The woman behind the desk goes to the machine on the opposite corner of the counter. Another fax comes in as we wait for her to carry our warrant to us and I wonder how we missed it before when the loud dial tone echoes throughout the room. JoJo must’ve kept me distracted more than I realized.
“Hold on for a minute, gentleman. I’ll give this to my supervisor and he’ll be out to help y’all in a moment.” She disappears around the corner and we’re left alone.
“Jo give you a hard time?”
“I think he knows something. He kept asking where we both are and when I lied to him about how we came up with the information, I swear I heard him growl like an angry bear. I didn’t want to lie but I don’t want to spill our plans. So, when he told me he sent the warrant over, I kind of hung up on him and turned my phone back off.”
Logan closes his eyes for a second and takes a deep breath in. He’s always been better about reigning in JoJo’s occasional outbursts, but I don’t think there’s any coming back from this one.
“Look, he’s going to find out sooner or later – though I was banking on later – that I dragged you into this. Hanging up on him probably wasn’t your best moment but I don’t think he’ll take it hard. He knows that us going out on our own isn’t something we take lightly. He will, however, be furious at Gray for a while when he realizes that he lent us one of his jets.” A ghost of a smile plays on Logan’s lips but I scowl at him.”
“Hey, you didn’t drag me into anything, so get that shit out of your mind right now. Second –”
“Gentleman, I’m Harvey Pearson.” a stout, older man interrupts, walking over to us with his hand out. We take turns shaking it before following him to the back where his office sits. We take our seats in the two chairs that face “It’s not every day that the FBI come into my offices requesting information on my clients. How can I help you?”
Logan pulls out the paper with the photocopy of the hangar number on it. “We’re just consulting with them on this case. We need all flights, in and out of Houston, that pertain to this hangar number. It’s only a partial but it’s got your company’s logo on it.”
The man picks the paper up. He takes a pair of reading glasses out of his breast pocket and sits them on his face. But his brows furrow for only a moment before placing the sheet back on the table. A smile cracks his still face and his hands fold together, coming to a rest on the table between us.
“Gentleman, I know this hangar. It’s one of five we have here that holds our private commercial jets. Specifically, the seven-forty-seven’s and bigger. It’s not often that our guests have personal planes that size but when we do, we remember them.” He looks to his left where his phone is and presses a button. “Janet, can you bring me a list of planes that have occupied any of the C-Hangars over the last…” He looks at us and cocks an eyebrow.
“Let’s say the last three months,” Logan answers in a loud whisper.
“The last three months, please, Janet.”
“I’ll be there in a second, sir.”
The line goes dead and we sit for a second before Mr. Pearson pipes up. “I’m going to give you everything you ask for but can I ask what this is for? Rumor has it that you all put out a sketch of that man that’s been in the news. Is this connected?”
Nosy old man. Just because he’s being forced to cooperate doesn’t mean we have to share our information. Besides, it’s still confidential and we owe this man absolutely nothing.
“Sorry, Mr. Pearson, that’s private information. Anything that’s readily available to the public will be shared in a news conference.” Already I’m getting bored with the man but fortunately, Janet chooses to walk in during that time.
“Here you go. Anything else?” She looks expectantly at us but we shake our heads no. When she leaves, Logan and I peer down at the paper. Automatically my eye zooms in on that day. No matter what, I see it. I see it on calendars, dated papers, anytime the sequence of numbers somehow appears on labels and barcodes. Anytime I see the numbers zero-three one-four, March fourteenth, or any variation of those numbers together; I see my parents dying. I see the faces of Brad and Josh.
“Right there,” I point out to the arrival date just days before the attack, and the departure a day after.
“Holy shit. Look who the plane is registered to.” Logan’s finger runs along the paper until it stops on the slot designated for Company/Owner Name.
“Oh, my god. The Alexander Group. Isn’t that…?”
“That’s the supermodel JoJo did security for.”
I run my hands through my hair for the umpteenth time. It’s not like we knew JoJo’s two-night stand was somehow involved in that night almost three months ago. Somehow, and this is the most surprising reaction I’ve had since that fateful night, I feel relief.
Cameron and I walk back to the plane slowly, unable to say a word. We cross over the tarmac again and before we head up the stairs, I tug on Cameron’s arm. When he turns around, I pull him into me. The second his arms go around me, the moment his head rests on my shoulder, the very instant his nose nuzzles the skin on the crook of my neck, I start laughing.
He pulls back, but only slightly as I won’t let him move more than a few inches, looking at me like I’ve gone insane. A confused smile covers his face but I just shake my head.
“You realize that in the months it took to get everything going, to get all that evidence sorted and filed, and all the hours spent chasing clues, this is what broke the case?”
“And that’s funny because…?”
“Shut up and hug me, you asshole. We’ve broken our streak. We’ve broken it wide open. How those agents couldn’t get their heads out of their overpaid asses and actually see this before us, I don’t know, but shit, Cam. This is actually a lead we can go on.”
“Uh, those agents have protocol to follow and – umph!” I pull Cameron into me, hard. All to get him to shut up.
“Cameron, I’ll call JoJo this time, but for fuck’s sake. Take this for what it is. This is a good thing.” I turn my head so that my mouth lines up with his ear. I’m sober this time so I’ve got no one to blame for myself. One of my hands has snuck its way between us and I fist his shirt over his heart. “Think of what this means. We’re one step closer to a life when this is done. We’re closer to…,” us, I finish in my head.
Chickenshit, I can’t finish out loud. Instead, I clear my throat, unclench my fist, and walk past Cameron and up the stairs. I take my seat and when he walks by me, I avert my eyes, pretending to organize the rest of my bags and files. The curious look on his face doesn’t go missing and I feel bad that as much as I want to take him to the private bed in the back of the plane and have my way with him – one that we both remember – I’m too embarrassed by what happened the last time to do anything.
Lindsay’s arrival turned out to be impeccable timing. Her third night home, she took me aside and nearly knocked the shit out of me. Hours upon hours of talking and I confessed to her that I was starting to feel something for Cameron. I tried to give her all the excuses why it was wrong, but nothing worked.
It was too soon after Brad.
Cameron and I already had our one night and I’d already fucked that up to the point where he would never want another thing to do with me.
Cameron would never want someone as fucked up as me anyway.
Any and every excuse that I could think of and Lindsay swatted them away like a pesky fly on a summer night.
Then Levi walked in and told me to listen to the only sane person in our family because she was right. After kicking them out, the next few weeks were spent coming to terms with myself, my head and heart, and my conscious. All this alone time and I’ve done nothing but play a game of yo-yo with my best friend and our feelings. Who knew that Cameron would be the one to really break me out of this funk and push me. That I would crush on my best friend at the worst time.
No, I’ll make my move but not until this is over. Because I’m dead set on making things right, on making him see that I care for him, and dammit, I want to take the big lug on a fucking date.
I feel myself grimace at the sissy thoughts but not for long. From the corner of my eye I see that very lug roll his lips inward and try to – although, unsuccessfully – restrain from laughing.
“What?” I feel my eyebrow rise in question. But Cameron only shakes his head.
“Nothing, bro. Don’t you have a call to make?”
“Shut the hell up. And I’ll call him, but not until we’re in the air. I don’t want him convincing me that we have to come back home.” I grimace at him.
As the plane heads down the runway and finally into the late afternoon sky, I wait for the fasten seatbelt sign to go off before I make my call. Lo and behold, I don’t have to wait long.
“Tell me something good, Logan.” No hello, how ya doing, or another greeting. Straight to the point with JoJo. It’s all business with him these days.
“You sure you want to know what we found?”
“Do I sound like I’m fucking around? Tell me.”
“The only private plane registered at the time of the shooting was for the Alexander Group.”
Joseph Rodriguez is one of the toughest, strongest men I’ve ever met. He’s built like Jason Momoa and Dwayne Johnson, nearly six feet five, and has a stare that’s known to intimidate some of the most dangerous men in the world. He’s daunting, fearless, and resilient. Until the days I watched him attend the funerals for Josh, and especially Brad, I’d never seen his exterior crack. But the silence is so deafening on the other end of the phone, I almost think he hung up.
“Jo?”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. We’ve got them sending everything on Irina’s flights into Houston to the office via fax.” I watch Cameron as he rifles through a copy of the hangar information. “Will you be okay going through it all with Suzie?”
“Suzie? Logan, where the hell are you? What is going on with you and Cameron right now? That asshole hung up on me earlier and now you’re acting just as evasive as he was then.” The anger rises in JoJo’s voice. Like Cameron stated earlier, lying to our friend and partner seems wrong, but completely right in the moment.
“JoJo, Cameron and I, well. We’re uh…” For a change, I’m at a loss for words. Cameron’s head snaps up and he vehemently shakes his head. I don’t break the lock I have on his gaze when I finish speaking. “Jo, you won’t be hearing from us for a while.”
I hang up the phone and in a decision, that takes a split second to make, I throw my phone to the ground and stomp on it. When the screen cracks, I pick it up and break the rest of it in half. I hear a noise and turn in time to see Cam doing the same thing.
I stand up and take the pieces of our broken phones and toss them into the trash can at the bar.
“Logan, get back here.”
I scramble to toss the rest of the phone pieces without cutting my hand and I hurry over to Cameron looking at the list Mr. Pearson provided us.
“I knew I saw him. I wasn’t just seeing things.”