Chapter Twenty-One
Tom
The days passed in relative peace. Tom and Callum spent their nights together, and during the day the three of them lived like a pretend family on an extended vacation. Sometimes Tom could almost forget it wasn’t real—that both of them had only been a part of Tom’s life for weeks instead of years. Leila hadn’t lost her reserve, but occasionally there were moments when something broke through her shell and they shared a real connection—and although it might have been wishful thinking on Tom’s part, it seemed to him like those moments were happening more and more frequently. And although all three of them still cast quick worried glances out the window when they thought no one could see, they didn’t flinch at every sound anymore.
For Tom, an innocent question was what put the first cracks in the comfortable illusion. Callum was out buying food, and he and Leila were reading together in companionable silence. The only books on hand had belonged to a young Callum, so Tom was reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which he had always thought of as a kid’s book but was actually more sophisticated than he remembered. He was so absorbed in the misadventures of the character who shared his name that when he heard a quiet voice say, “Dad?” he suspected it wasn’t the first time she had spoken.
The word gave him the same warm glow as always. He set the book down on his lap. “What is it?”
“How am I going to catch up with school when all this is over? A friend collected my homework for me last year when I was out sick for a week, but it’s been longer than that now, and neither of you have said anything about when we might be going back. Am I going to have to do all that homework at once? And when I get back, I’m not going to have any idea what’s going on.”
There were certain parts of being a parent that Tom wasn’t used to thinking about; school was one of them. In the back of his mind, he had known Leila was missing school, but he hadn’t really thought about how the days and weeks would add up, or what it would be like for her to try to catch up once she got back home. If she was able to go back home. Leaving town with Carrie would mean switching schools entirely, and even less opportunity to make up for everything she had missed.
Carrie. How was Carrie doing? The worry had to be eating her alive inside. He hadn’t been able to so much as call her, afraid she was still being watched, so she probably had no idea whether he and Leila were still alive. However conflicted Tom’s feelings about her might be, he didn’t wish that kind of fear on anyone.
And what about his business? He was losing money every day he spent out here. Would he have any customers left by the time he went back? He could live on less than he had been making, but how much less?
This wasn’t sustainable. Not for any of them.
Before he could figure out how to answer Leila’s question, the door opened. Callum held bulging shopping bags in both hands, so clearly nothing had gone wrong, but he wasn’t smiling. He jerked his chin toward Tom, a sign that they needed to talk privately.
Leila had seen it too. “I’m going, I’m going,” she said before Tom could say anything. She tried to sound unworried, but Tom could see the stress lines creasing her forehead. She had to know by now that their private conversations never meant anything good.
When the door to Leila’s bedroom closed, Callum sat down heavily next to Tom. “That was the last of our money.”
That couldn’t be right. “I thought we had more than that.”
Callum pulled out his wallet and showed Tom two dollar bills, three quarters, and a penny. “This is all we have left.”
They had been so careful, always buying the cheapest of everything, leaving out anything they didn’t absolutely need—the hot chocolate Tom had bought on their way up here being the one exception. But no matter how far they stretched the money Tom had taken from the ATM the morning he had rented the hotel room, it wouldn’t stretch forever. They had always known that. Tom just hadn’t expected the end to come this quickly. Looking into Callum’s empty wallet, though, Tom could account for every dollar they had spent. They had been as careful as they could possibly be—it just hadn’t been enough.
“Also,” said Callum reluctantly, “I saw frost on the leaves when I woke up this morning. You’ve felt it getting colder at night. We won’t be able to stay here much longer—not without heat.”
“We won’t be here that long,” Tom started to reassure him, but stopped. It had already been long enough for the temperature to start dropping, and right now their only plan was to wait.
“What should we do?” he asked instead. He didn’t like relying on Callum for ideas, but when it came to the Syndicate, Callum had the knowledge and experience that he lacked.
Callum sat quietly for a moment, thinking. “The only long-term solution is to get Leila beyond their reach. I don’t know when or if my father will give up looking for her, but it could be a long time. He might realize throwing resources after one girl is a waste of time and effort… but he can be very persistent when he feels like someone has made a fool out of him.”
“But to do that, we need to get her to Carrie. And if they’re still watching Carrie…”
“Then it’s not safe to bring Leila back to her,” Callum finished.
“And I can’t take her away myself,” said Tom. “Not long-term.” Even if he wanted to do exactly that. Even if that would be the best thing for her in the end. He wouldn’t kidnap Carrie’s child—not only because of the legal ramifications, but because whatever Carrie’s flaws, he wouldn’t do that to her. He wouldn’t leave her wondering about Leila forever, the way he had been forced to wonder for the first twelve years of Leila’s life.
He wished there were a better option than running. Or sitting here waiting while their money ran out and the cold crept into the corners of the cabin. If only it was as simple as barreling his car through the gates of the factory where they had been keeping his little girl, and bashing in heads until they agreed to leave him and his daughter alone. He pictured a man with Callum’s coloring, but with thick muscles and cold, mean eyes. He pictured that man lying on the ground in a pool of blood, unable to ever hurt his daughter again.
This was the feeling that had driven him through the remainder of his childhood after Mary’s death, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, until he had joined the military in a last-ditch attempt to save himself, or at least get him away from the people he cared about. He had thought it was gone, tamed, but it had only ever been suppressed. Now it flooded through him as if it had never left. He wanted to hurt them for taking his daughter. He wanted to burn the world down for bringing him back to this same place again, making him stand by and watch helplessly as the people he loved suffered.
He tried to slow down his ragged breathing. He closed his eyes and counted his breaths until they steadied. But when he opened his eyes again, nothing had changed. They were still here in this cabin, waiting for a solution that wasn’t going to appear.
Maybe it was his imagination, but it looked like Callum had edged away from him a little. “Are you okay?” Callum asked. “For a minute there, you looked… different. Scary.”
The nervous sound in Callum’s voice jabbed straight into his heart like a knife. He didn’t want this… this thing inside him anywhere near Callum. He didn’t want Callum to know it existed. He had to get back some of the discipline he had lost, or this would poison his relationship with Callum just like it had with Carrie.
Neither he nor Carrie had been in a very healthy place, back then. He had been angry at the world for taking first his sister and then his parents, who weren’t dead but were lost to him all the same—and even angrier at himself for being the reason for it all. And if he and the world were both worthless, if they had both failed him, then he might as well burn them both to the ground. Carrie had buried her own pain so deeply that she never fully shared it with him, or, he suspected, with herself. Instead she had hidden it under alcohol and laughter and sex. They had found each other in the last week of high school, and stayed together several months until some fight or other had driven them apart. A couple of months later they had both ended up at the same party; that time it had only lasted several weeks before the next screaming match and the vows never to speak to each other again. They had gone on like that for years, in a complicated dance of attraction and repulsion, until Carrie got pregnant and they both resigned themselves to keeping up the dance for the rest of their lives.
Until something—Tom couldn’t even remember what—had made him angry enough, in the middle of one of their screaming fights, that he had started to storm out of the apartment, telling her he was never coming back, the same old pattern all over again. She had screamed out after him, reminding him that he couldn’t leave, that she was pregnant now. He had come back inside, and slammed the door behind him, and put his fist straight through the wall. And Carrie had looked at him with mingled fear and contempt as he pulled his hand free.
It wasn’t the first time she had looked at him like that, either—that was the worst part. It was familiar. He had been seeing that look on her face for years. He had never given her a reason to respect him. He had never given her a reason not to be afraid of him. And in another few years, he knew, his child would be looking at him with that same expression.
He had never, would never, lay a hand on Carrie. That didn’t matter. It didn’t mean he was a good person for a child to grow up with. Carrie deserved better, and so did their child. So in the middle of the night, when she wasn’t awake to stop him, he had done what he had been threatening to do—he left. But he hadn’t done what he normally did after one of their breakups: spend the next couple of weeks getting so drunk he couldn’t see and showing up at various friends’ doors ranting about the evils of relationships in general and Carrie in particular. Instead he had joined the army. It was the one way he could think of to make sure he couldn’t go back to Carrie and his unborn child no matter how tempted he was—and some deeply-buried part of him had sensed that if he took this path, he might be able to contain the poison inside of him.
He had been right. The army’s strict discipline had given him something he had never known he needed, and he had found capabilities he had never suspected he possessed. He became a person he could look at in the mirror every morning without flinching away. His old self was a relic of the past, and his only connection to that self was the daughter he couldn’t see.
“Tom?” Callum’s voice reached him from what felt like a thousand miles away. “Are you still there?”
Tom forced himself back to the present moment. “I’m worried, that’s all,” he said, with what he hoped was a reassuring expression.
Callum frowned, like he didn’t quite buy Tom’s easy answer, but he didn’t say anything else.
“We have to take the risk and contact Carrie,” said Tom. “It’s the only way.” They had to do something, or he was going to self-destruct before the Syndicate ever found them.
Callum shook his head. “Not yet. It’s not safe.”
“Then I have to take Leila away myself. I can contact Carrie when it’s safe, and face whatever consequences I have to. If she wants to have me arrested for kidnapping, I’ll accept that. As long as Leila is safe.” He tried not to think about Carrie sitting alone in her apartment—for months? years?—wondering whether her daughter was still alive. He tried not to to think about Leila attempting to adjust to a new home and a new school while living with a father she barely knew.
Callum shook his head. “That’s not the right answer, and you know it.”
“Then what is?”
Callum hesitated. “I have an idea.”
“Tell me,” Tom encouraged, when Callum didn’t continue.
Callum didn’t meet his eyes as he spoke. “I go back. I confess to helping you. I can say I changed my mind and… and killed you. You and Leila both. He doesn’t want her dead, but I don’t think he’d care that much, as long as the problem was solved. And if he thinks I’ve toughened up enough to kill for him, he might even forgive me betraying him.” His voice sped up, as if to keep Tom from voicing any objections. “We’ll figure out some kind of proof to give him. That will give Carrie time to get out with Leila. Of course, you’ll have to run too. I know your shop means a lot to you—”
As if that was the problem with Callum’s idea.
“No,” Tom said before Callum could get any further. “That’s not going to happen.”
“It could work. And it might be our best chance.”
Tom shook his head. “We’ll find another option.” There had to be something else. Anything else. Something that didn’t involve Callum putting himself back in the hands of his family.
Callum started to respond, then froze. “We may have to figure it out sooner than we thought,” he said, his voice tight.
Tom followed Callum’s gaze to the window, just as the car came to a stop.
The bright red car, all sleek lines that promised money and power, looked as shiny as if it had never left the dealer’s lot. It looked much too conspicuous for someone who had been sent to kill them. But why else would someone be coming here?
“Another of your father’s goons?” Tom asked, watching the dark-haired man step out of the driver’s seat.
Callum shook his head. “No,” he said, in a tone of dazed disbelief. “That’s my brother.”