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“Wow,” Holden said as he looked. “How old were y’all when y’all started working?”
I thought back to the beginning. When that particular photo was taken.
“We didn’t do shows until we were like ten, or our ‘Dad’ felt like it would be a good fit for us. Everyone else started when they were older. I’m six in the photo,” I explained.
“Six,” he said. “What was it you were doing there?”
I was standing in the middle of a wooden board.
“They were throwing knives at me,” I said softly.
There was a long, careful silence and then Hannibal squeezed my leg.
“Who was throwing the knives?” Hunter asked, sounding horrified.
Mostly because when he said it, he looked over at his daughter that was right around the same age as I had been.
“My father,” I replied quietly.
Hannibal’s hand got tighter and tighter on my thigh until it was perilously close to pain.
“I don’t think I could ever do that,” Hunter murmured. “I just…I couldn’t. No matter how good. I couldn’t do it. What if I slipped? It’s one thing to be doing it with ropes when we catch them outside like we do the cows. But knives…”
Sally stood up abruptly, her anger almost as palpable as her son’s.
“I hope that man doesn’t think that I’m going to be nice to him at your wedding if that’s how he treats my future daughter-in-law,” Sally huffed.
Hannibal eased up on my thigh.
“Well,” I said quietly, “that’s gonna be kind of hard to do since he’s dead.”
Sally sighed. “Well at least something’s good in this world.”
Hunter’s wife made a noise in the back of her throat saying she clearly agreed with her mother-in-law.
Hannibal abruptly stood up and offered me his hand.
“Hunter, would you mind getting me the manilla folder out of the truck?” Hannibal asked as he led me out of the room. “And then meet us on the back porch.”
I followed without hearing Hunter’s reply.
When we got to where he was pulling me—a place that looked like it was once a child’s room but was now a mix between storage and the old stuff left behind by one of the boys—he let me go and then grabbed his hair.
“I don’t…” he paused. “Six?”
I shrugged. “You knew he did that.”
“I knew that he was having you do all kinds of things he shouldn’t have been doing. But throwing knives at you?” he asked in a rush. “Is that why you have a scar on your side?”
He’d noticed that?
“Yes,” I answered.
Why lie?
“I just…I don’t even know what to say.” He growled in frustration. “If he wasn’t dead…”
Hannibal would be killing him.
That I could get behind.
“I think I love you,” I blurted out.
His eyes were intense, and then he was right there, in my space, kissing the holy hell out of me.
Only when I was thoroughly ravaged by his mouth did he pull away and say, “Let’s go back out there. I’ll get their opinions on where to start.”
• • •
“You never went to jail,” Sally said, her eyes annoyed.
Hannibal’s smile grew. “Exactly. I was taken.”
Sally threw up her hands. “You’re impossible.”
That comment had us all laughing, though.
I swear to God, it was such a weird feeling being totally at ease somewhere. Even with my own family, whom I loved with all my heart, there was still an underlying tension that never seemed to go away.
Though Dad had put that rift there.
When he was alive, it was his expectations of us. When he was dead, it was the impossible task of keeping the circus running just so we could liquidate it when it was deemed enough time.
“So are we just going to talk about how you’re going to get caught?” Hancock asked as he leaned back in his chair. “Or are we going to talk about what you can do to not get caught?”
“What about getting invited to his wedding?” Holden asked. “All their stuff is online. I’ll bet their invitations are, too.”
I tilted to my side to see the computer he was parked in front of.
The screen showed a photo of Benji and his soon-to-be wife.
She was cute.
Then again, Benji had always been attractive, too. So it’s not so hard to believe that he would find someone just as attractive as he is.
“You said you had a hacker friend, right?” Hunter asked. “You could ask her if she can get y’all on the list.”
“You can’t,” Sway pointed out. “She has a restraining order on her.”
“You could go as your sister,” Hancock pointed out. “Y’all are twins after all.”
I was already shaking my head. “I look nothing like her.”
Sally snorted. “Dear, you look a lot like her. You just don’t put the time and effort in that she does. You never wear makeup. You have the same eyebrow and hair color. Your eyes are different, but that can be solved with contacts.”
“I can pass for her if it’s dark out when they get married, and the only kind of lighting they have is shitty.” I rolled my eyes.
