Retribution (The Protectors 3)

Liar.

My wife’s whisper in my ear unnerved me as it always did, but I also felt a pang of warmth go through me. I wasn’t a religious guy by any means, but on the rare occasion that I did hear Revay’s voice calling me on my bullshit, I welcomed it. Because she had always been the only one brave enough to tell me when I was full of it. And while I wasn’t so far gone that I actually believed it was her talking to me, I liked that my subconscious used her voice to remind me when my internal bullshit meter was pinging.

My hope had been to not have to deal with the intriguing Tate Travers or his cute kid again, but I’d suspected even as I’d left his apartment more than a week ago that things wouldn’t be so easy. My desperation to confront Buck and Denny Buckley had led me straight from the run down area of San Francisco that Tate lived in to the dusty, remote town of Lulling, Texas. The underground group I worked for employed a young hacker named Daisy Washburne to gather information on potential marks and I’d called her on the way to Lulling to see what she could dig up on Buck and Denny. In short, she’d found nothing…absolutely nothing. Both men had been living off the grid for some time so I had no address, no recent pictures, no nothing to use to find either man. It was beyond frustrating and I’d known the second I rolled into the tiny, insular town, that I wouldn’t get anywhere by asking the residents questions – all I would do was give the murderers ample warning that I was on their trail. So I’d reluctantly turned around and headed back to San Francisco and the only lead I had to work with.

On the way, I’d asked Daisy for any information she could give me on Tate, but like his father and brother, he didn’t appear to exist because there was no record of him anywhere. Which led me to believe he was still living off the grid for a reason. And after I’d had Daisy check why Tate had submitted his DNA to a private lab for testing, I’d suspected what that reason was.

Several hours passed before the door Tate had disappeared through earlier opened and I stood as Tate walked through it. My first thought was that the stricken look on his face was because of me, but then I noticed that he wasn’t even looking at me. His face had gone deathly pale and each step he took looked wobbly and uneven and I instantly stepped forward so I could catch him and Matty if he lost his footing.

“Let me take him,” I finally said when Tate teetered back and forth as I reached him. He looked at me as if finally seeing me for the first time and then he shook his head weakly.

“Then at least sit down so you don’t fall,” I murmured as I motioned to a chair.

“No,” he whispered. “I…I need to get him home. The doctor said he needs to rest…”

Tate tried to brush past me, but I put my hands on his arms to stop his forward motion. “Tate,” I said as gently as I could. His red rimmed eyes lifted to meet mine and I knew he’d been crying at some point because his eyes hadn’t looked that way when he’d walked away from me. My stomach fell as I realized what that meant. “Let me take him,” I repeated softly as I held him in place. I had no idea why I hated that it was only the fabric of his shirt I was feeling beneath my fingers and not his skin.

“Here, you can hang on to these,” I said as I tugged my car keys from my pocket along with my phone and wallet. I offered him the items and then realized how ridiculous it was to think he’d hand me his child in exchange for them.

Tate shook his head, but after I’d put everything back in my pocket, he studied me for a long time and then said, “Just for a minute.”

It was a testament to how tired the man was. I nodded and carefully took Matty from him. I hadn’t been sure if Matty was asleep or not, but I had my answer as soon as I pulled him against my chest. His eyes were closed and I could tell from how puffy they were that Tate hadn’t been the only one in tears at some point. His warm breath fanned across the skin of my neck and his limp body made carrying him awkward.

“They sedated him,” Tate mumbled as he pulled a blanket from Matty’s backpack and worked it around the boy’s body. Feeling Tate’s fingers brush against me as he tucked the blanket in between Matty’s body and mine did strange things to my insides…things I hadn’t felt in a really long time…things I didn’t want to think too much about.