Shapeshifter - 12. Non compos mentis

**Kelaste**

“Noom?”

“Yeah?”

I hesitated, but only for a heartbeat, listening to the strong muscle in my chest jump against my ribs. “Why do you hate my father so much?”

That question had sat at the back of my head ever since we found out who was trying to get me killed. After hearing my father’s name in my condo on that first, fateful night, there had been real hate in Noom’s eyes, and it had never left them completely. Even now, I could see it lurking in the back of his mind, ready to come out, ready to spill over me like molten rock.

We were lying on the floor of an abandoned construction site somewhere near Mike’s house. He had equipped us with camping mats, sleeping rolls, a little butane cooker and camping dishes, enough to make our one-night-stay bearable without impeding our mobility if the need to run came up. It was the only temporary solution we had been able to come up with, but it was better than nothing. I could feel where the bullet was buried in my body, the one that Noom had stalwartly denied removing, but it didn’t hurt all that much yet. It would have to come out sooner or later, but we had both decided that ‘later’ was a good date to do impromptu surgery on me.

Noom’s lips morphed into a thin, angry-white line, then he turned away from me, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling. “What’s not to hate about him? I mean, just look at we’re going through, he’s trying to kill his own son. Plenty of reasons, right there,” he replied vaguely, twisting his lips into a disgusted sneer.

Yeah, right. I pursed my lips, trying to figure out how to call him a liar without getting him angry, although I knew how futile that attempt was. Noom was always angry, he just tried to hide it. The few times he had really shown it were the night he had found out who my father was, and the night he had found out I needed— well, had needed, but not anymore— heroin. On those two occasions, Noom had been angry without being too obvious about it. True anger, true hate, not the controlled aggression he so blatantly showed on every other day. Like a peacock fanning his feathers, I thought.

I was ready to poke at him again, to try and get a reaction, any reaction, out of him, when he spoke up again.

“It’s a long story,” he said hesitantly, glowering at the ceiling.

I didn’t reply, but I wormed my sleeping bag closer to him and threw him a curious glance.

Licking his lips, Noom turned his head to me. He watched my face for a few moments, then he sighed and looked back at the ceiling, as if looking at me and talking about whatever was going on with him was too much to bear.

“I had a girlfriend once,” he finally began with a soft, low voice, “and a drug problem. She was a junkie, too, but not as bad as me. She got out as soon as we met, you see? Said, I was all the drugs she needed. I didn’t. I was happy having her and my snow, and she kept me fed and clean and safe, whenever I was too fucked up to care for myself.”

The anger left his face, the more he talked about that girl, and there was an old, all but forgotten spark in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “She was struggling to keep us afloat and after a while, I decided to stop being a whiny bitch and tried to help her,” he explained, gesturing to underline the words. “I really tried to help her, but I’d been living on the street most of my life, and I couldn’t hold a normal job. Didn’t know how a normal person was supposed to go about their life, you see? Robbery was not my style, so I tried my hand in dealing. That worked out much better than I would’ve thought. She wasn’t happy about it, but I brought home money, and I stopped doing four-day-benders, so she actually got to see more of me and that was enough, for a while.”

I wanted to touch him, but some instinct told me, if I touched him, he would stop talking. I didn’t feel anything when he talked about some girl he had loved once, the pain and melancholy in his voice didn’t bother me. Maybe I should have felt envy, pity or compassion, either for him or for her, but there was nothing. The past was the past, and that was that, at least for me. The need to touch him came from the softness he got when talking about it, because I wanted to roll in it like a cat in catnip.

Noom didn’t seem to notice my little difficulties. He continued with his story, staring at the ceiling. “Then I got stupid again. Before, I had paid for my own drugs, and I did so for a while when I was dealing. But I was a junkie and junkies are, how do they say, non compos mentis, certifiably insane, when it comes to all things monetary. I stole from the very stack I was supposed to sell to get high. At first, nobody noticed. I took a little, only crumbs, and re-sealed the bags, and nobody dared to object. Then I took more and more, lazy fuck that I was, and someone, I don’t know who, complained to my boss.” He swallowed dryly. “My boss had had some problems with his own boss recently, so this time, I didn’t get a beating or something comparably mild to get me back on track. No, he up and went to his own boss, explained to him he had found the thief or something. I didn’t know anything about that man, and I didn’t know who he was, I swear. Had I known…”

Silence settled over us as I watched Noom once again fight his feelings. The softness was gone from his face, replaced by an expression that held a notion of physical pain, anguish. My fingers itched with the need to reach for him and I made them into fists hard enough to have my nails bite into the palms of my hands. If I touched him, all of this would stop and I would never know what my father had done. I needed to know, needed to hear that I wasn’t the only person my father had ruined. That I wasn’t alone, that someone knew his real face.

My resolve almost faltered, the longer Noom fought his internal struggle, but in the end, he beat me to it just as I got ready to ask a question.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t even suspect anything. I came home one night and the door to our house was open, just a gap, but open. She was there, on the living room floor, on a carpet saturated with her own blood. She wasn’t whole anymore, but the pieces had been arranged perfectly. Little slices, like cold cuts, like they had put her in some giant egg slicer right there, and left her for me to find. I remember wondering coldly how they had done it. It was so… neat, so orderly, not a print in the giant pool of dried blood, not a piece where it shouldn’t be. Then I vomited and passed out. I don’t know how much time I spent down on the floor, in her blood, crying and wanting to die myself, but it was still dark when I got up and decided I’d better find my stash and give myself a last high to follow her wherever her soul had gone to. I turned around and there, on the wall right next to the door, was a message, scribbled right on the white paint. It was written with black sharpie, not blood, I find that strange to this day.”

When he fell silent this time, I rolled over to his side and all but fused myself to his body. I still wanted to hear the end of his life story, but I’d had enough of denying myself the comfort of his warmth. Nestled against his side and with every breath filling me with the scent of his musky, sharp sweat, I closed my eyes and finally found the will to talk.

“What did the message say?” I asked, a little intimidated by the confusing mixture of my own emotions, and the things I smelled, felt, heard.

Noom laughed. Just once, harsh, not unlike clearing his throat. I could hear the joyless grin in his answer. “It was a confession, my confession. It actually looked like my handwriting, and it sounded exactly like I would have worded it. It said I had killed her because that way I’d clear my debts with the local drug lord, and that I now felt too guilty to live on without her. It even held a detailed explanation of how I would kill myself and even that matched exactly how I’d have done it. Up in the bathroom, in the bath tub, where my stolen stash was. So I went upstairs, still pretty much shell-shocked and out of it. In my bedroom, there were two guys. They didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything, just watched me stumble past them and into the bathroom.”

I tried not to tense up as I imagined myself in Noom’s position. The person he loved dead, a set-up so perfectly executed, nobody would ever get suspicious, and two thugs to make sure he did what he was supposed to do; would I have managed to survive? No. I’d have done as I was told. I’d have been broken. I couldn’t imagine how Noom got out of that.

“In the bathroom, there was a syringe lying on the cabinet, ready to use, filled and all. It was lying on a white piece of paper, like a note just for me. It was a business card with the business end facing downward, and whoever had done this to my girl had written a few last words on the back. It read, ‘we will take the house as a down payment. Consider your debts paid.’”

Suddenly, Noom thrust his arm beneath my body and heaved me onto his chest, holding me to himself as we stared into each other’s eyes. There was a wild expression on his face, a twitching grin, too much white in his eyes, and his arms held me like steel cords to him as he continued to speak.

“So I considered my debts paid. I snapped. I had been ready to die for what I had done to my love, ready to take my punishment like a good little felon, ready to leave all this horror behind, but that one little sentence pushed me over the edge and out on the other side of sane. Fuck them, I thought. And fuck them, I would. I pocketed the business card and took the syringe and I went back to the bedroom, where those guys were waiting for me to tuck tail and die like I was supposed to, and I killed them. The first one with the syringe, the second one with the gun I took off the first one. They dropped dead with that surprised look still frozen onto their faces, and I did things to their bodies that I’m not very proud of. In the end, I took another look at that card, then put it onto their bodies for everyone to see. And I swore I’d get the one who had sent me that card. Theodore DeLargo, your father.”

He all but threw me to the side, but he didn’t let go of me altogether. I landed on my shoulder and hip, his arm still pinning me to him, huffing from the impact and wondering how I was supposed to react. The things Noom had told me still circled through my mind, haunting me with vivid scenes of blood, gore, and violence, but I felt detached from it all, a spectator to a madness that had its own agenda. Above it all, the idea of my father being the one pulling the strings hovered, bearing down on me like a block of lead. The visions weren’t the worst thing, no. The knowledge that my father would not only be able, but willing, to employ someone who had crossed the line to psychopathy didn’t shock me as much as I thought it should. It felt like I had always known and just been unwilling to see and accept, and that was the worst part about the whole tale. Now, knowing what Noom had experienced, I somehow felt responsible for it all, like I should have known and stopped my father, even as a little boy.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, twitching instinctively because I feared he would take it the wrong way.

He didn’t. He just snorted, shrugged and huffed, “I’ve never told this to anyone. Mike is the only one who knows bits and pieces, because he knew her and because he saved me when I needed to disappear.”

I took the unspoken hint and dropped the issue of my guilt. It didn’t matter anyhow because I now knew what we would have to do next. Relaxing in Noom’s hard grip, I let my head rest on the hard floor and sighed.

“Well, at least now I know where we’ll have to go next. But if we want to kill him before he kills us, we need a plan.”

~*~

Where would you plan an assassination attempt? I personally had nothing to fall back on to but my movies, and in movies, the protagonists always have some kind of super secret headquarters, with a hacker, PCs and lots of paper and gadgets.

We didn’t have any of that. Even the lighting sucked, but as Mike had explained when I had asked the first time, he was in the process of renovating his cellar, so naked bulbs were all he could offer for now. We had started out in his kitchen, but then a brown-haired, dark-skinned lady with yoga pants had chased us out, screaming profanities at Mike. I didn’t even get to know the name of Mike’s wife, but I dubbed her ‘Fury’, because that was what she was. Noom had seemed highly amused by the spectacle, but it had left me shaken and profoundly confused. I had little to no experiences with grown women, and I really didn’t do well with violence, not even the verbal sort.

So, having been thrown out of the civilized part of the house, we now cowered in a circle around a local street map lying on a dirty concrete floor, squinting at the colorful depictions of my father’s neighborhood in the light of a single light bulb. Mike threw glances at me every so often, brows knit together in an effort to stay put. There was some distance between us, but it obviously wasn’t big enough to suit his tastes. He did try to hide it, but it was still obvious.

“So the security fence goes all around all of this?” Noom repeated, drawing his finger around the edges of the giant, park-like piece of land my father owned and called home.

I decided to ignore Mike’s discomfort, for now. I couldn’t do anything about it, anyway, so I instead turned to Noom and planning. “Yes, same height all around, electrified on top, barbed wire and all. There are some trees at the periphery, but they are cut back every second year to keep out the wildlife.”

“And there are guards on the property?”

I almost blushed. It sounded so ridiculous, hearing it like this. “Yes.”

Noom frowned hard enough to have his brows all but touch each other. “Killing someone is hard enough under normal circumstances, but this is absurd. Even if you manage to distract the guards, I’d have to blow-torch my way through that fence fast enough to get through before they spit-roast and slit you open, given I don’t trip the alarm,” he groaned, tugging his mohawk in frustration.

I swallowed against the sticky lump of saliva in my throat. “That wouldn’t kill me, you know,” I breathed, staring down at the map. I could feel his eyes burn into my scalp, could feel his curiosity intensifying.

“Oh, yeah,” he uttered haltingly, “I forgot. You’re tougher than you look.” His eyes roamed over my body with an expression that made me shudder. For a short moment, I had the visions again, how he had described his dead girlfriend and suddenly, his expression became painfully clear to me. He thought about that exact same memory, and he pondered if I would have survived it. If I would survive something similar. If I was safe, in a manner of speaking. Safe to love.

My heart thundered in the following silence, and I found it hard to breathe through all the unspoken words hanging above us. There was so much going on besides what we were planning, with no chance to talk it through or find a moment to breathe. The plan was simple enough: I would go through the front door, draw the guards away from the perimeter and make them march me to my father. There was a chance they’d shoot me on sight, but as long as they didn’t put a bullet through my brain, I’d do a Lazarus on them as soon as they had me inside the house, which was another good way to draw attention away from the fence. And if they didn’t shoot me on sight, I’d make enough of a ruckus to keep them occupied while Noom cut through the fence at the side of the property and made his way inside. We would then both proceed to try and find my father. If I found him first, I was supposed to draw him outside, or at least downstairs and close to the windows, where Noom could take him out. Noom would try to get into the house, evade the guards and shoot my father on sight if he saw him. The moment the guards rang the alarm, or the moment they tried to kill me, I was supposed to run for the hole Noom had left in the fence and save my own hide.

It was ludicrous. At least Noom hadn’t uttered something stupid like ‘no heroics’ yet, because then I wouldn’t have been able to hold back my laughter.

But still, it was the only plan we had. It would have to do.

“We’ll need a bolt cutter, and I’d like to have ear pieces to communicate, or something similar. I’ll add a sniper rifle to my arsenal, just to be sure I’ll get the shot in if we’re lucky, and I want Kel to have a derringer. The lady-type one, small enough to hide in his boot,” Noom stated, scratching his stubbly chin. We hadn’t had a chance for personal hygiene yet, and I found myself being drawn to his unkempt exterior. I had to shake myself out of my love-sick stupor to actually listen to what he was saying.

“No ear-pieces, if they find one of those on me, they’ll instantly know that you are there,” I countered, shaking my head. “We want to prevent you being discovered too soon, that would be counter-productive.”

Noom squinted at me. “I don’t like the thought of not being able to communicate with you.”

I answered with a charming grin, not feeling the need to add words to how romantic his admission sounded. It made him blush and snarl, then turn away. His ears were red.

“It’s a long shot, whatever way I look at it, anyway,” Mike offered, crossing his arms in front of that massive chest of his. “Might be better off without a means to talk, seeing how much he influences you already.”

Noom shot him a scathing look. “Are you sayin’ I’m being mushy?” he bit out and leaned forward. I was unsure if he did it instinctively or on purpose, but Mike was quick to wave him off and shake his head.

“Now, don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just telling it how I see it. But it’s not your style to talk about bugging out and safety and ‘communication’ like that, especially not when it’s about killing that DeLargo asshole. You’ve been all about destroying that son of a bitch for years, all but trying to strangle him on the street. The only difference I see is cat-boy there, so how am I wrong in blaming it on him?”

Silence. I shrank into the background as Noom stared at Mike devoid of any expression, almost immobile. I even tried to keep down my breathing, lest I attract the fury lurking behind the quiet facade.

Finally, Noom spoke, or rather, he growled with his street-slang accent thick in his voice. “Ya blaming him for making me soft, or are ya blaming him for making me sweet on him? ‘Cause I honestly can’t see what’s botherin’ you about that, ‘cept for me actin’ like a somewhat normal person again. It was just you an’ me for a few years, that’s true. Now it’s me an’ him, and you, and the only person not happy with that seems to be you, my friend. I’m trying to get a life again, but that’s my choice, and mine alone. Stop blaming the scrap and get over yourself.”

I stared at the concrete floor, afraid to meet anyone’s eyes. This was a much too private moment to be had in front of me, but I couldn’t just leave the room after what Noom had said.

He had to have hit a nerve with his words, because Mike flinched, then tensed as if to attack Noom, and finally deflated like a balloon.

“I could organize earpieces, but Kel is right,” he finally grumbled, rubbing his forehead. “If they catch him, and we’re kind of expecting them to do that, they’ll know something is wrong right away.”

The heavy atmosphere lifted instantly, like underhanded peace offerings between friends are wont to. Noom nodded with an exasperated sigh and shrugged. “Well then. No talky talky for us. But we still need that lady gun for Kel; he can’t go in unarmed.”

“I might have just the thing for that,” Mike said and smiled.

~*~

Almost eight hours later, I was walking through the harsh, moist, late-night breeze, haunted by the whisper of rustling branches and the echoes of cars passing by on the distant interstate road. My father lived in an exclusive part of the Evergreen Isles district, a group of small islands only connected to the mainland by a series of road and train bridges with their own traffic checkpoints and a police force that bordered on Sci-Fi levels of technology. Neither Noom nor Mike would have been able to pass through the road blocks on their own, but with me by their side, the policemen hadn’t batted an eye as they had waved us through. It was the first time I actually understood what ‘social gap’ really meant, and after that, I felt a diffuse kind of shame for my birth right.

We had split up further down the hill, closer to the sea, almost half an hour ago. If my father was listening in on the police surveillance monitors, he already knew I was back and on my way to him, but I didn’t expect it. After all, he either thought I was already dead, or he reckoned I was still on the run; neither possibility involved me actually walking up to his home and through the front door.

I prayed he would be surprised, I really did. Big parts of our plan hinged on his ignorance and the resulting surprise and confusion. But just to be sure, Noom had formulated three plans, each one preparing us for contingencies that might present themselves on the go. My heart did a little hop-skip at the thought of my mercenary and the way his eyes had bored into mine when we had made our silent, awkward good-byes. I could recall his scent, the way his skin felt beneath my fingers, from memory, vivid enough to have my body tingle and my diaphragm shiver with anticipation. One thought of Noom touching me was enough to wipe away any and all trace of hesitation, and it was what had kept me going up this park-covered hill for the last thirty minutes.

Most of that time, I had spent walking along the perimeter fence of my father’s estate. God knew why he had decided to build the house and the main entrance on the far side of his plot, but I guessed it had something to do with his criminal activities and the paranoia those kinds of operations usually triggered. At least all the roads here— even the dead end ones that only lead to one house— had street lights. Not only could everyone see me coming, I was able to see them, too.

I was still a good hundred feet away from the main gate, but someone was already waiting for me there. It was a man, judging by the broad shoulders and the small hips, but he wore dress slacks and a tailored, form-fitting jacket that made it impossible to hide weapons. Not that he had to, the gun holster was very visible at his right side.

I kept my eyes on him, even as the wind threw strands of hair into my eyes, and I tried to walk upright and confident, like I belonged there. Luckily, the guard didn’t have my super-sensitive hearing— my heart was beating like an Irish drum and my breath rate wasn’t that far off either. I felt like a thespian on his first stage event, but rather than boos, my bad critique would be a bullet to the head. Talk about pressure to perform.

He calmly waited for me to reach him, shifting subtly when I was about to take that last step into his personal space and stopping me in my tracks. I had gotten so much better at reading body language since I had met Noom, I was actually proud of myself.

“What is a bum like you doing here?” the guard asked. He was a calm guy, had to be around forty, with a mellow voice and sharp, brown eyes. The street light above us shone at the back of his head and into my face, almost blinding me and giving him a good view of my shoddy attire.

I shrugged, licking my lips. “Can’t a son visit his father once in a while?” I asked, giving my best to sound annoyed instead of panicky. My voice did sound a little breathless, but then I had just climbed up a hill that would have made any skate boarder green with envy.

Much to my surprise, the guard’s demeanor didn’t change. “Didn’t know Mr. DeLargo had a son,” he said suspiciously, then shrugged and waved me closer as he walked backwards. I knew there were cameras at the main gate and that he was luring me in front of the lens, but this was what we wanted. A grand entry to throw them off-kilter and force them to make mistakes.

I turned to look at the camera, giving it my best dumb, lost stare. I didn’t have to fake the touch of fear in my eyes, that was real enough.

The guard— a blond guy, not white-haired as I initially had thought— turned slightly when his ear piece crackled to life, but the voice on the other end was too muffled for me to understand. The main gate whirring open was a much clearer sign, and I clasped my fingers around the seam of my sleeve to keep myself from touching my hip, where my secret weapon was hidden.

“You can go in. You know the way to the house, right?” the guard said, giving me another once-over. He was right to, I did look like a bum, or a hooker with a streak of bad luck.

I nodded. “Up and right,” I said and stepped through the gate. Darkness swallowed me almost instantly. The driveway was sparingly lit, with just enough lamps to keep a car on track but not enough to disturb the night. My father called it ‘the need for darkness’, explaining that humans needed to know when it was time to rest and that the modern lighting in cities was the reason so many people got depressed.

Gravel crunched beneath my boots as I followed the sloped path farther uphill. Darkness was also a good camouflage for crime, but this was the first time I actually saw my father's antics through a stranger’s eyes. I had never thought he’d be able to commit any crime, what with him being so worried about his public image that he kept me a dirty secret best hidden in a wine cellar. Now I knew that it fit exactly. My father needed his public image to be squeaky clean, simply to discourage his enemies from going to the police.

The old red oak trees lining the gravel driveway creaked and groaned in the breeze, making me sniff for the scent of blooming elderberry bushes instinctively. I couldn’t make them out in the darkness, but I knew they were there, cowering beneath the giant oaks, waiting for warmer weather to fill the garden with their fragrance. Behind them, there were paths for walking, dad’s shooting rink, and the family graveyard, where mother was buried.

Why was I trying so hard to remember what my old home was like, when in truth I was here to kill my father?

As I came closer to the house, a well-lit behemoth at the top of a hill smack dab in the middle of the estate, I heard the soft rustling of grass on both sides. My father’s goons were circling, keeping an eye on me and trying to stay hidden. He probably hadn’t bothered telling them I had superhuman senses, and why should he? As far as he was concerned, I never used them and tried to be as human as possible. Which was just the way I liked it-- and needed it to stay right now.

As I reached the front steps, the art nouveau door swung open and spit out two security guards who all but ran me over in their haste to grab me. I had seen that coming, but even if I hadn’t, they would have surprised me enough to catch me before I could do anything. They also didn’t bother to say anything, they just patted me down like a common criminal, fumbled through the pockets of my sweater and even checked my boots before dragging me inside like a sack of potatoes. They didn’t find my weapon, just like Noom had predicted.

“What are you doing? Do you know who I am?” I squeaked, trying my best to sound as indignant as possible. I knew, of course, where they were most likely taking me, but I had to sell my role and that meant struggling. I had a lifetime of experience with helpless struggling, so I knew there was a trick to it when possessing superhuman strength. I didn’t want to really break free, which would have been an easy thing to accomplish, so I tried becoming boneless in their grip, snaking my arms out of their hands and even shucking my sweater, faking my attempts to shake them off. They didn’t give up that easily, but when they finally had me up the stairs and on the second-floor-landing, they were sweating profusely and swearing through clenched teeth.

My dad hadn’t changed anything about the layout of the house since I’d moved out, except for my room. As I was dragged by, I saw a not-so-new plaque on the door, marked with a twirly ‘library’ on the brass. It had probably been there since the day I had removed my last box of stuff. He hadn’t waited to delete me from his memory. It figured. At least, with all the rooms being where they had been last I had visited, the map I had drawn for Noom and Mike was still accurate. Now, I just had to keep up my side of the plan. Noom had been so hopeful, I hadn’t had the heart to tell him I had my own intentions on how this finale would go down, but on the other hand, I still wasn’t sure if I could do it. If I could kill my father with my own hands.

The goons dragged me to the end of the hallway, knocked at my father’s office door and kept an iron grip on my arms, even after his sharp “come in,” echoed through the wooden door. The left one opened the door, the right one stumbled after a bit, distracted by the crackling of his ear piece, but we all made it inside my father’s kingdom. I fought not to make a face at the bits and pieces of the radio transmission that I actually heard, but it wasn’t that hard.

Not when I was facing the man who wanted to kill me.

“Hello, Dad.”

My father hated being fatherly, thinking it made him look like an old fart. Or worse, like a man who might be interested in breeding more children. Sitting behind his big, chrome-and-glass desk, he looked as disgusted and regal as ever, if a bit older than I remembered. “You know I don’t like being called ‘dad’, Kelly. Call me Theo,” he said, frowning at my clothes. “Although I’m considering denying I know you right now. You look like a transient.”

I somehow had expected him to be different, now that I knew he wanted me dead. I had expected him to do one of those creepy switches and show his real, evil face, spill his plan and maybe laugh darkly, but he was acting like always. Like his usual, civil self, all clean and calm and icy, just like every other rich businessman in existence. Like nothing was wrong, like he expected me to be too stupid to understand what was going on. It… hurt down to my bones. It made everything easier.

I swallowed and licked my lips, still hanging between the security guards like so much dead weight. “Da- Theo, I need your help. Someone is trying to kill me, and I don’t know what to do anymore. Please, you need to help me,” I begged, ignoring the taste of vomit that came with the lie. I didn’t like lying in general, but I was pretty good when I wanted to be and it wasn’t Noom I was trying to hornswoggle. The key to a good lie was building on it, throwing in just enough of the truth to get the victim riled up, and then really stick it to them with something frivolous they wouldn’t have believed without the truth part up front.

My dad did react a little to the killing part, cocking an eyebrow and leaning forward with that predatory look in his eyes, but he kept his countenance. “Is that so?”

“Yes! Please, I’m not lying! He’s been hunting me for days, and he's found me wherever I tried to hide. I think he’s trying to kidnap me,” I pleaded, wiggling a bit in the guards’ grip. I hadn’t tried lying to my father for quite some time, and the next part was crucial. I looked left and right, pulled my confused guards closer to the desk and added, “I think he followed me here, dad. He’s crazy!”

Okay, maybe pulling two grown men who each had a good hundred pounds on my measly body wasn’t that great of an idea, but it was necessary to get myself into view of the big landscape window behind my father’s desk. After all, the show I was putting on wasn’t for him alone, and for the plan to work, Mike had to see me give him the nod.

My dad was too surprised to react to my approach, but when a bullet hit the security window behind him, cob-webbing it with cracks all through the length of glass, he did find his footing and bodily dove over the table. He was surprisingly limber for a man in his early fifties, but what else other than sports would a rich, single man do in his spare time?

The bullet wasn’t enough to actually penetrate the thick glass, but it was enough to scare Theodore out of his office. The goon duo dragged me after him in a fast trot, both nervously mumbling into the microphones on their shirt collars. My show of physical strength was already forgotten, and I did my best not to remind them of it as they manhandled me down the stairs, following the white-shirted back of my father.

The whole thing was surreal and experiencing it felt like a dream, but up to this point, everything was going according to plan. In between the chatter, I could hear another alarm go off somewhere in the house, but it was almost drowned out by so many people trying to report in at the same time. “Shots fired, shots fired,” someone bleated into the com system, loud enough for me to understand it clearly. One of my goons let go of me to have a proper conversation with his ear piece, the other all but let me go as he tried to keep up with my father. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in his position, because what do you do when you have to keep your boss alive, but he orders you to hold on to a struggling boy?

Was this the right moment to reach for my weapon? Would I be able to surprise them enough to murder my father, and if so, would they still try to kill me for it, or would they remember that it made me the one with the money?

“Donovan is dead; the sniper took him out. Grover is hurt and immobile, and we have lost contact to our perimeter on the west side of the park,” goon number two informed us, hurrying to meet our speed and grabbing my arm again. My chance to act was gone.

My father marched us into the cold room next to the garage, one of the rooms with the least windows. I had hoped he would drag us into the living room or kitchen, but as long as we were on the ground floor, it didn’t really matter. My time to act was running out, but our plan was coming along just peachy. Damn it.

An explosion shattered the nervous chaos, swallowing all sounds except for the thunder of bursting windows. It was close enough that the pressure wave made the door behind me rattle. Fire alarms went off a second later, screaming everywhere in the house like newborn babies. My goons were finally pushed over their personal limit and they let me go, storming towards the door in their haste to see to their fallen comrades.

A cloud of smoke washed over me as the door opened and fell shut again. I watched my father’s back as he pulled himself off the floor, and I smiled. It wasn’t a good smile, but it was mine and he deserved it.

“We’re alone, dad.”

Theodore turned around with an expression of profound confusion, his eyes searching the now empty spaces where the two security guards had been before. I could see him rebuild his facade in front of my eyes, each bit and piece falling into place until he was himself again, ready to continue playing his game. I was fed up with his game.

“I know you’re behind the assassination attempts. I know about the pre-nup. I know about mom’s family in France. They know about me.”

I dropped each bomb with surgical precision, watching his face so closely I forgot to blink in my quest to shock him. I wanted him to hurt, to feel bad, to understand what he really was doing, but failing that, I at least wanted to make him afraid of me, of what I would do.

“Do you, now?” he sneered. The tendrils of smoke reached his pants legs, curling around the thousand dollar cloth like a cat.

It was time. I pulled my weapon out of the elastic sheath hidden inside the waistband of my pants. It was an ultra-thin karambit knife, curved like a tiger’s claw and black like my pants, and I had fallen in love with it as soon as Mike had put it on the table.

My father didn’t realize I had a weapon at first. He came at me with three long steps, one hand extended to grab me by the neck, sneer still on his cold face. I knew that gesture all too well and squeaked with shock, slashing at his arm on instinct as I stumbled back and out of his reach. The sound of pain he made was music to my ears.

“What the hell? You cut me, you little bastard!” he yelled, clutching his bleeding arm.

Another explosion rocked the house, followed by gunshots and shouts outside. The smoke was getting thick enough to make me cough, but I didn’t want to stumble outside and miss my chance to end this. And my father wasn’t stupid enough to think all of this was my doing. He wouldn’t go outside until my accomplices were caught, which was the reason I was supposed to drive him outside.

“You cut me,” he repeated, but this time there was such anger and hatred in his voice, I stumbled back a step. Then he pulled a gun, a real gun, and pointed it at me. The look on his face made me spin and run before the first shot rang out.

I didn’t just open the door to the inside of the house, I burst through it, as a bullet grazed my hip and burrowed into the cheap wood. Splinters and bits and pieces of the door frame showered around me, as I stumbled into the smoke-filled front hall. The house really was on fire, and it weren’t just a few flames here and there. The stairwell was gone with fire licking at the archway leading to it, and the kitchen was destroyed, with a large, gaping hole where the patio glass door had been before.

I stumbled into the inferno all but blinded by the smoke, struggling to breathe and with no sense of direction. My father followed, trying to aim through fits of coughing as blood dripped from his cut arm. Another shot hit my leg and I stumbled, turned and limped towards the hole in the kitchen wall, towards the night behind it. There was no pain yet, just a deep, all-encompassing shock and the knowledge I had to get away before he managed to hit my head. So much for me taking a stand and ending his life.

I was almost at the explosion site, almost out, when the security guard I had met at the front door stepped into the opening and turned, throwing me a surprised look.

“Shoot him!” my father yelled from behind, stumbling after me through smoke so thick even I couldn’t see him anymore. Somewhere in the back of the house, something collapsed, and a gust of sparks illuminated the burning husk of the front hall, my father barely a silhouette in the distance.

The guard obediently pointed his gun at me and I ducked, but not quick enough.

I didn’t hear the first shot; I was hit before the sound could reach me and it went straight through my chest. Time slowed and the small slice of outside that I could still see got blurry, but I could still hear the second shot. It hit the guard through the head.

Then Noom was suddenly there, pointing his big-ass gun, smiling that cold, fearsome smile, wide-eyed, wild, happiest in the middle of carnage. He pulled the trigger, still grinning. I didn’t hear the shot, this time, and the last thing I saw were Noom’s boots as he picked me up.

Then nothing.