Page 138 of Prodigal Son

But she couldn’t. She had no idea where to begin.

“Thanks,” she said again, softer, and when he didn’t acknowledge her, she turned for the door.

Mercy shrugged apologetically, as if to say,What can you do?

Cass walked back to her room feeling even more unsettled, and a little breathless, and a little fizzy, like she’d drunk too much Coke.

Whatever that feeling meant, she had a sense he’d wind up in her dreams after all.

~*~

Albie had put just enough whiskey in his coffee to take the sharp edges off his pain. He sat at the island in the kitchen, staring down into his mug, working up the…not courage. Because this didn’t feel like something brave he had to do. And he wasn’t really afraid. But his feet didn’t want to move, and he hadn’t found the words yet, so he sat, and he waited, and over in the pantry, just as all their other captives had, sat his brother. His new brother, the unknown one. Taped, and chained, and not going anywhere. Nicky had said he’d awakened about an hour ago, but had refused food or drink.

“Maybe he’s not,” Axelle said, quietly, across from him.

“You saw him.” And so had he. So had all of them. He might have dismissed his own vision – half that it was – as a hallucination. But for Fox to think it…and Phil…

No. That kid in there was their brother, no doubt.

“He’s young,” she said.

“Seventeen. Maybe eighteen,” he agreed wearily.

She didn’t say anything else, and that was good; he was honestly tired of her trying to put any sort of comforting spin on this.

He was tired of everything, really.

He threw down the rest of his coffee and got unsteadily to his feet. He heard Axelle’s stool scrape back, like she was coming to help him, and he waved her off without looking.

He didn’t know what sort of face she made – he didn’t risk looking – but he needed to do this alone.

He felt ancient, walking along on bent knees, felt naked without his usual grace. He stepped into the pantry and dismissed Nicky with a nod of his head. Eased the door shut after him.

The boy tied to the chair lifted his head, and stared at him with that same emotionless calm as Reese. Alive, but not human.

Albie leaned back against the shut door. He would have to speak first, he realized. Of course he would. A good little soldier would never open his mouth out of turn.

It would have been awkward to stare at a normal stranger, but this boy was no such thing, so Albie looked. Scrutinized him, head to toe, from his undercut – the glossy dark hair on the top of his head that looked so much like Charlie’s – to the shape of his nose, the angle of his jaw. He was lanky, taller than Albie, and Fox, and most of them, really, but underfed. Where his shirt had slipped, prominent collarbones showed, the shadows beneath them so deep they looked like bruises.

Everything about him struck a chord, plucked at memories, all of him achingly familiar. He saw Tommy in his cheekbones, and Miles in his chin, and Fox in the careless sprawl of his hips, even though he was tied up. But the eyes were the true evidence.

There was no denying he was Devin Green’s son.

“What’s your name?” Albie asked.

The boy stared back, unrepentant. But not defiant. Albie kept struggling to find labels that didn’t compare him to a loyal attack dog. “They call me Emerald. And Subject.”

“They call you that to your face?”

He tipped his head in silent question, trying to parse out what Albie meant.

“That’s how they address you when they speak to you?”

A beat. “They call me that when they talk to each other.”

Albie took a breath. “What do you call yourself in your head?”

He blinked, and didn’t answer.

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