HOURS LATER, JUSTIN SAT IN HIS ROOM, HIS STOMACH growling with hunger. He had skipped dinner that night, and his parents had left him alone. There was no way he would have been able to eat after watching Max be driven away to meet his fate. He also didn’t want to face his mom and dad. So he’d holed up in his room, trying desperately to think of a way to save Max without putting his family in danger. Time after time, he had come up empty-handed.
Now it was late, and Justin was starving. He stepped out into the quiet of the hall, preparing to sneak down to the kitchen—only his parents were still awake. He heard them talking in soft voices downstairs, so he stopped at the top of the stairs to listen.
“This isn’t sitting right,” his dad said. “That deputy’s place is a long way off. What was Justin doing out there with Max anyway?”
“I don’t know,” his mom replied. “He won’t tell me. You want to know what’s happening with Justin, you’ll need to ask him yourself. It’s about time you did.”
“I could talk to Kyle.” His dad sounded sad. “But Justin, I don’t know. It’s like I don’t even know my own son.”
His words were like a punch to Justin’s gut. He had never heard his dad sound so . . . regretful before. Justin had always thought his dad didn’t want to know him, but maybe that wasn’t true.
“You want to know your own son?” his mom asked, her voice firm. “Then turn around and look in the mirror. You two are more alike than either one of you will ever care to admit. I’ve been keeping the peace in this house since the day Kyle shipped out.” She was silent for a moment, as if letting her words sink in. “I’ve already lost one son, Ray. If it’s all right with you, I’d very much like to hold on to the other.”
Justin heard his dad sigh, then push back his chair and walk heavily across the living room. He was coming upstairs to talk to Justin.
Justin scrambled back to his room and shut the door just before his dad reached the top of the stairs. He threw himself onto his bed and picked up a comic book. A moment later, there was a soft knock on his door. His dad entered without waiting for an invitation. Justin looked up at him. His dad stood in the doorway looking awkward, like he often did when he was trying to talk about anything that might involve feelings. Justin almost felt bad for him.
“Justin, I—” His dad stopped, collected himself, then started again. “Is there anything else you want to tell me about what happened with Max today?”
Justin swallowed hard. Everything. That’s what he wanted to tell his dad—everything, from start to finish. He didn’t even care how much trouble he got in. But there was no way he could tell his dad even one word about Tyler. Because if he did, he’d get them all killed.
“I’m sorry,” Justin managed to choke out.
His dad looked surprised to hear Justin apologize.
“That’s not what I meant,” his dad said.
It was Justin’s turn to be surprised. If his dad wasn’t here to get him in trouble, then what did he want to talk about?
His dad furrowed up his brow and studied Justin for a long moment.
“Son, I’ve seen you make a lot of trouble. I’ve also always seen you own up to it. Until now.”
Even though Justin and his father had never gotten along, there was no denying that his dad was always able to tell when something serious was up. It was uncanny, really. And for once in his life, Justin actually wanted his dad to figure it out, to tell him what to do, but he couldn’t risk it. He had to throw him off course.
“Guess I’m not a hero, like you and Kyle.” Justin lowered his eyes back to his reading. “That’s the way it goes, I guess.”
He expected his dad to get angry, like usual, but he didn’t. Instead he took one limping step closer to his bed. Justin looked up at him again. There was an unfamiliar look in his dad’s eye—it was nice, friendly. Almost like he wanted to connect with Justin, rather than punish him.
“No one in this family has ever been drafted, son,” his dad began. “Not my dad, not his. They enlisted. We all enlisted. WWII, Korea. Both of them were decorated soldiers. I signed up the day I turned eighteen.” He paused, as if he was about to say something difficult. “In ’91, I was deployed with my unit to Saudi Arabia. Desert Storm—the first Gulf War.” His dad shook his head a little, almost sheepishly. “You know all that already.” He paused, then continued.
“It was my first command. Day one, we’re sent over the berm. An hour into Kuwait, we came up on the Al-Burqan oil field. The Iraqis had set it on fire, and there was smoke everywhere. Our eyes were burning—you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. Then shots went off.” He stopped again, looking like he was replaying the scene in his mind. “So we returned fire. Only, it turns out, we were firing on nobody. Because the shots were coming from behind us.”
Justin’s head shot up, and he stared at his dad with wide eyes. Was he saying what he thought he was saying?
“Friendly fire,” his dad confirmed. “The enemy was long gone, but no one could see a thing, so our own guys were shooting at us. Accidentally. The guy next to me went down. I moved toward him, to help him. Then I got hit. I took two bullets in my leg. One passed through the muscle, but the other”—he tapped at his calf—“cracked right into my shinbone and shattered it like glass. I was helicoptered to Germany the next day. The war was over so fast, most of my guys got home before I did.”
Justin was speechless. He’d always thought that his dad had seen serious action and been hurt in battle. Real battle, against the real enemy. But now that he thought about it, he’d never actually heard his dad say that. He’d only heard other people say it about his dad.
“By the time I got back,” his dad went on, his gaze cast down at the rug, “people were telling all kinds of crazy stories. I tried to straighten them out, to tell the real story.” He shook his head, ashamed. “But I could see how much it disappointed them.” He looked back up at Justin. “How much they wanted to believe I was . . .” He trailed off. “Well, anyway, I stopped correcting them, sooner than I care to admit.”
Justin and his dad sat in strained silence for a moment.
“I always wanted to tell Kyle. But when I saw the way he looked up to me—the way he looked at me . . . I just couldn’t.” His dad took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He looked almost relieved, like he’d been wanting to get these words off his chest for a long time. “My point is, Justin, a hero tells the truth, no matter what people might think about him. And you’ve always done that. From day one.”
Justin’s eyes filled with hot tears at his father’s words, but he willed them not to spill over onto his cheeks. He’d never heard praise from him before. He wanted nothing more than to tell his dad that he didn’t care what had happened in Saudi Arabia—that he still looked up to him. That he still loved him. But Justin couldn’t allow himself to speak. The stakes were too high. He couldn’t afford to utter even one bad word about Tyler.
“If what happened to you and Max today is different from what Tyler and that deputy are saying, Justin, then I need to know about it.” His dad was practically pleading.
Justin looked down at his comic book. “Dad, I’m gonna go to sleep now, okay?”
His dad looked as if he’d been slapped. He blinked a couple of times and took one step backward, as if he were catching his balance. Justin felt a sharp twinge in his chest, but steeled himself. He was keeping his mouth shut for everyone’s good.
Without a word, his dad turned and left the room, closing the door behind him. From his bed, Justin heard the front door open, then slam shut.
A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, JUSTIN WOKE WITH A START to the sound of the house phone ringing. The lights were still on in his bedroom. His comic book lay facedown on his chest. His neck ached from sleeping sitting up. He had fallen asleep while he was reading. He checked the clock—it was midnight.
He heard his mom’s muffled voice downstairs, talking to someone on the phone. The conversation was short.
“Justin!” she called up.
Justin sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his groggy head.
“Justin!” she yelled again.
“I heard you, Mom,” he said impatiently. “I’m coming.” He hopped up and headed downstairs.
She stood in the kitchen, clutching the cordless phone and waving it in his direction. “What did you and your dad talk about earlier?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged, still standing on the stairs.
“Well,” she said, eyeing him suspiciously, “after you talked about nothing, he stormed out of here without a word. I assumed he went to the office for something, but he’s been gone for hours. And he just called to tell me not to worry, that everything’s fine, but he’s going to spend the night at our hunting cabin, and he’s not sure when he’ll be back.”
A horrible thought dawned on Justin, but he told himself to remain calm.
“Do we have a hunting cabin?” he asked nervously.
“Not that I ever heard of,” his mom said, her voice full of concern. “That’s my point.”
The knot of dread tightened in Justin’s gut. A snippet of conversation—something Tyler had said to Emilio’s guys in the clearing—nagged at him. He’d thought it was weird at the time, but after things went crazy, he’d forgotten about it. “It’s stored in a nice, safe place,” Tyler had said about the weapons he was going to sell. He had to stash them somewhere safe, where no one would think to look. Like a storage space. Like his dad’s business.
Justin and his mom locked eyes. There was so much he wished he could tell her.
His mom was worried enough without knowing about Tyler and the weapons. She turned from him and dialed 911. She spoke quickly and anxiously into the phone. Justin could tell from her side of the conversation that the police weren’t going to do anything to help. His dad hadn’t been missing long enough to warrant any kind of response, and he couldn’t tell them what he knew. If the police tracked Tyler and his father down, sirens blaring, wouldn’t Tyler know that Justin had ratted him out?
No, the only way to save his father was to find him by himself. But how?
His mom hung up the phone in tears. Justin wrapped her in a hug.
“He’s fine, Mom,” he said, though he didn’t believe his own words. Justin had never felt more helpless—or hopeless—in his life. With no Kyle or Max to help him, how would he ever find his dad?
Just then, they were startled by a loud scratching noise at the back door. Before Justin had a chance to wonder what it was, he heard a familiar whimper, followed by a bark that made his heart soar. He had no idea how it could be possible, but there was no denying who was in their backyard.
It was Max.