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The light in the outer office flicked off as the power went out. The computers stopped humming. Even the dim blue light of the new coffeemaker blinked off. Luke’s computer, however, continued to hum thanks to the battery backup they’d installed earlier today. Luke couldn’t very well catch the kid noodling with his system if Simon couldn’t turn it on.
Luke kept his eyes pinned on the shadow at the window. They’d purposely not repaired the lock yet, but it was on Luke’s list of things to do as soon as they put whatever this was behind them.
The window squeaked open and a small head poked into the narrow opening. Another couple of months and Simon wouldn’t be able to pull this off. Luke almost chuckled as he watched the kid struggle to wedge himself through.
More grunting erupted before Simon dropped through the small opening and rolled into the room. The boy clicked on a small flashlight and headed to Luke’s desk, pulling the chair under him. He squiggled the mouse around to activate the computer.
The tap tap tap of keys told him Simon was a faster typist then he was, which was a bit of a knock to his ego. When it was obvious Simon was engrossed in what he was doing on the computer, Jake gave him a quick kick in the leg. Luke sat back as Jake pushed to his feet, walked to the office door and raised his industrial-strength flashlight. The older man shone the beam right in Simon’s shocked face.
“Grandpa!” Simon snatched his hands off the keyboard and shoved them under his thighs as if the action would prove him innocent of any wrongdoing.
Luke pulled out his cell and called Fletch. “Yeah, we’re done. Hit the power. Thanks.”
The desk light buzzed on again and Luke headed to his office to flick the overhead light to blaring. “Evening, Simon.” He lounged against the door frame and felt more than a little sympathy as Simon turned fearful eyes from his grandfather to him. “You have some explaining to do.”
* * *
“OH, MAN, I’M getting old,” Holly murmured as she stretched and opened her eyes. Falling asleep on the couch before eight was pathetic. Thirty wasn’t supposed to be old. Thirty was supposed to be energetic and full of life, not conking out sooner than your kid, who’d managed to scarf down half a large pizza in the time it took to close down the first act of Buzbee Bunnies and the Galactic Raiders.
Holly sat up, straightened her crooked slipshod ponytail and rubbed her eyes. “Simon?”
He wasn’t in the living room. He had taken their plates and the leftover pizza into the kitchen, an action Holly found confusing as she trudged into the other room. He always had to be reminded to put things away.
Only silence greeted her. “Simon?” Nerve endings she wasn’t aware of fired. She raced upstairs, flung open his door, but nothing. His room was the same disaster it had been first thing this morning. Tamping down the mounting panic, she ran downstairs, looked for his bike and found it missing from the back porch. The flashlight they kept on a hook by the door was gone as well. So were his house keys.
She pulled open the door and yelled his name, not caring one bit if the neighbors heard. In fact, she’d prefer they did hear, so she could ask if they’d seen him. Grabbing a sweatshirt, her purse and keys, she hurried to the front door.
The phone rang.
Cursing, she dropped her things and plunged into the kitchen, yanking the receiver off the wall. “Simon?”
“He’s fine.” Luke’s statement had her sagging in relief. She slid down the wall, pressing a hand against her heart as she caught her breath. “Holly? You okay?”
“Where is he?” she whispered.
“With your father and me. At the police station.”
“At the where?” A new pool of dread formed in the pit of her stomach. A thousand questions exploded in her brain at once, but none of them were coherent enough to be voiced. “Never mind. I’m on my way.”
* * *
“IS SHE MAD?” Simon asked after Luke ended his call to Holly.
“Your mother sounded scared.” He wasn’t about to coddle Simon, not when he needed to be jolted out of his increasingly dangerous behavior. “You didn’t leave a note in case she woke up, did you?”
Simon shook his head, avoiding his grandfather’s stare like the plague. “I thought I’d be back before she did. She usually stays asleep.”
The kid figured he’d covered all the angles; his attention to detail was both baffling and sobering. Reckless, it occurred to him...just like another eager young man Luke was familiar with.
“She wasn’t crying, was she?” That idea must have put a chink in Simon’s armor. He sat forward in Luke’s chair, hands gripping the armrest so tight his knuckles went white. “I don’t like it when Mom cries.”
“You should have considered that before you went gallivanting on your own after dark,” Jake said.
“Gala-what?” Simon’s face scrunched up in the way Luke identified as the boy absorbing new information.
“Look it up.” Jake clomped off. “I need some coffee. That fancy new machine of yours easy to work?”
“Pop in a pod, put a mug under the spout, push Brew.” Luke watched Jake limp out of the room. “So.” He walked over and sat on the edge of his desk facing Simon, resisting the urge to let the little guy off the hook and give him a hug. Ignoring what he’d done wasn’t going to teach Simon what he needed to learn. “Looks as if you’re in hot water this time.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt anything.” Simon dug his finger into a crack in the chair cushion.
Luke stared at him.
Simon sighed. “This time.”
“We lost some important emails thanks to that malware you installed, Simon.” Luke wasn’t going to cut him any slack. If he was old enough to commit the crime, he was old enough to be told the truth about the consequences of his actions. “Alerts about missing kids, escaped criminals. Law enforcement reports that help us do our job and keep people like you and your mom safe.” Yes, they’d retrieved them, but Simon didn’t need to know that.
“I just...” Simon shrugged his shoulders. “I was just so mad. I wanted you to go away.” He ducked his head and stabbed his thumb deeper into the padding.
“And you thought hacking our computers, destroying our coffee machine and locking us out of the office was the way?”
“It was a start?” There was an odd hopeful light in Simon’s eyes as he peered at Luke and cringed.
He would not laugh. But the desire to haul the kid into his arms and hug the stuffing out of him returned full force. Criminal tendencies aside, there was so much potential in this little boy, so much energy needing to be focused in the right way. But how to do that and keep an emotional distance was the question.
“So what?” Luke persisted. “You wanted to make my life miserable here so I’d leave?”
“Yeah.”
“And then your grandpa would get his job back and everything would return to how it used to be.” How many times had Luke wished the same thing himself? That he’d never gotten into that car that night. That he hadn’t had that first drink. The list went on and on.
Simon nodded, but there was a glimmer in his eyes, as if he hadn’t expected Luke to understand his intentions.
“Mom was so angry when you came here,” Simon said. “I’d never seen her like that, then I heard her talk about how you hurt Grandpa, and I wanted you to hurt.”
Try as he might, Luke couldn’t blame Simon for what he’d done. If anything, it made the boy’s actions all the more admirable, if not misguided. “I bet reading all those superhero comic books made tricks and revenge look pretty fun.”
That spark ignited again. “They get to help people and stop them from feeling bad. People are so mean sometimes it makes me want to make them be nice.”
“And I was someone else who was hurting people you care about.” Luke nodded. “You know what, Simon? I might have done the same thing in your shoes.”
“You would?” Awe and wonder shining in the boy’s eyes made Luke recall Simon’s father.
“Before I knew better, sure.” Luke slid off the desk and bent down beside Holly’s son. “Not a day goes by I don’t think about what happened the night I crashed my car into your grandpa’s. It’s like a scar, up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “It won’t ever go away because I know how much pain I caused both him and your mom. It doesn’t matter how much I apologize—nothing can ever make up for the choice I made. But now that I think about it, I never apologized to you directly. And I should have.”
“Why to me?” Simon’s face twisted.
“Because I hurt people you love, people you only want to protect and defend. But, Simon.” He patted the boy’s arm. “You can’t bend the rules and break the law because you think you know better. That’s only going to make things worse for you in the long run. Stop you from doing what you need to do.”
