“Linc.” Her voice was sad now, the earlier anger totally gone. “What if he comes here?”
“Did you ever tell him you’d moved?”
“No.”
“Then how would he know where you are?”
“You know he could find out.”
He could. Their father was mean and devious. A few questions to the right neighbor or an old friend were all it would take to figure out what became of his children.
If he cared enough to ask.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t. In the seven years since his arrest, Gerry Scott had hardly spoken to his three kids. He might have called Lacey to gloat about getting out, but Linc had no reason to think his dad would try to see any of them face to face.
“Do you think you could come down here? When he gets out? Just for a few days. Until we know it’s safe?”
Linc’s earlier panic had settled into a sick laundry-machine twist in his stomach, but her question pushed it out of his guts and over his skin like a dozen spiders. He glanced out the window, at the quiet, normal town around him. “I can’t. I just started this job. I can’t take time off yet.”
More silence. No gum this time. Guilt followed the panic spiders.
“I gotta go to work,” Lacey said. Linc felt shitty he couldn’t be who she needed. “I’ll call you if I hear anything else.”
“Sure.” He didn’t want her to call. If she did, it would be about their dad, and Linc... He couldn’t deal with that. He had half a mind to go back to his apartment, pack up all his things, and start driving north. Pennsylvania wasn’t too bad. Upper New York state got cold in the winter, but he’d managed before. He could drive until he ran out of gas or until he spotted a “Help Wanted” sign in a place that looked like it paid more than minimum wage and wouldn’t care about his...busy...past employment history.
“Okay,” she said. He’d almost forgotten she was still there.
“Okay.”
The call went dead. His throat hurt. He couldn’t even be kind enough to say goodbye to her.
The guilt wound its way around to anger, like usual, and he glared out the windshield as he started the car. He hated this feeling. For months after that night in Raleigh when he was nineteen, the shame gnawing at him literally made him sick. He couldn’t eat anything, couldn’t sleep. He saw his dad around every corner and jumped every time his phone rang, even when the call turned out to be his sisters. Every time he felt eyes on the back of his neck or thought he smelled his father’s brand of cigarettes, he’d packed up and moved on.
But that was before. He wasn’t running. Not again. He had time at least. If his dad didn’t know Lacey and Lilah were in Wilmington, no way he’d know about Seacroft. Linc could make a plan, apply for jobs, find a new place to live. No need to skip straight to sleeping in his car again. He’d done that before often enough; he knew exactly how to fold his knees and twist his spine to fit his six-foot-one frame without being completely bent out of shape in the morning. But he wasn’t eager to do it again.
As he pulled in, a quick check of the apartment building’s parking lot showed no signs of Chelsea’s Miata or even Jordan’s battered pickup truck. Hopefully, Jordan was working and Linc would have a few hours of peace.
Except, by the time he found himself inside, he wasn’t tired anymore. His mind jumped all over the place from Lacey’s angry voice on the phone to the sickening crack of Mickey’s ribs under his dad’s booted foot.
And then to Red, with his sweet face and nervous smiles. And Vasquez, sniffing around Linc’s sexuality. She didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who wanted a gay best friend to keep in her purse, so what the hell was she playing at? She had no right to poke into his personal life.
He turned on the Xbox. Linc hadn’t playedWinterlandsin at least a year, but the poster in Red’s apartment got him thinking about it again. It worked best in a two- or three-player format. You could bring your own partners or join a queue and get matched with another singleton looking to kill an hour or two with a stranger while fighting murderous trolls and seducing the occasional elf.
A new player’s name flashed on the screen.
AveryCNC.
Linc put on his headset and waited for the connection.
“Hello?” The reception was good. The guy’s voice was clear.
“Hey, you looking to play?”
“Hello?”
Linc grimaced and pulled the mic dangling from the headset closer to his chin. He really needed to get a new one. “Hey. Wanna play?”
“Yeah! I’m Avery. What should I call you?”
