Page 2 of Daniel Watson
They talked for the next hour. Not on any kind of plan to get them to his home. Not about what might be coming after the two on the beds with all sorts of shit hooked up to them. Caleb told him about his wife and brothers. The children and what they were up to. How his grandparents were helping out with projects around town that he might have heard of.
Daniel was impressed. All the good works that were going on around town were something that Caleb had a hand in. He’d not even realized that they were in the same town until today. All he’d had to do was walk down the street from the building he was working in and find his brother. Christ, talk about a small world. They had been together for the last few months, and neither of them knew a thing about the other.
When he was given a note, Daniel waited for him to read it before he let his tension go. Caleb looked at him, smiling when he handed him the note.
“Tabby is my wife. You’ll learn not to mess with her. Or not. She’ll love you anyway. But she’s sort of firm about things. Well, you’ll figure it out. She said that the basement has been converted into your lab of sorts and that you should come home with me and the other two.” He asked him where he was going to be staying. “With us. Everyone in town knows that I’ve been looking for you. Most of the people won’t even equate you with the man at the newspaper office. You didn’t get out much, I’m to understand.”
“No. I was working.” Caleb stood up. “We’re going now? To your home? I mean, this is a huge undertaking. How will you get the young couple there into your home?”
“It’ll be a piece of cake.” He wished he had the confidence that Caleb had. He’d never had an easy move in all his life and was sure that this wasn’t going to be any different. Going out to the garage, he started laughing when he saw the setup that was going on. Yes, he thought, it was going to be a piece of cake with this man in charge.
~*~
“Mister, I’m not coming down outta this tree until you swear to me that that cur dog is out of sight. He already done did bite me once. I don’t like donating my blood to nobody, especially not cur dogs.” Daniel let himself laugh at the little boy in the tree. “You just go on now, Mr. Sebastian, and I’ll be fine and dandy.”
“Can I help?” Daniel had yet to meet any of the others but Caleb as his family, so he put out his hand to Sebastian, a man who could be his twin. “I think that we’re brothers.”
“You don’t know that you’re brothers? Sheesh, Mister. I got me five sisters, and they make for sure that everyone knows that they’re related to me. They’re all bigger and older than me, too.” The little boy looked at him. “Yeah, I can see that you’re his brother, so don’t be thinking nobody else is gonna notice it.”
“I didn’t get to meet him when I came to town yesterday. We all have the same father, but we’ve not been together before.” Luke, he found out the boy’s name and said that was nice for them all. “I guess. Where is the cur dog?”
As if he’d summoned the pooch, he came barking at them from around the corner. As soon as Sebastian told him to lay down, it did. Daniel was trying to hold back his laughter when Luke told the other man that he only minded big people, not little kids with teeth holes in his leg.
“He thinks you smell good to him.” Luke told him that wasn’t helping. “No. I suppose not. I’m not saying that you did anything, but could he have a reason for wanting to chomp on your legs? I mean, he doesn’t look to me like a mean dog.”
“I had to do it. My momma,” Luke looked at Sebastian, then back at him before continuing again. “She’s having herself a bad day. Dad, he knocked her around a bit and took all the money in the house again. I’m not asking for money, Mr. Sebastian. I’m just telling this man here, your brother, why the dog hates me. I was feeding him, you see. Putting out the scraps for him to munch on. You don’t know what he looked like before I started doing that. All his ribs were fighting to be on the outside of his skin rather than where they’re supposed to be. But momma, she got it in her head that we couldn’t feed a cur dog—I don’t even know what that means—no more on account of dad taking all the food money. Again.”
“Is your momma all right?” Luke told him that she was in the hospital with his sisters. “All right. We’ll come back to that. This dog, he’s usually friendly to you, is he?”
“He is. Sometimes, when it’s raining out, I bring him into my room and hide him away. My daddy, he’d have himself a conniption if he were to hear about that part. Woo Eee doggie. I’d be hurting.” Daniel was having so much fun that he didn’t want to leave, so he said he’d help the little boy and dog out. “The dog don’t need much in the way of help, mister. He just needs to not be chomping on the hand that feeds him.”
“Do you think perhaps you smell like your dad, and he’s smelling him instead of you?” Daniel looked at Sebastian while Luke was thinking things over. “I was looking for Caleb and Tabby. I need to talk to them about something important. Do you know where they might be?”
“I know where Tabby is. She’s with the other women out looking for a building to have the school’s fair days in. They’re just down the street at City Hall getting permits and standards that they’re going to need.” He asked about Caleb. “He should be with Joey. That’s the last place I knew anything about either of them.”
A thick jacket hit him on the head, and he looked up at Luke. “That’s my daddy’s. He said he wanted me to drop it off to be dry-cleaned. I put it on so that I’d not lose it. You think that’s all it was, Mister?” He said the only way to find out was to test it on the dog. “I’m not going to be happy if you’ve been funning with me about this. He already bit me once today.”
Once Luke was out of the tree, he could see how badly the boy had been knocked around, too. Telling him to put his hand out to the dog earned him a look, but he had confidence in the plan that he’d laid out for him.
The dog was growling at the back of his throat, but he did inch his way to Luke. Almost as if he would have given up, the dog jumped into the little boy’s arms and was trying to lick his face off. The giggling little boy and the happy pup were just what he needed right now.
“Now that he’s not going to chomp on you anymore, do you mind if I have a look at your wound? I don’t want him to lose you again because you got an infection.” Setting the two of them on the sidewalk, he cautiously looked at not just the superficial bite mark but also as many wounds on his arms and legs as he could. “I think we should all pay a visit to the hospital to make sure you’re up to date on your shots. We can check on your mom and sisters while we’re at it.”
“You a doctor or something?” He said he was a doctor. “We sure could use a doctor in my family. Dad comes around with his fists, all ready to do some hurting, and you could patch us up. Momma gets the most beating around. So does Serenity, but she hits him back now so he don’t mess with her too much. Momma would too. She used to anyways. But since she’s got the cancer, it’s hard on her to defend herself.” Luke looked up at the two of them. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I lose her. She’s the best momma there ever was.”
“She sounds like it.” They took a hand each, and the three of them, with the dog following right behind, walked down the street. Sebastian said he had parked his car down here when he’d seen Luke up the tree. That was when he saw Caleb. “I have to talk to Caleb for just a minute. Do you think you guys could wait for me to go with you? I’d like to have a couple of tests run while—just give me a few minutes.”
He was prepared for the bear hug that he’d gotten every time he came upon Caleb. It was breathtaking, literally, as well as it really did make him feel quite a bit better about things in general. However, he didn’t have good news this time, and he almost hated to let him go.
“I heard about it.” Nodding, he told him he was so sorry. “I am as well. While they didn’t give us any kind of information on the two of them, it’s still tragic that they both passed away. The young woman, Cassie, she had lost a lot of blood, you said, and the young man, Bradley, he was hurt pretty badly.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you know?” He told him that his butler had gone to check on him and had heard him talking to someone about it. “I guess I could have been more discreet about it. I’m sorry that you had to find out that way. While I didn’t really hold out much hope for the young woman, as you said, she’d lost a great deal of blood. I did hope for the young man to make it.”
“Do you know what happens now?” He said that they’d make arrangements to have their bodies picked up for them. “No. I mean, I’m glad that is going to be taken care of. I meant about their killers. Do you know anything about if they’ve found them or not?”
“Several factions are taking credit for the deaths, though they don’t say who they killed or where, so we’re not putting much out there on that. I know that the president has his best men working on finding them. It happened on our soil, and he’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. The two of them, brother and sister, from what I’ve been able to figure out, have lost a great deal in working for the government. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what else comes to us about it. I just don’t know.”
“Thank you for telling me.” He got another hug. “You’ll be staying, right? I mean, you just got here, and I’d hate to lose you so soon.”