Case Reopened

Not Wanting to Go Home (Mason's POV)

As you can clearly read, there was a chapter titled Not Wanting To Go Home from Carter's perspective. You could read this one without having read that one but I don't suggest it.

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Mason finished off the last question and stood. Checking the time, he couldn't help but smirk. An hour test that he finished with fifteen minutes to spare. Sometimes he thought it was unfair that he had looks and brains. But then he remembered it wasn't his fault that he was born with both and so he stopped thinking about it.

"Done already?" Mr. Herald said.

"Yup."

Mason tossed the test onto his teacher's desk and walked back to his seat. Bending over, he lifted his backpack and hooked it onto his shoulder. As he reached the door, Mr. Herald called out to him.

"Don't you want to know what you got?" Mr. Herald said, holding up the test.

"Is it less than a hundred?"

Mr. Herald smiled in response and Mason held out his hands. "Then I already know my answer."

Again Mason reached for the door, but Mr. Herald spoke, stopping him again.

"You have an amazing brain, Mason. I hope you don't waste it."

With his father? Ha. Like Mason would be given the chance to waste his brain. He didn't think about his future but that didn't mean he didn't believe his father already had it completely laid out for him. Mason was a Douglas after all, that meant something. Legacy. No choice in life.

"I won't."

Mason walked to the entrance, savoring the complete absence of humans around him. Smith had taken a call and Mason figured since his agent was waiting right beyond the classroom door that meant he'd taken it in the car. That told Mason it was a serious and private call. Mason only allowed for being mildly insulting that Smith would assume it would take Mason a full hour to finish the test.

But Smith's assumption meant that Mason got time to be alone, even if was for a brief time. All that waited for him at home was the kind of chaos that didn't involve him. If he got in the middle of the chaos that pissed people off. And watching the chaos from the outside was dull since all of it was political. But at the residence, there was nothing but antiques and no sense of home.

It was only two years since his family had moved into the White House and still nothing about it felt welcoming. At least back at their old home, even if it had been nearly as big, it felt like a home. Angela could always be found in the kitchen prepping some meal or other.

Now Mason didn't even see the kitchen or know who was working there or feel comfortable sitting on a barstool for hours talking to the staff. Angela had been given a job somewhere. Mason didn't know where, his parents hadn't told him. He wondered if they'd think he'd try to run away and live with the one person who he could always find.

His mother was the person he loved the most, but even then he didn't always know where to find her. And if he messaged her, she'd reply but she was often doing one thing or another. Angela had been... a constant. Mason hadn't felt he had a constant in a long time.

Mason pushed open the front doors and stepped out but stopped.

He did have a constant but it wasn't one he liked all that much.

How was Owens even lying on the railing? It looked uncomfortable and slightly dangerous. The dangerous part he didn't care about. Owens could fall and break something for all he cared. But the uncomfortable aspect, did she somehow revel in being abnormal? Probably, she seemed to not care about fitting in, making friends, or being a human being.