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"It's cheesy alright," Lea agreed with a smile. "But it is also accurate."
"I worry what prison could have done to that part of him," Dusty went on, blinking hard at the tears that were swimming in her eyes. "It's nothing. Just the hormones," she insisted, shaking her head.
It wasn't.
We all felt it.
It was always my deepest fear. Not for myself. I knew I would get by well enough. It was what I had always worried about for my brother. I worried it would make Kingston hard, would take away the goodness. I worried it would steal Rush's humor. I worried it would turn Nixon and Atlas, make real hardened criminals out of them.
So while I didn't know Eli for long enough before his incarceration to truly feel how they did, I could relate.
It was all of twenty minutes later when Charlie and Helen's late model black SUV pulled up.
There was a mix of both hope and fear in my belly, making it feel like it dropped and swirled simultaneously as all the women seemed to move forward at once on numb legs.
There was a long second where we knew nothing. The windows were darkened. We could barely even make out Charlie and Helen, let alone anyone possibly in the back seat.
But then the front doors open and out walked Charlie and Helen.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Five.
No one was in the backseat.
"Oh, no," Lea said, voice a hiss.
Charlie looked at his sons, face blank. Helen's, oddly, was equally blank. She wasn't devastated as we were expecting if things went a different way than we had all been hoping.
"He wasn't fucking there," Charlie hissed, looking bewildered. "We got there before the prison night lights even went off for the day. Sat right outside the front. Finally, I was worried they were closing so I went in and they said he was already released, that we must have just missed him."
"We watched all day," Helen said, shaking her head.
"Maybe he was counting on that," Ryan said, looking like he was holding it together for the most part. But that was Ryan for you- strong, stalwart, calm, able to detach himself from situations so he could keep a clear head. "If he didn't want to be seen, maybe he shaved his head. Maybe he changed just enough to slip by unnoticed into a cab or bus."
"Where would he go?" Helen asked. "Back to his place?"
"I will go and check," Shane declared, giving Lea a look.
There was a loud ringing in Charlie's back pocket, making Shane freeze mid-stride and turn back as Charlie, a very composed man, fumbled for his phone, hope clear on his face.
"Mallick," he clipped into the phone.
We didn't see relief though.
In fact, it was maybe the first time in six years that I saw Charlie Mallick slip into loanshark-mode, criminal-mode. In general, the men kept that stuff away from the women and kids as much as possible. I had seen it in Mark and Shane here and there, when they got a call about a job that needed to be handled. I even saw it when Mark came home after a job, carefully burning his clothes, washing all traces off his body, then bleaching the bathroom.
But it was a whole other thing to see it on Charlie, on the man I had long since started to see as my father figure.
It was almost shocking to see the sweet, caring, loving grandfather to my kids go cold so fast.
"Lo?" he asked, not because he needed that clarity for himself, I didn't think, but because he wanted his sons and wife to know who was calling him.
And me, well, I had been in Navesink Bank long enough to finally understand the careful power dynamic of all the syndicates in the town.
There were The Henchmen MC, allies, gun-running bikers.
There was Richard Lyon and his cocaine.
Once upon a time, there was Lex Keith and his evil, and some twisted fuck known as V as well, both long-since dealt with.
There was Breaker, the contract muscle, and Shooter, the sniper.
There were the Grassis and their docks.
There was Third Street and their hookers and heroin.
Then, well, there was Lo and Hailstorm who were in a league all their own. They had their hands in a little bit of everything. But they were this machine, this thing full of well-oiled parts and highly trained people.
If Lo was personally calling, it could not have been good.
"What? You've got to be fucking kidding me, Lo."
I knew the feeling that was in my stomach right then. I had lived with it every single day for ten years.
Dread.
"Marco?" he said, again, for his sons' benefits.
That name meant nothing to me, and I turned helplessly to the women at my side.
It was Lea who looked the most concerned and Lea who first spoke.
"Right before Eli went away. And I mean right before," she said, looking at me. "There was this shit going down with The Henchmen and Lex Keith and all that crap you've had to have heard stories about. What you might not have heard was that Janie's, Lo's favorite protege, man Wolf had gotten himself pulled in by this cop on a fucking power trip. And something about him didn't sit right with Janie. She was desperate, so she came to Charlie to ask for him for help in, ah, extracting some information."
