Free Flee by Keely James Page B

as permission to follow Thomas’ orders. I know they would have stopped me if they had disagreed.” His answer was somewhat comforting. Dad and Juan Carlos weren’t speaking to us and apparently weren’t even speaking about us, but they did want to see us safe. It was something, at least.
    â€œWell, Uncle Hector, welcome to the family. Looks like we will be seeing a lot of you. I gotta ask, have you ever been to an American football game?” Laughing at his confused expression, I stood to move inside. “Let’s go see Mom and tell her you’re here. We’re not going to mention anything about this situation, however. She’ll panic with worry over them. We’ll just say Thomas sent you as a precaution.”
    Mom received Hector’s presence with muted joy. Like me, she was thankful to see a familiar face. Any association with home was welcome. She was putting on a brave front, working to build a new life here, but I knew she missed my father and brothers to the point of pain. I could sometimes hear her crying quietly in her room at night. My biggest source of security growing up was the love my parents had for each other. Even recently, when Dad’s newly inherited role in his family’s dealings had begun to morph him into a man neither of us understood, she had remained passionately committed to him. I’d been astonished when she had agreed to leave with me. I knew she’d been driven by a desire to keep me safe, and by horror at how out of control things had gotten at home. The attack on our house the night we had left had been the final straw for her.
    Hector was assigned the small two-room guesthouse to the left of the pool. Before nightfall, he had met the security personnel on duty and had begun to assess their plan and abilities. Mom watched him warily when he was in the house, shooting an anxious, curious glance my way every so often. Thankfully she didn’t voice her questions out loud. I wasn’t sure I would have known how to answer them. I wouldn’t lie to her, but I wanted to keep her as in the dark as possible, at least until she wasn’t so emotionally vulnerable.
    ****
    The pitch blackness I awoke to did nothing to induce me back to sleep. I was restless and anxious. What was happening at home? How was Thomas handling it? This was the first crisis where I wasn’t there. Thomas and I had always ridden these things out together. He called me his sounding board, especially after he had been wounded in January when his jeep had been forced off the dirt road that wound through the arid hills behind our home. Thomas had suffered multiple abrasions and fractures and a head injury that had us fretting over him for months. Dad had been furious, demanding retribution on all real and supposed family enemies. It was the first time I had seen Mom scared of him. It was also the first time I had seen Juan Carlos, eerily calm and collected, taking over the decision-making and keeping things in control until Dad was rational again. At the time, I was glad that he’d been able to diffuse the situation, but his detachment from emotion had frightened me. What was he capable of?
    Thinking of Thomas made me sad. I knew he’d always favored Dad, worshipping him with even greater devotion than I did. And Dad had been worthy of devotion; a dedicated husband and father, playful and there for us when we needed him. At least until his brother had been killed, and he had inherited the dark side of the Reyna family business. That responsibility had turned him into someone we no longer recognized, with Mom as his greatest and most broken-hearted victim.
    Looks like my run is going to be a long one today, I thought, angrily and silently dressing. Mom had cried herself to sleep again last night, scared of what she did not know. I didn’t want my raging thoughts to awaken her now. So I grabbed my bag and quietly let myself out of the house and drove to