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“To us, yeah,” Ellis conceded. “But I think he’s different with Bree. He’s better with her. He wouldn’t leave her like this.”
“What’s so great about her?” Damian muttered.
That was it. Ellis crowded his brother again, got into his face. “She’s special. Dad saw it. I see it. If you can’t, you’re more of a jackass than I thought. She deserves love, and for whatever reason, she loves Dad like he’s her own father.”
Damian didn’t back down. Instead, he studied Ellis’s face for several long seconds, then surprised the hell out of everyone by taking a step back and holding up his hands in surrender. “Okay, you’re right. I’m a jackass for taking swipes at Bree just to get under your skin. She’s innocent in this. Foolish for loving Dad, but innocent.”
Primed for a fight, Ellis didn’t know how to respond. He wanted to punch something. Preferably his brother. He wanted to rail and scream and throw things. He wanted a good old knock-down, drag-out fight to release the pressure valve on the resentment and anger that had been boiling in him his whole life.
But then he remembered the hallucination of his brothers, remembered the little boy in the Superman cape begging him not to leave. He could still see that wounded kid in Damian.
After a charged second, he also backed away.
Damian crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the ground for a moment. Then he breathed out, long and slow. “She’s going to get hurt, El. If you care about her at all, you’ll make her stop looking.”
Again, awareness tingled across the back of Ellis’s neck as he watched Damian retreat inside. He looked at Nate and held out an arm in awhat-was-that?gesture. “Why does it feel like he’s threatening her?”
Nate shrugged. “It’s Damian.”
“Point taken.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. Jesus, he was exhausted already, and they hadn’t even made it to the airport yet. “Let’s get this done.”
22
They found Harold Cooper eating a sandwich in the cab of an F-450 truck. The plow on front was down, and half of the runway had been cleared. Looked like they caught him on his lunch break.
Ellis pounded a fist on the huge truck’s door. “Harold Cooper?”
The window buzzed down a few inches. “Coop. Who’s asking?”
“I’m Ellis Hunter, and this is my brother, Nate. We’re looking for our dad, Will Hunter. Have you seen him lately?”
Coop studied them both for a solid ten seconds. Long enough that Ellis thought he might freeze to death in the icy wind howling along the riverbank. He’d never liked the cold, but now he was starting to despise it.
“All right,” Coop finally said and polished off his sandwich. He tilted his head toward the airport’s one hangar. “I gotta finish this, then I’ll meet you inside.”
The hangar wasn’t as cold as outside, but it was no L.A. beach either. Ellis shivered and paced around the small office area to keep his blood flowing.
“This is weird,” Nate said.
Ellis shot him ano-shit-Sherlocklook.
Nate lifted a shoulder. “Dad disappears. It’s his M.O. He’s done it to all of us. So why does this time feel different?”
Ellis stopped pacing and frowned down at his boots. The snow melted off them with every step he’d taken, leaving a trail of water across the concrete floor. If only Dad’s trail were so easy to follow. He glanced up to see his brother watching him, waiting for his response. “Because Bree said he was scared.”
“And Dad’s a lot of things, but he’s not a coward. An old sourdough like him, nothing scares him.” Nate’s lips tightened. “Whatever he’s running from—ifhe’s running from something— it’s bad. Are we sure we want to poke the bear like this?”
“Nope.”
“But we’re going to.”
“Yup.”
Neither of them said more about it. Coop finally joined them ten minutes later.
“All right.” Coop hung his anorak on a hook by the door and pulled off his gloves. The man looked exactly like what he was: a hardened outdoorsman with little time for chitchat. “Ask what you gotta ask.”
Surprisingly, introverted Nate spoke up first. “Do you know our dad?”
