Chapter Fifteen - Tyler
Evan and Robert are having a fucking tree-trimming party. If there’s ever a time when I wish that I hadn’t burned down my apartment, it’s now. Not that I’m against tree-trimming, or parties, or wassailing, or any of that shit, but it’s making it very hard to focus on what I’m currently focusing on, which is hitting refresh on my computer over and over and over again to see if the GPS tracking on Maddie’s sat phone tells me if it’s moved at all. (I had to pay a preposterous premium for that feature, but who the fuck thought I wouldn’t?)
It hasn’t. Moved, that is. It’s still in the same place in what appears to be a massive goddamn compound somewhere in Mexicali. I don’t have a live satellite shot, which pisses me off, but I can sort of make out the contours of where she is, using my maps app.
Out in the other room, Deck the Halls is being butchered by all the guys who clearly could not make it into the Las Vegas Men’s Chorus. Phone says it’s eleven-forty-three PM. Computer says the same thing. So I guess it is. Fuck. I asked her to call at eleven.
It’s OK. It’s OK. She brought up a good point. It might be suspicious if she called right at eleven every night. I don’t want to put her in an impossible position. We agreed that she would just make sure to reach out sometime before the night is over. All good. No problem.
Refresh, refresh, refresh. Sat phone is still at its same location. Refresh, refresh, refresh. Still at its same location. Deck the halls! Refresh, refresh, refresh. Same location. With boughs of holly! Refresh, refresh, refresh. Same location. Fa la la la la la la la la! Fuck! What was that?
“Dude…?” Oh. It was Evan knocking on the bedroom door. Now he’s poking his head in. Shit, why even bother knocking?
I assault him with the question. “Shit! Why even bother knocking, bro?”
“You OK?” he asks.
“Why? Do I not seem OK?”
He stares at me. And those eyes of his don’t betray shit. If this was a staring contest, I’d lose. Then, finally, he says, “No.”
“Well, shit, man. What the fuck do you expect? Maddie’s somewhere in Mexico with a fucking drug lord doing God knows what.”
“The guy is with her though, right?”
“Who? Which guy? Friggin’ Ricky? Yeah, I don’t trust that dick-box to do shit.”
“Why?” he asks, stepping into the room with an extra glass of eggnog, which he hands me, and which I pound back. He knows I fuckin’ love eggnog.
Wiping my mouth, I tell him, “Because. He’s got his own agenda. And he’s clearly an opportunist. And because I never found out why an Army Ranger knocked him out. But if you’ve been hit hard enough to be knocked out twice in your life, there is clearly something wrong with you.”
“Really? How many times have you been hit that hard?”
“Hard enough to be knocked out? I dunno. Like a dozen. But it’s not a fair question because I don’t get knocked out. You know that. But if I did, that would just prove my point! Would you trust the man you love to be left in a fucking life-and-death situation with this dick-box?” I point both thumbs at myself to emphasize that I’m referring to me. (Who’s got two thumbs and is a total dick-box? This guy.)
“You already know the answer,” Evan says. “Of course I would.” He lets that land like an anvil and it kind of takes the wind out of the sails that are propelling my angst.
“Yeah, well, whatever. You love me. I don’t love good old Ricky. I don’t even know the guy!” I flop back onto the bed where I’ve been sitting and throw my arms above my head. I couldn’t be more of a teenage girl right now if I tried.
“Listen,” he says in his infuriatingly calm tone, “she’s got the phone, yeah?”
“Yeah.” I pout.
“And the Ricky guy knows how to get hold of you too, right?”
“Yeah,” I grudgingly acknowledge.
“So, look, if she doesn’t reach out to you by the morning, then you can freak out. But she said she would, and my bet is that she will. Give her a little credit. You know her. Worrying like this isn’t helping her and it sure as hell isn’t helping you.”
I prop myself up on my elbows and watch my best friend, appointed in grey flannel trousers and the most well-tailored white cashmere turtleneck sweater I’ve ever seen, unflinchingly sip his eggnog. He looks like the headmaster at the fancy boys’ school who all the moms, and some of the dads, want to fuck.
“Give her credit, huh?” I ask.
He nods, swallows some nog, and says, “Yep.”
“She’s a total fucking badass, isn’t she?”
“Always has been, and I see no evidence to suggest that’s changed.”
I pick my phone up and turn it over and over in my hand. “I just want to know she’s OK. I love her, man.”
“I know. I love her too.” I open my mouth to start, but he says, “Different. Obvs, bro. But I do. And I’m worried about her too. We lost Scotty. And then we lost her for a long time. And now that we have her back, the last thing I want is to lose her again.” He finishes off his eggnog and turns the empty glass around and around in his hand.
After a moment’s rumination I say, “If she doesn’t check in before morning…”
“She will. I feel it in my gut. But if she doesn’t… You’re tracking her? You know where she is?”
I nod. “Roughly. Yeah. More or less.”
“Then I’m right there with you when we fucking roll in to get her back.”
I’ve been looking down at my phone, but that snaps my attention up quick.
“Dude,” he says, “it’s been a long time since I’ve mixed it up with anyone. I don’t wanna get soft just because I’m settled down. Besides, Robert would never admit it, but he’d think it was hot as shit if I went on some pre-dawn raid on a Mexican drug fortress or whatever the hell it is. Marriage, bro. Gotta keep it spicy.” He winks.
I sniff and shake my head. “Yeah. OK. Look, man, you get back to your party.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I dunno. Sit here and keep hitting refresh to make sure the phone hasn’t moved.”
“Nope,” he says, stepping over to grab me by the arm and tug at me.
“What are you doing? Stop pulling,” I say. (Seriously. I might as well be fifteen and named Britney right now.)
“Get up, bitch,” he says. “Come out. There’s a shitload more nog and Rodney keeps asking about you.”
“The fuck’s Rodney?”
“You met him at Thanksgiving. Owns the salon?”
“Oh. You mean Mustache?” I ask.
“Yeah, that’s him. He’s obsessed with you.”
“He knows I’m straight, right?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
I take a moment to consider that. “Fair question.”
“Come on, man. She’ll connect with you soon. I promise,” Evan says.
I put my hands on my knees and push myself up to head into the party with him, seeing if there’s any way possible I can stop worrying about Maddie for maybe five minutes. I mean, the answer is a resounding no, but I’m nothing if not game.
“You don’t think Rodney just wants me for my beard, do you?” I ask.
“I think he wants you in spite of it, man.” Evan claps me on the shoulder and we head into the living room where now we are on to, Five gold rings!
Please call, Maddie. Please call soon.
The clock on my phone says four-forty-five AM. I’m lying on my back in my bedroom. The phone is on my chest, staring at me. Mocking me. Toying with me.
The last of the revelers left over two hours ago. Robert and Evan crawled into bed and Evan told me that I should let him know if Maddie hadn’t called by the time the sun was up. Well, the sun is coming up in a little over an hour and she still hasn’t made contact. I should wait. I should wait one more hour. I should…
Fuck it.
I spring out of bed, grab my boots, and lace them up without turning the light on. It’s now officially the morning of Christmas Eve and the late December moonlight streaming in through the window gives me enough visibility to get ready for what I have to do. I grab up my computer. Refresh. Phone’s still there. OK. Good. But not good.
This is bad. This is very bad. It’s day fucking one and she hasn’t reached out like we talked about. That means one of only two things: One. She’s in a situation where she can’t make contact. Like they’ve got eyes on her twenty-four-seven, or worse, they’ve got her locked down somehow. Or two. They found the phone and also see reason number one.
There is a third reason why she wouldn’t have called by now, but I won’t even let myself go there. I will not.
I shove my own phone in my pocket and grab my car keys. And I suddenly wish I still had a gun. I gave the gun I had, Logan’s gun, back to Pete. And Pete took Logan’s other one. Both of them burned up in the fire, presumably. I’m not a big gun guy. I hate them, ironically. But I’d rather have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it. (That’s a line from True Romance by Quentin Tarantino. I mean, probably other people have said it too, but Christian Slater says it in that movie right before the whole fucking film turns into one big blood bath. Which, even though I’m hoping this situation won’t… You never know. Shit. Rambling.)
But I do feel like I need backup. Something that gives me an edge. What I’m about to do is head to an unknown location, without any recon, and no idea of how many hostiles might be fortifying it, to try and confirm the safety of an asset. Shit, no I’m not. Let’s be honest. I’m going on a retrieval mission. Once I get down there and confirm she’s OK (because she has to be), there’s no way I’m leaving without her. So I wish I had a gun. That’s all.
Because even though I appreciate the offer, I’m not bringing Evan. I can’t. He’s married, and he already puts his life on the line every day. Every day when he goes to work, his husband has no idea of whether Evan will return home at night. And while that’s true for all of us all the time—it’s a dangerous world—that shit is conscious for Evan and Robert. I can’t go into his room and drag him out of his warm bed to go on what might be a very fucked-up mission. I can’t. I won’t. I love him too much.
And I love Maddie too much not to go.
But I barely even like myself most of the time, so if one person’s gonna fucking buy the farm in this equation, I vote for me.
Still… it would be nice to have some kind of backup. Some way of at least knowing what the hell kind of mayhem I might be wandering into.
And then all of a sudden I realize…
There is.