Page 35 of Among the Sins of my Father

“There were signs they were holding someone in a bunker in the backyard,” Conway adds. The bet he places is a large one. I match it, earning a raised brow from him as I slide the chips into the middle of the table. “We haven’t found the son yet, but we have our suspicions.” Conway mimics a motion of someone hanging. “It’s almost as though someone wanted to wipe out the entire family.”

“You don’t think it was the father that did it?” The news anchor asks.

Conway laughs. “Now don’t you go reporting on any of this. As far as you’re concerned all this is just hearsay. I don’t think drunken conversations around a poker table can count as a credible source.”

My phone vibrates and I slide it out of my pocket just enough to read the message. It’s Barrett. He’s found her. An immense wave of relief rushes through me. It wasn’t retaliation. She really was just holed up somewhere drugged out of her mind.

My chair slides noisily across the floor as I get to my feet. Folding my hand, I throw it on the table. “Sorry lads, but duty calls.” I lift my phone as though its presence alone provides proof of my need to leave. “It’s been a pleasure.” I doff an imaginary hat.

Conway grins, knowing I’ve just left a sizeable amount on the table. He thinks he has one over me. I nod in his direction.

“All the best for your investigation.”

“Which one?” His brow hitches at the same time his smirk does. I swallow back the urge to whack it from his face.

“All of them.”

Barrett is waiting in the car by the time I make my way through the crowd and outside the club. He merely nods in acknowledgment when I climb into the passenger’s seat and pulls back onto the road.

“Where is she?”

“The warehouse on the corner of—”

“I thought we checked that place out earlier,” I say, cutting him off.

“We did.”

I adjust myself on the seat. I cannot get Conway’s smirk out of my mind. It’s clear he knows more about me than I thought. Or at least he suspects things of me. It’s like there’s a piece of the puzzle I’m not aware of. Mary hasn’t spoken to the police, of that I’m sure. It’s reported that she’s gone to stay with her brother who has been keeping the police far from her while allowing her to recover. Barrett was clumsy for the first time ever. We haven’t spoken about it. There’s no point. It is what it is. Mary survived. It’s a complication. Nothing more.

We use our phones as torches when we enter the building. Barrett takes me straight to where Alice is lying on a discarded mattress. She’s warm, she’s breathing, but there’s little else to indicate her consciousness. The strip of material around her arm has been loosened. There’s a needle on the ground. It’s a state I’ve found her in many times before.

I crouch down, placing my hand on her forehead. I don’t know why I do it. I think it’s some sort of throwback to the times I felt like I had a mother. The times I was sick, lying in bed and she would come and press her hand to my brow and shake her head, declaring I still had a temperature. It didn’t happen often, but those times still replay in my head. I think my memories confused the times of sickness with affection.

She’s small and frail in my arms as I lift her. It’s almost unfathomable to think that this creature was the one to give me life. It’s always felt the other way around to me.

“Hospital?” Barrett pulls the door open so I can place her in the back seat of the car.

“Call the doctor and get him to meet us back at the Sanctuary. She’s coming home.”

“What about the lad?”

“It’s time Gideon knows the truth.”

“That’s a change of tune for you.”

I shrug as I shut the door on the limp body of my mother in the back seat and climb into the front passenger’s seat.

There have been a lot of changes in me recently. And it’s all because of her. Berkley. For the first time in my life, I’ve got someone I want to make happy. I want to see her smile and know that I was the one who put it there. I’ve never felt that way before. I’ve always been driven by my need to find Hope, my desire for revenge. It was my sole focus. It’s only now, because of her, that I’ve begun to see things differently.

For the first time ever, when I think about the future, about what I want in life, there is an image in my mind. And it’s of Berkley.

Berkley laughing.

Berkley crying.

Berkley dancing.

Berkley sleeping.

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