“Sir…”
I hadn’t realized I’d dropped my eyes to the little boy until Tate’s shaky voice got my attention. I knew without question that the kid was the linchpin…even a subtle threat against him would get me what I wanted.
“What’s your name?” I asked the terrified little boy.
“Sir-” Tate said again, but a hard glance in his direction had him falling silent.
“Matthew,” the kid said, his voice soft and uneven. “But Daddy calls me Matty.”
Matty had stuck his head around his father’s body to answer me, but even before he finished his last statement, Tate was gently pushing the kid back behind him.
“Please sir, I’m begging you…”
I finally lowered the gun and settled my eyes on Tate. “Where are they?”
A slight shudder went through Tate’s body. “I…can I put Matty to bed? It’s…it’s really late.”
I studied the younger man for a long moment. I was pretty sure I was right about him being in his mid-twenties and though he wasn’t quite as tall as me, he appeared more muscular than I’d first guessed. His brown hair was just a little too long and I found a sudden and very disturbing urge to push back a few of the strands that kept falling over his forehead. I shoved the errant thought away and took in the rest of him. He had a rangy look to him but more than anything, I noticed the strain that made him appear to have lived every single one of his young years and then some. His body said he was in his twenties but his eyes said he was much older…that he’d seen much more than most.
“Give me your phone,” I said.
“I…I don’t have one.”
He must have seen the irritation in my face because his eyes fell to my gun and he said, “I’m telling you the truth. I had one of those disposable ones where you buy the minutes, but I couldn’t afford to reload it so they turned it off a couple days ago.” Tate swallowed hard when I rubbed my finger over the trigger on the gun. It was a habit on my part more than anything else, but I didn’t mind if he thought the move meant something else.
“The phone is in that drawer,” he said as he pointed to a small single drawer table by the door. I kept my eyes on him as I checked the drawer and pulled out an older model flip phone. I had to turnit on and sure enough, when I tried to dial, I got a message saying the phone had been deactivated.
“What about a landline?” I asked.
Tate shook his head, but didn’t say anything. I wondered how the hell someone managed to go this day and age without any kind of phone, but didn’t give voice to my thought. I tossed the cell phone back in the drawer and went back to stand in front of Tate and his son who was peeking around his father’s leg to watch me with curiosity.
“Where’s his room?” I asked.
“Back there,” Tate said, motioning behind him with his head.
I nodded and Tate quickly turned around and picked his son up. He stripped the backpack the kid had been wearing off and dropped it to the floor and then cast me several glances over his shoulder as he went to a small room on one side of the cramped apartment…although apartment was a generous term for the confined space. From what I could tell, the kid’s room was the only actual room besides the bathroom. The rest of the space was open and there was a tiny kitchen with a small table jammed against the dingy window. The living room had one couch which was covered with a sheet and on one end was a single pillow and a folded blanket. There was a small, old fashioned TV on a TV dinner tray table in the corner.
As shitty as the apartment was, the kid’s room was a whole other story. It was painted bright blue and there were all sorts of posters covering the walls, most of them depicting some kind of superhero. There was a laundry basket full of toys in the corner and the bed had several stuffed animals sitting on top of the Iron Man comforter. Next to the bed was an old milk crate stacked high with books.
“Okay, let’s get jammies on,” Tate murmured as he searched through the drawers of a faded yellow dresser. I wasn’t surprised to see that the pajamas had Captain America all over them. As Tate put Matty down so he was standing on the bed and began to undress him, the little boy kept glancing my way.
“Is he gonna shoot us, Daddy?” Matty asked as he braced hishands on his father’s shoulders to steady himself as Tate worked his pants off and replaced them with the pajama bottoms.
“No, he’s not,” Tate said firmly as he got his son’s attention. “He…he just got us confused with some other people, okay?”
Undaunted, Matty shifted his attention back to me. “Why does he have a gun?”
I could see Tate didn’t have an answer for his son and when he cast a desperate glance over my shoulder, I actually felt a thread of shame go through me. I found myself tucking the gun in the waistband of my pants at my back before I could think too much on it.
“Are you looking for bad guys?” Matty suddenly asked after Tate pulled his shirt off.
“Sort of,” I answered before Tate could.
“Are you a policeman?”
Tate’s moves in getting his son dressed were quick and efficient and I wondered how much of that was related to practice and how much had to do with wanting to get his son away from me.
“No, buddy, he’s not,” Tate said. “Come on, climb into bed.”
