The Institute: Daddy Issues by Evangeline Anderson Page A

got­ten my­self to­gether. It was just a bad memory, I told my­self, blot­ting my eyes and tak­ing a deep breath. Just an old, bad memory that had been brought up by that stu­pid little girl party dress.
    I would get rid of the dress and wear some­thing else. Salt and I would get on with the mis­sion and find out who was cook­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing Please. And then we would go back to our old lives and everything would get back to nor­mal. I just had to make it through a few more days and everything would be fine.
    I wrapped my­self in a towel, since I had no other clothes in the bath­room and I re­fused to put the dress back on un­der any cir­cum­stances. Then I came out into the sit­ting room.
    Salt was stand­ing in front of the fire with his shirt off, wear­ing a pair of black, silky sleep trousers. It oc­curred to me that in the three years we’d been part­ners, I’d never seen him with his shirt all the way off. We had gone to the beach once or twice but even there, he’d worn a t-shirt with his swim trunks.
    He had his back to me and was in the act of put­ting on a t-shirt now but he paused for a mo­ment—I think be­cause the shirt was in­side-out and he wanted to switch it around. I was go­ing to say some­thing to him—some glib re­mark about how I had rinsed the speck in my eye out in the shower—but a flash of sil­very white caught my at­ten­tion.
    Salt moved, his broad shoulders flex­ing and I saw it again—the fire­light skated along a criss-crossed pat­tern of sil­ver scars on his mus­cu­lar back.
    “Salt?” I said softly, go­ing to him.
    “Andi?” He turned quickly, put­ting his back out of sight. “I did not hear you come out of the shower.”
    “What happened to your back?” I asked, ges­tur­ing at him. “Those scars—they look—”
    “Old in­jury,” he said in a man­ner I thought was just a little too off­hand. “When I was in Mo­scow po­lice. The sus­pect had a knife—”
    “Those weren’t made with a knife,” I in­ter­rup­ted him. “They’re too even. They look like some kind of lash marks.” I walked be­hind him and put my hand on his back. He jumped away from my touch at first but when I touched him again, he sighed and let me. “Salt, what happened?” I asked, tra­cing the pat­tern of sil­very scars with my fin­gers.
    For a mo­ment, his en­tire big body tensed and I thought he was go­ing to shout at me or maybe just with­draw and re­fuse to speak at all. But fi­nally he turned to face me.
    “It was old in­jury,” he said quietly. “But not from knife fight. These scars are from a belt.”
    It took a minute to click but when it did my eyes went wide.
    “You mean from when your father beat you? Your father did that to you?”
    He nod­ded. “ Da— he did.”
    “But…why?” I shook my head, un­com­pre­hend­ing. Though I had seen a lot of aw­ful things in my time at the PD, I still couldn’t un­der­stand what would cause a per­son to ab­use a help­less child.
    Salt sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
    “I would rather not speak of it now, if is all the same to you, Andi.”
    I didn’t feel like I had the right to in­vade his pri­vacy. Not about some­thing like this, any­way. After all, my dad might have left me but at least he had never beaten me and from the look of the scars on my part­ner’s back, those beat­ings must have been par­tic­u­larly sav­age.
    “All right, I’m sorry,” I said awk­wardly. “I guess we both had pretty shitty dads.”
    “Is all right,” he said stolidly. “It was a long time ago. I was…re­luct­ant to let you see.” He gave a hu­mor­less laugh. “Now, at least, I can take off my shirt at the beach next time.”
    “You could have taken it off be­fore,” I said, frown­ing. “You could have told me—I would have un­der­stood.”
    “Maybe.” He shrugged. “I did not want you to pity me.”
    “Me either,” I said softly.