by Elle Keaton
Buck couldn’t tell where he ended and Joey began; didn’t care. Everything was the heat of their mouths coming together, the rough texture of their tongues against one another and the faint taste of the coffee Joey must have had before he arrived at the shop. Buck could have stood there kissing him for hours; the little sounds Joey made slayed him. It certainly had gone on for more than a few minutes when there was a quiet throat-clearing and Xena went ballistic, barking and lunging at the interloper, nearly pulling Joey over onto the floor. Buck knew exactly how she felt. He reluctantly released his hands from where they were cupping Joey’s face, letting them fall back to his sides.
A man Buck didn’t recognize was standing in the open doorway. Dark hair, bearded, and huge, were Buck’s first impressions. Followed by an immediate sense of danger. This man, regardless of his careful approach, had an air of menace.
Joey jumped away from Buck as if he had been burned. The loss of his body heat was immediate; Buck had never experienced anything like it before. He couldn’t believe he had actually, finally, kissed him. Involuntarily he raised his hand to his own lips, feeling where Joey’s slightly rough, chapped lips had so recently pressed against his own. Both men saw the action. Buck felt his cheeks warm, hoping against hope he wasn’t beet red.
“Mr. James, your mother sent me. She needs you.”
Joey blanched. Buck watched him struggle with his self-control before he replied with false brightness, “Okay, thanks, uh, Dmitri. Buck, this is my mom’s friend Dmitri. Dmitri, this is the guy who is going to fix my car. We were just figuring out, uh, stuff.”
Boy oh boy, was Joey a terrible actor. The entire time Joey was nattering on, Xena was lunging and barking, practically pulling Joey’s arm out of the socket. “Dmitri” was standing just out of her range, a good choice on his part.
“Hey, Buck.” Joey stepped back toward him, dragging a growling, slavering Xena with him, “I really appreciate you watching Xena today, too. I’ll come pick her up this afternoon.”
Buck liked dogs. He did. But he’d never had one. And this was not the kind of dog he had ever imagined owning. Buck’s thoughts ran more along the lines of a cute little mitten-maker. Still, he automatically put his hand out for her leash and watched as Joey and the Dmitri guy headed toward a gray sedan parked next to his building. Xena stopped growling once the big guy got in the driver’s side. Joey tuned back with a quick wave, hazel eyes huge in his pale face, before he, too, disappeared into the strange car. Xena cocked her head at Buck, seeming to question why he had let Joey go off with that man.
Sighing, Buck tugged on Xena’s leash. She ticked along beside him across the concrete pad. His office, the place he still occasionally thought of as his dad’s office, was not a place he spent a lot of time in. The space was cold and unforgiving. No pictures adorned the walls, no calendars, no muscle car posters. Just a big metal desk and a filing cabinet. When Miguel had seen it the first time he had been surprised.
After his father’s death, the first thing Buck had done was drag in the big trash can from the work area and proceed to rip everything off the walls, sweep all the knickknacks off the shelves and desk top—the samples, the model cars they had built together, all of it gone. Buck then had made sure the trash can was sitting at the curb on trash day. The incident had been alcohol-fueled, but not without other underlying causes.
The overpowering rage Buck had felt at his father’s illness and death, paired with Fritz’s halfhearted (at best) acceptance of who Buck was as a person, led him to destroy the only positive reminders of their complicated relationship. Since that time, he’d never felt motivated to make it his own space, just a space that didn’t house lies.
Xena trotted ahead of him, leading the way inside the small room. He snapped the leash off her collar and hung it over the back of his chair before plopping down. Xena released a gusty sigh, turning three times before curling up on the ratty carpet square with her head on her paws. He thought she might go to sleep. Instead she just stared at him with her expressive eyes as if she was trying to tell him something, or read his mind.
Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he searched recent calls until he found the one he’d made last night. He stared at it a minute before he tapped the display.
Micah answered in one ring.
Seventeen
Joey squished as close to the sedan’s passenger door as possible, wishing he could escape when the car stopped at a light or maybe a gas station. Wasn’t that what happened in suspense novels and action movies? Houses and trees had been flashing past for long minutes when it finally struck him they were not heading east out into the county as he had assumed.
Really, if he was going to be any kind of witness he needed to pull his head out of his butt. He’d been expecting to see evergreens and the bare branches of maples and birch trees that lined the river banks and encroached on farmers’ fields, and instead he was seeing the dark-red brick buildings associated with Old Town and the historic Port of Skagit.
For as long as Joey could remember this area of town had been run-down and abandoned, the warehouses and old office buildings filled with squatters, drug addicts, and the homeless. With the recent upswing in the economy, investors had been buying swaths of property and remodeling the buildings to lure businesses of all kinds. The neighborhood had affectionately been nicknamed NOT, for “north of Old Town.”
For a disco minute, Joey had considered quitting his nursing job and starting a coffee shop in one of the refurbished buildings. Except he enjoyed nursing. A lot. Helping people feel better gave him immense satisfaction. He loved the connections, the conversations, and the diverse people he met. He couldn’t imagine not being a nurse.
He glanced over at his taciturn driver, hands sure on the steering wheel regardless of the last remnants of snow lingering on the streets and sidewalks.
“What is your name?” he found himself asking.
“Sacha.”
“So, Sacha, where are we going?”
This question was met with silence, hands tightening on the steering wheel, but no answer.
They were heading toward a sector that had not yet been touched by gentrification. Windblown trash collected in cargo-bay entryways. There were no sidewalks; each building had a kind of built-in stairway and attached raised cement walkway. With the cold snap Skagit was currently suffering, there were sleeping bags and makeshift shelters where the homeless huddled together trying to stay warm and safe.
This section of NOT was too far for tourists or locals to walk to from downtown. The still-used railroad tracks cut through the tip, making it adventurous for pedestrians if a train was rumbling through town. Trains didn’t come as often as they used to, but they still posed a risk. The sedan slowed, bumping over a section of the track Joey was thinking about.
He was desperately trying not to be afraid. Or at least to not show his fear. This man was akin to a feral dog: if he truly understood how terrified Joey was for his family, friends, himself, and even his dog, he would smell it on him and attack. Instead he tried to concentrate on the buildings they were passing by, noting how many still forms were huddled against the unforgiving brick.
When Joey was scared, he talked. Talked more. He was already a chatterbox, something that had been noted in his employee file more than once. Joey saw talking as a positive rather than a negative. The conservative administration of St. Joe’s might not like his methods, but he had among the highest customer-satisfaction survey results for each year he had been there. Trying to be quiet was killing him.
Great, now he had the word kill floating around in his brain. His always-powerful imagination conjured up a vision of the word floating in a gravity-free room, bumping the sides randomly in patternless repetition. He was going to explode with words.
The sedan slowed to a crawl before Sasha turned right onto a small street behind one of the more decrepit-looking warehouses. A single garage door stood open. They turned to enter it and stopped, the door dropping to close behind them
with an ominous thud. Joey’s heart felt like it was literally stuck in his throat.
Panic rose inside him, fast and furious. He should have tried to get out of the car; he should have screamed; he should never have agreed to get into the car with this huge man who so obviously was a killer, an enforcer. He’d had to get in, though, hadn’t he? The pictures left on his car were a direct threat to his family. And he had compounded the problem by stealing prescription medication for these men. He was ruined. Despair swamped him, his eyes filling with useless tears. He wished he could have said goodbye.
Sasha grabbed his arm to pull him out of the car. Joey hit his head on the door frame and the sharp pain disoriented him for a minute. When he blinked back to clarity he realized the storage bay was huge, encompassing the entire first floor of this structure. Concrete support columns broke up the space with monotonous regularity. As Joey’s eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, he saw a crude room had been created in one corner. The walls were plywood; it looked similar to a huge shipping container until he noticed the makeshift door on one end with a padlock on the outside. In the silence that fell he could hear faint shuffling noises, a querulous unintelligible sentence, a sniffle.
What hellish rabbit hole had he fallen into?
Inside the room were bodies. Living human bodies. He couldn’t see how many. There was a smell, too, although nothing like the house where the sick man was. A massive police-style flashlight appeared in Sasha’s hand. The light had Joey squinting, and the creatures in the room threw their hands over their eyes, gasping at the unexpected glare. Joey thought he counted at least fifteen people all sitting on the floor, some wrapped in blankets, others huddled together for warmth. They all wore the same expression of fear. Some also looked resigned.
Sasha grabbed one of them and pulled her out of the room, motioning for Joey to stay where he was. When the room plunged back into darkness again Joey had to lean against the plywood wall to support himself. He was trying to stay in control of his terror, but he had no frame of reference, no way to make this less terrifying, more normal. His breath was coming in hot, short pants; someone was making weird high-pitched grunts, and Joey needed them to stop. He couldn’t breathe.
A hand tentatively touched his pant leg, tugging. Joey’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he saw a young boy, gaunt and pale, with dark hair and wide eyes, looking up at him. Instinct had Joey trying to pull his leg away, but there was nowhere to go. Immediately he felt guilty. This child needed something.
The door opened again, and Sasha brought the girl back in. She was, Joey thought, in her late teens, skinny, with long blonde hair that was currently lank and filthy, smudges of dirt on her forehead, and a large dark bruise on the side of her face.
“Sveta will help you,” Sasha informed him, his tone brooking no argument.
“Help me with what?” Joey managed to squeak out.
Sasha glanced impatiently at him. “She will help you with the sick ones.” His thick accent made it sound like “seek,” but Joey got the gist.
Now he understood the quiet bodies lying in the cold dark; the moist sounds of sniffling and labored breathing. This box was some sort of quarantine. A quarantine Joey was somehow expected to fix? Who did these guys think he was?
He still had no idea if his other patient had survived. The sick man had looked appalling last night. It had only been, maybe, seven hours, and he easily could be dead by now. No explaining about tetanus had convinced the man’s keepers to take him to the hospital. Joey had done what he could, administering another tetanus shot—likely just as wasted as the first—cleaning him, fitting him with an actual IV and leaving the bags he had brought with instructions so they could be changed. Truthfully, Joey figured they could use warm tap water; the man was on his deathbed.
The fear Joey had been tamping down was replaced by anger.
“How am I supposed to help them? What supplies do you have for me? I’m at least going to need decent light, and why isn’t there a heater of some kind? No wonder these people are all sick!”
“Make a list,” Sasha rasped.
“Off the top of my head: lots of water, everyone here needs a blanket, hand sanitizer, oranges, a way to heat the water, decongestant, an explanation would be nice but I don’t think I’m getting one of those.”
Sasha eyed him with a sneer.
“Rubber gloves, and a box or two of disposable surgical masks,” Joey added. Whatever virus this run-down crowd was carrying, Joey was going to lessen his chances of getting it. It was probably too late; one of the bodies started coughing, setting off several others in the room. Joey groaned. How had his life turned into this?
How many grueling hours later Joey didn’t know, Sacha tapped him on the shoulder and signaled it was time to go. Joey’s back ached from bending over; he felt forty-eight instead of twenty-eight. He’d almost managed to forget he was being coerced into helping these teens.
That’s what most of them were, teenagers. Joey figured they were between fourteen and eighteen, although, with malnourishment and illness, it was hard to gauge. They had been heartbreakingly thankful for his ministrations. Most of them seemed to just have bad colds. There were two he was worried about, fever indicating their illness could be the flu—which his entire administration had been warning was supposed to be very bad this year.
Sveta spoke a little English and had acted as his translator for each patient. She helped him explain the hand sanitizer and the importance of not touching each other without cleaning first. He handed out tissues, masks, and plastic trash bags. He shook his head at the state of them, wanting to ask Sacha who they were and why they were being kept in an abandoned warehouse, but wisely held his tongue.
The two youngest and smallest gave Joey the most cause for worry. Sacha had not been able to bring everything on Joey’s list. There was no way for water to be heated, and it was far too cold inside the box. Even with them crowded together, the chilly concrete pad leached the warmth from their fragile bodies.
It didn’t escape his notice that every one of the children was exotically beautiful. Delicate bone structure under the filth coating their bodies, luminescent eyes, lithe forms under shapeless clothes. He wanted to throw up. Instead he had Sveta pass around the oranges and bottled water.
Eighteen
Buck was utterly undone. Having spent most of his life mostly uncomfortable in his own skin, feeling disconnected wasn’t new to him. Usually he managed to keep his turmoil private. Internal. He suffered, dwelled, and overthought, but no one else had to bear witness. For the first time in his life he wished he had someone to talk to, that he felt comfortable talking to someone about feelings.
After clicking off his call to Micah he slumped over his desk, his head on his forearms. Cars were so much easier. Buck couldn’t count how many times he had wished people came with instruction manuals. Cars could be difficult to figure out at times, but they never had motives that Buck was unable to fathom. Buck never said anything he didn’t mean. He was not a nuanced guy. If he said he was going for coffee, he meant coffee. If he said he liked someone or something, that was what he meant. Coffee never meant sex, walking the dog never meant…something other than walking the dog.
Ironically, Buck had been born into the most passive-aggressive household in the Skagit Valley. The intricate dance of communication in his childhood home had been one excruciating experience after another. What was the right answer at the dinner table, about his homework, about what books he liked, who his friends were at school, sports? Invariably he would say the wrong thing. His parents’ eyes, his father’s eyes, would transform from delighted interest to a flat gray when Buck answered.
He never could parse what the right answer would be. Questions were a minefield. By the time high school rolled around he figured that almost every remark was a trick question impossible to answer correctly, so he stopped trying to answer. The only subject his father and he had in common was cars. Working on and restoring cars had been th
e touchstone allowing them to communicate.
A conversation about a carburetor was a conversation about how Buck was doing in English class. Paint or upholstery could be politics or how much the local Chamber of Commerce was angering his father with their demands. Buck learned early to be seen and not heard, to listen for the undercurrents, to be very careful how he presented to his family and to Skagit. He figured they would never accept him for who he was, only who they wanted him to be.
He could not fathom that he had practically assaulted Joey. Furthermore, he was violating Joey’s privacy by calling Micah and Adam when he had promised Joey silence. Buck thought Joey was in trouble, but he had no proof. Except who pretends to know a creepy stranger, leaves their dog with you, or borrows your car at the last minute when they barely know you? Someone in trouble, that’s who.
Along with so many other things his father disapproved of, he long ago had carefully wrapped the idea of Joey James up in bubble wrap, dropped it into a mental lockbox, and forgotten it. That evening a few weeks ago in the ER with Micah, when Buck had seen Joey for the first time in ten years, his body had felt like a beacon had flashed on inside his skin.
This morning he’d kissed Joey. Without asking. Without thinking. Reflecting on the kiss again had his skin shimmering with need. He shuddered, groaning. The dog, which had been lying forgotten while Buck freaked out, whimpered and stood, shoving her cold nose into his armpit. Automatically he reached down to reassure her, the soft fur a comfort he hadn’t known he craved.
Xena huffed and tensed, reacting to a quiet sound from outside the office. He’d left the garage doors wide open like an idiot. Thousands of dollars’ worth of tools sitting out for any enterprising thief. It wasn’t a thief, though. It wasn’t anyone scary at all. It was a tired-looking Adam with Micah in tow.
Buck had a difficult time reconciling the Micah he’d seen around town over the years with this confident man holding hands with his boyfriend. Buck’s stomach clenched. He wanted that, too. Maybe he’d never be a hand holder, but he wanted to be important to someone.