Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series by Renee N. Meland Page B

before we had taken life, when we were still innocent, or could at least pretend we were.
    We could both exist by ourselves, and had for years. She’d been alone since she was fourteen, and I’d been alone my entire life; maybe not physically, but close enough. Sure, we survived, but couldn’t things be different? Better?
    I fell asleep thinking I could still smell her, and hear her voice drifting through my ears.
     
    Staying inside all day had been easy when I didn’t have the kids. But with them there, I had to hear questions all day, which meant I had to lie from sun up to sun down. Between the lies, though, I got to know the children. Not as chores I needed to deal with, things that could get me caught, but as people. I began to notice how Alexis crinkled her nose every time she laughed, or that Felix was afraid of the dark, and wouldn’t go to sleep unless Nick or I stayed awake beside him. He’d try and keep his deep brown eyes open for as long as he could, and I would watch his eyelids slowly give way to slumber.
    I’d never given so much as a second thought to fatherhood, but I found myself a dad anyway. On television, kids always seemed to be dripping in some sort of fluid, snot or otherwise. Either that, or they were screaming at the top of their lungs, somehow possessed with an operatic ability to hold a note for minutes on end. Not these kids. These ones were miniature adults, more acquainted with the world than I was. It occurred to me that maybe they were more qualified to take care of me than I them.
    I wondered how the woman on the TV would handle them. Being a parent in normal circumstances was probably hard enough. I could picture her sitting in a chair in her entryway, clutching a pillow in her hands, staring at the door, and willing it to open to reveal her daughter on the other side.
     
    The next Wednesday, I heard footsteps as I walked onto the front porch, but it was too late. I was already closing the door behind me.
    Keegan stood at the foot of the stairs, with the benign smile of a neighborhood grocer.
    We both knew our meeting was much more significant than that.
    “Going out?” He nodded with his hands in his pockets. My days as a drug dealer had taught me to be leery of men with hands in their pockets.
    “Need some milk.”
    Keegan stared at me as I inched down the stairs. I kept one eye on his face and the other on his buried hands. “Little late, must really need some cereal, huh?”
    “Something like that.”
    Keegan laughed. “Son, why don’t we just stop all this?”
    “You’re not my dad.”
    “No, I’m not. I’m afraid the infamous Ben Foley held that title.”
    I froze. He knew exactly who I was. When he had found out didn’t matter, just what happened next. I knew if he was going to arrest me he would have done it already. Or maybe he just liked playing with his prey before he swallowed it whole.
    Keegan sat down on the second church step and patted the wood next to it. I wouldn’t have sat, but his hands were now visible. I sat down too, but kept a few feet between us. “Look, I know who you are. But I really don’t care that you killed that guy. Or your mother. They probably both deserved it. At least your father did. Met him once or twice. Real mouthy toward my guys. Told one of them how he had to beat some sense into his bastard son all the time.”
    “I didn’t kill my mother.”
    Keegan laughed. “You missed what I said. I don’t care.”
    “Then why are you here?” I tightened my hands into fists and rested them on my knees.
    “Simple, you have something I want.”
    I scoffed at him. “I don’t have anything. Literally, nothing.”
    “You have something much more valuable than money, or anything else that the Catholic is letting you guard in there.”
    I steadied my face. He couldn’t have known about the kids. Nick, certainly, but not the other two. “What do you want then?”
    “I’ve been showing your face around town, getting a little intel