Chapter 20
They didn’t call the cops. They called James. He was waiting on call near the house with several other police officers that he personally deemed he could trust. The last thing they needed was Isabelle pulling something on them all, managing to swing it her way one last time. She’d already proven she was more than capable of swaying cops before. Roarke was not interested in a repeat incident when he finally had her.
Hanna went upstairs to retrieve the scared boy.
“Hi,” she said, carefully, quietly, from the doorway of the room, lingering in it like a folkloric vampire waiting for an invitation.
He was in the corner. He had headphones in his ears and his hands slapped over on top of that. His eyes had been squeezed shut when she first entered, now he was looking at her with wide, terrified eyes. She felt terrible for him. This wasn’t his fault, he didn’t ask for it. His father was lying unconscious out in the hall in a small pool of his own blood from his broken nose, his mother was downstairs, staring down the barrel of a gun that his uncle was pointing at her. Maybe by now she was even in handcuffs.
Those were not images he’d be able to get passed or banish from his mind with any real ease. That would stick with him forever. Hanna remembered her own time, watching her father get attacked by police officers or thugs to whom he owed money. Those images were a tattoo on the inside of her skull like a graffiti mark her brain would constantly be trying to wash away. It turned her hard, made her a cop. But James had been her softness, her friend. That’s what this boy needed. He needed proof that adults could be kind, that there could be good in the world.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, pointing to his headphones. He didn’t stir. “I want to talk to you, but I it won’t do much good if you can’t hear me, huh?”
He blinked. His hands slowly slid down, off the overly large headphones. She guessed that was as much as she was going to get. He could hear her, enough anyway. It was a start.
“My name is--”
She paused. Had she really been Laura? Had she been that person since the moment she walked into the bar and told Roarke her name was Hanna and she wanted in on his gang? Hanna wasn’t quite that woman she was going to pretend to be when she first entered into this mission, the woman Hanna was now was something different entirely. She was a blend of Hanna and Laura, she was uniquely the woman crouched there, looking at a scared boy, hoping to make a connection.
“My name is Hanna,” she said. “But do you want to know a secret? My real name is Laura.”
It felt good to say it. She hadn’t even told Roarke her real name. She didn’t want to give a face and label to that other side of her, the person she was before she met him. She didn’t want to encourage that dissonance by making the lie, the other person, the girl she was real. But it felt good to tell this boy, this boy who had no notions about her or her name. She wanted him to trust her, both sides of her and the person they combined to become.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “You don’t have to tell me. But you know both of mine.”
He didn’t say a thing. She smiled and shrugged. She still stayed in the doorway. She wouldn’t break this momentum they had so far. She got him to listen to her at least, despite the sounds of the police downstairs, his mother shouting loudly, Roarke shouting back. It wasn’t helping her situation. She rolled her eyes, huffed, and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind her. The boy flinched.
“It’s okay,” she said. “They’re just loud, right?”
The sounds of shouting died to a muffle through the wood of the door and she sat down on the floor, crossing her legs and holding her knees like she used to do in preschool.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I am. I think we’re going to get food. I hope we are. Would you like to go with us?” He didn’t say anything. “You have an uncle you know. His name is Roarke and he looks mean but he’s actually a huge softie. He’s going to take us to get food because we can’t stay here.”
He blinked. His tiny brow furrowed and set in. He breathed heavily like trying to look bigger and angrier than he was. She could see the seeds of Roarke in him and couldn’t help but smile. She was looking through a time machine into a small version of him from years and years ago. She wondered if he was ever this small, ever this scared. It was hard to imagine now, with the big man he was but maybe there was hope for this boy as well.
A bang at the door interrupted the silent calm of the room and she tried not to glare too hard.
“Give us a minute,” she shot back and turned back to the boy who had put his hands back over his ears again, curling farther in on himself. She was going to kill Roarke when she got out of the room. “Sorry about that.”
The boy, slowly, took his hands away from his ears again. This time he also removed the headphones covering his ears. He was a cute kid, she’d give him that. He was small, quiet, and his face was a picture of bright eyed innocence. It was impossible to think he came from Isabelle and her psychotic boyfriend. This boy was far too good to be wrapped up in their world. He was also far too good to get wrapped up in the world of the Hell Hussars.
Isabelle had been nuts, she was a vengeance crazed lunatic, but she had a point. Her anger at her family was justified, even if her actions were not. They stole her identity from her, her independence, her ability to choose for herself. Her lashing out, harboring resentment, that could have been predicted by any therapist of anyone in the family took a moment to ask her if she wanted to talk. This boy would be the same if the Caracals got a hold of him or Roarke got too eager at the idea of turning Clark’s own son against him. Maybe the boy was a gifted musician or painter. Maybe he’d be a math whiz.
Isabelle had a future that was snapped away from her and in that moment Hanna realized it was not a younger Roarke she was looking at in that boy but a younger Isabelle before the conditioning and control set in. He was still free, he could do anything. And she’d be damned if anyone, even Roarke, took that away from him.
They sat together for another half hour with Hanna making one-sided conversation with him before he finally agreed to be taken out of the room and into the hallway. By then, his father and mother had been taken away, the blood and debris cleaned up. Roarke and James had sense of mind enough to prevent any unforgettable images. The boy held her hand, clasping at her fingers like a lifeline. He didn’t let go the entire time. He insisted on sitting next to her in the back of the cop car.
“We’ll get the bikes later,” she whispered to Roarke.
Instead they drove to get that food she promised him. They settled for crappy Chinese takeout and took it to a park where birds were chirping and the sun was out. The boy ate in silence.
“You get a name out of him?” Roarke asked, picking at what was left of the four pack of eggrolls.
“Jason,” she said. “Don’t know about any nicknames or anything. But he answers to that name at least.”
Roarke nodded. He was watching the boy with unreadable eyes. Hanna couldn’t tell if it was with suspicion, with anger, or with pity. It seemed to be a mixture of all those things. She couldn’t blame him. The day was a lot to process, the entire situation was a lot to process. The past months had been hectic, a rollercoaster, and they ended bombastically. It was hard to admit to themselves that it really was over. It really was done. Isabelle wasn’t waiting around a corner to try and get one last jab at them. She was behind bars. The head had been cut off the Caracal snake. They’d find out in the coming weeks how the rest of the chips would fall.