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I took my eyes off the road for way too long. I wanted to look at him and never stop. “Yeah. I’m your dad.”
“You said you grew up with Mommy.”
“Yeah, I did. We fell in love back then, but I had to leave to take care of my family.” I turned to look at him again. “I didn’t know about you. I never would have left if I had known. You would have been with me—both of you would have been. You would have been with my family instead of running around the country getting shot at. I’m sorry about that. I could kick myself for letting that happen to you. I blame myself.”
“You don’t have to,” he told me. “It isn’t your fault.”
I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want forgiveness from a five-year-old. He didn’t understand all that.
Riley’s forgiveness would mean a hell of a lot more and she wasn’t likely to give it to me. I couldn’t exactly blame her. I would just have to make it up to her by giving her the safety she deserved.
Keeping Connor safe would be more important to her than being safe herself. I could definitely give her that.
“What is it like at your place?” he asked.
“It’s high in the mountains. It’s very rocky and barren and beautiful. You can see everything for hundreds of miles around, and when you get up high, you feel like you’re the king of the world.”
He frowned. “What do you mean by getting up high?”
I couldn’t look at him. “You’ll see when you get there. It’s hard to explain in words.”
“Did you grow up there?”
I clenched my teeth. “No, I didn’t. My dad took me away when I was young. I lived out in the world the way you did. I didn’t even know it existed until after he died. I wish now that I could have gone there with him.”
“Why did he leave his own family?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve been trying to find out ever since he died.”
He paused again. “Is it true someone killed him?”
“Yes,” I growled. “Someone killed him and I’m the one who found him. They tore him apart and destroyed our house.”
“And the same people want to kill me?” he asked. “And you?”
“That’s right.”
He didn’t say anything else. He glanced at his mother’s sleeping form and then stared out the window.
That story might be too much for a child his age, but the sooner he understood what he was up against, the better off he would be.
He was my son. He would take over the Clan after me, so it was up to me to educate him about what that meant.
I turned off into the national park. We passed tourists and Connor craned his neck to peer up at the huge, towering cliffs. “Whoa!” he exclaimed. “This is incredible!”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I told him. “Wait until we get farther up the mountain.”
Riley stirred and sat up. “Where are we?”
“We’re pulling into Badlands National Park. We’re almost home.”
She and Connor stared at everything as I wound my way deeper into the canyons. The cliffs got steeper, more barren, and the whole area cleared of all people. We left behind the hiking areas and I turned off onto a bumpy dirt road.
“Won’t you wreck your fancy car driving on this?” Riley asked.
“I drive on it all the time. Here we are.”
I pulled under a rocky overhang, parked in a shadowy cave, and popped the glove box. I took out a remote and punched the button over my shoulder.
