doubt she knows exactly what I’m thinking. She already reads me like a book.
I leave her in Lisa’s good care and head up to my father’s house.
“About time.”
“Lazy day?”
I expected the jabs, and am not about to let them get to me and ruin what was a great fucking start to my day. So instead I flip them the bird with a big smile on my face.
“You’ve got an adoring, beautiful woman in your bed, worshiping your cock, time disappears, brother. Don’t knock it ’til you try it.”
Tse grunts and scowls before he turns back to troweling compound on floor, but when I look over at my father, he’s grinning at me.
Lissie
Hanging out with Lisa and Kiara in the kitchen for most of the day was better than lying in bed watching the TV Yuma had hauled in there a couple of days ago, but I was still glad when Ramirez and Luna show up fifteen minutes after the boys got home from school.
“Ouray around?” Luna asks.
“He’s in his office.”
“Trunk?”
“In his,” I answer.
“Yuma?”
“At his dad’s place.”
“Can you get hold of him? Tell him to meet us in Ouray’s office.”
I look from Luna to Tony and back. “What’s going on?”
“Call him, Lissie,” Tony suggests. His eyes are kind, but I still have an unsettled feeling.
A few minutes later, we’re sitting around the large table in Ouray’s office when Yuma walks in.
“What’s this all about?” he asks, before taking the vacant seat beside me.
“The boys; Michael and Thomas,” Luna starts, her eyes on me. “DNA results came back this morning. It opened up yet another layer to our investigation. Looks like Thomas and Michael are related after all.”
“No shit?” Trunk sits forward in his chair.
“Half-siblings. Same dad, different mom.”
“Michael matches the third, unidentified body we found in the grave, but he and Thomas also have DNA in common. Their father’s.” She turns back to me. “Looks like Thomas is Jesse, Lissy; Dani’s son.”
That boy, that confused, innocent-looking boy is her child. Suddenly my throat is closing and I have to swallow hard.
“It’s clear Chains and Bones were both affiliated with the American National League, but we’re just finding out the extent of that involvement,” Tony adds.
“Those sick fucks!”
This from Trunk. I’m not surprised. I’ve heard by now how the ANL snatched his young stepson, hoping to add him to the children’s army they were brainwashing and training for God knows what.
“They weren’t just selecting a pure race,” I mumble. “They were breeding one.”
“Might still be doing the same thing somewhere else,” Ouray points out.
“At least not Chains, and we’re expediting a DNA profile for Bones. We’ve got three of the five boys matched, and Zach only to his mother. It’s still a mystery where the other two boys came from,” Luna explains.
“What about Thomas and Michael? What do we tell them?” Yuma wants to know.
I glance over at Trunk, who has probably spent the most time with those kids out of anyone.
“What do you want to tell Michael? We still don’t know who his mother was, just that she’s dead, and I wouldn’t volunteer the identity of the father. That last would be the same for Thomas, but we can tell them who his mother is…was.” His eyes are on me. “Did your friend have any remaining family?”
I shake my head. Dani’s mother, like mine, had passed away a long time ago. It’s one of the things that connected us. She never knew her father and if there was extended family somewhere, in all the years we’d been tight, Dani never bothered mentioning them.
“Just me,” I state firmly. “He has me.”
Beside me, Yuma suddenly shoots up out of his chair and stalks out of the room, all eyes following him. After a few awkward moments, Trunk is the first to speak.
“Then he’s a lucky kid, and I think we should tell him together. You can give him back a little of what was taken from him.”
All I manage to do is nod. There are so many thoughts crowding my brain right now. Including what the hell had Yuma tear out of here like that, but I shove that to the background. It’ll hold, but what can’t wait is letting a small boy know he’s not alone in this world.
Half an hour later, we’re sitting in Trunk’s office, the boy looking uncertainly between us. Trunk nods at me to take the lead. I’m nervous. I’ve been thinking about how to tell an almost eight-year-old his mother is dead, but I realize he’s probably