Chapter 22
John
John rubbed along his jaw. His bruise was the size of a baseball, royal purple with a yellow tinge. He’d been icing it for days but still the inky mark lingered. Colt was a big bastard and he hit like a truck.
The punch that had come as soon as he stepped foot inside the surveillance quarters hadn’t been entirely unexpected. He’d known on some level Elkin would have her revenge for not letting her pimp out his staff and ‘accidentally’ letting that secret slip to Colt was as good a strategy as any. Now his jaw clicked when he chewed.
He glanced up at the monitors. With Jeremiah Hall due to arrive in twenty minutes John had expected her to be shaving or putting on makeup but Schwartz was cleaning her kitchen counter. Pop music was blaring out of her portable stereo, Lorde this time, and she was dancing as she worked the cloth back and forth.
The back door burst open. “Almost showtime, huh?”
Colt’s cheerful tone didn’t fool him for a second. “Fifteen, give or take.”
Colt watched Daniel sing into her bottle of all-purpose cleaner.
“She’s not getting ready?” he asked, a faint note of hope in his voice.
John winced. “I think she is…in her own way.”
“Right.” Colt’s face hardened again.
Things had been uncomfortable since the punch. Colt understood why John had turned down Elkin’s offer but he still thought he and Seb should have been given a chance to decide for themselves what they wanted to do. John was forced to admit that he thought Colt would choose Schwartz no matter how suspicious the deal appeared.
“I thought you’d pick the girl no matter how fucked-up the deal seemed,” John told him as they sat on the back steps waiting for the courier to arrive.
“Yeah, well, maybe you were right.” Colt staring at his feet. “Didn’t matter anyway. She doesn’t want me.”
John wanted to tell him that was a good thing but he knew better than to push his luck. “What about drinks on Thursday?” he suggested.
“When Hall gets here?” Colt asked. “Are you serious?”
“Why not? We’ll go out for your birthday. Take your mind off all this shit.”
So it had been decided. Tonight, after Hall arrived, he and Colt were going out, despite the awkwardness, despite the shadow being cast by Daniel’s visitor, and judging by the jut of Colt’s jaw he was going to get them laid. He’d say ‘try and get laid’ but whenever Colt made up his mind to get laid it happened in forty minutes or less, like delivery pizza.
Seb walked in, his hair wet from the shower. Like Colt his eyes immediately went to the monitors then he turned away. “Evenin’. Guy almost here?”
“Can’t be far. You don’t have to take the shift, kid. You can go out with Colt if you want to.”
“Nope, I’m stayin’,” Seb said firmly. John knew he’d volunteered in the unspoken hope that his presence might stop the sex from happening. Again, he knew better than to push his luck by pointing it out.
“Fuck, is that the time?” Daniel exclaimed. They all watched as she dashed upstairs, pulling her rainbow scarf from her head so her hair spilled down her shoulders. Waves of molasses, John thought, then cleared his throat, embarrassed. “So anyone want dinner or something?”
No one responded, at first John was annoyed then he noticed a sleek red muscle car had just pulled up at the front gate. A tattooed arm extended from the driver’s side window and pressed the button so that a loud buzz filled the surveillance office.
“Must be Hall,” Seb said, folding his arms across his chest. “What kind of car is that?”
“1969 Buick Wildcat,” Colt said his face like thunder. It seemed impossible, but without leaving his car Jeremiah Hall had managed to make Colt hate him even more.
John buzzed Hall in and got to his feet. “I’ll go meet him outside.”
Colt stood up. “I’ll come with. Kid, you okay here?”
Seb glanced at the monitors where Daniel was shimmying into fancy looking underwear. His expression suggested he was watching his father get lowered into the ground. “Yup.”
He and Colt strode out into the driveway as Hall was getting out of his car. John noted that the vehicle rose by a good three inches.
The man was even bigger than he’d been in his photograph, almost as tall as Colt, with a body that was thick with muscle and covered in ink. From the information Middlebend provided John knew Hall was an actor slash personal trainer who lived in LA but he looked more like a white trash thug. He had a lip ring and his dirty blonde hair was pulled into a hipster bun. Beside him Colt muttered something of which the words ‘jerkoff’ were clearly audible.
“Jeremiah Hall?” John asked, shooting Colt a warning look.
“That’s me.” The big guy yanked a bunch of yellow roses from the passenger seat. “You can call me Jem though ay.”
He had the same accent as Daniel, a tight, vowel-heavy intonation that somehow turned ‘e’s into ‘i’s. For some reason it sounded fifty times more annoying coming out of this guy’s mouth. Actually he was pretty sure he knew the reason.
“How was your trip?” John asked before Colt could say anything inflammatory.
“Yeah alright. Traffic out of LA’s always a nightmare.” He looked up at the house, visibly impressed. “This is where Dani’s working?”
He’d been informed that Schwartz was involved in a highly classified project that neither of them was allowed to talk about.
“Yeah,” John said.
Hall whistled. “She’s a clever girl. How’s she been?”
“Fine.”
Hall smiled and John got a strange hit off the guy, a little like he was…But no, he couldn’t be? Right?
Hall tapped his foot against the smooth white pebble driveway. “So you, ah, you guys gonna take me to Daniel or what?”
Colt bristled as though the man had told him to go fuck himself. “You’ll get there soon enough.”
“Is that right?” Hall eyed Colt and Colt eyed Hall and John could hear them working out how best to overpower one another.
He stepped forward. “You’ve gotta come through the back for an inspection first, follow me.”
The guy came quickly enough but John noticed him looking back over his shoulder at Colt. “You guys Private Security?”
“Ex-military,” Colt said. “Special forces.” His tone of voice all but dared Hall to ask if he’d ever killed anyone.
“Very impressive.” Hall sounded a little too amused to be believable. “Glad Dani’s being well taken care of.”
“Where’d you get the car?” John asked before Colt could outline exactly how well taken care of Daniel, and Daniel’s pussy, was.
“Found her rusting in a junkyard,” Hall said, his voice softening. “Brought it back to life myself but I haven’t had the chance to drive it for ages.”
“Right.”
Hall’s answer seemed to aggravate Colt. Although the way the guy was breathing appeared to be aggravating Colt. He was now glaring at the man with barely disguised hostility. That was to be expected though. The aggressive way in which Seb shook Hall’s hand was more surprising. Usually the kid was better at keeping things professional, he damn near broke the guy’s arm.
“Am I missing something here?” Hall asked, gripping his injured wrist. “Or are you dicks to everyone who visits Daniel?”
“You’re a special case,” Seb said, his eyes hard in a way John hadn’t seen since Syria. “Ready for your search?”
“Why? You need me to bend and spread Texas?”
“I’m from Tennessee,” Seb said, his voice dangerously soft.
Once again John was forced to intervene. He stepped forward stretching a hand between them. “That’s enough.”
Seb and Hall looked at him. Side-by-side their similarities were obvious. Hall had longer hair, Seb a slighter build, but they shared a square jaw, blonde hair and pale blue eyes. Daniel did have a type. John’s guts twisted uncomfortably. “Kid, go sit down.”
Seb did so, but only after he shot Hall another filthy look. Hall kissed his lips at him. “Bye, sweetheart.”
“That’s enough,” John repeated. “Hall, get in the back room, strip off and put your clothes in the container by the door. Piercings in the plastic tub beside it.”
Daniel’s guest gestured to the seat of his pants. “All of ‘em?”
There was a muffled crunching sound that might have been Colt’s jaw splintering. John inwardly groaned. “All of them. I’ll be in to scan you in five, get a move on.”
Hall swaggered away and John had a sudden horrible vision of him planting his dirty, pierced dick inside Daniel. He batted it away and rounded on Seb. “Are you sure you can handle this rookie?”
“’Course I can,” he said stubbornly.
“Then act like it. He’s gonna be here until tomorrow, that’s just a fucking fact. If it goes well, he’ll probably be back here again. You need to get your head around that.”
Seb cast his eyes downward. “Yes, boss.”
“You’ve dealt with worse, much worse, remember that.”
The younger man sighed. “Yeah I know. You want me to scan him?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. You stay on the monitors. Count your breaths and relax.”
Seb nodded, his mouth a thin line.
“I’m gonna go start the car,” Colt announced, already headed out the door.
“Good idea,” John said. “Meet you in fifteen.” Right after I see this prick naked.
Hall was so comfortable with his nakedness he might have been in the military himself. As John passed the wand up and down him he didn’t even flinch. “How’s Dani been?” he asked.
John tried not to picture him crushing her with his massive tattooed body. “She’s fine. Raise your arms.”
“She excited to see me?”
“Have to ask her yourself.”
“But you talk to her, right? Hang out with her when she’s working?”
“No.”
Hall chuckled. “You sure? ‘Cause Texas and the big guy are eyeing me off like I’m about to fuck their wives.”
Wife, John thought dully. You’re about to fuck their wife. “No idea what you’re talking about. Turn around.”
Hall rotated slowly, cock swaying in front of him, long and heavy. Not as long as Colt, not as heavy as him, the realization helped him keep his temper.
“I reckon they’re in love with her,” Hall said thoughtfully. “That kind of thing always happens to Daniel. Guys meet her and think she’s some sort of manic pixie drea— Jesus!”
John lifted the electric wand from Hall’s back. “If you don’t shut your mouth right now there’s a good chance I’ll find some missing paperwork that means you have to get right back in your obnoxious car and drive away. You understand?”
Hall’s lip curled, the hole where his piercing used to be raw and pink. “Yep. I get it.”
“Good. Now dress so I can get you out of my sight.”
When the asshole was fully clothed, his piercings in their original holes, John led him to the front of Castle by the Sea. “Watch yourself. Give us a reason and we’ll drag you back out again.”
Hall raised his hand in a mock salute. “Aye, aye, sir.”
John longed to jam his knee into Hall’s groin but he had a job to do. He pressed his palm to the fingerprint pad and when the door clicked open he shoved Jeremiah Hall inside.
“Have a good night…” Hall said, and winked at him as the door closed on his face.
John got that strange hit again, something about the guy’s voice, his choice of words…
“Blackwood are we going?” Colt called. He was lurking by Hall’s car, looking mutinous.
“Are you pouring sugar in his tank?”
“Not yet. Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”
“Lemme check in with Seb first. I’m worried about how he’s gonna handle this.”
It was a lie. Really he wanted to see how Hall and Daniel were interacting. Colt made a grumpy noise and moved over to the SUV. “Hurry the fuck up. I need a drink.”
John found Seb sitting bolt upright in front of the monitors. Daniel and Hall were all over each other, making out as they climbed the stairs. Hall had taken off his shirt and his massive chest looked like it was swallowing Daniel whole.
So much for gay. Where the fuck did I get that from?
Wishful thinking? Daniel’s voice said cheerfully and John bit down on his tongue hard enough to taste blood. “Hey, kid?”
“Hey, boss.” Seb face was so gray all his freckles were standing out like a splatter of brown paint. “Headin’ off?”
“Yeah. Keep both eyes on Hall and if he steps out of line, don’t hesitate to get him out of there.”
“Sure.”
John didn’t know what else to say. The discomfort in the kid’s eyes mirrored his own, a sick confusion with an edge of excitement. “Good luck,” he said, and he clapped Seb on the back and left.
Outside Colt had the engine running. They drove to a bar down by the pier in silence. Colt chose the place, a kind of upmarket dive with loud music and dark corners. John only needed to set foot in the place to know it was a pick-up joint disguised as a dive. Good-looking people in tight jeans, played pool while they eyed each other over like slabs of fresh bloody steak. The minute he and Colt walked in they were clocked by at least seven different women, most of them done up divorcees out for a night on the town.
They were going to get laid tonight.
Colt didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry though. He ordered them drinks before leading the way towards a booth, away from the action of the pool tables and bar. He wasn’t talking so John kept his mouth on his beer and his eyes on the table. They’d finished their first round and were onto their second when Colt finally spoke. “She can fuck whoever she wants.”
“Sure,” John said. He’d been expecting this.
“If she really wanted the kid or me she would have had us. But she didn’t and here we are.” Colt drained his shot of Bushmills. “She basically said she’d never be with someone like me. She told me that right after she came on to me.”
“Is that a bad thing?” John said without thinking.
Colt’s eyes narrowed.
“I don’t mean that she told you right after she came,” John said quickly. “I just mean…You can’t actually see a future with the girl, right?”
Colt tapped his finger on the hardwood table. “You too, huh? Why the fuck not? Why does everyone act like me and Daniel are some different fucking species?”
John put down his beer glass. “Because you are. I know you and Daniel like each other but sometimes that isn’t enough.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Colt asked, his brow heavy.
John hesitated. He hadn’t eaten anything all day and the alcohol was already seeping into his stomach lining, diluting his blood. Now wasn’t the right time to talk about this shit. “You know what? Forget it.”
Colt jabbed a finger at the tabletop. “Right now the girl I like is getting fucked by a guy with a dick piercing. Talk.”
John took a deep swallow of beer. “Okay, it’s like this. Say you and Daniel met someplace else—”
Colt’s face brightened. “Park, I always imagine it’s a park.”
“Sure. You meet at a park and hit it off and then you and her start dating. You have great sex, she’s beautiful and funny, you don’t agree on some shit but you just don’t talk about it. It works.”
“Exactly.” Colt sat back and puffed out his chest. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that one day you’re watching the news and you’ll start yelling at each other about blood diamonds or climate change and you’ll never really make it up. As time goes by that fact starts to grate. Every fight becomes about everything you’ve ever disagreed about and then one day it’ll break you. You’ll end things just to have some fucking peace.”
“All couples fight,” Colt said stubbornly.
“They fight about whose turn it is to do the dishes, not whether you’re an active cog in a capitalist war machine. Could you really be with someone who hates the military? Who’s actively worked toward undermining it?”
Colt looked pained. “Maybe after a while she’d—”
John snorted. “Yeah, that’s the trap. Thinking if you pump enough loads into someone you’ll convince them to see things your way. Open your eyes, man, you’ve got nothing in common. She’s anti-military, you’re ex-military. You’re American, she’s a Kiwi. She’s Jewish, you’re Catholic.”
“I’m a democrat,” Colt said defensively.
“Yeah and she’s a socialist just short of Che fucking Guevara. She’s spent her whole adult life on communes trying to start a revolution. Your lives are fundamentally incompatible.” John heard his voice growing sharper and wondered who he was really trying to convince here.
Colt placed his pint glass on the table not quite a slam, but close. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. My mom’s from El Salvador, dad’s Irish as they come. They got married in the fucking sixties. Had a life together, a family. Love conquers all and that shit.”
The liquor in John’s gut kept him talking, even though he knew it would be better to shut his fucking mouth. “Your parents grew up in the same city, came from the same social class, followed the same religion. They had plenty in common. When you mix people who’ve got nothing in common but love, you get nothing but problems.”
“And how the fuck would you know?” Colt demanded.
John swallowed his shot and decided tonight, with a bruised jaw, aching ego and a bellyful of alcohol, was as good a time as any to drop the bomb. “Because that’s how it was with me and my ex-wife.”
Colt didn’t say anything. His eyes were locked on the wooden tabletop and they stayed there for a long, long time.
“You mind saying something back?” John said when he couldn’t take it anymore. “You’re putting me on edge.”
“Sorry,” Colt said shaking his head. “It’s just…We’ve been friends for fucking years and I didn’t know you were divorced. Or married in the first place.”
“Sensitive subject.” John flicked two fingers at the bartender, a pale kid who looked about fourteen. “Another?” the guy said when John circled a finger over their empty glasses.
He nodded.
“So…” Colt looked like he was only barely restraining himself from shouting ‘what the fuck?’ “So you and your ex-wife,” he coughed, as though the phrase was a cloud of cigarette smoke. “You were…bad for each other?”
“Yeah.”
Colt stared at him, his face a mixture of curiosity and exasperation. “And would you maybe care to elaborate at all?”
“Fine,” John said with more mustard than was necessary. “We met at college, we were both studying journalism. Her name’s Anthea.”
The word sounded foreign on his tongue. Like the name of meal you used to love but hadn’t ordered in years.
“Anthea,” Colt repeated. “Wh-what was she like?”
“Smart. Real fucking smart. Attractive too, she had every guy in our course panting after her.” He smiled at the memory of the first time he saw her, more for the fact that he’d almost swallowed his tongue than any fondness for the relationship. “She used to wear high heels and pencil skirts to class like she already worked at CNN. She was funny too, lotta people didn’t think a good looking girl like her could be funny but she was.”
He took a long swallow of beer, barely tasting the liquid as it went down. “She reminds me of Daniel.”
“Fuck,” Colt muttered. “In what way?”
“She was the kind of girl who thought going outside the law was the only way to get real shit done. ‘Don’t ask for permission ask for forgiveness’ sort of thing.”
Colt raised an eyebrow at him. “You fell for a girl like that?”
“I told you we had nothing in common.” Except for love, if you could even call it that. The older John got the more he thought it was a hybrid of lust and defiance. Two kids trying to conceal their rough edges; his visions, her anger issues, by putting their backs together and deciding they were soul mates.
“So you married a girl like Daniel.” Colt was eyeing him with a keenness that John did not like. “And now you and Daniel…?”
“They not really the same. They’re not. Anthea was…” he fumbled for a difference that wasn’t too fucking personal. “Blond.”
“Right, cos being blond really changes shit.”
John didn’t have time to reprimand Colt. The bartender reappeared with their round. As soon as he turned his back he and Colt drained their shots.
“So what happened?” Colt asked, his voice a little thicker than usual. “Was she all poor and you were all rich? Like in Pretty Woman?”
John glared at Colt. “I’m not rich and my ex-wife is not a sex worker.”
“Wealthy then. Come on man, spill.”
“I’m not wea—” he sighed. “There’s nothing to spill except you shouldn’t be allowed to get married when you’re nineteen. Clerk should have kicked our asses out of City Hall.”
“Then what was all that shit about being incompatible?” Colt asked with a shrewdness John sometimes forgot his loud, careless friend possessed.
“We were just incompatible. Neither of us respected what the other one believed in. We tried to ignore it but then Nine-Eleven…” He swallowed, bad memories hazing over him like smog.
He couldn’t tell Colt how he’d carried dread like a kidney stone inside him for weeks before the towers fell. That on September seventh his mom called, crying her eyes out, saying he was going to war.
“After Nine-Eleven I enlisted,” he said shortly. “Anthea was neck deep in anti-war shit and it killed us. She went to graduate school, I met your ass in reserves. The end.”
Colt blinked at him. “So that’s why you hate her? Daniel?”
John stared down at the wiped-clean tabletop. “I don’t hate her.”
“Then what?” Colt urged. “I know there’s something you don’t like about her and I know it’s not just the way she acts. Is it because of your ex?”
John shook his head.
“Then what? Christ, Blackwood, just fucking say it.”
John looked around the bar at all the other thirty and forty-somethings, drinking beer, flirting, hoping to take someone home and feel a little less fucking lonely. He felt so separate from them, him and Colt. Like they were aliens dropped out of some other planet, a world with only four occupants, one strange girl and three conflicted men. We’re in the wrong place, he thought. We should never have left Castle by the Sea.
“John,” Colt’s voice was low. “I know about what you can do, okay? I already know that. Can you please just fuckin’ tell me why you don’t trust Daniel?”
John could feel the fear underneath Colt’s words and knew exactly why he was worried. What if he’d sensed she was a killer, a terrorist, a psychopath? He wanted to get up, leave, forget this ever happened but he knew Colt deserved better. And he had the car keys. “Seems like tonight’s the night for confessions, huh?”
Colt didn’t answer, just kept staring, waiting.
“It’s not that I don’t trust her,” John said thickly. “But she’s dangerous. Not her exactly, but what she knows or why Middlebend brought her here. It’s bad.”
“How bad?”
“Worst I’ve ever felt. Whenever I see her, she’s so bright, but it’s like all around her is just blackness.” John scrubbed his hand across his buzzed scalp, the soft bristles offering the same small comfort they always did. “I know I sound fucking insane—”
“You’re not insane. You’re not crazy and you never fucking have been.”
“Thanks.”
“I think I’ve felt it too,” Colt said. “Not like your Nostradamus shit but kissing her was something else. All that brightness kinda fills you up. It’s why me and Seb are fucked. You wouldn’t understand.”
John recalled the brief brush of Daniel’s lips, how it had filled him with eagerness and loathing. “I might.”
He and Colt made brief eye contact and then looked away. What did it mean, John wondered, that they’d fallen for the same girl?
“None of this fucking matters,” Colt muttered. “She’s with that hipster fuckface.”
John’s gut contracted as he wondered what Daniel was doing right now. He could not quite stop himself from imagining her writhing in pleasure, her hands fisted into Hall’s stupid fucking hair. “Yeah.”
Each man sensed the conversation had concluded and they drank in silence for a while.
“Why do I feel like this?” Colt asked suddenly, his voice miserable.
John shrugged, his own chest an empty cavern.
“God I want it to stop. I just wanna feel something else.”
“Well there are options.”
For the last forty minutes a woman had been watching them. Actually, there were a few but this one stood out. She had dark hair and big eyes, a decent rack under her tight stripy shirt. Not Daniel, but in the dark, drunk off your ass, it wasn’t such a stretch. He tilted his head towards her in as subtle a motion as he could manage. “Over by the window, what do you think?”
Colt pretended to study the bar menu, his eyes briefly flicking over to the brunette. “Alright. You think…”
“Yeah she wants it. Should we go over there?”
“I don’t know if I can handle…” Colt made a face and John knew he meant the seduction song and dance. He got out of his chair. “Leave it to me
Colt smiled, his first genuine smile of the night. “You’re a fucking friend, Blackwood.”
“Yeah, yeah,” John said, full of mangled affection and misery. “Let’s just forget all this shit for a while, shall we?”