for a moment. “There was this kid in elementary school—I don’t even remember his name. He used to say things about me not having a father.” I shook my head. “I remember wishing each day on my way to school that he wouldn’t be present. His desk would be empty. I’m not sure I took it further in my mind, such as why he was missing. I wasn’t wishing death. I was wishing for a reprieve.”
“I fucking carried it further in my imagination. I was an eleven-year-old skinny, hungry kid at the mercy of Gordon Maples and his bitchy daughters. The two girls would do shit and tell their dad it was one of us just to get us in trouble. Even then, I took it further in my head, but I was powerless to carry it through. Back then, I didn’t know what I was capable of doing. Now I do.
“For the last twenty-four hours, that skinny kid has been reveling in the fact that he’s in the driver’s seat. Zella left Maples’s house before I introduced myself to her old man. She has no clue that I’m Mason Pierce. Fucking Maples knew before you gutted him. Now, I’m waiting for that look, the one where Zella realizes she’s fucked.”
I had no urge to ask Mason what he had planned. My brother-in-law was a complicated man who could quite easily be misdiagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. If I recalled correctly, I believed I’d even heard Laurel joke that she’d mentally diagnosed him with DID before Mason broke free of his Kader facade.
When I think about the man beside me, the one who loved and admired his wife or the one who cared for his sister throughout their lives, it was difficult to imagine he was also Kader—a well-oiled killing machine. Yet even now, when situations called for Kader, the dark web’s assassin for hire, there was reassurance in knowing that he was close at hand.
The issue that I wondered about right now was how Kader, a rather stoic and goal-focused individual, would behave when fed by Mason’s childhood traumas. I’d been the one to gut Maples. Mason had been the one to kill him quickly with a slit of the femoral artery. In that move, Mason was cool and detached as a killer should be.
What would this next encounter entail?
“What about the kid?” I asked.
“I looked up Zella’s other kids. They’re both girls. One is twenty-five, married, and living in Michigan. The other is twenty and single, living in Kentucky. There’s no sign that either has had any contact with their mother in the last year.”
“Does the older one have kids?”
“A boy a month younger than Zella’s.”
“Fucked-up family. Zella’s kid would be that kid’s uncle.”
Mason shook his head. “I talked to Dr. Dixon. She recommends involving DCFS to determine if that household is a safe and viable fit. The way I see it, living with his sister can’t be worse than living with Zella and Maples.”
DCFS was Department of Children and Family Services, a governmental agency we didn’t need involved in our cleanup. “DCFS brings another layer of inquisition.”
“I’ve thought about that too,” Mason said. “Wrapping the kid in clean blankets and abandoning him at a firehouse has also occurred to me.”
That would involve more than governmental investigations, the news media would be all over that shit. I shook my head. “You know what Allister would have done?”
Mason nodded. “That market is still out there. The Sparrows have connections to adoption attorneys. It seems to me that someone willing to put down fifty to a hundred grand on a kid sounds like a reliable parent who at least has the financial means to take care of it.”
“Him, not it,” I corrected. “And Sparrow wouldn’t approve.”
“You’re wrong. This isn’t sex trade we’re talking about. It’s illegal adoptions, and they happen every day. They also happen without all the digging and inquiry that would happen at the firehouse or if he gets delivered to one of his sisters. The right attorney draws up the paperwork and bam—it’s done and legal, at least on the surface.”
“You make it sound like the best option,” I admitted.
“Because in many ways it is.”
The SUV exited the interstate and came to a halt at a stop sign. I looked at my new phone. The halfway house was less than two miles away. With traffic, we’d be there within ten minutes. I continued to consider Mason’s stance on the subject of adoptions.