Breaking Out (22 page)

Part VII

Parker

Chapter 21

Glitch

The cool glass flashed his reflection as he stared at the dark window of his apartment, waiting. He'd become a master of waiting, yet his patience had grown reed thin. Waiting for winter to end, waiting for Scout to come around, waiting for her to become a woman, and now he was waiting for the key to it all. Parker was sick and tired of waiting, especially because everything he'd been waiting his whole life for always seemed to be interrupted by Lucian fucking Patras.

Unbelievable. A week had passed since Patras announced the clock had started, and Parker was sitting around with his thumb up his ass. He should've known better than to assume Patras would simply hand Scout over. No, that would be too easy. He had to hide her away like the quintessential needle in a haystack.

Parker was taken completely off guard by Lucian's appearance at Leningrad. It was killing him, not knowing what brought on the happy couple's parting so suddenly. Something had to have transpired. The Lucian who burst into his office was nothing like his usual cool, arrogant self.

Parker smirked, his eyes narrowing in the marbleized reflection on the glass. He liked knowing Scout was likely mad at Patras. However, his satisfaction faded fast, as it always did when he considered her predicament. On the tails of his smug amusement always came the awareness that she was likely hurting as well. Hurting because of Patras, but nevertheless hurting. He needed to find her.

When Patras showed up at his office like a man possessed, Parker knew she'd left him. No man looked that haggard after voluntarily cutting a woman loose. It should have pleased him, but for the first time Parker's confidence wavered.

There was such bleak desperation in those dark, haunted eyes. It could have been his superciliousness. A man like Lucian Patras wouldn't take well to being turned down by any woman. Yet, there was something personal hidden in the frantic set of his eyes, something sad. Perhaps the man really did love her.

If he truly loved her, Parker's plight would only be more difficult than it already was. He turned and faced his small living room. This was no penthouse. He'd found a modest place, and it was the first roof he'd had over his head in years. Great pride should be riding him, but all he felt was trepidation. What if this wasn't enough for her?

He shook the thought away, trusting his instinct that he knew Scout better than anyone, and while money held importance to her, material things did not. So long as she had shelter, warmth, and food in her belly, she'd be content. All the other extra shit was just distraction.

Men like Patras were masters of distraction, magicians over the meek, drawing the eye with glitz and ostentation. But Scout was anything but meek.

He still recalled the first day he'd met her. She was small and thin. She'd been crouched low, tying a tattered lace of a boot too many sizes too big for her small foot. Parker had been still adjusting to a life without walls. His mother was dealing poorly with their new lifestyle and mourning the loss of her husband.

***

He glanced down at his shoes. They were warm and cushioned with support. “Wanna trade?” he asked the small girl. When she glanced up at him, he stepped back. Her eyes were crystal blue and lined with far too much cynicism for a girl of her age.

“Get out of here,” she snapped, and he frowned.

“Those shoes are too big for you.”

“Who asked you?” she said smugly and went back to lacing the boots.

“Mine are a little tight.”

She glanced at his shoes and then to his face. “Who are you?”

“Name's Parker Hughes. My mom and I are staying over there for a while until we find a new place.”

She laughed. “Once you come to the tracks, you don't leave. Better keep the shoes you got. Mine gots holes and you won't likely find a better pair than the ones on your feet. Winter's coming. Your feet freeze, and you'll be limping all the way to spring.”

She had a crass way of speaking he found intriguing. She looked about five years younger than him. Her face was dirty and her long, dark hair disheveled, yet her hands were clean.

“What's your name?” he asked.

She knotted her lace and stood. She was a little thing. Her jeans were serviceable, tucked into the boots and drawn with a rope around her waist, a thermal shirt tucked sloppily beneath, and a flannel tied low around her hips. She slung a canvas bag over her shoulder.

“I'm Scout.”

“Scout. Like in
To Kill a Mockingbird
?”

She frowned. “I ain't killed nothing.”

“It's a book.”

Her expression remained tight, but something in her eyes shifted. “You read books?”

Parker's brow pinched as he nodded. “Yeah. I love to read.”

“About birds?”

“About anything. Do you like to read?”

Her tiny shoulders pulled back. A curious look took over her small face as she hardened her expression. “Sure. I read all the time. That's why I'm smart. Smart enough to not go trading good shoes right before winter.”

“Scout!” a scratchy voice called, and they both turned.

“I gotta go,” she said, shifting her bag again.

“Do you live here?” She was the first kid he'd seen in weeks. Granted, she was years younger than him, but he missed talking with people close to his age.

She jerked her head toward a dim corridor. “We stay at the end there, but don't you think of coming by and snooping through our stuff. I got ways of keeping back creepers.”

She was being quite serious, staring up at him with those witchy blue eyes. He fought back the pull of a smirk. She mesmerized him from the hard set of her mouth to the way she carried herself in those rugged boots. She was rough and nothing like the girls he'd grown up around. No bows and lace for this little scrapper. She was all sharp edges and intimidation. He doubted she'd ever held a book in her life.

“Well, Scout, it was nice meeting you.”

Her brow crinkled. As her gaze moved over him, he waited. Her eyes settled on his watch. She lifted her chin. “You steal that?”

He looked at his wrist. “No. It was a gift for my fourteenth birthday.”

“Probably shouldn't wear that 'round here. People go thieving on new folks with expensive things. Could probably get some good money for that. I'd hide it away and pawn it when you need food or clothes.”

“Pawn?”

“Yeah. Sell it.”

His life sure was not what it used to be. “Maybe I'll do that.”

***

That winter he did pawn his watch, but only to buy Scout a coat. They'd become friends, but she always kept him at arm's length until the day he found her with Slim.

Parker had noticed the man leering at Scout in a way that made him uneasy. He tried to always know where Scout was, but soon became equally as interested in where Slim was. His instincts had done him good. It wasn't long before Slim proved to be as creepy as he appeared and Parker had to step in.

She was too young for the tracks and too beautiful for a girl of her age. Parker always kept an eye on her, watchful of the older men who looked a little too closely at young Scout.

Over time, she'd changed in subtle ways that only made the job of protecting her more difficult. When his mother died, she'd come to him and sat silently beside him through the night. She never said much, but she missed nothing. After losing his mother, he and Scout sort of stuck together, like a team. The only time she went missing was when Pearl needed something.

He had mixed emotions about Pearl. Parker knew what it was to lose a mother. He'd lost both his parents, but losing his mom hurt the worst, mostly because she was a victim.

Pearl was nothing like his mother. Over the years she became harder, colder, but no matter what, Scout loved her and he loved that about her, her loyalty. Scout didn't turn her back on those she cared about. He liked that he fell into that category.

Parker liked to believe he was a man of the mind. He learned at an early age to value less earthly things, a beautiful sunset, the sight of a father holding his child's hand, words of love written from heroes to their far-off lovers just before a battle.

He had a romantic soul and Scout had one too. She loved stories. His favorite days were those spent taking her on an adventure in the public library. They'd visited Atlantis, traveled back in time, flew the Jolly Roger, without ever having to spend a penny or leave that braided carpet.

She was enraptured by fiction. “You're magic, Parker,” she'd told him one rainy afternoon. “I think this carpet is magic too. All we have to do is sit on it and your voice flies us away from Folsom, to places where we are rich and warm and feasting like kings.”

Her vocabulary and grammar had improved greatly once he started reading to her. It wasn't easy for her to confess she couldn't read. He'd always suspected she couldn't, but it took years for her to admit it. When he promised to teach her, she hugged him fiercely. It was the first time she'd ever touched him and it had been years since he'd been hugged.

It wasn't long after those physical boundaries had been crossed that he started seeing Scout differently. He became a bit more protective, territorial. She was still young, not yet an adult, but he'd decided once she came of age he'd press his luck and introduce her to other things.

He'd dreamt many times of kissing her. She was so innocent. When that time came, he didn't want to frighten her. Knowing Scout, if she was kissed and didn't want to be, she'd break his nose. He started reading her more adult stories with romantic plotlines by the time she was seventeen. During the intimate moments, she'd blush and fidget.

Then one day she'd caught him in the alley with another woman. He was an adult and technically doing nothing wrong, but the repulsed look on Scout's face when she'd caught him haunted him for a long time. She truly was innocent.

He grit his teeth and paced his apartment. A man like Patras likely had a twisted definition of love. Scout deserved a love that was pure, without condition. He couldn't imagine Patras using a slow hand to teach Scout about things she'd not yet learned. It was almost an intolerable thought, the two of them together. He was furious when he'd found out she'd given herself to a man like Lucian. She was his first.

Scout gave herself to a man who knew nothing about her. He hated that she was so enchanted by money. She could be quite the fool and he'd told her so last fall. He wanted to tell her only whores sold their bodies for riches, but he didn't have to. She connected the dots on her own and he could see in her eyes that sleeping with a man like Patras did not come without the price of her pride.

Scout had dignity in spades, and Parker saw the mistakes she was making. However, until he was in a position to put another solution on the table, his hands were tied. He never expected her to fall so willingly into the arms of Lucian Patras. She was stronger than that, and the fact that he'd miscalculated her emotions for the other man irritated him to no end.

I'm the one who waited. She should be with me.

Patras was a spoiled, rich prick much like those Parker had once called “friend.” Their lives only felt the tremors of the stock market. Real human emotions never broke the surface. How could Scout fall for such shallowness?

She needed a man who could relate to her plight. Respect the journey she'd made thus far in her life and see her for the accomplished person she was. Lucian would never be able to grasp what her life had been, but Parker had been there beside her for almost a decade. Waiting.

It wasn't fair to have someone step in before he had the chance. Parker had waited because Scout was innocent. He didn't feel the need to rush her. He hated acknowledging he'd missed an opportunity. But he would have another, and there was no way he was letting a man like Lucian Patras walk away with Scout's heart.

However, when he caught a glimpse of the uncontrolled, savage rage in the other man's eyes, Parker wondered if he had made a deal with the devil himself.

He knew how Patras saw her. She was a beautiful bauble, a possession. Something must have severed whatever fucked-up arrangement they had. She wasn't meant to be a rich man's mistress. She was meant to be cherished and respected. She was meant to be loved.

Lucian admitted to loving her last winter when he was so desperate to find her. Well, Parker had strong emotions regarding Scout too. Patras didn't deserve her. She was too trusting, too good, and too naïve to know better. Patras was a disease to humanity. Such men believed only in advancement and would climb over anyone to reach the top, including innocents like Scout.

Parker had a plan. He needed money, because Scout saw money as freedom. Parker saw money as a noose around the neck, tightening and choking his peripheral, cutting away all humanistic qualities until nothing but greedy breaths for more sneaked by. It was a challenge not to fall under its spell the way his father had. However, if money was what she needed in order to see him as a man, then so be it.

He'd intended on working his ass off. Not as a bellhop like Patras would've enjoyed. That was only a small stepping-stone. He had plans of finding a better job as soon as he found the means. Running into Slade had been nothing short of a miracle.

Slade Bishop was a shrewd man. It was no wonder he and Patras hung in the same circles. And, for whatever reason, Slade was out to get his partner. Parker didn't care. He was smart enough to let the other man's vindictive nature work in his favor. They'd quickly formed an understanding—fuck Patras and get him away from Scout.

Parker didn't know what the other man's issue with the couple was. He didn't care, so long as no one hurt Scout. All he cared about was getting her safely away from all of them.