By the time Jack got himself out from under his mother's watchful eye, he didn't want to go see Irene anymore. He'd had time to think about how every fiber of his being was warning him away from her.
He remembered the last time he'd seen Spencer Truman. He'd snuck into Truman's hospital room, knowing that Truman had framed Victor-dad for murder, been responsible for the loss of at least one little brother, and helped Mom off the roof of a building. Truman had spoken to him like they were friends, like Jack would somehow take his side over his family's.
The revulsion he'd felt then, as a young boy, was the revulsion he felt now.
He remembered how his instincts had screamed at him that Eli Clarke would be the wicked stepfather to end all wicked stepfathers. He'd agreed to suppress his feelings at his mother's request… but eventually he'd been proven right.
The danger he'd felt radiating from Eli was the danger he felt radiating from Irene.
And when he set aside his determination not to betray Victor-dad, he didn't feel any of that coming from his biological father. Scarface. Scarface-dad. He was sensing anger and frustration, but a weird sort of safety too, almost as if subconscious memories of his babyhood were coming into play. It would be nice if Scarface-dad would say something about the whole pretending Jack was dead fiasco beyond "that happened," though. It was a stark contrast to the way Scarface-dad had apparently whimpered about Starr making the sun come out for him when he'd first seen her as a baby.
Jack scowled.
His instincts told him to go home and confess everything to his mother.
His memory of Victor-dad told him to stay away from Blair even if that meant throwing himself into something he knew perfectly well was stupid and dangerous and going to end badly. Anything else was disloyalty.
His pride told him that it was fantastic that he had managed to sneak out of the house despite Blair's obvious efforts, and since he'd managed it he was going to go somewhere forbidden.
His feet took him to Tea's house before he'd sorted all of that out.
This time, he was careful to make certain that there was no one around to hit him over the head as he approached the house. There was no rain to dull his senses now; he could see and hear everything, or rather, nothing. He was very much alone. The house was quiet and dark inside and out. Still, he decided to try his key in the back door instead of the front.
At first, Jack thought that either Irene or Tea must have changed the locks. An embarrassing flood of relief coursed through him when his key stuck. He would just have to go home. If he couldn't get into Victor-dad's house, maybe that was Victor-dad sending him a sign from the great beyond that it was all right to stop lying about Scarface-dad and let his mother and Starr be happy.
Then he remembered that this lock always stuck because no one ever used it. He pushed down harder on the key and the door swung open.
Damn.
He didn't turn on the lights. He told himself that that was because he didn't want to give Blair any clues that he was here if she had noticed his absence right away and come looking. He told himself that that was not because whoever had really killed Victor-dad (and he was pretty sure it hadn't been Scarface-dad) might be lurking around. It definitely was not because Irene's interest in him had been more sinister than genuine.
At the foot of the stairs, he heard the faintest hint of voices and strained his ears to hear more. One voice, he thought, was Irene; another, also female, was less familiar. He could feel tension radiating down the stairs in waves, but his fear suddenly evaporated. Now he was overwhelmed by curiosity. Slowly, he ascended the stairs.
The women were in the room Victor-dad had shared with Tea. That explained why he hadn't seen any light from outside; that room had the kind of curtains that blocked all light from either direction.
Sam's room was next door, and Jack slid inside. He crouched among the scattered action figures and pressed his ear against the wall.
Irene's voice was clear.
"You had me torture my own son for eight years—"
The other voice was softer. "Regardless, I would have a better chance of success if I knew what I was asking him for." "He knows what you're asking for. If he doesn't, he'll figure it out. It's why he had his silly little girl break him out of jail." "If he decides that the only way to solve the problem is to kill me, that doesn't get you any closer to it. I wouldn't be the first agent he's killed since he escaped."
"Spare me the righteous indignation. You know he's not your son, although I do appreciate that you commit to your character as if your life depended on it." A laugh. "Oh wait. It does."
"That's the beauty of framing him for Special V's murder. Or letting young Jack do it for us." Jack's whole body jerked at the sound of his name. "He's gotten a taste of being locked up again. He can't stand the idea of being away from them any longer."
Jack pulled his knees to his chest and buried his face against them. They were talking like they were the ones who had murdered Victor-dad, and he was helping them.
If he were Blair or Starr, he would have stormed in there, taken them both down, and been hailed as a conquering hero.
But he wasn't. He was Jack. He was the one who did stupid things when he had a crowd to egg him on and only killed people by accident. He was the one Scarface-dad had thrown away at birth and who was always a distant second for Victor-dad, first to Starr and then to Dani.
He was the one who was going to slink out of the dark house with his tail between his legs and go home to his mother.
Todd grimaced as Blair deposited Victor Lord's ring in his outstretched palm. It was the same ring, all right, and at the edge of his mind he knew that there was something important about it. He didn't want to pull at that thread of a thought; it might send him spiraling into some catatonic mess of not knowing who the hell he was, let alone what it was.
But that wouldn't happen. Not while Blair was here. Blair had more power over him than a ridiculous ring ever could.
Blair was backing away from him.
"Where are you going?"
"I have to go back to Capricorn."
The lie manifested itself in her shaky voice and wild, desperate eyes.
He jumped in front of her and blocked the door. (Physically barricading a woman into her bedroom was not something he liked to do nowadays, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Besides, the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. He was only trying to sort out the stupid ring in the first place because he was trying to protect her, after all.)
Without even arguing, she thrust herself forward, as if she thought she could somehow run through him. Instinctively, he braced himself for the impact and closed his arms tightly around her.
"You never saw me play football," he whispered. "Keeping people from knocking us over and running in the other direction is actually what we do."
"Let me go." Her voice was muffled against his chest.
"It's not safe."
"It's just Capricorn."
"You aren't really going back to Capricorn right before it closes when you have two people on the run in your house with two small children and a teenage boy who—" He groaned. "You went in there to get the ring and he was gone, so you thought you'd go rescue him from Irene without me?"
Todd released Blair with some regret. The circumstances had been less than ideal, but having her pressed against his body was something he had dreamed of for eight long years. The sudden absence of her warmth left him empty and achy as he stormed down the hall to Jack's room. It was empty, as he had known it would be.
"Irene threatened your life," he told Blair. You are not going out there by yourself.
"I wasn't going to be by myself," she drawled, all Southern and superior. He loved it when she talked that way, but again, this was not the time. "I was going to call security."
"I got your security right here, Babe." He crossed his arms and locked eyes with hers. "Better than anything money can buy."
"You're going to get yourself killed or arrested."
"Probably, one of these days, but not tonight."
"You need to stay here with Starr and the kids in case the police do another search."
"Starr could handle the police by the time she was Sam's age." He grabbed Blair by the hand. "Jack may not like it or accept it right now, but he's my son, too, and it's my psycho mother he's looking for. You don't get to leave me out of the loop on this. I've been out of the loop for eight years."
He headed for the garage with Blair's fingers clutched tight in one hand and the ring still clutched in the other.
He could see Victor Lord's emaciated face, hear him whispering not to let this happen. Victor Lord hadn't given him the ring as a symbolic gesture, he had realized. When he'd been alone, he had removed the stone from the ring and found—
The door slammed.
"Jack?" Blair called.
"It's me," came the answer.
Todd scrambled back upstairs.
As much as he wanted to be in a position to overhear what Blair said to Jack, what he needed was to get inside the ring.
Starr's bedroom was empty; she was sleeping in another wing of the house so as not to make her presence too obvious to her brothers. Todd rummaged through her desk and found a Swiss army knife. His hands remembered what to do better than his mind, and in seconds he had extracted a microchip from behind the stone.
It.
"Eight years of my life," he whispered.
He sank to the floor and rested his head against Starr's bed for a long moment. Then, resolutely, he crawled to Starr's closet. Far in the back hung a handful of Halloween costumes. He tucked the chip into the lining of a headband adorned with kitten ears.
Also in the back of the closet was a computer which had apparently been abandoned in favor of the new laptop on Starr's desk. Todd snapped it open and pried free a circuit that looked more or less like the chip he had removed from the ring.
"Looks more like the chip than Victor Junior looked like me, at least," he muttered, and forced the ring shut again. The fake would buy enough time to figure out what the hell was on the real chip. He had never actually known. He had taken the chip from Victor, and days later Mitch had been walling him into the mausoleum. Then… Baker and the chair and a thousand questions about it.
It.
It that was now hidden in a Halloween costume he'd never seen his daughter wear. She'd worn it for a boy who hadn't been good enough for her and who had left her with a beautiful baby girl—and apparently not enough self-respect to demand the use of a condom.
It that meant he couldn't go downstairs and see his son, who no longer accepted that he was his father.
It that had given Blair enough time away from him to convince herself that they were strangers, and that she liked being alone. Or something. He wasn't actually sure, and that might have been the worst part.
Jack was glad that Blair had met him at the door. He was looking forward to her wrath, which would be so much more palpable and understandable than whatever he had overheard at Victor-dad and Tea's house.
He didn't get her wrath, though, at least not right away. He got a hug, which he returned gladly, and an "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Mom," he mumbled, and even though he wasn't fine at all, it almost felt like he was telling the truth.
"Where were you?"
"I went to Dad's house to see Irene."
"Did you see her?"
"No. She's creepy. I knew before I got over there that I didn't really want to—"
There was a knock at the front door. Furious that he was being interrupted in the middle of the night when he had finally decided to tell Blair the everything that included everything, Jack threw the door open. He was spoiling for an argument with the cops, or maybe he'd just tell them he'd lied about Scarface-dad so they didn't need to look for him.
But it wasn't McPain and his band of idiots at the door. It was Tea and Dani.
Because it was always his siblings who had bigger problems than he did when he wanted to talk to his parents.
"Mom's there," he pointed, and he went upstairs to his room without further comment.
He'd been hoping that they key sticking in the lock earlier that night had been a sign from Victor-dad. Now he knew that if Victor-dad had sent a sign, it was his favorite child Dani appearing just as Jack was about to betray his memory.
He muttered an obscenity and flung himself across his bed.