can’t stop him from tracking down his father if he chooses. Given everything else I’ve lied to him about, I doubt he’ll keep believing that his father died.”
“You killed me?” I mock softly, weakly attempting to lift her mood as we leave the fire station.
“Of course I did,” she replies with a weak smile. “You were too powerful to leave alive.”
The second place we visit is an old apartment that Dove purchased ten years ago, paid off and then completely locked up.
The signs that Alex was even here are minimal.
He did a much better job of covering his tracks in this place compared to the fire station and once again, Dove finds a little paper star.
Our journey remains hopeful, but after visiting three more abandoned, run-down places with absolutely no sign of Alex, and no paper stars either, the late hour forces us to call it quits.
That and Bree calls us back to her Estate before our wanderings around the city bring the wrong kind of attention down on us.
Each empty place we visit, Dove uses receipt papers from the car to make her own paper starts and she leaves them lying around just in case Alex visits one of those places after we leave.
Back at Bree’s home, Dove vanishes as soon as we walk through the door.
I spend the next hour debriefing Bree on everything we learned, or didn’t learn, and she agrees to put eyes on the empty places we visited and will report any movement to me.
She then assures me that while Caterina is rampaging through the city, I’ve only lost two clubs and one counterfeit house so all in all, not too bad.
I find Dove after the meeting in my bedroom, sitting on the edge of my bed.
“Hey,” I say softly as I walk in, Scotch bottle in hand. “I was planning on drinking myself into a stupor so that I could sleep without dreaming.” Holding the bottle up, I shake it until the liquid sloshes inside. “Wanna join me?”
She pulls her legs up onto my bed and sits cross-legged, then nods and smiles tiredly. “I’d love to.”