Page 48 of Prodigal Son

To be fair, Raven did have a point. Her argument was that by intercepting their tail and acting as protection escort, Albie and Tommy had effectively claimed the Rover, and its occupants, as their own. Their people – theirs to protect. Which meant Raven was now officially tied, like it or not, to the Dogs. In a game of stealth, it was a complicating factor.

“Come on,” Albie said, voice maddeningly even, “do you really think they didn’t already know you were mixed up in this?”

“They might not have!”

“Use your head. If they know who Dad is, then they know who all of his children are. Up ‘til now, they’ve probably been content to leave us be because they know none of us are on speaking terms with him. But that’s changed now. So.” He shrugged.Do the math, his expression seemed to say.

Raven pressed her lips into a thin, pale line and opened and closed her fists a few times. Finally, she made an inarticulate sound of frustration and spun away from him. Paced over toward the wall, arms folded tight across her body.

Albie came to join the two of them by the Rover, and Axelle made sure her gaze was fixed on an innocuous bit of brickwork on the rear façade of the building.

“Well, congrats,” he said with a sigh, and it took her a moment to realize he was talking to her. When she looked at his face, his expression was one of weary resignation. “It looks like you’re in this now.”

She felt her back bowing up and worked to keep her voice neutral. Not as neutral as his, but she didn’t think that was possible. “I was ‘in this’ the second your dad stole that file.”

He sighed again, but didn’t contradict her, which was both surprising, and sapped some of her anger. “Raven’s going to keep digging. And I guess you’re stuck playing her assistant.”

“Not like I have another choice,” she shot back.

He lifted his head and made eye contact. His eyes were glass-colored in the weak sunlight. “No,” he said, and gooseflesh broke out down her arms, “you don’t.”

~*~

They’d taken one of the featureless club utility vans, a decision which Fox regretted deeply at this point, because it meant they were all cooped up together in one space.

“You’ve got to find a way to calculate the wind speed,” Devin was saying in the back seat.

“I know that,” Evan countered, huffing in frustration.

“But do you, though? You have to have a way to measure it. Look: you take a little bit of ribbon, like this–”

“Pothole.”

“What?” Fox pulled his gaze away from the rearview mirror – Devin was using a paper straw wrapper he’d found on the floor to demonstrate the use of flags and bits of cloth to gauge the wind speed and direction – just in time to see the massive pothole looming in the road ahead. There was an oncoming car, and a wall to his left; no chance to swerve. He gritted his teeth, let up on the accelerator, and they hit it head-on.

The van jumped.

“Hey!” two voices chorused from the backseat.

Eden braced her arm along the window and looked like she was trying not to laugh. “I did warn you about it,” she said, mildly.

“Yes, and what a help it was.”

After some grumbling – “I’m an old man, Charlie, I can’t just be bashed about anymore, honestly” – the sniping conversation picked up again in the backseat, and that left Fox alone with Eden and his own thoughts.

Of the two, his mind was more disturbing.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Eden said. She sounded sincere.

The thing about it was: Fox was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. Sure, he’d tell little lies here and there when he was running an op; that was just part of the game. But in his daily life, with his club brothers and his family, he was always honest. Blunt, yes, often unemotional, even disconnected – there were some wires crossed the wrong way in his brain, and he knew it. The way he didn’t always leap to the most obvious human emotion in a given situation.

He’d always thought Devin was like that too: honest and wrong. He wondered if the other twelve were like that too. If something had been – been done to them. To make them that way.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to say until he opened his mouth, only that it was a vulnerable kind of truth. He said, “I haven’t been to visit Abe in a long time.”

Her brows jumped in surprise. “Your old martial arts instructor?”

“Yeah, he’s that. But he was also in Project Emerald.”

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