Page 106 of Bittersweet & Strange

I know who I am looking at. I approach the bars carefully and reach for the keys I took from the guard.

The man lifts his head at the sound of my footsteps. The moment his gaze settles on me, whatever exhaustion had weighed him down disappears. He scrambles backward so quickly that his shoulder strikes the stone wall.

“You.”

I stop several feet from the bars and study him, remembering the frightened man I locked in the tower and the son who eventually stood in front of me and offered himself in his father’s place. Of course he recognizes me. The last time we saw one another, I was the monster holding him prisoner, and Boone bargained away his own freedom to secure his father’s.

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

His face loses what little color remains. “Stay away from me.”

I take the ring of keys from my pocket and step toward the lock anyway. “Your son sent me.”

That stops him.

He stares at me, caught between the danger of believing me and the possibility that I’m telling the truth.

“Boone?”

“Yes.”

His eyes search my face, suspicion fighting with the first trace of hope I have seen in them. “Where is he?”

“Upstairs, where I told him to stay when I came down here to find you.”

The old man shakes his head almost immediately. “No. Boone wouldn’t send you. You took him from me.”

There are several things I could say to that, none of which would improve our present circumstances or convince Boone’s father that following me out of this cell is preferable to remaining inside it.

“That I did.”

His eyes narrow when I fit the first key into the lock and attempt to turn it.

Wrong one.

“Then why would he send you?”

“Because Lucien took you.” I discard the first key and try another. It also refuses to turn. “When Boone needed someone to help him get you back, he came to me.”

The second key fails, and I reach for the third.

“And because Lucien hurt your son.”

The man goes completely still. His breathing changes, and when I look at him again, whatever suspicion occupied his face moments ago has been replaced by fear.

“What do you mean, hurt him?”

The third key slides into the lock and turns.

I pull the cell door open, but Boone’s father makes no attempt to leave. His eyes remain fixed on mine, waiting for an answer I have neither the time nor the desire to give him in the middle of a prison.

“That is something Boone should tell you himself.”

His face tightens. “What did Lucien do?”

“Something that ensures I will deal with him before this night is over.” I step into the open doorway. “Right now, your son needs me to get you out of here, and I would prefer to do that before someone discovers the unconscious men upstairs.”

Boone’s father remains where he is, studying me, trying to reconcile whatever Boone told him about me with the man standing here offering him freedom.