“Another reason why you shouldn’t have hired him.”
“I know, I know.” He thinks about it for a little while and then adds, “I might have to fuck him up a little bit and then we’ll be straight.” Khalil yawns, and something that feels like panic spears through my chest. He’s been so busy lately. This is our first time talking in two weeks. It was the same with Thorin, who had just finished his MOS training. His unit was getting ready to deploy, so there hadn’t been any leave for him to come home before he had to report to his duty station either.
“Hey, uh…you want to call Thorin and see what he’s up to?” I ask, scrambling for a reason to keep Khalil on the phone.
Just a few minutes more. I don’t want to be alone.
Khalil shoots me a weird look. “You get hit on the head recently? He’s fucking, remember?”
“Yeah, but I think I can hack into his account and turn the camera on.” I’m already bringing up the web browser on Whitney’s computer and typing in an address. “Trace showed me how.”
“That’s not at all disturbing,” I hear Khalil say.
I’m already downloading the program Trace designed when I knowingly toss back, “So you don’t want to watch?”
Khalil pretends to consider it for a moment before a slow smile takes over his face. “Nah, I definitely want to watch. Do it.”
Later, when I’m walking home with my head down, hoodie up, and hands shoved in the pockets of my jeans, I’m staring at the ruptured sidewalk of my street like I always do, counting the cracks because it looks the way I feel inside.
Up ahead, I hear a bottle roll, and in this neighborhood, no matter the time of day, it always means something when you’re not alone. I lift my head, but the red Porsche 911 parked on the street up ahead doesn’t give me pause. It’s not unusual to see a nice car creeping through here, someone looking to score. The true eyesore is the man leaning against it, sporting a Colgate smile, a thick wave of sandy brown hair, and Ray-Bans.
I keep my eyes on him as I dodge the deep gouges in the sidewalk like a rehearsed dance, and even behind the dark shades, I know the man is watching me back. His smilebrightens with each step that brings me closer to him until I’m officially weirded out.
“If you’re looking for Molly, that’s two doors down,” I tell him as I point. I don’t wait for a response as I turn down the broken path with overgrown weeds sprouting through to the crumbling shack I once shared with my mother. It was a home she’d inherited from her grandmother, and the only reason it passed on to me was because it didn’t.
I was squatting in my own home.
“I wondered if I’d know it was you,” the man says mysteriously. I keep walking since I know better than to engage with anyone lurking around here. “You look just like your father!” he calls out when he realizes I’m not going to stop.
My foot pauses on the first broken step as I twist to look behind me. “What did you say?”
“Your father,” he says. “You look just like him, Ezekiel.”
Completely aside from the fact that he knows my name, he’s wrong. I’ve never met my father, but I’ve seen pictures of my mother. I have flashes of her face in my head—sometimes contorted in rage and others smiling softly down at me. I have everything of hers except for her dark brown eyes. My green eyes I must have gotten from my father, who I hear has orhadstrong Italian ancestry. I still don’t know if the bastard is alive or dead.
“I’m sorry… Who are you?” I ask rather than correct the stranger. It’s clear this meeting was no accident, and I’m not telling him shit until I know why he’s here.
Reaching up, the man removes his sunglasses and tucks them inside his shirt pocket. The shock of seeing my own green eyes staring back ripples through me, as does the wound that spreads into a spiderweb of cracks. It’s not just the same color. It’s a twin set—as if someone used a dropper tool to match the spring shade.
“I’m Isaac,” he supplies casually. “I’m your brother.”
EZEKIEL
Present day…
Ican’t breathe.
Rolling over in the snow, I feel Thorin’s presence more than see him as I inhale as much of the frigid air as I can. It’s a soothing balm to the burn in my lungs. My ears are ringing, my fingers and toes are numb, and the rest of my body trembles violently. But the worst feeling of all is not remembering how I got this way.
Thorin doesn’t crowd me, giving me a moment to sort out my shit. It always takes a while, especially when I almost end up buried alive.
Seth.
FuckingSeth.
This has him written all over it.
He’d bring the entire mountain down on our heads if it meant taking out Thorin and Khalil. I’d just be convenient collateral damage.
