The apartment was dark when Connor and Josh returned. They were the first to make it back, and deep down they were worried that that meant they had been too early to return. It likely wasn’t much safer than it had been immediately after the confrontation behind the Charming Cat Cafe, but they couldn’t avoid their normal lives for much longer without drawing even more suspicion. Josh had already missed too many classes as it was. And while that felt like a very superficial problem compared to being hunted and killed by a shady agent of some unknown organization, it was still a serious problem. And it was one of many that was on his mind as Connor and flipped the lights on and locked the door behind them.

“I’m kinda bummed we didn’t actually get to eat any meat.” Connor grumbled, making a B line fore the kitchen. “It smelled really good. Which was conflicting.”

“Conflicting?”

“Like, that whole time we were at your family’s place… like. They had a lot of nice accomplishments and stuff. Like your mom had all those letters on the wall from the students she helped, and your dad has those awards for crime prevention in his office. The house was well kept, things were neat and clean, the food was—as far as I could tell—very good. But they were awful.”

Josh was about to agree, but Connor cut him off with an apology. “I know it’s not my place to say that, I on;y spent about a day with them and they’re not my family. But that was awful.”

“Thank you for your politeness after the fact, but you were right the first time. They are bad people.” Josh chewed on his lip as he carried on. “And I think that bad people are capable of doing decent and good things. Same way good people can do bad things.”

“It’s just a shame that people that can do so many good things are just… so bad.”

Connor seemed to have gotten more comfortable complaining about Josh’s family, and while Josh knew that it wasn’t incorrect, it still made him mildly uncomfortable. They were still his family, and he was the one that was supposed to be complaining more.

“But the worst part—the absolute worst part—is that they don’t realize it.”

“Oh, I think they know.” Josh grumbled. “I don’t see how they couldn’t.”

“I think, and again my experience was limited, but I think they actually thought they were doing the right thing. Or at the very least surviving.” Connor was going through the fridge now, digging for something to eat, and his voice was being muffled a bit. “Your parents, at least, they probably think that they’re doing the right thing. They have their own trauma, probably, that lends to their behavior, but they also probably see how it can be problematic. But I’m betting they carry on with it because they think that either the ends justify the means or that they turned out okay and so it must be fine.”

“You’re talking like you have some experience. I didn’t know you were taking family psych classes too.” There was a hint of a sneer in Josh’s words, which he regretted, but it was a natural reaction to his family being attacked.

Connor paused. Suddenly he was very serious, as he turned away from the fridge and put down the small container of the food he’d chosen as his dinner.

“I have some experience being in an awful family too. And I won’t trouble you with my life’s story, because I don’t want to come off like I’m trying to compete to see who had the more miserable childhood. But I understand what it’s like. So, if you ever want to talk about it… you know… I don’t mind.”

Josh wasn’t exactly sure how to respond. It wasn’t the sort of conversation he was prepared for amid all his other anxieties, but it was a relieving thought. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” Connor offered a gentle, but hesitant, smile. “Anyway, did you want some beef and black beans? Or were you going to eat something else?”

After a quick inspection of the offered food container, Josh nodded. “Sure, I’ll take some. Just plate them separate so I can put spices on mine.”

“Why would I put your food and my food on the same plate…” Connor narrowed his eyes.

“Because you wouldn’t want to wash extra dishes?”

“You’re going to rinse them off if I’m the one preparing the food. That’s the fair way to do it at least.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s fair.”

---

Sara had not expected to be the first to return. Though, she had expected a different sight than what she walked in on. The boys hadn’t felt safe enough to split up into different rooms, but it had felt too awkward to share a proper bedroom; so, they were sprawled out on the couch. They had planned to keep a rotating watch so that someone would be awake an alert if something went wrong, but they quickly collapsed in sleep after they’d each taken a one hour turn at being awake. And because Sara was coming back at around two in the morning, not even her noisy jostling of the door woke them up. And she couldn’t blame them. She was tired too.

Sara had spent her time alone at a camp ground in a nature reserve. It had meant taking four different buses, and then hiking several miles both ways. But it had been refreshing. Mentally refreshing. Physically, she smelled like sweat and dirt. She checked. She’d checked several times, but she did so again to compare to the general stink of the boys. They’d been on public transit for a good chunk of their day as well. So even when Sara dropped her bag by the door and walked over to the couch, shoved Josh’s leg off the middle cushion, and plopped down between the boys… no one woke up.

It didn’t take Sara very long to get to sleep either. She just reclined, closed her eyes, and let the world fade around her.

By some stroke of luck, no one else even got close to the penthouse that night. Not even on the same floor or even another penthouse floor. Lucky because, not only had Sara left the door unlocked after she returned home, she had left it open. And when morning came, it was still open.

Connor was thee first one to wake up, and the first to notice the door.

“Josh! Someone’s broken in! Get the bat!” Connor leapt off the back of the couch to lunge toward the study area where they’d left a wooden baseball bat for home defense purposes. He was, however, off balance and landed face down on the hard wood floor.

The shouting had worked though. Josh was up. And much like Connor, off balance. He also had the disadvantage of having been moved slightly in his sleep, which made him even more disoriented. He hadn’t really heard what was being shouted, either, so he merely heard shouting and reacted by attempting to dive deeper into the couch.

The one person who had not woken up, was Sara. She was far more tired and operating on far less sleep. Not even Connor’s shouting had stirred her. But being headbutted in the stomach by Josh, as he dove to safety, definitely woke her up.

And the chain reaction continued. Sara bolted upright off the couch, brushing Josh’s mostly limp and barely awake body to the floor in the process, and drew a knife from a sheath tucked behind the inside of her waistband. She had hidden it for her travel back, but not had the energy to actually disarm herself when she’d made it home. And while she wasn’t entirely conscious either, her instincts were perhaps the sharpest of the three. So without even really paying any mind to what she was doing, she lunged with the knife for Josh, who rolled away—sleepily unaware that he had just dodged death by a matter of a foot—while Connor scrambled to the baseball bat and then rushed to slam the door shut.

It was the slamming of the door that brought everyone to their senses. It was loud and sharp and jarring. And while they all had varying levels of sleep deprived headache, they were fully conscious.

“What happened?!” Sara shouted. “Where’s the threat?!”

“The door was open, someone was inside the apartment!” Connor shouted back.

“The…” Sara paused before going red in the face. “No. No. I think… I think I left it open last night.”

“What?” Josh grumbled, still on the floor and perhaps the least focused of the three.

“I got home late last night, and… I think I just dropped my bag and crashed.” Sara feigned a nervous laugh and brushed her hand through her hair as she tried to recall the events of the night prior. “I remember opening the door. But that’s about it.”

Connor deflated from his alert posture and sunk to the floor with his back against the door. Somewhere on the way down, his tank top rolled up around his chest as he sank. “Geez, Sara.”

It was a frustrated exclamation, but it quickly devolved into laughter from all three.

“So how was the family barbecue?” Sara asked between breaths.

Connor choked out snorting laugh, but Josh answered before he could. “Oh, it went real bad. Apparently Connor knocked up my sister.”

Sara’s face went white in a mixture of emotions that Josh couldn’t pin down, but Connor lost it cackling.

“No. No.” Connor tried to correct the story, but he was having a hard time talking. “I allegedly got her pregnant. At least that’s what she was going to tell her parents before I outed her.”

“That’s awful, Conner! How could you do that?

Sara’s reaction was far different than Josh expected, but he understood why. Outing someone’s pregnancy to their parents, especially when it was a secret was really messed up. But this had been a special occasion and Danielle had been far more twisted than Josh had expected.

“It was warranted.” Josh widened his eyes to try and express how absurd and horrible the whole ordeal had been. “My little sister was trying to lure him to her room so that she could get caught or claim that he’d coerced her when she couldn’t hide it any more. Which, honestly, fits with her pattern. I hadn’t noticed it when she was younger, but she has always been the type to let other people get in trouble for her. The youngest child can do n wrong, after all.”

“And she still wasn’t the worst member of your family.” Conor rolled his eyes as he said it. It still made Josh uncomfortable, but it wasn’t inaccurate.

“I had to throw my brother on the concrete patio, lie to my older sister multiple times, agree that my younger brother was a horrible worthless drunk on several occasions, and go along with both of my parents toxic parenting philosophy. And the whole time, every single one of them joked that Connor and I were dating.”

Sara’s face was scrunched up with scrutiny and disbelief. “I can’t tell if you’re lying to me or exaggerating…”

“He’s being completely honest. It was actually worse than it sounded too.” Connor chimed in, his laughter finally fading. “But what about you? Did you get chased through the woods by assassins?”

Mention of her trip made Sara perk up immediately. “No. But I saw a doe, two opossums, a great horned owl, and a set of bear tracks.”

“That’s a real spirit quest.” Connor said with a smirk. “Did you have any profound realizations while you were out there?”

“Yes. Nature is beautiful and enjoying it alone is boring.” Sara said with a humph.

“I’ll take your word for it.” Josh muttered quietly as he finally got off the floor and dusted himself off. “I’m not a big outdoors person, so… yeah.”

There was a pause in conversation while each of them digested the events they had missed. Josh inevitability began to linger on the things that had been making him anxious the night before. But being with both Sara and Connor made him feel much more at ease, even after the spectacular mishap they’d had after waking up.

“Where do you think Margot is?” Josh was the one to ask the question, but they were all thinking it. Though, Josh was thinking it for a very different reason.

Sara shrugged, not wanting to think about where her mother had run off to hide. “She’s fine, probably. But I doubt she’ll turn up for a week or so. If she’s following her normal patterns, she’s making a discrete but traceable path across state lines. She’ll lure the attention of anyone following her, so they’ll be looking far away from here. And when she thinks it’s safe to come back, she’ll disappear completely and make her way back. She’ll probably scout out around us a bit before making herself known, but it shouldn’t be that long.”

“Is that… normal?”

Josh’s question had clearly struck a nerve, but Sara just shrugged again. “Kind of? Margot wasn’t actively being hunted down until I was most of the way done with high school. So it’s kind of a newer pattern of behavior, but this has happened a few times. Though… she’s only actually been attacked twice before this.”

“Really?” It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing Josh had been expecting. He knew she was dodgy and had been in combat before, but being singled out while home seemed like an awful thing to have to worry about.

“Both times while she was away from home, so I was mostly safe. But it was a gray man both times too. So they had probably kept track of me to some degree.”

“Gray men are what Margot calls the kind of people who blend in absurdly well.” Connor jumped in, preemptively answering Josh’s question. “Special operations and espionage types. The kind of people that anyone trying to hide probably won’t notice until it’s too late.”

“The guy at the cafe was like that. I couldn’t tell you what he looked like at all. I mean, I could, but it was just a really normal looking guy.” Josh held his hand to his forehead as he tried to remember, but even the more simple and easy to recall memories seemed out of focus around the assassin. “The only real thing that stood out was the bar code tattoo on his arm, and I got the impression that I was the only one that could see it.”

“Is that what happened?” Sara raised in eyebrow.

“Yeah… I just realized I never really got a chance to tell you guys what happened at the cafe. And everything that happened with Gul…”

Connor made his way back across the room towards the couch to get into a more comfortable position to listen to the story. “We need to hear everything.”

“I really want to tell you guys everything. But—” Josh paused as he took stock of himself. “But, can I shower first? I haven’t really changed the gauze in two days…”