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“Fuckin’ shut up,” someone else snaps.
I hear mutterings behind me. “Where’s Xander?”
“Not here. Just these two.”
“Luna!” Mom yells. I can sense her trying to run after me. Trying to reach me. “Leave her alone!! LEAVE HER ALONE!!!”
I look up. The cratered dead-end road is lit from our headlights. Some masked guy so easily restrains my mom. Lifts her with one arm around her stomach, like we’re made of the weakest nothings.
“Take anything you want! Just let her go!!” Her gangly limbs flail.
“Mom!” I croak into a scream, my face wet with tears and rain. Adrenaline and fear surge through me—I try to sprint after her, tripping over my feet to stand and move.
It’s a stupid idea, maybe, to not run away and save myself.
But it’s instinct to want to be with the ones you love, the ones who make you feel safe.
I know I can’t overpower these men. Neither can she. But I’d rather be in my mom’s loving arms, suffering, than take the futile chance of escaping and being on the cement alone.
Cruel hands suddenly wrap around my hips, stopping me, and I watch as another man throws a fist in my mom’s cheek.
“NOOOO!” I scream like a knife is plunging into me. “MOM!” Mom.
Their fist flies at her again. I shut my eyes.
I can barely hear anything but my own pulse, my own terror. I can’t watch. I can’t look. I turn my head even more and squirm in this guy’s hateful clutch. “Why are you doing this?!” I shriek. I don’t get what they hope to gain by hurting us.
“Find their phones!”
I realize my dad and Donnelly are still on a call, but they’ve been left in the car.
“DAD!” I scream.
I swear I hear my name. Distantly. And then nothing. My gut drops in pure horror. What do I do? What can I do? “What do you want?!” I yell.
No one answers me.
“Hurry up. Their security is coming.”
“Leave her there,” someone says. “Let’s take the other one.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. She said his name.”
Donnelly.
And then they zip-tie my thrashing hands behind my back. They put me on my feet.
I’m shoved forward in the dark. So forcefully, I skip and trip and barrel downwards into the cement. My wrists snag against the restraints, and my head makes violent impact with the cratered road.
Whoa.
Breath ejects. Pain flares. Black spots blur my vision. Dizzy, I barely realize I’m moving. I’m being hoisted in another pair of arms.
I go limp, trying to blink away the throbbing in my temple. My skull is pounding, and I imagine these are his arms. They’re his arms. My pulse slows. He has me.
I’m okay.
He’s right here.
He’s always with me.
Donnelly.
TEN MINUTES EARLIER
20
PAUL DONNELLY
“So let me get this straight,” Lo says, peeling the foil off a chicken burrito, “your dad was lying when he said he took you to the zoo?”
He’s referring to the evening smoke break I had with my dad this past week. Sean dredged through ancient history, my childhood, while I wore a wire. So Xander’s dad heard everything.
I swallow a bite of steak burrito. “It’s not that he was lying.”
He scrunches his face. “You just said he’d never taken you there.”
“He believes he did. He doesn’t remember the part where he forgot to bring me.” I have trouble making direct eye contact now. It hasn’t been that way. When I arrived at Lo’s office, I shook his hand, sat down across from him at the desk, made a couple jokes, felt confident as shit, but I’m starting to wish for an easy exit.
“Sorry,” he says tightly.
I look over at him in surprise.
“If I sounded accusatory, I apologize,” he says with a hand to his heart and rolls forward on the leather chair. His office is private and warmer than he is. Framed The Fourth Degree comics hang along black-painted walls, and colorful collectibles fill a tall glass cabinet. Right next door is Superheroes & Scones, and we coulda eaten in the store’s breakroom.
Instead, he invited me to the Halway Comics offices. Been thinking it’s so he can kick his feet up on the desk and stare me down on the other side.
But his feet are on the floor. And he keeps rolling closer. Towards me. “Honestly,” Lo says with more sting than softness, “there’s a part of me that thinks you’re withholding details out of spite, and it’s putting me on the offensive.”
“If I knew something, I’d tell you.”
“Would you?” Lo questions, his burrito in two hands, like he’s about to take a bite. But he just holds my gaze, not with anger. Not with malice. With something he’s rarely directed towards me. Understanding. “I’ve been on PaleyFest panels and been asked about my alcoholic father—with auditoriums full of people waiting for the answers. I’ve sat across my oldest son and been asked about that same dad, and you want to know which was harder?” He takes a beat, alluding to the obvious answer: his son.
