Vow To Protect. Ann Voss Peterson

come to see him in jail. She hadn’t come to his trial. She hadn’t even answered his phone calls.

      The boy ambled up the driveway toward them. Lanky and skinny, he moved as if he was growing too fast for his coordination to catch up. Eight more years, and he’d be eighteen. Legally a man. The age Cord was when the kid had been conceived. When Cord had been thrown in prison.

      He tried to speak, to move, to do anything that didn’t involve standing and staring, but he came up empty.

      “I had to get him away from the neighborhood. I didn’t want him to live that life, to spend his Sundays in a prison visiting room like I did. I didn’t want him to follow that path. I—”

      He held up a hand to cut her off. She didn’t have to explain. “You were right not to tell me. You were right to give him a better life.” The life they’d planned together before he was arrested. The life Melanie had dreamed for them both.

      Her gaze burned hot on the side of his face. “Don’t say anything. Please. He doesn’t know you’re his father. I told him his father died.”

      Cord had died in prison. He’d died every day since he’d killed Snake. “He won’t learn it from me.”

      The boy crested the drive and started up the walk. The afternoon sun slanted down on his face and illuminated the dusting of freckles sprinkling the bridge of his nose, almost invisible under the remnants of his summer tan. His sandy-brown hair fell low on his forehead, straight as straw, refusing to cooperate with its new back-to-school cut. And though not large, his ears perked out from the sides of his head as if on alert.

      It was like staring at a photo of himself as a child.

      Numbness gave way to heat swirling in his head and burning down the back of his neck. An empty feeling hollowed out under his rib cage.

      “Hey, Mom.” The kid gave Melanie another small smile, as if the two of them shared a funny secret, a special joke. Then he looked at Cord, focusing on the tattoos ringing Cord’s biceps and stretching down his arms. Barbed wire. A headless snake. The writhing forms of dragons. The lines thick and chunky, more symbols than art.

      What was the kid seeing? Did he notice the resemblance? The eyes they shared? The rectangular chin? Or was he just seeing the ex-con? The criminal? The man with no future?

      “Ethan, this is Cord.”

      Ethan. His son was named Ethan.

      The boy nodded. “Hi.”

      Cord willed his voice to function. “Hi.”

      “Cord was just leaving. And so are we.”

      He managed to tear his eyes away from Ethan and direct them to Mel. The void in his gut seemed to widen. “I’ll follow you to the police station. Make sure you get there safely.”

      She looked away. “Do what you want.”

      “You’re a cop?” Ethan’s eyebrows dipped low over his eyes.

      “No.”

      “He’s someone I knew a long time ago. That’s all.”

      Cord nodded. That was all. He’d killed the rest as surely as he’d killed Snake. As he’d killed his own future.

      Tires screeched, the sound echoing from the street.

      Cord spun around just as a police cruiser whipped into the driveway. Three cars followed. Jolting to angled stops, the cops hunkered down behind the open driver’s doors, guns drawn.

      “Police!” a voice barked, deep and threatening. “Hands up! As high as you can reach! Now!”

      Cord’s mouth went dry. He raised his hands, stretching as high as he could. The familiar mix of adrenaline and humiliation tightened his throat and coated his tongue.

      Movement shifted and rustled from around the house and yard. Cops fanned out from their cars, semiautos and rifles leveled on him, Kevlar vests dark and oppressive in the early-September heat.

      A cop approached Melanie and Ethan. In less than a second, he whisked them away from Cord and out of the line of fire.

      At least they wouldn’t be hurt. Cord could focus on that.

      “Keep your hands above your head and slowly turn around.”

      Hands high, Cord pivoted. He turned slowly, allowing them to see he had no bulges of weapons in the waistband of his jeans, no reason to believe he was dangerous. As much as he wanted to ask why they were doing this, he kept his mouth shut. He knew how cops thought. He was an ex-con. He had nothing coming. Not even an explanation. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to egg them on by demanding one.

      “Keep turning.”

      He turned another 180, until he was facing back toward Melanie.

      She crossed her arms around Ethan’s chest and held him tight, protecting him. The boy watched with wide eyes, as if he’d never seen a scene quite like this. No doubt he never had. It sure as hell wasn’t a scene from his world.

      It was a scene from Cord’s.

      “Put your hands on the top of your head,” the cop ordered.

      Cord did as he was told, lacing his fingers together the way he’d been taught.

      “Down on your knees. Take it slow.”

      Cord lowered himself. One knee and then the other hit the pavement. He didn’t have to wonder how Ethan saw him now. He just hoped it wouldn’t take the kid long to forget him.

      “Down on your belly. Arms away from your body. Palms facing up. Cross your ankles.”

      Cord had done this maneuver enough while in prison to perform it in his sleep. He flattened himself to the ground and crossed his legs. Cheek pressed against the hot driveway, he moved his arms wide, palms up.

      Boots scuffed the concrete around him. A hand grabbed his arm and bent it behind his back. A steel handcuff closed around his wrist. The cop grabbed his other arm, cuffing it to the first. The inflexible bands of steel bit into his wrists, bruising his flesh. Hands patted his sides and legs. Once satisfied he was clean, the cop rolled him to his side.

      “Rise to your knees.”

      Cord struggled into a kneeling position at the cop’s feet.

      “Cross your ankles.”

      Cord did what he was told. Why didn’t they take Melanie and Ethan away? Why didn’t they take them into the house where they didn’t have to watch, where the fact of what he was wasn’t in their faces? “What is this about?”

      “Shut up.”

      He should have known better than to ask. He had nothing coming. The old prison saying was just as true on this side of the razor wire.

      A dark green sedan crept up the drive and stopped behind the cruisers. The door opened and a dark-haired detective climbed out.

      The last time Cord had seen Reed McCaskey, the cop had been marrying Cord’s half sister Diana on the shores of Lake Mendota. Cord hadn’t been invited, not to the wedding and not to the small reception held on a boat afterward, but he’d stood in the shadow of the park shelter anyway and watched, though to this day, he didn’t really understand why.

      McCaskey made his way through the parked cruisers and stopped behind the cop who’d been shouting the orders. “This isn’t Kane.”

      The cop gave him a frown. “You sure?”

      “Yes. But bring him to the downtown district office. We need to have a talk with him anyway.”

      The patrol cop nodded. “Parole violation?”

      “Possibly. And helping his father escape.”

      Melanie didn’t move. In her embrace, Ethan scuffed the rubber sole of his shoe against the pavement. As if sensing Cord’s