Insanity Chapter 9 (Patreon)

“Urgh, my head,” I said, as I woke up. Xavier knew how to throw a punch.

“About time you woke up,” Malik said, sitting in a chair while looming over me. “I was only gone for half an hour, what the heck happened?”

“Where is Cal?” I asked, not bothering to answer him. What mattered was that Cal was still here.

“Asking about that brat again?” Malik said, sounding annoyed. “You should be happy, when I got back Cal, Jessica and Gerald were already gone. Xavier left this note for you,” he said handing me a piece of paper.

Mal, I know how much Cal means to you, but there is nothing that can be done now. As long as Cal remains with us he won’t be safe. I want to tell you the reason why, but it isn’t time for you to hear it yet.

I’m taking Cal and Jessica to one of Gerald's safe houses. It’s one that you nor Malik have ever been to before. Jessica will be able to keep him safe and you know that. If you try to find them I will know. If you try anything foolish I will know. I had to mark you for your own good.

I’ll come back home in a few days. Make sure Malik doesn’t get into much trouble. We’ll talk about this more when I return.

“Can you seriously believe that,” Malik said, taking the paper from my hands. “You keep me out of trouble. It’s the exact opposite of what you ask me. Though to be fair most of the trouble we got into was because of that little brat.”

“Will you just shut up!” I yelled at him, as I brought myself to my feet. “This isn’t something to joke about! He took Cal! Can’t you get off your high horse just this once and see how I feel about this!”

“Dude, just calm down,” Malik said, staring at me in shock. “I was just trying to lighten the mood. Xavier said that Cal had to go. You know that there is no arguing with him when he gets like that. I’m sure in a few days, he’ll be back with both Cal and Jess with him.”

“Just calm down. We lost everything that we worked so hard to get today and it’s all because of-”

“Because of who, Cal? Is that all you can do, just blame Cal for existence! He wanted to help! It’s not his fault things went the way that they did. If there is anyone to blame it is me. I fucked up, not him!”

“You’re right it was your fault,” Malik said to my surprise. “You messed up, but I messed up as well. I should have trusted you to make the decisions. Things would have been easier if I would have just taken your side.”

“I’m sorry that Cal had to leave, but Xavier must have his reasons for doing so. You know that he would never do anything to separate the two of you unless he had to. Besides if Jess is with him then he’ll be fine. She basically dotes on him as is.”

“Let’s just hope that wherever they’re going Fidge isn’t there. That lanky bastard was the one that got us in this mess by not providing us with proper intel, to begin with. Not to mention whenever I see him he looks at me in a way that makes my skin crawl.”

“Ugh, don’t get me started with that,” I said back to Malik, as I started to calm down. I was still angry at Xavier for taking Cal, but if it was him, Malik was right. I had to trust that Xavier knew what was best. He’s protected us thus far, so there is no reason to assume that he wouldn’t now.

“Fidge is somewhat a freak I think the last time we met him, he was trying to sniff Jess’ hair, and I even caught him trying to sniff my boots. Luckily I never saw him try anything like that with Cal.”

“If you think about everything that happened is his fault,” I said, agreeing with what Malik said earlier. “If he provided us with the proper intel we would have known that man was there. What if he purposely did this to us?”

“Shit, you might be right,” Malik said. “Xavier said that Fidge got his intel from Gerald. Gerald never misses something like that. He would have warned Xavier long before we were even given the intel.”

“That son of a bitch set us up! He knew that man was there and how he would react when that box was taken! I’m going to go kick his ass! Mal Come on let’s go!”

“Wait, the box,” I said remembering the box. “Where’s the box!?”

“The box?” Malik asked, looking a bit confused before realizing what I meant.

“Xavier isn’t here right now and that means that everything in his room is left unguarded. If that ox is there we can figure out why he was so insistent on Cal leaving.”

“You’re right, he was oddly insistent about that,” Malik said, standing up from his chair. “Normally he would just punish us and let Cal off with a slap on the wrist. It’s odd to think that he’s actually punishing him by taking him away from his family. Let’s go check it out. There might even be other things that he’s trying to hide from us.”

Malik and I then made our way upstairs to Xavier’s room, luckily for me, picking the lock didn’t take too long. He’s had the same set of locks on his doors for years and I have been using them to practice my lock picking skills.

When I got the door opened we walked into his room. Unlike ours, which was quite beat up, his was in much better condition. Though we couldn’t complain as we did a lot of the damage to our rooms ourselves.

On his bed was all the loot that we stole today, even the box, but to our dismay, it was already emptied out if its contents. Though I now knew exactly where to find them. Xavier had a safe underneath the floorboards beneath his bed and I knew the combination to open it.

“Malik, help me move the bed,” I said to him.

Once the bed was out of the way it only took me a few seconds to move the floorboards out of the way and put in the combination to the safe before opening it.

“No way, it can’t be!”