Nathaniel was ready to collapse the moment he stepped through his front door, kicking his shoes off and pulling the hood back off his head.
Though his initial landing hadn’t been the most graceful, what with falling back first from six stories up, he came away relatively unscathed; minor bruises and scrapes aside.
He had supposed, lying in the bushes with an aching back and a tennis ball rolling off his chest, that maybe jumping out a window wasn’t the best idea, even if he could slow the speed of his dissent. He had already used so much of his energy glancing forward that any little break in his concentration would be enough to send him crashing down.
A lime green tennis ball just happened to be the thing to break it.
While he stood carefully from the bushes and brushed himself off, he decided he was still pretty lucky. He had been not too far from the ground when his concentration was broken so his fall wasn’t as harsh as it could have been, even if he did also land in a pile of glass.
“You’re five minutes late.”
Nathaniel looked up quickly from where he had been arranging his shoes by the door, his train of thought broken.
His father stood across from him in the doorway, continuing to speak at his silence.
“You said you would be home at 9:42 and it is now 9:58.” There was an accusation somewhere in there that Nathaniel hoped he was only imagining.
“Oh, he um was harder to get away from than I expected. It won’t happen again.” Nathaniel promised, desperately trying to keep eye contact.
His fathers expression changed for only a second, eyes narrowing and jaw clenching before quickly soothing back out, returning to his usual indifferent manor.
“Be sure that it does not.”
“Yes sir.”
“Very good. Now then, I am well aware that your current semester is ending and final will very soon be upon you. Therefore I’ve decided you will be taking a break from assisting me.”
That catches Nathaniel’s attention, “Are you sure? I mean, you said previously there was still months worth of work to do.”
“That may be, but I can not allow your future to be jeopardized by own doing.” His father began, “And it is just as well as there is a matter that I must…. Inquire about, before I am able to move any further. Until then, I will be working alone.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense, I mean if you’re sure you won’t need me to help you?” He implored, almost hoping for his father to reconsider.
“I am more than capable of handling it on my own.” He turned away, ready to leave, but paused briefly, looking over his shoulder. “And Nathaniel, do go and change, I don’t need any of our more nosier neighbors peaking in here and thinking my son is some ruffian.”
“Yes, of course father.”
And with that, he was gone.
Nathaniel let himself fall backwards, slumping against the front door and groaning.
This was so typical of his father to just suddenly announce a change of plans like this. If anything he should be relieved, because yeah he did have a lot of school work that needed to be done and he didn’t need the added stress of preparing traps and running away from some ‘hero furry'.
But, this meant his father would be around even less and, if he was lucky, go back to seeing him maybe once a week.
Sure, maybe committing crimes along side his father wasn’t the best idea, but at least it allowed him to see his father.
The need to be connected to the only family he had left was enough to push away any guilt he felt from any of the crimes ho was committing and laws they were breaking.
And now that his father was working on his own for a while that meant Nathaniel would have an even harder time understanding just what his plan was.
Their crime sprees had started so simple, breaking into banks and transferring money from corrupt politicians, multimillion dollar business, and others that wouldn’t miss a few thousand.
It had actually been rather easy to move the money into an offshore account and then into multiple smaller amounts and then to cash it out at different times in different locations, all under different aliases; Nathaniel’s allowance had of course increased ten-fold.
And then suddenly they were breaking into guarded offices and buildings that were hidden from maps and stealing heavily encrypted information. Stealing money Nathaniel could understand, but information was a harder concept to figure out.
Just what was his father’s end game here? He needed to find out.
Nathaniel lifted himself from the door, favoring to lean on his right foot as he pulled the cowl down, relishing the cool air that hit the lower half of his face. He really needed to figure out how to make a cowl that stayed up but didn’t leave his face feeling like a swamp. The last thing he needed was to break out on only the lower half of his face.
He finally made his way out of the front hall and into the main room, retrieving his phone from where he had tossed it onto the couch earlier.
He punched in the passcode and then entered a number, holding his phone to his ear and waited. He spoke softly when an answer came, in fear his father was still within ear shot.
“I dropped the drive off in your mail box. How long will it take for you to get back to me?”
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