Noah

by Allison LaFleur

  “I’ll treat them like my own, but you need to quit talking like this. You are going to be fine. We are gonna figure this out.”

  “I appreciate the support, Noah, but I’m not thinking this is going to end well.”

  “Look. Here, take this.” I wrote him out a check. “Take this today. Tomorrow I’ll call my broker, have him sell a few things, and we will finalize it. It’s Sunday. This is all I can do today.”

  John didn’t even look at it, stuffing the check in his pocket. “Thank you, Noah. I need to get back. I’ll stop by tomorrow and clean out my office.”

  “John, we’re going to beat this.”

  “I hope so, Noah. I hope so.”

  Lena

  “Hey, Lena!” We’d been in our house barely two months, but it seemed like we had lived here forever. It was perfect with five big bedrooms, five bathrooms, a spacious den and kitchen, a three car garage, a huge backyard for our kids to play in, and great big windows to let in the natural light.

  Noah had been right—it was the perfect house for our growing family. It took my breath away when I thought about where I had come from.

  “In the kitchen!” I called back.

  “Can I have John’s kids over for the weekend?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “He’s gotta go to Chicago for treatment. I thought we should help out.”

  “Is everything okay, Noah?”

  “I don’t know, babe.” He came and folded me in his arms, and I relished in the feel of him, my head resting on his chest, listening to his heart beat. “I’m really worried. I’m not sure he’s getting better.”

  “We have so much. I want to do whatever we can.” My heart overflowed with love for this man in my arms. How did I get so lucky?

  At that moment, I heard Kinsey over the baby monitor, and my heart flooded again. My life was perfect.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  FOUR YEARS LATER

  Noah

  “Make it stop.” Lena groaned, reaching a hand over to shove me, bringing me out of a deep sleep to hear my cell phone vibrating on the nightstand. “Noah, wake up.” She pushed again until I finally grabbed the noisy thing and answered it.

  “Hello?” Who calls at 3 am? I flopped onto my back, already planning to return to sleep as soon as I could.

  “Mr. Hendrix?” a trembling young voice answered.

  “This is Noah.” How many hours until the alarm goes off?

  “Oh, Mr. Hendrix! Thank God. This is Mark. I really need your help.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded frantic. I wracked my sleepy brain to place this ‘Mark,’ but I couldn’t.

  “Mark, are you sure you’ve got the right Hendrix?”

  “This is Noah Hendrix, right? Of A&H BioTech?” He sniffed, and I rubbed my eyes. This call wasn’t going away, and I wasn’t going back to sleep.

  “It’s Hendrix BioTech now, but yes, that’s me.”

  “I’m Mark, John Alexander’s son. My brother Mason needs your help.”

  Wide awake now with all the sleep fuzzies gone, I pushed into a sitting position.

  “Mark!” I whispered, “It’s great to hear from you, but it’s three o’clock in the morning. Why are you calling?” Lena and I spent years looking for Mark and Mason after John’s death. Their mother Claire was so angry, she took them and ran.

  “Mason got arrested. Can you come bail him out?” Mark had to be seventeen, maybe eighteen by now, but the plaintive tone made him sound twelve. I squeezed my eyes shut and sighed before I carefully threw back the blankets, swinging my legs over the side, and eased out of bed. Hand over my mouth, phone held to my ear, I tiptoed out of the room so as not to wake Lena.

  “Where is he?” I whispered.

  “They’re holding him at the 48th precinct. Can you please come get him?” he begged. “If no one comes, they say they’re gonna send him to juvie.” His voice cracked on the last word. Already half-dressed, I finished pulling on the suit still draped over a chair where I’d left it yesterday when I got home from work.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m glad you called, Mark.” I hopped on one foot as I slid into my shoes. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of this. I’m going to call some people and see what I can do.” I hadn’t been able to keep my promise to John before this, but I sure as hell would now. “Mark, give me the number there.”

  He rattled off the digits, and I jotted them down, saving them in my phone as I grabbed my wallet and keys. I left a note for Lena on the fridge, snuck out the door, and got in the Porsche. It was too late at night, and I was in too much of a hurry to deal with the trains.

  “I’m here to see Mark and Mason Alexander,” I said to the desk sergeant manning the entrance to the 48th precinct.

  “Mr. Hendrix!” A gangly teenager with thick glasses unfolded himself from one of the plastic chairs lining the walls and ran toward me.

  “I’ll call the detective down for you, sir.”

  The boy threw himself at me. More man than boy, he was almost as tall as I was, but rail thin. “Thank you so much for coming. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “What happened?” I held him in front of me at arm’s length. With a sweeping glance, I took in his ratty t-shirt, his worn sneakers with holes in the toes, and the unkempt hair that was cut so poorly it was clearly done at home.

  “He snuck out of the shelter last night,” he sniffed, wiping a watery eye before taking a deep breath and continuing. “A group of older boys convinced him that toilet papering buildings downtown would be fun.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound too bad. I can clear that up.” I turned on my heels to go speak with the office.

  “No, wait. It gets worse.” He reached a hand out to grab my sleeve. “They didn’t stop at toilet-papering buildings.” He pulled me close and broke into a whisper, “They smashed windows and robbed a convenience store at gunpoint.”

  I stopped with a sigh, turning back to face Mark and rubbing at the wrinkle I’d just discovered on my forehead. “That complicates things a bit.”

  “Can you get him out? My mom will freak out when she gets back from work.”

  “Mark, where is your mother?” I needed to talk to John’s wife immediately.

  “She’s cleaning offices.” He looked down, stubbing a toe on the floor.

  “And she doesn’t know about Mason?” It was three in the morning, and these two teenage boys were on their own. What happened to them after they disappeared?

  “No, she doesn’t know. Can you please just get him out?” He blinked at me from behind his thick glasses like a hopeful little boy instead of the gangly teenager he was.

  “I’ll do my best.” I mentally ran through my options before pointing a finger at him. “But we are coming back to this conversation.”

  “This better be good.” Judge Allen’s sleepy voice came over the line.

  “Noah Hendrix, judge. I need a favor.”

  “Noah.” I could hear him rustling about in bed. “This better be worth waking me up at 3am.”

  “Ah, yes. I’m down at the 48th precinct with the son of a friend of mine. I was hoping you could make a couple calls and get him released.”

  He sighed, “Give me a few minutes. You owe me.”

  “Next time we play poker, I’ll sweeten the pot. Nicks tickets maybe?”

  I finally got Mason out at dawn. The judge came through, and he was released into my custody. What the hell am I going to do with a 12 year old?

  “Boys, where can I take you?” I glanced over at Mark in the seat next to me, then flicked my eyes to my rearview mirror to see Mason sitting in the back seat.

  “Back to the homeless shelter,” Mark said matter-of-factly. “We need to get ready for school.”

  “Where?” I couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly.

  “The homeless shelter. We need our backpacks. Mom should be there soon, anyway. She has to get changed and sleep for a couple of hours before she goes to her other job.”
r />   I swallowed. “Where is the shelter?”

  Mark gave me directions, and I turned my Porsche down the streets of New York, the neighborhood changing, making me think of the first time I took Lena home to her family’s tiny, rundown apartment. Nothing good happened there, either.

  There was no way Mark’s kids should be living in a homeless shelter. Why didn’t they call me? I would have taken care of them. I should have taken care of them. It killed me that I hadn’t.

  “Boys, I really need to speak to your mother.”

  I pulled the Porche up to the curb of the medical offices where Mark swore his mother was cleaning. I had waited at the shelter with the boys until they left for school, but she’d never shown up.

  The offices weren’t fancy. The sign was faded, and bits of grass grew in the cracks of the sidewalk. There were more children than I’d expected. Dressed like Mark and Mason, they all wore hand-me-downs, ill-fitting and worn. Few men walked the halls. The offices serviced mostly women and children, and even the youngest kids looked far older than their years.

  Uncharacteristically nervous, I shifted from one foot to the other before I worked up the courage to knock. After John died, our friendship vanished. Angry, she’d taken the boys and ran. I hoped when she saw me, she would at least come to the door.

  Guilt ate at me as the depths of her poverty became apparent with each new discovery. I could see light through the blinds, moving around in one of the back rooms. Cupping my hands around my eyes, I tried to peer through the small glass window in the door before it suddenly swung open.

  “What do you want?” she demanded. My eyes widened. She looked so old. Lines marred her face beneath her graying hair, which she’d tied up in a rag as she mopped, vacuumed, and scrubbed the offices.

  “Hi… uh… I’m Noah Hendrix.” Nervous as a school boy, I didn’t know what to say. I had promised John I would take care of his family, but this woman had the power to prevent me from keeping my word.

  “I know who you are. What do you want?” Claire was tiny, but her iron gray eyes blazed at me. It appeared the years had not cooled her anger.

  “Mark called me. Mason was arrested tonight.”

  Her eyes flew wide, and she took a step back into the shadowy recesses of the office. “Is he okay? What happened?” She peppered me with questions, her demeanor no longer aggressive but now that of a worried mother.

  She finally let me in and was shocked to hear the boys had called me. I think that bothered her even more than Mason’s arrest.

  We sat in the crinkly plastic office chairs she she’d been cleaning, and she cried. She started to talk about all those missing years, about how Mason didn’t remember much about his dad, and how he had been acting out at school. He was unhappy living in the shelter, but she didn’t have money to live anywhere else.

  I took her small hand in mine, wishing I had been there to help more, that things hadn’t gone so horribly wrong. “Claire, I called in a few favors. Judge Allen got the charges dropped if I agreed to monitor Mason’s probation until he turns twenty-one. We just have to make sure he doesn’t screw up again. If he violates his probation, he will go straight to juvie where all his older friends were sent.”

  “How can I promise that?!” she wailed, crying harder. “I have to work! I have to get us out of that shelter! My boys need a real place to live!”

  “Let me help you and the boys. John would want me to.”

  When I got back home, Lena was still in bed, but I was unsuccessful sneaking back in without waking her. Her cat-like hearing sensed me coming a mile away. My clumsy attempts at stealth were no match for her.

  “What happened?” Lena asked, rolling over and watching me undress. She folded a pillow in half and tucked it under her chin, propping herself up in our king size bed.

  “John’s boys called me. The youngest got in trouble last night.” I tossed my suit back over the chair I’d taken it from just hours before.

  “Is everything going to be okay?” She cocked her head as her eyes followed me around the room.

  “I think so, but they are going to be coming to dinner every Sunday night.” I bit my lip hoping that would be okay. I really should have asked before springing it on her.

  She adjusted herself in bed, the sheet dropping just a bit to expose her lacy nightshirt. “That will be nice,” she said, blinking her hooded eyes at me. That sheet slip was no accident. My wife had something in mind for this early morning.

  “I hope so.” I sat next to her, the bed sinking a bit with my weight. “I kept seeing myself in him—a good kid with good parents, who made a bad decision.” Relieved she wasn’t upset, I took her hand. “Do you remember Frank at my parents’ country club? I think you met him once.”

  She snuggled up, tucking my hand into her chest and hugging it. “It’s been awhile, but I think so. He’s a friend of yours, right?”

  “We grew up together. We did some stupid stuff, and he took the fall. My parents got me off. I got lucky. If they hadn’t, my life would be very different right now.” My past had not been perfect. Teenage boys have a habit of making stupid decisions, and I hadn’t escaped that fate.

  “So now you get to help someone else.” Lena always understood me. I didn’t know how I got so lucky.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.” I rolled into bed, my body melting into hers, our psyche so in tune she understood what I couldn’t even begin to say.

  “I think everything is ready,” Lena said, taking the roast from the oven. I pulled oven mitts from the kitchen drawer and took the roast from her, carried it to the dining room, and placed it on the trivet in the center of the long table. The place settings were perfect, the food hot and ready.

  Ding!

  The sound of a text coming through on my cell interrupted me as I walked back into the kitchen to see if Lena needed more help. I dug it out of my pocket and read it quickly before Lena fussed about phones interrupting dinner.

  I have several more juveniles for your little rehabilitation program. Damon, Liam, and Ryder will be expecting your call.

  Ding- Dong! The doorbell rang, and I heard my four-year-old daughter Kinsey race down the hall to answer it. I followed her at a more sedate pace.

  “Hi,” she shouted, out of breath as she flung the heavy oak door open to reveal two nervous boys.

  “Hi,” the younger said. “I’m Mason.”

  THE END

  Read ahead for a sneak peak of Ryder: The Lost Billionaires, Book 5!

  Ryder: The Lost Billionaires, Book 5

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ryder: The Lost Billionaires, Book 5

  Ryder

  KABOOM!

  The instant Sam reached a hand out to open the coffee shop door, the glass front exploded outward. A cloud of dust blew out of the hole, obscuring my view of the interior as blinding orange and gold flames shot sky high from the roof. The concussion rolled out in a wave, and the force threw him back a step, leaving him in a bloody heap on the sidewalk. Reflexively, my arms came up to protect my face seconds too late as the BOOM reached my ears, and the car I sat in rocked with the shock wave. Then my favorite java stop collapsed into a million pieces.

  Bits of wood, glass, and rock flew like missiles. The outside tables were thrown clear, shattering windows and windshields and battering everything and everyone who couldn’t get out of the way in time.

  I felt blood trickling from one cheek. My suit coat had a rip in one sleeve, speckles of dirt, and singe marks all over. Dammit! It’s Armani!

  “What the hell just happened?” I shouted to my partner Sam, who still hadn’t moved from his spot on the sidewalk. The windshield had cracked like a spider web, and a giant dent pocked the roof where a chair had landed on it.

  “Sam!” I threw my shoulder against the inside of the car door, trying to force the bent metal open to get to him, but it wouldn’t budge. Then Sam started moving, struggling to get to his feet, and I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
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  “Sam, get in!” I waved a hand out the broken window, motioning to him.

  He picked himself up off the ground, one hand held to his head, and stumbled back to the car. I could see his mouth moving but couldn’t hear anything. My own voice sounded like I was swimming underwater. I felt something tickle my neck, reached up to touch it, and my fingers came away bloody. The blast must have blown my eardrum.

  He yanked open the car door and fell into the seat as I threw the car in reverse and backed us away from the ruined building. The tires bumped over bits of debris as we careened away from the scene. “Sam, you okay?”

  Sam didn’t answer. He just lay back in the seat, one hand pressed to his stomach. My brows wrinkled as I focused on not hitting any of the people staggering around in the streets. Cars sat parked at random angles where the drivers had hit the brakes and bailed, leaving them wherever they’d stopped in the roads.

  The world suddenly came into focus, and I was assaulted by the sounds: the crackle of the fire creeping across the buildings on either side of the coffee shop, sirens wailing in the distance, fire trucks laying on their horns, dogs barking, babies crying, the wailing and groaning of the injured and dying. A whimpering dog ran by, his back still smoking where he had caught fire.

  I stopped the car, pulling us to the curb with a bump, and looked more closely at Sam. A piece of rebar projected from his stomach, and blood spilled thick and wet from the wound, pooling in the seat beneath him.

  This was supposed to be a simple coffee run on our way to the FBI forensics conference at the Bellagio. No exploding buildings required.