The knock on his door awakened Matisse, and with it came a rush of the previous day’s events. Nicole poked her head inside, and seeing he was awake, slid through and closed the door. “Bentley will be here in an hour. Breakfast is ready.”

He rubbed his eyes and jammed the heels of his hands against them. “Okay.”

“Get some sleep?”

Maybe? He raked his hands through his hair. “I think so.”

With two fingers, she caught a strand of his hair and flicked it away from his eyes. “Don’t hide behind your hair. You’re too handsome for that.” Like she had when he was a child, she drew her finger down the bridge of his nose and bopped it gently.

“Is Dad here?”

Smile dimming, she shook her head. “No. He went to meet his lawyer at the office. FBI was there, asking to see some stuff.” Like he had a moment ago, she shrugged. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, “For what?” But he stifled the urge. The less he knew about his father’s problems, the better. It was those problems that put him in this position to begin with. Instead he asked, “Is Genevieve here?”

Canting her head, Nicole regarded him silently for a moment. “No. I sent her to Memere’s. She doesn’t need to stress about this either, and Mem has the pool, so she’ll be happy.”

He nodded absently. “That’s good.”

“Tisse.” Squeezing his hand, Nicole got his attention. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but I do know you. And I know you did what you thought you had to. You may be thoughtless at times, but you have a good heart.”

Her words were nearly too much for him, and the most he could do was nod. With a pat on his knee, she stood. “I have coffee waiting. Hurry up.”

She left him, and he went through the motions of getting ready. He arrived in the kitchen with a wet head, scraping his hands through his hair to secure it in a ponytail at his neck. As soon as he sat, his mother placed a mug of coffee in front of him along with a beignet. “Eat.”

Tracking Nicole’s progress, he studied her for signs of stress or anger. Quieter than she normally was, but not abnormally so, she sipped her own coffee and stared out the window. “Mom—” he started to say when the doorbell rang.

She gave him a half-smile, and held up a finger. Wait. The doorbell rang again, and she left him in the kitchen, only to return a moment later with Bentley. It struck him then that he needed to come up with a story for what he’d done, and do it fast.

“All right, Matisse. Let’s get started,” he said jovially as he sat next to him.

“Coffee?” his mother asked, as if he was a normal guest on a normal day.

“Thank you, Nicole. Yes.” he answered while opening his briefcase and pulling out folders. “Now. The government is accusing you of breaking into their system and stealing from it. They have proof you did these things.” He slid a paper to Matisse so he could read the charges then took a sip of his coffee.

The government had him pretty good. They’d traced him, followed his trail as he’d bounced from IP address to IP address, a tactic which should have worked, given the tangled web he’d created. Within the patent office’s organization, they’d found a gap between the stored data. The Indiana Jones reference was correct. He should have left something in the patent’s place, a fake one, something, to fill in the hole he made. If he had, they’d never have been alerted to him.

“Matisse?”

He’d remained quiet for so long, considering the evidence the FBI had, he hadn’t heard anything else Bentley’d said. “Sorry. What was your question?”

“I said, they’re willing to reduce the charges if you tell them what it was you took and return it.”

“Reduce to what?” Nicole asked, gracefully seating herself across from them.

“It depends on what he took. The more it’s worth, the higher the penalty and fine.”

Raising an eyebrow, his mother gazed at him. “Matisse?”

He had a decision to make; he told the truth, implicated his father and himself, or he lied. The memory of his father, lying to the lawyer yesterday, returned to him. Whatever Dad told the FBI was probably going to place the blame squarely on Matisse’s shoulders. Stomach clenching, he stared at his hands. 

There was no good answer to this problem. He could take responsibility for it, leave his dad out of it and hope after the worth of the patented idea was calculated they took pity on him.

Or... he could tell them the truth—Dad asked him to erase the patent. Then they’d both go down. He to a lesser extent because he was seventeen. After all, his father was the one who asked him to commit the crime. Why then did that feel like the wrong choice? He didn’t want Dad to go to jail. Of course, he didn’t want to go there either.

Could he send his father to prison and live with himself? It took a second for him to imagine it, and the decision was made. “I don’t know,” he answered.

Bentley leaned forward, staring at him. “Don’t know what, son?”

“I don’t know what I took. I got in, played around, deleted something. I wanted to see if I could do it.” He shrugged. “Guess I couldn’t.”

“Matisse,” Nicole whispered his name on a breath. “Oh, honey. What have you done?”

Shrugging again, he tapped the table with his fingers. “Easy. Or it should have been.” After a deep breath, he met her eyes. “Whoops.”

Her eyelids lowered, shuttering her expression, and she shook her head. “I can’t believe you’d do something like that.”

“Sorry.”

“Matisse, I don’t know what this will mean,” Bentley said. “I’ll tell the FBI what you’ve told me, but I don’t know that they’ll be inclined to chalk this up to a youthful prank. Messing with government offices is a big deal. What if you deleted something that can never be recreated? What if it was a cure for cancer? Or AIDS?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, slumping. The lies made him more and more sick to his stomach until the coffee burned his esophagus. “I don’t feel well.” Pushing the chair back, he stood. “Can I go?”

With a dismissive gesture, Bentley motioned for him to go and shifted his gaze to Nicole. “I’ll do the best I can, but I don’t know what they’ll say.”

“I understand. Thank you so much for your time.”

“Thank you,” he murmured and beelined for the bathroom as the burn reached the back of his throat.

Managing to lift the toilet seat before he threw up was his success for the day, he decided. Head pressed against the cool porcelain seat, Matisse thought about what he’d done and the decision he’d made. There was every possibility it was going to ruin his life.