With Bonnie in the middle of the road—granted, there was no other traffic—Hunt cracked open the passenger door but didn’t push it open.
Bobo was still standing on my lap and his head lifted as he stiffened with sudden alertness—blocking the front window. I wrestled him out of my view while glancing through the side windows across my friends’ laps. I didn’t manage to make sense of whatever was going on before Hunt pushed his door the rest of the way open and jumped out of it, immediately breaking into a run.
“What’s going on?” I asked urgently, but Brady was already pushing open his door to follow, and Griffin and Layla were getting out, too. When Griffin reached his hand back in to me, Bobo stared up at me, waiting for my permission to go.
“Good boy,” I said in a hurry. “Go. Follow.”
From my lap in the middle, he leapt out onto the ground, waiting for me.
The second I was out, I whirled in Griffin’s arms, trying to look everywhere at once and asking, “What the hell’s happening?”
For the second time today, a man was running with such desperation and scrambled speed it could only mean he believed he was running for his life.
The administration slash office building was at his back as he scrambled down a steep hill.
“Do you see who’s chasing him?” I asked Griffin and Layla, who remained beside the car with me, trying to make sense of the scene before we ran out into possible danger. Hunt was already running toward the man, Brady jogging more slowly after him.
“No,” Griffin said. “I see no one. Let’s go.”
As we all ran toward him, the man noticed us and switched direction to aim for us and our car.
But when his attention crawled across Hunt, he stumbled and fell to his knees, his mouth agape for a few seconds before he pushed up to his feet to continue running.
“Holy fuck,” I mumbled under my breath as the man and Hunt intersected, both stuttering to a halt to gape at each other.
Even with a good twenty feet still separating us from them, their resemblance was obvious.
The man and Hunt shared the same sharp nose and high cheekbones, although Hunt was a little leaner than the older man, who appeared to be in his mid-forties. Their hair was the same shiny black, their skin a similar brown, their eyes dark. They were both tall, although Hunt had a couple of inches on the other man.
“Holy motherfucking shitballs,” Layla breathed. “Is that … ?”
“His father?” Griffin whispered so reverently I didn’t want to correct him to say “sperm donor.”
Two men simply could not look this much alike and not be related.
The stranger was studying Hunt like he was seeing a ghost. Gingerly, he reached for Hunt with both hands. His long hair had come partially free of the long braid that draped down his back, framing the wildness in his eyes; they burned with the urge to flee while being apparently unable to look away from Hunt.
Brady, Griffin, Layla, Bobo, and I all drew up around Hunt as his father cleared his throat and rasped, “Son?”
Hunt’s throat bobbed while his forehead bunched into lines. “I … think so?”
The man’s eyes, a darker tone than Hunt’s chocolate brown, glistened. His voice was an awed croak. “How truly mighty the Great Spirit is. I believed you were lost to me forever, my son.”
“I was told you were dead.”
The man’s lips pursed, making the fact that they were thinner than Hunt’s more apparent. “Lies.”
“Is someone after you?” I interjected. In his shock, the man seemed to have forgotten whatever he was fleeing. “Do we need to help you get out of here?”
When his eyes landed on me, they widened. “You.”
I flinched until he added, “You walk my dreams. I thought you were a witch come to steal them.”
“Nope, no witch here.”
He studied me for several seconds we probably didn’t have to waste before nodding. “Not a witch. You look like the white man, but my ancestors stand with you.”
“Your ancestors of the Eastern Band Cherokee?” Hunt asked.
