Page 17 of Engaging his Enemy
“I’m calling in HERO Force.” Moto dialed his phone.
Ben held his palms up. “I can’t afford—”
“We can’t do this alone.” This was his family. Ben was in danger, backed tight against a wall. All Moto’s anger and resentment paled in comparison to the need he felt to fight alongside Ben. “I’ve got your back, brother.”
10
Moto drove along the tree-lined street where he grew up, sunshine dappling the windshield and contrasting with his mood. He was preoccupied with concern for his brother and had a foreboding feeling there was danger ahead. Ben was involved with one of the most notorious drug dealers in the country, and his freedom was on the line.
It was up to Moto to prove Ben’s innocence, and he was up against one hell of an adversary. Whoever had left the face evidence on Ben’s computer knew exactly what they were doing, and it was going to take Moto’s best work to prove it had been planted. Work he was now ready to begin.
As he rounded a corner, Davina’s house came into view, Wyatt just visible in the backyard, and his plans to get to work immediately changed. He pulled into the driveway with more than a little trepidation. He wanted to get to know the boy, but Wyatt clearly played a strong offense, and Moto had never been good with kids to begin with.
He got out and walked around the house. Wyatt threw a ball to Piggy, the little dog racing back and forth across the lawn excitedly. Moto was struck by how tall the boy was, nearly grown, not yet a man but certainly not a child. He’d already missed so much, and an unfamiliar ache settled into his bones. “I used to do the same thing with my dog in this yard,” he said, noting the sudden twist of Wyatt’s neck, the way his shoulders shifted higher in Moto’s presence. “A golden retriever named Muffin. Sweet old thing. She used to drop tennis balls on my pillow first thing in the morning, wanting to play.”
“My mom told me about her. She said the dog used to eat her shoes.”
Moto chuckled. “All the time. Only your mother’s. Nobody else’s.”
They stood in silence for a while, Wyatt throwing the ball and Piggy going after it, as possible conversation topics flew through Moto’s head, each one discarded as lousier than the one before it. How was he going to make any headway when he couldn’t even talk to his son comfortably?
Wyatt took the ball from the dog and threw it again. “Is Uncle Ben going to go to jail?”
Ah, so he was concerned. “Not if I can help it.”
“Can you?”
“I think so.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“No. I’m not sure.”
The dog returned and barked at Wyatt’s feet. Wyatt took the ball and threw it farther this time, behind a hedgerow separating Davina’s yard from the neighbors’. “Mrs. Bloom still live over there?”
“She died. It’s a couple from Pakistan now.”
Moto grunted. “She used to make me cookies. Nothing stays the same.”
“You can’t expect it to. Not when you’ve been gone as long as you have.”
“Fair enough.”
“Were you ever going to come back?”
The tone of Wyatt’s voice told Moto the boy had been waiting to meet his father, and a wave of guilt crested over him. “I had no reason to.”
“Your brother is here.”
“We didn’t get along so good.”
“And my mom.”
They shared a look. He needed to tread carefully here. “I didn’t come here hoping to walk back into a relationship with your mother. I came here because I was asked to help. But your mom meant a lot to me, Wyatt. I loved her.”
“Then why did you leave?”
He moved toward a bench his mother had long ago placed nearby, its feet now buried beneath a layer of turf. He sat down, wanting to answer the question truthfully and not entirely certain what that actually was. “I was scared.”
