Read The Buried (The Apostles) for Free Online

FILLINGHAM . “You want Deputy Fillingham here to give you some room?”
    The boy shrugged one shoulder then the other. “Uh, yeah, that’s what I want, for Deputy Dickhead to get off my ass.”
    With a tilt of his head, he motioned the deputy to walk toward the door. The lawman trained narrow eyes first on Hatch then the kid. Now , Hatched mouthed the single word. The deputy backed out.
    Now time to distract the boy from that giant pot of anger and resentment he was brewing. Hatch took a bright yellow scarf from his pocket and snapped it in the air. He made a fist with his other hand and tucked in the scarf. Waving his fist in the air, Hatch opened his fingers one by one and revealed an empty palm. The kid stared at his hand, which gave Hatch a moment to study this thirteen-year-old in crisis. Alex Milanos was no longer a boy, but not quite a man. He was in that awkward, in-between stage where nothing fit. Not his clothes, his words, his emotions. Everything was off kilter.
    Hatch took a seat at the table centered in the room. He opened the fist of his other hand, and a royal blue silk scarf floated to the table.
    Alex tapped the scarred wood against his leg. “This is bullshit.”
    Hatch flattened the scarf on the table.
    “The break-in—hell, no one got hurt. We didn’t even have a real weapon, just a little pocket knife.” Alex swallowed hard. “A stupid one I used at Boy Scout camp, and the only time I had it out was to pick the lock.”
    Hatch folded the scarf three times and nodded thoughtfully.
    Alex waved the stick around the holding room. “This is stupid. All this for forty bucks.”
    No, this wasn’t about forty bucks. This was about one angry, screwed-up kid who just wanted to fit in.
    Alex’s hand shook, the stick bobbing. “It wasn’t even my idea. I told the guys we wouldn’t get anything. The shrimp shack doesn’t keep much money in the cash register on a weeknight, but I went along, and I was the one who got caught. The deputy said he’d release me if I squealed, but I can’t do that, can’t rat on my guys.”
    “It’s important to look out for your buddies. I don’t blame you for keeping quiet.”
    The stick grew still. “You don’t?”
    “My guys, my team, I’d do anything for them.” It was the dead truth. Hatch would put his life on the line for his teammates, and he had, many times, and they for him.
    Alex slumped into the chair across from him. “I’m in big trouble, aren’t I?”
    Finally. An opening. “Depends on what you do from here.”
    The chair leg in Alex’s hand clattered to the table. “Am…am I going to prison?”
    “Nah, the state of Florida doesn’t imprison thirteen-year-olds for taking forty bucks from a shrimp shack.” Hatch casually reached across the table, palmed the chair leg, and slid it to his lap. “But you can do time in juvie for threatening a peace officer.”
    The boy’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Oh shit.”
    “That about sums it up.”
    “Granny is going to kill me.”
    “Yep, pal, I’d be pretty concerned about that, too.” Hatch waited. The kid’s actions and the repercussions of those actions needed to pound his head, loud and painful, like the sound of the chair crashing into the wall.
    Hatch fingered the scar on the right side his jaw. He’d weathered a few crashes, poundings, too, most of them of the self-destructive nature, but lucky for him, he also had a great aunt Piper Jane who’d hauled his sorry, fifteen-year-old ass out of juvenile detention and onto her thirty-five-foot Tartan. Together, the two of them had sailed around the world.
    Those first few months he pulled ropes until his palms bled, buffed teak until his shoulders flamed, and went hungry because he burned his dinner on the galley stove. For more than a year, his life was the sun and sea and sails. No time for stewing and brewing. Somewhere around the Canary Islands his blisters turned into calluses. At the Suez Canal he officially went from deck hand to