The Bad Boy of Butterfly Harbor(51)

“Grandpa!” Simon snatched his hands off the keyboard and shoved them under his thighs as if the action would prove him innocent of any wrongdoing.

Luke pulled out his cell and called Fletch. “Yeah, we’re done. Hit the power. Thanks.”

The desk light buzzed on again and Luke headed to his office to flick the overhead light to blaring. “Evening, Simon.” He lounged against the door frame and felt more than a little sympathy as Simon turned fearful eyes from his grandfather to him. “You have some explaining to do.”

* * *

“OH, MAN, I’M getting old,” Holly murmured as she stretched and opened her eyes. Falling asleep on the couch before eight was pathetic. Thirty wasn’t supposed to be old. Thirty was supposed to be energetic and full of life, not conking out sooner than your kid, who’d managed to scarf down half a large pizza in the time it took to close down the first act of Buzbee Bunnies and the Galactic Raiders.

Holly sat up, straightened her crooked slipshod ponytail and rubbed her eyes. “Simon?”

He wasn’t in the living room. He had taken their plates and the leftover pizza into the kitchen, an action Holly found confusing as she trudged into the other room. He always had to be reminded to put things away.

Only silence greeted her. “Simon?” Nerve endings she wasn’t aware of fired. She raced upstairs, flung open his door, but nothing. His room was the same disaster it had been first thing this morning. Tamping down the mounting panic, she ran downstairs, looked for his bike and found it missing from the back porch. The flashlight they kept on a hook by the door was gone as well. So were his house keys.

She pulled open the door and yelled his name, not caring one bit if the neighbors heard. In fact, she’d prefer they did hear, so she could ask if they’d seen him. Grabbing a sweatshirt, her purse and keys, she hurried to the front door.

The phone rang.

Cursing, she dropped her things and plunged into the kitchen, yanking the receiver off the wall. “Simon?”

“He’s fine.” Luke’s statement had her sagging in relief. She slid down the wall, pressing a hand against her heart as she caught her breath. “Holly? You okay?”

“Where is he?” she whispered.

“With your father and me. At the police station.”

“At the where?” A new pool of dread formed in the pit of her stomach. A thousand questions exploded in her brain at once, but none of them were coherent enough to be voiced. “Never mind. I’m on my way.”

* * *

“IS SHE MAD?” Simon asked after Luke ended his call to Holly.

“Your mother sounded scared.” He wasn’t about to coddle Simon, not when he needed to be jolted out of his increasingly dangerous behavior. “You didn’t leave a note in case she woke up, did you?”

Simon shook his head, avoiding his grandfather’s stare like the plague. “I thought I’d be back before she did. She usually stays asleep.”

The kid figured he’d covered all the angles; his attention to detail was both baffling and sobering. Reckless, it occurred to him...just like another eager young man Luke was familiar with.

“She wasn’t crying, was she?” That idea must have put a chink in Simon’s armor. He sat forward in Luke’s chair, hands gripping the armrest so tight his knuckles went white. “I don’t like it when Mom cries.”

“You should have considered that before you went gallivanting on your own after dark,” Jake said.

“Gala-what?” Simon’s face scrunched up in the way Luke identified as the boy absorbing new information.

“Look it up.” Jake clomped off. “I need some coffee. That fancy new machine of yours easy to work?”

“Pop in a pod, put a mug under the spout, push Brew.” Luke watched Jake limp out of the room. “So.” He walked over and sat on the edge of his desk facing Simon, resisting the urge to let the little guy off the hook and give him a hug. Ignoring what he’d done wasn’t going to teach Simon what he needed to learn. “Looks as if you’re in hot water this time.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt anything.” Simon dug his finger into a crack in the chair cushion.

Luke stared at him.

Simon sighed. “This time.”

“We lost some important emails thanks to that malware you installed, Simon.” Luke wasn’t going to cut him any slack. If he was old enough to commit the crime, he was old enough to be told the truth about the consequences of his actions. “Alerts about missing kids, escaped criminals. Law enforcement reports that help us do our job and keep people like you and your mom safe.” Yes, they’d retrieved them, but Simon didn’t need to know that.