Page 90 of The Thief
My knife hovered over his throat, the blade drawing a trickle of blood as he smiled back at me.
“I thought I’d give you a hand.” He grinned back at us, the pain from my knife not even registering. “After all, as Tyler here can vouch, I’m always willing to help where I can... isn’t that right?”
I gritted my teeth then growled, “Don’t think for a second I won’t gut you right here for what you did.”
“But don’t you want to know why?” he asked. The calmness in his manner and the way he spoke was really pissing me off.
“Why?” My brow furrowed; my face screwed up as I glared at him in disbelief. “Do you mean why you robbed a bank? Or why you terrorised innocent people and hurt them? There was a fucking child there that day. Nothing makes what you did okay. Not as far as I’m concerned.”
All my brothers were beside me, all of them ready to fight for me. But this man wasn’t scared. It was like he’d resigned himselfto his fate. He knew his time was up and he didn’t care. He was the worst kind of opponent because he had no fight in him. It was as if he was already dead.
“You’re right,” he replied. “The kid wasn’t supposed to be there. My team fucked that up.”
“Damn right you fucked up,” I growled. “And now you’re gonna pay.”
“I get it,” he stated plainly. “You made Anton and Rory pay. You’re after me and Con next. It is what it is.” He shrugged like none of it meant anything to him.
“Why are you here?” Adam demanded. “You walking in here, it makes no sense. You know how this is gonna end.”
“Maybe I want it to end. But it’ll be on my terms,” he replied, and keeping his eyes on me, he added, “You and I aren’t so different.”
“I’m nothing like you,” I sneered, but he just smiled.
“I think you are. We hurt people, make money off their misery. But we do it to make our world better. To help others.”
“You shot the bank worker as he kneeled and begged for his life. A guy who’d done nothing to you. How was that making the world better?”
Something flickered in his eyes, something evil, and he took a few deep breaths before he spoke again.
“How do you know he’d done nothing? If you’d been at that man’s funeral, you would’ve seen a little girl sitting beside her widowed mother, pretending to grieve for her stepfather. But her shoulders would’ve been more relaxed than they’d ever been before. Her legs weren’t shaking like they usually did. She wasn’t fidgeting or biting her nails. And the deadness in her eyes, that everyone thought was the sign of a shy, morose littlegirl... that was lifting. That night, she’d go to bed feeling safe. That was something she hadn’t experienced for a long time.” He paused. “Let’s just say the bank job wasn’t the only job I had to do that day. It was a case of killing two birds with one stone. He was my target, but the robbery was an added bonus. I was there to take his life, but I figured robbing his bank wouldn’t hurt either.”
My throat was dry, and my hand holding the knife against him wavered a little as I digested what he’d said. From the silence in the room, I could tell the others felt conflicted too.
“You see,” he added. “I learnt from the best. You take care of those who can’t take care of themselves. There was a reason I saved you, Tyler. A reason that I protected your girls, too. Don’t you want to know what it is?”
“Tell me,” I hissed through gritted teeth. “Tell me what makes you so fucking special.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
FOURTEEN YEARS AGO
Dan Armitage, Sixteen Years Old
“Itold him to be home at five o’clock. Where the hell is he? I went to all this trouble of making dinner, and now look, it’s getting cold,” Mum moaned like I was his keeper and knew where my little brother was all hours of the day.
“He said he was going to Joe’s house after school,” I told her, pissed that I was taking the flack for my brother being late again. “Why don’t you ring his mum, see if he’s still there?”
“I might just do that,” she cussed, throwing her spatula into the sink aggressively and marching out to the backyard.
I watched through the window as she pulled a packet of cigarettes from her apron, took one out and lit it, breathingdeeply before throwing her head back and blowing out a stream of smoke. She had no intention of ringing Joe’s mum. She preferred to wallow in her anger. Plus, she wouldn’t want to admit she didn’t know where my brother was. That’d mean admitting she wasn’t perfect to the outside world. God forbid she showed any flaws in public like the rest of us.
I stared down at my plate of eggs and bacon, decided I’d lost my appetite and stood up, taking my plate to the bin and scraping my food off it. Then I put my empty plate in the sink and walked out.
I took the stairs two at a time, and when I got to the landing, something told me to turn right instead of left, and go into my brother, Elliot’s room. I don’t know why; call it a brother’s intuition, but I followed my instincts, opened his door, and walked inside.
There was a stillness to the air in the room. Everything was spotless. His bed was made, not a crease in the covers. His bookshelf looked like a rainbow, all colour co-ordinated, just the way he liked it. His slippers were placed perfectly beside his bed, facing east because any other way upset him, and his pyjamas were folded at the bottom of his bed with military precision. My brother was unique. Some might say difficult, but I wouldn’t. He was my brother. I wouldn’t have him any other way.
As I scanned the room, I noticed a piece of paper on his desk under his window, and seeing it there bothered me. Elliot didn’t leave papers out. Elliot left nothing out. He liked everything to be in its place, and everything always was in its place.
