Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

Mercedes . It wasn’t fair. Matt got the money and he and Mitch had to scratch for everything. Cole wasn’t stupid. He knew that Mitch was a drug dealer. He knew that Matt was too, he just did it in a suit and tie.
    Cole knew that Mitch was on the run right now because of that botched job at the pill popper palace in Miami. Mitch had forced him to leave his friends behind without saying goodbye and part of him hated Mitch for that.
    I wish he weren’t involved in any of this illegal shit . But Mitch was, and Cole found himself wishing that if Mitch was going to be bad, he would at least be better at it. Then they wouldn’t have to be running from the law all the time.
    They could stay in one place. Have a decent house. A decent life. Like Matt has . But Mitch sucked at being bad and they were on the run, hiding in this piece of shit house that Mitch called ‘home’. Cole called it ‘hell’.
    Mitch loved this hellhole and Cole had no idea why.
    I hate it here . I hated it when I had to live here before . His mother’s aunt had been so old. Betty had tried to take care of him, but she couldn’t even take care of herself. I had to do it all . And he’d only been a little kid. Only eight when Mitch went to jail. Because of Matt’s father.
    Who says I’m not his son . It shouldn’t matter. But it did. It mattered because Matt got everything. And I have to live here and keep up the act . Mitch wanted everything to look normal, wanted people to believe he really did HVAC work with that black van he drove. He wants me to go to school and have friends .
    Sure, like I’m gonna invite the guys to hang here at Hotel Hell where my brother’s hiding a quarter million in cash in the root cellar and a pile of pistols in that room in the basement that’s supposed to be secret .
    Mitch thought he didn’t know. Mitch thought he was stupid. Sometimes Cole let people think that because they didn’t expect as much.
    It worked sometimes. Sometimes it didn’t. Recently it hadn’t mattered. A few of the guys at school had bothered him last year, stealing his lunch, pushing him around. He’d grown over the summer and he’d thought things would be better and for a while they were. Until the head asshole at school found out that Mitch had gone to prison.
    The bullying had started all over again. And now it was more personal. Calling Mitch a fag was bad . Saying Mitch was doing me was a hell of a lot worse .
    Shoving me against a wall  . . . Cole shuddered. They’d ganged up on him in the stairwell. If that janitor hadn’t come along when he did  . . . God . I was so lucky . But he wouldn’t be next time. The guys had told him so. They’d wait until nobody was looking.
    And Mitch wonders why the hell I don’t go to school? Cole didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like he could go to the cops. Not with a quarter million in cash in the root cellar and all those guns in the secret room.
    Well, there was one less gun in that room now. Cole patted his pocket, comforted by the hard steel he’d kept hidden there for the past three days. Let them try to touch me again , he thought fiercely. They’ll be sorry .

Chapter Five
    Marston, West Virginia , Tuesday, December 3, 11.50 A.M.
    F ord had found the keys to the old man’s truck in his pants pocket. It had been easier to strip the pants from his body and dump the contents than to go rooting around and risk the old guy coming to. Once he’d ripped off the pants, it occurred to him that the old guy would have trouble following him in the snow were he to have no clothes at all. So he’d stripped him to the skin. And hadn’t that been fun? That would be a big no .
    Tying the old man up had been considerably more satisfying. Ford had found some strong twine and tied it tight . No way was anybody getting free from those knots.
    Then Ford had searched the place, looking for any hint to where this cabin was or where they’d taken Kim. He’d found nothing and began to worry that the creepy guy would come back. I’m back . Did you miss me?
    Ford shivered, grasping the steering wheel of the old guy’s truck, his hands covered with a pair of ratty gloves that were too small for his hands. He wore the old man’s coat and had dumped every article of clothing he’d found in the cabin into the bed of the truck so the man couldn’t put clothes on and follow him should he manage to escape.
    Then he’d rounded up the old man’s weapons and any food he could easily