Elijah smiled at that. “Yeah, the better one.”
There were more jostling sounds and then Shep said, “That’s not true.”
“You didn’t even know my grandpa.”
“I know you,” Shep said. “That’s all that matters.”
Elijah scoffed. “My grandfather was a real man. The kind of men other guys wanted to be. The kind who stood up for people when they couldn’t stand up for themselves. He was a lot like you.”
“You’re definitely a man… I’ve seen you naked.”
Had anybody else said that to him, Elijah would have thought they were teasing him, but Shep... he didn’t say things he didn’t mean, not to Elijah.
Elijah gave a watery laugh. “My grandpa would have liked you.”
“Probably. Most people do.”
It was a definitive statement said with no pride or smugness. It made Elijah believe it to be true even though he’d never seen it firsthand. This time Elijah’s laugh had teeth. “You really are so weird. I swear inside your head is a little computer chip with the settings just slightly off.”
“Does that bother you?” Shep asked, his voice once again curious like he was testing Elijah somehow.
“No. I like your weirdness.” It was true.
There was a long silence before Shep said, “Good.”
They lay there for a long while, before Elijah said, “I hope there really is a place where bad people are punished for their crimes.”
“Wouldn’t you prefer to know they received their punishment before they died?”
“Nobody pays for the things they’ve done in this world, no matter how bad it is, especially here in LA. The cops here are just as bad as the criminals,” Elijah said, his tone leaving no room for argument.
“That’s the thing about justice, it rarely comes from within. Corruption breeds corruption. Sometimes it takes an outsider.”
“You’re an outsider…” Elijah mumbled, not entirely sure what he was implying.
“You have somebody you need me to take care of, rabbit? Is somebody hurting you?”
It was a ridiculous question. There was clearly nobody hurting him. Shep was with Elijah every minute of every day, and though Elijah didn’t know much about Jayne Shepherd, he knew he’d never let a wolf come anywhere near his sheep… or, in Elijah’s case, his rabbit. “No. Not anymore,” he said, his voice hollow.
“But somebody hurt you in the past?” Shep asked, his voice a low snarl.
“It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter,” Elijah assured him, hoping it was true.
“It matters to me.”
There was a tension beneath Shep’s words, a quiver of barely contained rage that warmed Elijah inside. When was the last time anybody cared enough about him to be angry on his behalf? Just his grandfather and he was long gone.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I think I can go to sleep now. Night, Sam.”
Once more, that hesitation. “Night, rabbit.”
Sleep eluded Shep after their conversation, but the security cameras showed Elijah fast asleep, curled up in a ball in the center of the bed, only the side of his face visible. His confession nagged at Shep. Somebody had hurt the boy. Somebody had hurt him bad enough for it to still plague him, for it to haunt his dreams and to keep him from sleeping at night and, according to him, the police had done nothing.
Shep wandered into the kitchen, not bothering with a shirt. He brewed a pot of coffee, taking his cup to the island and sliding onto a stool. He propped his phone against the rarely used sugar bowl giving one last glance to the boy’s sleeping figure before opening his laptop so he could dig through Elijah’s past.
After just thirty minutes, it became clear to Shep that if he wanted any informationElijah as a child, Google had it all, from the moment of his birth all the way to his twelfth birthday party. With almost no effort, Shep could create a snapshot of Elijah’s life, where he lived, where his films recorded, where his family vacationed, his favorite color, favorite animal, favorite foods, his grandfather’s horse ranch… anybody with even a small knowledge of the Internet could have found a million ways to enter Elijah’s life and hurt him.
Then it all stopped. From the ages of thirteen to eighteen, Elijah was a ghost. There were no photos, no social media posts, only a couple articles from the tabloids speculating on why he’d walked away when it seemed he couldn’t lose. It was a total media blackout. That couldn’t be an accident.
