Page 49 of Psycho
Once inside, they entered what looked like a boardroom. The room August had showed him in his mind the night he’d broken into his apartment and said he was Batman. There was a large table, screens that encompassed two walls, a murder board on a third wall…and four men staring at him from where they were seated around the enormous conference table.
August sighed, setting the shoebox on the table. “Why are you all here?”
The older man stood, giving Lucas a friendly smile. Thomas Mulvaney was even hotter than his pictures, objectively speaking. Lucas tried to recall if he’d ever read how old the man was, but nothing came to mind. He could have been anywhere from his late forties to early fifties, but he was fit and well-dressed and walked with the confidence of a man who was used to going unquestioned.
“Lucas, this is my father,” August said begrudgingly, like he only did it because it was expected. “You know my brother, Adam. The redheaded one who looks like he smelled something bad is my older brother, Atticus, and the one who looks like he just rolled off a pirate ship is my brother, Archer. This is Lucas.”
Thomas reached out and took Lucas’s hand without waiting for him to reciprocate. He was instantly hit with a barrage of images. A much younger Thomas crying over five caskets. A man looking at a little boy through an observation window. Thomas fighting with a much younger man with russet hair and haunted eyes. Thomas telling those gathered around the table to be nice to Lucas, and their many objections. Lucas snatched his hand away, a shiver running through him.
Thomas tilted his head, gaze sharp. “What did you see?”
Lucas hesitated. Had that been a test of some kind? August had said they’d hazed Noah. Was that what was happening now? Was Lucas earning his way into the meeting? There was no way Thomas had intended Lucas to see everything he had. The first few images had felt…intimate. Too intimate to share out loud. “You telling the others to be nice to me because it might set August off. Adam sulking because you were mean to Noah when he first came here. Atticus complaining about somebody named Kendra never being allowed to be in the loop.”
They all stared at him, then swung their gazes to Thomas as if waiting for him to pass judgment on Lucas. Thomas just smiled and gestured to the row of empty chairs. “Have a seat, Lucas. Please,” he added, almost as an afterthought. Lucas continued to stand, reading the room as hostile despite Thomas’s sudden change in demeanor.
“Why are you all here?” August asked again.
Atticus snorted. “Because you have Calliope spying on an FBI agent for this man—a former FBI agent, astranger—and didn’t feel the need to tell the rest of the class.”
August was fuming. “And, instead, she snitched and helped stage this little intervention?”
Thomas sighed. “Calliope didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already heard from the boys. And she knew not telling me was a greater risk than pissing you off.”
“You told her not to do the background check on Laurence Kohn?” August asked. Lucas’s heart sank. He thought they were finally getting somewhere.
Thomas frowned. “No. I let her do the investigation. I just asked her to do another background check of my own. On your friend here.”
Yeah, this wasn’t going to end well. He shouldn’t have dragged August into this. Wait, had he dragged August into this, or had he invited himself in? Lucas couldn’t even remember anymore.
August’s affect went cold. “I didn’t think I needed to tell you I was utilizing Calliope for a personal matter. And I definitely didn’t think you’d run a background check on my boyfriend without even talking to me first.”
Atticus dipped his head towards Adam, stage whispering, “Did he just say boyfriend?”
“Uh-huh,” Adam confirmed, leaning forward, like he was anticipating a fight. Archer reached for a highball glass filled with amber liquid, clearly bored.
Thomas was eerily calm. “You asked Calliope to investigate a federal agent. That affects us all.”
“So, is this an ambush?” August asked. “If Calliope didn’t actually find anything, we’ll go. We have jobs. I’ll make sure we do our own investigating from now on.”
He grabbed Lucas’s hand, tugging him towards the door.
“August, stop.” August froze at his father’s harsh tone. “Calliope did find information about your agent.”
August didn’t turn around. “She can forward it to me at my apartment. It will minimize any blowback on you.”
Lucas had never experienced August this…livid. He wasn’t showing any outward sign of anger, but Lucas could feel his rage like a living thing, filling Lucas with heat from the point where they touched. August didn’t like his father’s lack of trust in him, and the images he projected to Lucas were almost cartoonish images of increasing violence as August processed his fury.
Thomas’s voice was firm but not unkind. “August. Sit. Now.”
Lucas leaned into August’s space, pressing his lips to his ear. “Don’t start a war over me. Hear him out. We’re already here.”
Lucas tugged him back to the two seats at the end of the table, relieved when August followed without a fight. Once they were both seated, Lucas asked, “What did you find about me? I should at least be able to explain myself, no?”
Thomas gave the barest hint of a smile. “To start, I wanted to know if you were mentally unstable, or if there was any way you truly were clairvoyant. I thought, perhaps, it was a clever way to trick my son into thinking you already knew all our secrets. That you were undercover.”
“And now?” Lucas said, guarded.
“After reviewing your record with the FBI, your rapid mental decline, and your medical charts from the facility, I made some phone calls to a few trusted friends in the profession and concluded that nobody spends that kind of time in a mental health facility to sell a good cover story.”
