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“You can’t,” Colin said. “You can’t ask that of him. It wouldn’t make sense to you anyway.”
“And it makes sense to you?” Joe asked.
“Parts of it. I don’t claim to understand everything, but I understand some.”
Talon.
The name popped into my mind.
Talon might understand.
But Talon wasn’t here. He was in Denver with his sons, and he was living a good and happy life.
I wasn’t about to suggest he be brought into this mess.
“Why are you here, then?” I asked. “If you’re not going to give us the information we want, why?”
“I came to speak to Jade,” Colin said. “To say goodbye, probably forever. Cade and I are going away.”
“Together?”
“Not ‘together’ together. Just as two men who have something in common and need to heal. Far away from here.”
“Why?” Marj asked.
“My therapist suggested I get away, take some time to relax and truly work through what happened to me,” Colin said. “Cade showed up in Glenwood Springs where I was staying, and we talked.”
“You mean he didn’t try to harm you?”
“I thought about it,” Booker admitted. “But Colin was frightened, and when I looked at him…”
He saw himself. He didn’t have to utter the words. It was written in the sunken depths of his eyes. He saw another victim of Tom Simpson.
He saw someone who understood.
Colin continued, “I convinced him to come with me. We can work through this together. My therapist has arranged for us to work with his colleague in Bora Bora. We both have the money to do it. We have a lot in common.”
True. What they had in common was my father.
“And we’re supposed to just let you walk out of here,” Joe said.
“Yeah, you are,” Booker said. “The worst I’ve done is pepper spray the two of you and send some emails.”
“You stalked a little boy on the playground,” Marj reminded him.
“I didn’t stalk anyone,” Booker said.
“So that wasn’t you? You didn’t leave evidence to incriminate your brother, your sister, and Colin?”
“I did,” he said. “I was angry. I was hurt. Yeah, I took the cufflink I’d stolen from Tom the last time I saw him. I took one of my brother’s baseball cards and my sister’s stupid pet rock. I left them there to be found. But I swear I wasn’t there to hurt the kid. I recognized the boy. I wanted to make sure he was okay.”
“Right,” Joe scoffed.
“You have no idea. I saw what they did to him. What he went through. They made me…”
“Stop it,” Colin said. “He’s had enough.”
“No way,” I said. “They made you…what?”
