Chapter 26
VI
I didn't sleep last night.
Well, I did get three hours of sleep, maybe, which is three more than I expected, given everything swimming around in my head. A name on a piece of paper. An address across the city. And the question I can't stop asking myself no matter how many times I tell myself to stop.
What if my father is alive? Out there somewhere, laying low, just waiting for…
Waiting for what? For me? Or somebody else? Does he have a plan? Is he okay? Healthy? Has he been hurt?
What would it mean if he were alive and I were able to find him?
I've built a whole life around wanting this, waiting for this, making it happen. I ended up in a dead mall with three men who are helping me in this quest, all because I believed in it.
And now that it's close enough to almost touch, I'm scared shitless.
What if my father’s different? What if I'm different?
What if we stand in the same room after all this time and look at each other and the thing between us, the Sunday morning phone calls, the unannounced groceries, the man who had to teach me about periods because my mother wasn't around, what if that thing is just gone?
I don't say any of this to the guys. Hell, I barely let myself think about it.
I eat breakfast and drink my coffee and when Rogue comes to find me at eight, I'm composed and ready, jacket on, my father's case files in my bag.
"Hey, will anyone at the hub notice I’m not there?" I ask.
“I gave them a heads-up. Said you had some personal stuff to take care of.”
“And that was… acceptable?”
I might be “attached,” if that’s the right word, to some of the most powerful men in the Rot, but that doesn’t mean I can shirk my responsibilities. Everyone here is expected to pitch in. That’s what makes the place work. And that’s why I don’t want to be a slacker
Rogue nods and hands me a second coffee.
The address from the paper Kade dug out of the trash takes us to the north side of the city, a part of Rothwell I don't know well.
The other side was my territory—my father's office, the Saturday market, the coffee cart on the corner.
The north side was always somewhere else, a different version of the same city. Funny how we stick close to home.
Even so, this part of the city looks the same as everywhere else now with its empty storefronts and too-quiet streets. And lack of people. That’s the biggest tell of all.
Sting walks on my right. Rogue walks on my left. Armen is slightly ahead, taking everything in.
I watch them and think, not for the first time, that I have no idea what I did to deserve this.
The building is a narrow four-story structure on a block that's held together better than most in Rothwell. There’s a tailor on the ground floor, still open, although I can’t imagine whose clothes he takes care of.
Then there’s a dentist on the second floor, sign faded but lights on.
People always need dentists, right? And, the upper floors have the look of offices that might or might not still be occupied considering that some are lit and some are dark.
We go in.
The third floor is what we want. The directory in the lobby lists a consulting firm for suite 3B, which could mean anything or nothing, but when we get there, the door is locked. Naturally, Rogue has it open in seconds without making a sound.
Inside is a two-room office, recently occupied. There’s a coffee cup on the desk with dried residue at the bottom, a jacket on the back of the chair, and papers organized in a way that means someone was just here and intends to come back.
Knowing this, the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and I position myself so I can keep an eye on the door.
Armen goes to the desk. Rogue goes to the filing cabinet. Sting stands guard.
I go to the papers.
I've been reading Rothwell city documents for months.
My father's files, Fischer's records, Voss's paperwork.
I know what I'm looking for now in a way I didn't when this whole thing started.
I have a sense of how these people organize things, what they hide and where, and what a question mark in a margin means.
I find it on the third page.
A contact list. Names and locations, written in a careful hand. Most of them mean nothing to me. But two lines from the bottom, there's a notation, not a name, just initials and a location. MR. A neighborhood on the edge of the city, the kind that barely registers on any map.
MR.
Mayor Renner.
My father's initials.
Oh God.
My hands don't shake. I won’t let them. But I do hold the page in my two hands like I’ve found buried treasure, and re-read it until my vision blurs.
"Rogue," I say, my voice cracking.
He's at my side in seconds. He reads the line.
"That's him," I say, pointing. "MR. That's my father."
"Could be."
"It's him," I insist.
He looks at me. I look at the page. He photographs it twice.
Armen comes over. He reads it and says nothing.
Sting speaks from the door. "Guys. We need to go."
On the street, I walk while thinking about a neighborhood on the edge of the city and my father’s initials written in a careful hand.
Rogue falls in beside me. He doesn't say anything, just walks close enough that his arm presses against mine and stays there.
I think about Sting.
I've been watching him today, probably more than usual, because there's something that changed in his expression when we passed the old Rothwell Elder Care earlier.
The nursing home where his mother once worked is long closed, but the sign still stands.
Behind it, the windows are dark and the parking lot is empty, speckled with weeds growing up between the cracks.
He didn't say anything when we passed, but I saw him looking at it, and his face was that of a man walking past something he lost.
I find his hand and squeeze once. He looks at me, and something passes between us that doesn't require words.
"You good?" Rogue says from my other side.
"I will be."
He takes my other hand.
And so I walk back through Rothwell with the terror of actually being close to something I've wanted for so long, I'd almost stopped believing in it.
"Club?" Rogue says.
I look at him. "Did you just read my mind?"
"It’s one of my biggest talents," he says.
"Club," Armen confirms from ahead, without turning around.
Sting squeezes my hand.
Yeah. The club.