Dark Matter - The Mors Mortis Trilogy Book 2

Chapter Thirty Two - Empty Eyes

The moment Jared threw the door open to Brenton's study, he heard movement – the sharp scrape of a chair, a grunt of annoyance – and his eyes found Brenton instantly. His father had been turned away from the door, gazing out the window with a book in his lap.

"Evans!" Brenton snapped, spinning around. "Didn't I tell you not to let anyone –"

Brenton cut off the moment he saw who, exactly, was standing in his doorway and the lecture fled his lips and left his mouth hanging open instead.

Brenton had hollowed out since Jared had last seen him, the skin pulling sharply against bone, casting his face into sharp plains and shadows. It made an unwanted pang of homesickness rip through Jared's chest, of loss without knowing what exactly he was missing.

Jared waited, hoping Brenton would recover himself enough to speak first, but it quickly became obvious he wasn't going to, and Jared swallowed down the dryness that had entered his throat.

"You look surprised to see me," he said eventually, his voice scratchy.

For a long time, Brenton just continued to stare, the silence between them stretching and twisting uncomfortably.

"I am," Brenton said, and he stood up slowly, placing the book he'd been holding down onto his desk, his eyes only leaving Jared's for a second to take in Tai and Marco, to notice the handcuffs around their wrists.

There was something in his expression Jared had never seen there before. It was an almost sickened relief, a strangled, surprised hope. Jared was surprised at how flat it made him feel.

"Where have you been?" Brenton asked. "You've been gone for weeks."

Jared swallowed down the emptiness that was rising within him and tried to colour his voice with emotions. If this was going to work, he had to play his part right.

"I've been with the S.I.S," Jared said, faintly relieved when he heard a familiar conceit enter his voice. "They took me hostage after Parker tried to kill me."

Brenton's Adams apple bobbed up and down, and Jared tried not to let it bother him. He knew his father well enough to recognise his signs of discomfort.

"We thought you'd turned against us," Brenton said.

"Of course, you did. You haven't trusted me ever since I brought Leah back, have you? Why else send your second in command to kill me?"

Something shifted in Brenton's face at that. Nothing in it moved, not exactly, but something happened, like rocks shifting at the bottom of the ocean, sending surges to the surface.

"No," Brenton said softly. "No. I didn't send him. I never would have. Surely you know that."

When Jared didn't reply, Brenton took a step forward.

"Surely you know that, Jared," Brenton repeated, the words more urgent now, demanding and desperate.

Jared stared at him for a moment longer before he sighed.

"Yeah, I do," he admitted.

Brenton relaxed slightly, and Jared felt an overwhelming urge to leave it there. To go back to who he'd been before; to the naive, blind mess he'd let his father turn him into.

But even as he cherished that thought, he felt his throat moving, heard himself speaking.

"Even you aren't ruthless enough to hand out a death sentence to someone who can't die."

For a moment, his words hung in the air, their weight heavy enough to silence everything, but then Brenton jerked, a choked noise wrenching up his throat as if it had been pulled from his guts by a rope.