Page 3 of The Big Fix

“I know, but c’mon,” I’d teased him, “it looks like dinner to me, kid. I can get lost so you can make—”

“No,” he’d snapped, pivoting and returning to the kitchen, where he told David how much he appreciated the files being dropped off, basically excusing the handsome young man from our home. I would not have let him go if I were Owen’s age. He was pretty, and as he walked to the front door, he gave me a smile.

At fifty-six, I had no business even looking at men that young. Forty was as low as I went, and even that made me slightly uncomfortable. A twenty-year age difference shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. For starters, there was the whole issue of my musical preferences, and that was only the tip of the iceberg. Dating someone younger was fraught with challenges, and I honestly didn’t have the energy. At this point in my life, I wanted to exert energy in the field, not in my personal life. The exception, of course, being Owen. I would turn myself inside out for Owen.

Standing there now, alone, I ran everything back in my brain, trying to figure out what I’d done to elicit the reaction I got. I’d brought up the DEA hack because it had been weighing on me for months. We hardly ever talked anymore, but since he was pissed at me anyway, I thought why not go for the teachable moment. I should have known better, though usually he took it just like the others who worked for me. But suddenly he turned on me like a feral cat, defending himself and attacking me at the same time. My normal was to try and coach instead of blame, but he was decidedly not accepting the constructive criticism like he usually did. I couldn’t imagine what I could have done to piss him off. There was no moment I could point to where I could see the night taking a turn. All I’d done was walk through the goddamn door. When had my home become such a battlefield?

Most of the time, to help mitigate any kind of disagreement, I followed him. I would knock on his door, and when he gave me permission to step inside, only then would I enter. I’d take a seat in the wingback chair in his room, put my feet up on the ottoman, and we’d talk and figure out whatever the problem was.

It hit me suddenly that I was living in the past. How long had it been since the last time I’d done that?

Walking down the hall to his room, I knocked gently and waited.

“I’m going out,” he said through the door. “I’ll see you later.”

“Owen,” I said softly. “Please, let’s just talk. We’ve always been able to talk.”

The door was thrown open, and he had a backpack and a jacket on. It was the end of September now, so the temperature was starting to drop a bit. “I don’t wanna talk to you,” he admitted sadly. “I’m all talked out.”

“How? We hardly ever talk.”

“No,” he disagreed, biting out his words. “We talk all the time, but you don’t hear me. You never listen.”

But that wasn’t me. “I always listen to you,” I insisted. “Please, let’s go get pie or something and you can explain about whatever this is.”

His eyes went so cold, I was startled. “I’m not a child. I’m more than man enough.”

“Man enough for what?” I barked at him.

“For you,” he said flatly, his eyes searching mine before he charged down the hall. I heard the front door slam and his Mustang roar to life a moment later.

I stood there, unsure of what had just transpired and having no idea what to do. What the hell was “for you” supposed to mean? Did he want me to see him as combat ready? Did he want to go into the field with me? Was he waiting for an invitation to accompany me on ops where I sometimes partnered with the military that were insanely dangerous and where he could be killed? Because if so, that was never going to happen. I’d lost his parents, who’d been close, dear friends of mine, and if he thought I would let them down by not keeping their son safe—forever—he was insane. And since Owen could never be accused of that—crazy was not something he was—and as he’d never even alluded to wanting to fight by my side… I really was lost in the tall weeds. But perhaps it was best to ask. At least then I would know.

Of course, when I called him, it went directly to voice mail. I left one, asking if that was what this was. If his man-enough comment had something to do with combat. Perhaps he thought I considered him weak or something else equally ridiculous.

I checked to see where his phone was, and there was nothing. He’d turned off the location feature. When I checked my backup, the GPS I had on his phone and car, both were dead as well. It wasn’t surprising; if Owen wanted to still be on the grid but look like he was off, he could. He was very gifted, and he’d had many legitimate—as well as criminal—offers for his services over the years. I was always impressed with his skills, but now they were being used against me, and I was not a fan. It made no sense that he would want to worry me. His rage made no sense. This was Owen, my friend Owen. My murdered friends’ kid.

I had saved him when he was ten, then kept an eye on him after dropping him off with his grandparents. I suggested he see a therapist, told them to contact me for any emergency, physical or financial, and they had appreciated my concern. But the truth of the matter was, their daughter had been killed because of their son-in-law Ronan’s work. As mine was technically the same, they really didn’t want me involved in Owen’s life. It made sense, and I didn’t begrudge them their choice. The hard, cold facts were that I could not have been a parent or guardian to Owen. I was entrenched in my life with Army Intelligence and had no time for anything else. I certainly couldn’t have taken care of a traumatized ten-year-old boy.

Eight years later, when I got the call from his grandmother that Owen was in trouble—terrible, life-altering trouble—I was there immediately. I’d been surprised to find FBI agents at the jail in St. Paul, Minnesota. Owen Moss was a wanted hacker, and he was going to jail for twenty years at the very least. They were trying to prove more of the crimes they suspected him of, hoping to put him away even longer. But I had enough clout not to let them.

After that, with some guidance, Owen had turned into a well-rounded, smart young man. He got a master’s degree from MIT in Computational Science and Engineering, and he was funny, tender-hearted, could quote poetry, and his head was full of so many facts, I always told him he’d be a winner on Jeopardy! He was fluent in five languages—I was most impressed with the Japanese, having tried and failed myself many times. He had a TikTok with four or five million followers who religiously watched his videos about different kinds of tech. Owen would break down everything from video games and consoles to spy cameras and computer hardware. Since we had amazing gadgets we used almost daily, he was always showing people how things worked.

His Instagram was devoted to his second-favorite interest, which was travel. The account was full of his trips, where he traveled to and the economical way he’d done it, as well as the people he met and the kindness he received. There was food, and off-the-path hidden gems, and so many glorious pictures of sunsets and castles and cottages lost in the woods. He was simply a wonderful man, and more than that, he was fun. He was an extrovert, and there was no possible way that anyone could say no to Owen Moss. He could talk about anime and Wicca, the stock market, education, different law-enforcement agencies, conspiracies he truly believed in, the possibility of alien life, and computer coding. Owen could talk for days about how he could make a computer sing. That, of course, led to hacking, which was what we’d been arguing about.

Last December, he’d hacked into the DEA database because he’d been looking into a person of interest a client of ours had come in contact with, and whom we had reason to look into ourselves when Owen realized that everything about the guy had seemed far too easily accessible. His whole life had been out there waiting for anyone to find. Normally, that meant it was a cover, and as soon as Owen started digging, he was proven right. The problem became that when he saw he’d reached a firewall, instead of letting me know so I could have a conversation with someone in my extensive network of friends, he blasted right on through. Getting a frantic, spitting-nails phone call from an old friend who was now the principal deputy administrator of the DEA was not fun. The fact that she could have sent federal marshals to take Owen into custody and put him in jail for the rest of his life but didn’t, in deference to me, was damn nice of her. And once I explained that one of her guys was missing, her volume had lowered. But that didn’t mean Owen wasn’t on a watch list now. All the federal agencies knew who he was, and though I suspected he was slowly getting rid of the notices that referred to him by name, I had not questioned him about it.

If I was being honest, I wasn’t questioning him because every time we talked, it blew up. I had no idea why, but communicating with him lately was like walking through a minefield. We would sit together, and I’d be telling him about something and asking him about his day, when a comment would set him off and he’d go silent on me. Worse, he’d get up and retreat to his room, and I’d be left alone.

I thought, perhaps, that sharing space with me was the problem. He was a man, I was a man, and we were basically roommates. Maybe he didn’t want to be here. Maybe he needed his own space, his own house. Just because he called our home home didn’t mean he wanted to be here anymore. And I understood, I did. He couldn’t very well have an orgy in the living room while I was having pizza and beer and watching Netflix. There were milestones he was missing by living with me, and perhaps he resented me for that. But whenever I broached the subject of him getting his own place, that would set him off too. There was no winning. And then the situation came up with the hacking of the DEA, and suddenly I was just as mad as he was. It had become the subject everything came back to.

But now, being cut off from him, in the dark as to where he was, was driving me nuts. He knew better. He knew I had an issue with him being alone out in the world. I could not lose him. I could not fail his parents. Not again.

I dozed off and on all night, sitting on my usual end of the sectional in the living room, but the following morning, when he still wasn’t home, I broke down and called Margaret Tomlin, Owen’s best friend since his first semester at MIT. She picked up on the second ring.

“Hi, Mr. Colter, what’s shakin’?”

I had always liked her. She was a child of nature, her parents both practicing witches, organic farmers, and holistic healers. “Maggie,” I greeted her warmly. “I was wondering if you’ve heard from Owen.”