Kindred Spirit - Noah Harris Page 0,7

when you look like that.

Levi sighed. “I know, I know you do. But I’m okay, I promise.”

What were you thinking about?

“My mom and dad.”

Missing them?

“Of course I miss them. They were my parents.”

Levi shook his head irritably, not wanting to think about them. Not about the warmth of his father’s hand when it gripped the back of Levi’s neck comfortingly. Not of the way his mother’s laugh could light up a room. He didn’t want to focus on the love they shared for one another and how they had doted on him. Levi shoved away the memories before they could rise too high and threaten to drown him.

They were dead and beyond his reach. They couldn’t help him, not anymore. His father had tried to keep him out of the hands of people who’d wanted to take him away. Government people. Then within a few months, he had somehow driven his truck off the side of the road and into a ravine. His mother had followed five years later, skirting the edges of society, trying to keep herself and Levi out of sight of anyone and everyone looking for them.

His father had kept him safe from the first people to come for Levi, and his mother had taught him how to avoid them for the rest of his life. It meant never staying in one place for too long and alternating between the city and quiet places in the middle of nowhere. Levi had spent six months in LA, and now he’d had over a year in Gilcreek. He had taken his mother’s lessons well, and he knew he would have to move on again soon.

Now you just look pissed. I thought you said you were going to stop getting lost in your own head?

“I did.”

And once again, you’ve done the complete opposite. Starting to think you like being lost in the forest of your thoughts.

Well, that was certainly a poetic way of looking at it.

He snatched up his bag of tools and marched out of the bedroom. “Just try not to cause too much mischief at the store today, eh? I’d really like not to have people look at me like I’m the devil.”

It was one time.

“If we’re measuring the past week, yeah, maybe. You really didn’t need to dump a whole shelf of salsa on the floor.”

It was on that guy. He wouldn’t stop staring at you.

Levi sighed, closing the front door behind him, locking it before descending the porch. “He wasn’t going to do anything.”

Though why Eric thought he needed to follow Levi around anytime he was in town was admittedly a little disturbing. And it wasn’t that it wasn’t funny as hell to hear the yelp and turn around to find Eric completely drenched in several gallons of salsa that had probably been sitting on the shelves for a couple of years.

“Just behave yourself. Tell me if Eric starts staring at my ass again, and I’ll deal with it. I’ve managed a year here without the locals pulling out the pitchforks and torches, okay?”

Fine. I still say you should let me pull his brake line.

“That’s murder.”

Murder counts for people.

“You’re a person,” Levi grunted, heaving himself up into his truck.

You can’t flatter me into behaving.

Levi grinned at the mollified tone of Lou’s words. “Just stick with me, okay?”

Always.

Jacob

Jacob had honestly thought that settling into the town would have been a more arduous and awkward process than it turned out to be. The DDI had set him up with a long term stay at the only motel in town, sat on the edge of Gilcreek’s central district. Well, Jacob thought calling it a ‘district’ was a stretch. It was a whole two streets with half a dozen shops and a bar.

He thought it a little strange there was a motel to begin with since he couldn’t imagine there were too many people passing through Gilcreek. He’d brought that up to the woman behind the desk, who seemed more interested in her phone than in checking him in, and she’d told him they made good money during the hunting season. Personally, Jacob thought it had to be really great money for a few months if it was able to keep the place afloat for a whole year.

In the week he’d spent in Gilcreek, quietly keeping to the motel, he had tentatively explored and mapped out the town mentally, but he’d yet to run into his target. He was, of course, used to the looks from the townspeople, more curious