Web of Lies by Candice Owen

she was discovering now.
     
    “Grant used to love sitting out here on the long summer evenings.”  Jack’s voice interrupted her thoughts, and she turned her head to look at him.  He was wearing a t-shirt now, but it did nothing to hide the breadth of his shoulders or the muscles that ripped his abdomen.  He stood in front of her, crossing his legs at the ankles and his arms over his chest.
     
    “I’m glad he was happy,” she said.  “So, is this a working farm?”  A neutral subject is best , she figured.
     
    “Not a farm like you’re used to.  Aside from the vineyard and strawberry fields, Grant had a few horses, the chickens, and a kitchen garden out back.  He sold everything but the fifty acres around the house before he came east to find you.”
     
    “Why would he do that?”  Faith turned troubled eyes to his face.
     
    “He wanted to be with you again.  Especially after the diagnosis.”
     
    Jack stopped speaking, and Faith let the silence spin out, as she thought,  What is there to say, anyway?  
     
    “I was with a biker gang when I met Grant,” he said, out of the blue, catching her off-guard.  “They were a tough bunch, and I wasn’t really a member.  Everyone had a persona, if you will, something that uniquely identified him within the group.  I am a climber...trees, walls, mountains.  You name it, I can climb it.  And I was a wiry kid back then.  So, I became Spiderman.  Hence the tattoo.  They used me because I made a good cat burglar.  I was climbing into your dad’s hotel room, while he was visiting you once, when he caught me.”
     
    He stopped speaking, and Faith looked at him.  “And?”
     
    “And nothing.  He didn’t call the police, not even when I attacked him.  After he scared the crap outta me― he had a big gun that he pulled on me, after he beat my ass.  The wily old bastard, I couldn't lay a finger on him. Standing there with his cannon pointed at me, he warned me about breaking and entering and keeping bad company and let me go.  I was shocked.  No one before Grant had ever given me a chance.  Even the guys in the gang took it out on me when I messed up.”
     
    Faith went to stand directly in front of him.  Something in the way he spoke told her there was a deep wound that he was not talking about.
     
    “What about your family?”  Even as she asked the question, she knew there had been no family in the way she meant it.  The gang had been his family, even though she assumed they abused him.
     
    “I lived in foster homes from the time I was born until I found the biker gang at seventeen.  I hung around them when they let me, and they used me until I got caught.”
     
    She did not ask any more questions.  She had had enough abuse from her blood relatives to know that some things needed to be left in the past.  Instead, she tried to focus on other things.
     
    “So, how did you come to be in my dad’s club?  And why did the biker gang let you go?”
     
    Jack led her back to the swing seat and sat with her.  He told her the whole story, from his arrest for breaking and entering and larceny, to his two-year stint in jail, to his meeting her dad again soon after he was released on parole.  They let him go because he had not ratted on them but took the blame for everything in the heist that got him arrested. 
     
    He told the gang that he wanted to go straight, and he would fight to the death to do it.  They knew he was serious, and told him if he changed his mind, he knew where they were.  He knew he wouldn’t get accepted into the armed forces with his record and jail time, but he wanted to be somebody.  He ended up in a program where he met Grant again, and things just took off from there.
     
    “I never knew my dad,” he said.  “Grant was the father I never had; but, he was also my big brother and my mentor.  And eventually my friend.”
     
    Faith listened to him with quiet pride, in him and in her dad.  She felt