Just for Today, Be My Son

Chapter 5: The Son She Asked For

Smoke came first.

Not flames yet, just a gray line under the door. Caleb looked at Evelyn, Anna, Charles, and Bear. Panic would waste time, and time was already running out.

"Saint," Caleb said into his earpiece. "Tell me you have doors."

Only static answered.

Anna began coughing. Evelyn pressed a sleeve over the girl's mouth.

Caleb turned to Charles. "Is there another exit?"

"Old passage," Charles rasped. "Behind the east wall. Evelyn knows."

Evelyn frowned. "That was sealed when I was sixteen."

"No," Charles said. "Your father only told you that."

Evelyn searched the wall, pressing along the carved panels. Bear used an oxygen stand as a pry bar. Smoke thickened.

Then Caleb felt a click.

A panel shifted.

Behind it was a narrow passage.

Bear helped Charles while Caleb led the others inside. Flames appeared under the door behind them.

They moved through the dark tunnel, but Adrian's men followed.

Caleb handed Charles to Bear. "Take them out."

Evelyn turned. "No. I lost you once because men made decisions without asking me. Do not make yourself another ghost."

Caleb looked at her. There was too much to say, so he only said, "I am not dying here."

He turned back.

The first guard came around the bend. Caleb drove him into the wall. The second came with a knife. Caleb took him down too.

Then Adrian appeared, coughing but smiling, gun in hand.

"You could have had a place in the family," Adrian said.

Caleb wiped blood from his mouth. "I already have a family."

Adrian raised the gun.

A shot cracked.

But Caleb did not fall.

Adrian looked down at the blood spreading across his shirt. Behind Caleb stood Charles, pistol shaking in his hand.

"For Julian," Charles whispered. "And for the child I helped steal."

They escaped before the east wing exploded.

Charles died before dawn.

Adrian's files exposed Harrow House, the clinic network, and decades of stolen children.

Weeks later, Caleb and Evelyn opened the DNA results in the same diner where it began.

"You were right," Caleb said.

Evelyn broke down. "My son."

Caleb took her hand.

"Just for today?" he asked.

She laughed through tears.

Anna climbed beside him. "Does this mean he's my uncle?"

Bear called from the counter, "Means this family just got significantly more terrifying."

For the first time, the road did not feel like escape.

It felt like a way home.