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“This is what I know.” I swipe at my cheeks and nose with the back of my hand. Dad passes me a tissue wordlessly, and I use it to mop up before clutching it in a fist. “Uh, I have been thinking about it since I left. If Smoke—I always knew that wasn’t his real name—if he and his family are like vigilantes who do their own kind of cyber crime, or however they do it, to take down bad people in bad organizations who make the world a terrible place by hurting, exploiting, and killing others, doesn’t that kind of make them the good guys?”
“Good guys or not, they were going to use you,” Dad grumbles. The murderous flash in his eyes is completely and utterly expected since I know he’d like to find Smoke and break him in half.
My gut churns painfully. I know I can’t let him do that. “It’s not…I don’t think he was going to use me. I was so angry when I found out. Angry and hurt and betrayed and humiliated. But I thought about that too. I don’t think he’s the kind of person who would do that.”
Dad raises a brow at that. It’s the kind of brow-raising that says I don’t know a thing about this person, and I’m too kind in giving him the benefit of the doubt. Kind. Not silly or stupid.
“I know what you’re thinking. I’m not that gullible.”
Dad picks up the book he’d set down on the small wooden nightstand and starts fiddling with it, flipping the pages and clasping the cover. “No, but you are naïve. You’ve been sheltered from most of the bad in the world, and that’s my fault.”
I reach out and set my hand on his, stopping him before he can mangle the book into a damp, scrunched-up ball. “It’s not your fault. And I’m not that naïve. I’ve been to high school, and I’ve been to college. I do know a few things. I know I haven’t had a relationship before, but I have friends, and I do know people. I’m pretty good at reading them.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to say that you weren’t. You are very naturally intuitive.”
“I just…I don’t think he was using me. He’s truly a good person. If they mistook the club for being a bad organization, then there must have been some kind of reason for them to target it, even if they got it all wrong. He had been working undercover for a long time, yet he never once talked to me or approached me. It was me who approached him.”
Dad doesn’t like that. I can see it in the way his big body becomes totally tense. He looks like a tall hardwood tree, the kind of tree so big and thick that it never even sways in the toughest of gale-force winds. “That’s how they work,” he grunts. “They want to make you think it was your idea.”
“No. That’s not how he worked. Every single time, it was me.”
“But he knew who you were, and he knew who he was, but he got involved with you anyway. Do you really think that was without any reason?”
I gnaw my bottom lip between my teeth. That’s the question I keep asking myself. I don’t want to believe it. It doesn’t feel natural to think that, but was it really without any reason? Did he see a giant opportunity, the one he’d been waiting months for, and take it? I just can’t believe that of him because it seems so out of character, but what if everything I know about him was just an act?
“Hey, uh, sorry to interrupt.” Big Jim’s booming voice startles me.
I grasp the edge of the bed to keep from flinging myself onto the floor, an involuntary knee-jerk reaction to seeing the hulking figure in the doorway of my dad’s room. I never closed the door behind me. I didn’t need to. Everyone in the club would know that we wanted privacy. Big Jim is very aptly named, considering he’s bigger than a giant. With a full head of sandy hair and a matching red-blonde beard, he looks like a total Viking. If any movies were looking for extras around here one day, I know he’d get the part hands down.
Dad and I both know the brothers would only interrupt us for a good reason. Dad nods, and Big Jim gives us his news. Big news. Big Jim news. “You’re not going to believe this, but Smoke’s here. Drove up with a little old lady. They’re standing outside the compound, outside their car, waiting to get in. I can tell the car’s been reinforced. They definitely know what they’re doing.”
Dad’s eyes don’t stray from Big Jim’s hulking figure. I’m glad I don’t let out a second gasp. I stay perfectly silent and perfectly still. I knew there was something up with that car. Just like I knew a Glock-toting Granny wasn’t normal. And still, it never set off any alarms within me. Was I really that stupid? Maybe Dad’s right, and Smoke was just biding his time until the perfect opportunity came along. A terrible sick feeling starts to make my stomach spin, and my breath comes a little quicker with it.
