Through the fire, p.8
Through the Fire, page 8
"Or my boyfriend?" Stephanie grinned.
"With all due respect, ew."
Nick put on a hurt expression. "Which of us gets the ew?"
"I'd say both of ew!"
Nick groaned and Stephanie clutched at her heart. "Wounded! How could you!"
"Honestly? It wasn't hard." Tyler made finger guns and shot at both of them. "Not my type one, not my type two, should we be packing up to go bounty hunting with you three?"
"Yeah, I guess." Nick looked out the doors toward the dark parking lot. "I'll probably ride with Chris for a while, though, unless Jake's gonna."
"Is he coming too?" Tyler asked.
"I dunno, but he's actually a bounty hunter, at least. Why, you decide he's more your type than us?"
"You all need more melanin, man. That lady last night, though, yeah, if she'd have me."
"Cheyenne? I'm not sure she's ever met anybody she considers worthy."
"That's 'cause she's never met me."
"Except she did, last night." Stephanie got up to give Nick a kiss. "I'm gonna go get my stuff and check out. Think they'll let me get away with not paying for tonight?"
"Probably, if you go ask Chris to charm them for you."
Stephanie laughed incredulously and left with Tyler trailing along behind. Nick cleared all the empty Chinese food containers off the tables, packed what was left back into the takeout bags, and put the tables back where they belonged before going out to the parking lot.
Chris and Jake were both leaning against the driver's side door of the truck, their heads ducked together in quiet conversation and their breath steaming in the cold air. Chris backed off a step when he saw Nick, and Jake clocked himself on the side-view mirror when he moved back. "Ow."
Chris, perfunctorily, said, "You okay?" to him, and, "So what's the deal? You shake them or what?" to Nick.
"They're still coming." Nick shook his head. "Sorry, I guess."
"Aw, your little college friends are determined to stick with you no matter what. It's kinda cute." The thinnest thread of admiration laced Chris's sarcasm.
Nick understood that, actually. Whether Chris believed it or not, he understood. Steph and Ty's insistence on tagging along was as generous as it was frustrating. "Look, I know it's a pain, but they're worried about me. They're my friends."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Probably a shit ton of people would drop everything and get their daddies to pay off the school so they don't get in trouble for me, too."
His brother, on the other hand, mostly just frustrated him. "Jesus, Chris, can you ever give it a rest?"
"Pretty much no."
"I would," Jake said a beat too late, then sucked his teeth, annoyed. "Drop everything, I mean."
"You'd give it a rest, too," Nick said dryly.
Jake quirked a faint smile as Chris punched his shoulder. "Yeah, you would. You got my back."
The way Chris could hit below the belt every time, without even trying, amazed Nick. He braced against the sting, but it had already scraped through him, leaving raw spots behind. He looked down, and Jake, who had always been more observant than Chris, said, "Nick does too, man."
"I know that." Chris sounded baffled, like Jake had seen fit to inform him that the sun would come up tomorrow. A little of the sting faded, and Nick could lift his head again.
"Chris was telling me about the vamps and Saboac," Jake said. "I assume that's what you wanted to talk about when you called."
"Wait, you're calling Jake now? How long has that been going on?"
"For god's sake, Chris. I haven't been sneaking around calling your best friend behind your back for the last four years or anything. I called him while the laundry was finishing."
"Oh." Now his brother sounded about twelve and vaguely embarrassed. "Okay."
Jake apparently thought so too, because he grinned broadly at both of them. "You're both idiots, you know that?"
Chris muttered, "Takes one to know one," cementing Nick's conviction that he had the emotional maturity of an average twelve year old.
"Anyway, if you're right and this Saboac thing is after one or both of you, probably getting out of town for a few days isn't a bad idea. I'll stick around and see if anything weird turns up here, if you want."
"Weird wasn't happening here, though. It was up over the state border in Bridgeport, where Dad died." Nick pulled his coat around himself, wishing he'd gotten a heavier one from the trailer. A California winter coat didn't cut it in Colorado, especially as the sun went down.
"The boards say it's happening all over the midwest."
"Is Colorado really the midwest, though?"
Chris stared at him, and Nick rolled his jaw. "Okay, maybe not important right now."
"You think?"
"The point is, I'll hang around and see if anything turns up here, since if Saboac is after you, this could be considered the epicenter." Jake spoke in a patient tone that indicated long-honed practice at stopping the Cassidy brothers from arguing with each other. "If it stays quiet while you're gone, maybe it was just a freak encounter."
"I don't think that thing was a freak," Chris said dubiously. "They look human. This didn't."
"No, an unusual one, not a freak encounter."
"Not a grendel encounter," Nick said with a note of triumph that made him think maybe he was about twelve, too. "See, that's one of the reasons I don't like using 'freak' for…freaks."
"A grend…oh, because of the Beowulf board? That's pretty good. Look." Jake's eyebrows drew down, digging serious lines into his forehead. "Are you two going to be okay? You've got a lot on your shoulders right now."
"We'll be fine." Chris shifted those shoulders, but Jake, still concerned, looked at Nick, and only relaxed marginally at Nick's nod.
"Call me if you need anything." Jake reached over and grabbed Chris by the back of the neck, almost rattling him. "Anything, okay, man?"
"Yeah." Chris stepped in for an awkward bro hug, pounding a knotted fist against Jake's back a couple of times. "You keep us posted too, huh?"
"I will." Jake nodded at Nick and went off to his own car, leaving Nick shivering in the cold beside Chris's truck.
"I'm glad you're still in touch with him," Nick said when Jake was out of earshot. "I didn't know if you'd stay friends after he moved south."
"He talks to me more than you do."
"Low bar."
Chris gave a quick, hard laugh. "Yeah, I guess so. Look, are they driving with us, because that's gonna get uncomfortable real fast."
"No, they'll follow in Ty's truck, and please don't try to lose them, Chris." Nick sighed as guilty-as-charged humor twisted Chris's face. "Where are we headed, anyway?"
"Steamboat Springs."
"Isn't Shy living there? Maybe she'll know something about our bounty."
"There's twelve thousand people in The 'Boat and if she's hanging out with one of them who's up for assault and battery we gotta have a talk with her."
"To be fair, that does sound like something Cheyenne would do."
Chris chuckled. "It sounds like something Shy would want you to think she does. What she'd actually do is beat the ever-loving shit out of the guy we're looking for, if she got hold of him. Well, depending on who he assaulted, I guess. And then I guess she'd patch him up because of whatever code paramedics have about not hurting people."
"Yeah, okay, legit, except if Shy beat the shit out of somebody I don't think there'd be anything left to patch up." Nick went around to the passenger side door and put the Chinese leftovers behind the front seats. "I'll call her anyway, when we're on the road, and see if she knows anything."
"Yeah." Chris swung up into the truck, starting the engine as Nick went to meet Stephanie and Tyler as they left the hotel.
Stephanie looked dubiously at their old Dodge. "Is that thing really okay for a long drive, Nick? Maybe you should come with us."
Nick glanced back at the truck, which had been around a couple decades longer than he had, and had both the paint job and the rust spots to show it. "It's actually in great shape. I know it looks a little rough, but Chris is really good with cars."
Tyler's lip curled. "If he's so good with them, why does it look like that?"
"Ever painted a car, Ty?"
"No?"
"Try doing a good job yourself someday, and then decide whether it's worth the bother. I'm riding with Chris." He gave Stephanie a brusquer kiss than she deserved—she wasn't the insensitive one—and went back to the Dodge, with Tyler's bewildered voice turning to Stephanie behind him.
"Why would you paint it yourself? Just bring it to a shop."
Steph grated, "Jesus, Ty, when are you going to get," and Nick didn't hear the rest as he climbed into the Dodge and closed the door.
Who was he kidding. Slammed the door. Slammed it on the beat of an AC/DC song on the radio, which somehow increased his frustration. Chris's momentary silence said a lot, and the caution in his voice said even more. "You okay?"
"Yeah. No. No. I don't know."
"Ty's kind of a dick, huh?"
"Ty thinks you're a dick."
Chris smiled faintly. "He's not wrong."
Nick made a short, startled breath that bordered on laughter, and turned the radio up. "Let's go."
Nick fell asleep about ten miles out of town, despite having turned the radio up to bone-shaking. On the plus side, that meant Chris could sing as loudly and as off-key as he wanted to for most of the three hundred mile drive across the state. The north route, avoiding Denver, kept him on the open road and made it harder—probably—for Nick's friends to lose him in traffic. Everybody stopped for a pee break around Walden, and Nick got back into the truck looking groggy. "You want me to drive a while?"
"I'm good."
"C'mon, Chris. You didn't get any more sleep than I did last night."
It was hard to believe the funeral had been only yesterday. Chris put that aside, pretty sure that if he started to think about it too much he'd stop being able to function, and he needed to get through the hunt and back home again before he could fall apart.
Not that he would ever, ever fall apart when Nicky was around. "I'm good," he said again. "Been singing."
"No wonder I was having nightmares." Nick scrubbed his hands over his face, finishing waking himself up, and nodded. "Okay. Lemme see your phone so I can start looking for this guy. What's his name?"
"Derek Emerson. White, thirty-eight, concealed carry license, got fired from a trucking job a while ago."
"Stealing or accidents?"
"Road rage. Got in other drivers' faces a lot and it finally blew up. He got off without any jail time, but it was pretty bad." Chris unlocked his phone and handed it to Nick. "He's bounced from job to job since, mostly security. He got in another fight as a bouncer and actually burned down the whole bar. He got out on bail, but he skipped out and here we are."
"Jesus." Nick read the file as they drove through the dark night, then got his own phone and started searching on the guy. "He's got a bunch of social media profiles and his location turned on," he said disapprovingly after a minute. "Finding him shouldn't be too hard. Got a map?"
"Bought one at the service station back there. It's in the glove compartment."
"Shoulda known."
"Yeah you should have." Chris turned the radio back up and Nick spent the last hour of the drive using his phone as a flashlight and mapping out the coordinates that Emerson posted from most often.
"He hasn't posted for about five days," he said as they pulled into town. "Maybe he's smarter than I thought. You want to go check out the bars he hung out at, or call it a night?"
Chris glanced at the truck's clock, which was about as vintage as a bluetooth connection. "It's already eleven and we haven't slept much. Last thing we want is to get stupid with somebody who might be packing. Shy's not back yet, but she said we could crash at her place."
Nick said, "Uh," in a weird tone. "All of us?"
"Shit." Chris looked over his shoulder like he'd see the big SUV Tyler was driving. And did, actually, because it was riding his ass, but since the two in that vehicle obviously thought he'd ditch them at the first opportunity, he guessed he wasn't surprised by that. "No, not all of us. Shy's place isn't that big. I guess we can look for a motel."
Nick's silence was as momentarily weird as his tone had been, and for once, Chris wished he couldn't read anything into it.
He could, though. Stephanie and Tyler-whose-dad-could-buy-off-the-university weren't going to stay somewhere Chris could afford. Even with a big bounty coming in, blowing it on an upscale hotel—and most places in Steamboat Springs were upscale, because it was a skiing town—was a dumb-ass way to spend his money.
"Pull over at the gas station up there. I'll go with them tonight. You stay at Shy's. We'll meet up tomorrow." Nick sounded exhausted. Way more so than he'd sounded a minute ago, like it wasn't from actual tiredness at all. Chris pulled into the station and killed the engine, trying to figure out what he wanted to say, or how he wanted to say it. Or whether he should at all, because even he could see how it was a fight in the making.
Still, he finally said, "Is it like this a lot?"
Nick looked out the window as Tyler's big-ass Toyota Highlander pulled up. It wasn't brand-new-straight-off-the-lot, but it was only a couple years old, and Chris bet it had been new when he'd gotten it. "Not all the time," Nick said quietly. "But a lot."
Chris, carefully, said, "I'm sorry."
Nick gave him a brief, tight smile that went farther than words, and grabbed his bag out of the back of the cab. "I'll call you in the morning."
"Arright, man. G'night."
He drove to Shy's apartment alone, and slept on the couch.
Nick called at about nine-thirty, voice apologetic on the line. "They got up late. Not used to driving all over hell and breakfast, I guess. Where you at?"
"He's not home and I already hit the McDonalds and I'm at the diner he likes to have breakfast at. It's awesome. I had a thing called a 'Mountain Man Deluxe' that was like the best chicken-fried steak I'd ever had. Waitress gave me a chocolate milkshake, too."
"What, for being cute?"
"Why else?"
Nick snorted. "What about Emerson?"
"No joy. You did a good job with the tracking, though. Waitress here knew him, and so did the staff at McDonald's. He likes Egg McMuffins and his eggs over-easy. Never trust a guy who likes his eggs over-easy, Nick."
"I like my eggs over-easy!"
"Gross. Anyway, I'm heading to his gym to see if any of the rats there know where he'd go to ground. You coming?"
"Let me know how it goes and I'll meet you after? We can either follow the trail or hit the next place. There's a coffee shop he likes to go to on Saturdays."
"Meet you there unless I get something good at the gym." Chris hung up and left enough on the table to cover his bill, the milkshake, and the tip, just in case somebody gave the waitress hell for being nice. Emerson's gym membership was for a place a couple miles away, not a bad distance to walk for a warmup or after a big breakfast, but the only path was the road's shoulder. Chris wouldn't have walked it himself, especially in winter. It only took a few minutes to drive, though, and the staff at the desk really wanted to sell him a membership. He took a guided walk through, then asked if he could try the equipment. The kid trying to land his business gave him a day pass, and he grabbed workout gear from the truck before spending about forty minutes doing some serious lifting between short conversations.
A couple friendly guys got a lot less friendly after he mentioned he was thinking about joining the gym because his buddy Derek Emerson worked out there, and one guy just walked away. A woman in her thirties stopped her treadmill and put her hands on the arms, shoulders high as she studied Chris curiously. "You don't look like somebody who'd be friends with Derek."
"No? What do the rest of his friends look like?"
"Trouble. The bad kind," she amended after a brief examination of him. "You look like the fun kind."
"I'll break your heart," Chris promised. "But you'll have a great time, first."
She grinned. "I've had much worse offers. Seriously, though, you must not have known Derek long? Yeah," she said when Chris nodded agreement. "Take my advice and stop knowing him now. He's the type who brings people down around him."
Chris folded his arms over the top of her treadmill display, chin on them so he could look up at her through his eyelashes. "Truth is, we're less friends and more 'he owes me money.' I've been hitting his haunts, the ones I know about, at least. Got any ideas where I should look?"
She set her jaw forward, looking him up and down again. Differently, this time. First time, it'd just been appreciation. Chris was cool with that. This time, though, it was more appraisal. Tension increased in her shoulders, still high from how she'd braced herself on the treadmill's arms, and she sounded wary as she said, "Is he likely to be around less if you get your money out of him?"
"If things go right, yeah."
She pressed her lips together, then nodded. "He's got a thing for a girlfriend of mine who works evenings at the 8th Street Steakhouse. Like…a bothersome thing."
"A won't take no for an answer kind of thing?"
"Yeah."
Chris was just liking this guy better and better. "Your friend working tonight?"
"Yeah."
"I'll see what I can do to convince him she's not interested."
A smile rushed out on the woman's breath. "That'd be great." Her shoulders dropped and she looked him over again, the smile warming. "I don't suppose you're free until then?"
"I wish to hell I was. What's your name?"
"Rhonda."
"Maybe another time, Rhonda." Chris winked and went to shower before heading out. The woman waved at him as he left, and he called Nick, muttering, "You guys probably don't just want to just hang out in The 'Boat for the afternoon, do you," when his brother answered.
"What? No. Why, you got a booty call?"
Chris looked back toward the gym as he got in the truck. "I could."
"What?! How? What? Jesus, Chris, you didn't even bring the slutmobile. I mean I guess that's probably why you've got a booty call, nobody would actually hook up with you if they saw that thing, but—"
