Page 17 of Logan

“Okay,” he said, once the money was secure. “You’ve bought my time. Now talk.”

Shaking my head, I pulled out my phone. “I don’t need to talk. I just need you to listen to something.”

I set the phone in the middle of the floor, as far as I could reach without moving my feet, and hit play on the video that was already cued up.

“Hey, Clay. Long time no see. Heh. That sounds too casual, doesn’t it, but what do you even say in a situation like this?”

Clay’s reaction to the sound of his brother’s voice was as dramatic as it was instantaneous. He drew back from the phone like it would explode until his back was plastered to the wall.

“It’s a recording,” I assured him as I hit pause on the video. “I figured a live video call would be too much, but hopefully, this can help prove that your brother really did hire me.”

Well, he hired the Roth brothers, who then asked for my help, but Clay didn’t need to know those details.

Slowly, Clay pulled away from the wall and reached toward the phone with trembling hands. I didn’t move a muscle, I barelyeven breathed, as he held my phone up closer to his face and started the video again.

“What do you even say in a situation like this? ‘I miss you’ doesn’t cut it. Sometimes I wonder if I even remember you accurately. After so long, you feel more like an imaginary friend I once had, rather than a brother. I keep all your old stuff in a box in the attic, just to prove to myself that you’re real. That you might come home someday.”

I stopped listening and tried to block out the words coming from the video. It had been Sebastian’s idea for Jason to record something, and I was ashamed that I hadn’t thought of it myself. Ever since I’d received the video, I’d been dying of curiosity about what it contained, but I hadn’t watched it. The message on that video wasn’t for me, and that hadn’t changed even now that I was in the same room. I considered stepping out, but I was too afraid to leave Clay alone in case he ran away again. So, instead, I turned away to face the broken plywood divider and hummed to myself.

Yet, despite my efforts, I couldn’t help overhearing some parts of the video.

“The private investigators I hired won’t tell me what happened to you, but I’ve done my own research. There’s only so many reasons for a kid to suddenly go missing like that.”

I started humming louder and bit the inside of my cheek against the shame I felt intruding on a private moment like this.

While I hadn’t watched the video, I’d seen the timestamp and knew it was about ten minutes long. We were coming up toward the end of the video when a new sound caught my attention. A soft, wet sniffing sound came from behind me. It was so quietthat at first, I thought it was a part of the video. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Clay sitting in the middle of his mattress, phone clutched tightly in his hands only a few inches from his face, and tears quietly streaming from both eyes.

“I don’t care what the truth is. I don’t care what you have or haven’t been through. I don’t even care if you never come home or even want to see me again. All I want... all I want is to know that you’re safe. That you’re out there somewhere, living a good life.”

Clay gasped and bit his lip, trembling from head to toe. The phone slipped from his fingers onto the mattress as heaving sobs wracked his chest. He curled up and cried into his knees, creating a perfect ball of misery.

I didn’t dare stand up for fear of startling him more. So, I stayed crouched on the floor, awkwardly Spiderman-walking my way over to him. As gently as I could, I put a hand on his shoulder.

As soon as I touched him, his body reacted like it was spring-loaded. Except, instead of moving away from me like I expected, he pounced closer and buried his face against my shoulder. I held him as he cried, feeling his tears soaking through my shirt as I stroked his hair. While he no longer looked like the child he’d once been, in that moment, he still felt like that scared little boy.

“I won’t tell you that it’s going to be okay, because I can’t guarantee something like that, and you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. But I promise that your brother is telling the truth. All he wants is for you to be safe and happy, whether that means returning to your old home, or finding a new one somewhere else. Whatever you want.”

After a few minutes, Clay’s sobbing calmed down enough for him to speak, though his tears never fully stopped.

“I-I want... to go home.”

“All right.” I squeezed his shoulder in what I hoped was a comforting gesture. “If that’s your wish, then it’ll be done.”

“No, not all right.” He shoved me away, though not very hard. It was more of a dismissive gesture than an actual attempt to make me leave. “How am I supposed to get there?”

Grabbing the cash that I’d given him out from under his pillow, he threw the wadded-up bills at me. “A hundred bucks isn’t gonna cover it. Even a bus ticket would be more than that. It doesn’t matter if I want to leave. I can’t. I’m stuck here.”

Gathering up the discarded bills, I smoothed out the wrinkles from the paper and placed them back into his hand. “Don’t worry about the money. I’ll take you there.”

His tears finally stopped though their ghosts still left tracks down his cheeks, and he looked at the bills in confusion.

“What? You’ll... but Jason lives in Maryland. That’s all the way on the other side of the country.”

“Do you have any ID?”

Clay shook his head, staring at me like I was some strange creature in a zoo.

He could stare all he wanted. I was too busy making plans. “Without ID a plane ticket is out of the question. But I have a car, so long as you don’t mind a bit of a long car ride.”

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