“Y’know, I couldn’t figure out why you were acting so suspicious. Refusing to talk, refusing to hand over your phone without a warrant. Now I get it. You were drawing attention to yourself so we wouldn’t look at your son. This whole thing’s been about protecting Grayson.”
Allison Brice waits behind the glass, hands pressed inside her coat pockets. Grayson stands still in front of the Live Scan terminal, the glass plate glowing faintly blue as the technician gestures for his hand. He hesitates just a beat, long enough for the moment to feel heavier than it should, before pressing his fingers down one by one, rolling them over the scanner. The machine hums softly, a sterile, electronic sound, capturing every whorl and ridge, all the minutiae of his skin.
Cutty leans into Louise’s ear. “I think we found her kryptonite,” he says. “I think we may have found our guy,too.”
The Day Before April Fools’Day
50
Luke
I drop into the next set before my brain can talk me out of it: twenty push-ups, fast, chest to floor, breath burning in my throat.
You’ve still got command, kid, but the zip—that late life on your fastball—it isn’t there.
Sweat runs down my temples and drips onto the mat, little dark splatters keeping time with my pulse. I flip over, crunches, then bicycles, then that damn plank that makes every muscle in my core quiver.
Your mechanics are clean, Luke, but the radar gun doesn’t lie.
Jump squats next, twenty of them, legs burning. Then alternating lunges, long and controlled until my quads are shaking.
Look, you’re smart, you’re gritty, you’re coachable. But without that extra seven, eight miles per hour, scouts aren’t coming.
No free weights today, just gravity, body weight, and the stubborn need to push until my mind shuts off Allison, Finley, betrayals and backstabbings and lies and secrets.
I collapse in my second bedroom, wiping sweat from my eyes with a towel. Maybe the workout will help me with sleep, which has come in fits lately.
My phone buzzes. It’s Grayson, of all people. Haven’t heard fromhim in a while. Whatever my current feelings toward his mother, I can’t project them onto him. Nor can I reveal anything to him. The kid adores his mother.
“Hey, buddy,” I say into the phone.
“Luke?” His voice sounds broken, shaky, high-pitched.
I snap to alert. “I’m here, Gray, what’s up?”
“I—I—I…fuck. I don’t know who else to talk to,” he says.
“You can always talk to me, kiddo. Anything. Tell me.”
“Um…” His voice is shaking. “I’m in town.”
“You are? You came home for spring break? I thought you were—”
“I’m in Chicago, downtown. Nothomehome. A bunch of us came in town for a few days, got a hotel room. Last-minute. I didn’t tell Mom. More of a guys’ thing.”
“Oh, I didn’t—”
“What’s going on with Mom and Dad? Are they, like, broken up?”
Two instincts pull me in opposite directions. One is the uncle in me, the one who wants to shield him, keep him out of the blast radius, tell him everything’s fine so he can stay a kid a little longer. The other is the brother in me, the one who knows exactly how bad things have gotten and hates the idea of lying to him.
“Gray, did you talk to your mother?”
“No. I just saw Dad.”
“Well, what did he say?”
“I didn’ttalkto him. Isawhim. He didn’t see me.”
