by Gregory Ashe
“He could have shot from the door,” Jem said, trying to gauge the angle at which the bullet had entered the wall. “What the hell was he doing? Trying to scare them?”
Tean was toeing cushions near the overturned couch. “Why would Antonio come here?”
“Revenge.”
“Right, I agree. Tanner killed Andi; now Antonio wants to get back at him. But why come here, to the villa?”
“Maybe he thought Tanner would be here. Maybe he thought he’d catch the three of them together.”
Shaking his head, Tean said, “There are too many things I don’t like about this.”
“Like what?”
“Why is everything messed up? He only shot once. This looks like a search, not a fight.”
“Good Lord, you sound like a genuine criminal. What have I created?”
“He didn’t come here for Tanner, Jem. That’s what feels wrong about this.”
And it did; Jem’s gut was twisting with it. What he said was “Then let’s figure out what he was looking for.”
Pushing back his hair with both hands, Tean sighed. Then he nodded.
They worked together, room by room. Tean wanted to be gentle at first, the way he was always gentle: turning the armchairs onto their sides, plumping the cushions, lifting the pictures by their frames. Once Jem showed him that this time, they weren’t going to be nice about it, Tean took to the whole process with surprising enthusiasm. He was kicking out the spindles of a straight-back chair, checking to see if the legs had been hollowed out, when his glasses went flying. His expression was murderous as he finished stomping the chair to pieces.
When Jem passed over his glasses, Tean pushed back a sweat-heavy strand of hair and said thanks.
“You’re really getting out some aggression, huh?”
“Just exercise,” Tean said. He was breathing faster than normal, color in his cheeks.
“Like a beaver on Adderall.”
“Title of your sex tape.”
Jem gaped at him. The desert wind flung pebbles against the villa, the only sound the click of stone against stucco.
“Out of my way,” Tean said, pushing Jem aside. “I’m going to smash that longhorn skull.”
“I love you so fucking much right now.”
“Save it for your tape.”
“What in the world is going on?”
“I don’t know,” Tean said. “Maybe I swallowed one of Scipio’s pills on accident.”
They worked through the living room, turning over furniture, cutting and breaking, checking the walls and baseboards. Jem got tools from the truck and they removed the wall plates for switches and outlets. He even made Tean steady him while he inspected the light fixtures. He didn’t bother trying to remount them; he just left them hanging by their wires.
Clockwise, they moved through the villa. In the bedrooms, they checked the dressers, the nightstands, the closets, the doors. They checked walls and baseboards again. In the bathrooms, Jem searched the caulking along the fiberglass shower stall, the drain, the caulking around the pan. He checked the toilet tank and under the sink. Tean didn’t have the right tools to get the pipes loose, but Jem checked them by hand; nothing seemed loose, but that was the whole point. The medicine cabinet was in place again, so they lifted it out of the wall and checked the hollow space between the studs. Nothing.
“Somebody took the handcuffs,” Tean said.
“The sex handcuffs,” Jem corrected. “Maybe Kalista decided she liked them.”
“Maybe Nick did.”
“Ok.”
“Maybe Nick’s going to use them on you on your date,” Tean clarified.
“Yeah, I figured it out.”
“What? Oh my gosh, you’re blushing.”
“Nothing. Quit looking at me like that. I get why it’s hot, I just—you’re talking to a walking bundle of trust issues.”
“Oh. I was just teasing.”
Jem scanned the final bedroom, trying to figure out what they’d missed. “I know.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“This is actually worse than when you emotionally castrated me by telling me I was a gentle lover. You know that, right?”
“I don’t know if I said gentle. I thought I said considerate. And attentive.”
“Those are worse. Those are so much worse.” He stalked toward the kitchen. Without looking back, he shouted, “And quit looking so goddamn smug.”
“You just told me you loved me.”
“I take it back. I take it all back.”
“Even the part about your beaver?”
Jem was glad he was walking away because it was very hard not to smile at that one.
They broke apart the chairs in the kitchen. They took the legs off the table. They emptied the cabinets—which were mostly empty already. Tean smashed a few wineglasses.
“Did the prisoners refuse to talk?”
“I got a little caught up in the moment. I don’t think I’ve ever actually broken anything before. On purpose, I mean.”
“Great. This is the second time I’ve popped your cherry.”
“I was not a virgin—” Tean cut himself off and crossed his arms. “No. I’ve got the upper hand right now. I’m not giving it up.”
“Fine. Bring that upper hand over here and help me move this.”
Together, they rocked the efficiency stove away from the wall. Behind it they found only a few dried elbows of macaroni and something very gray and very fuzzy that had obviously died a long time ago.
“Mouse,” Tean said.
“Wake up your pet snake.”
“You wake him up,” Tean said, tugging on his waistband. “You already know how.”
“What the hell is going on? Is it a full moon tonight? Did you take drugs? Were you bathing in tick medicine?”
Tean just shrugged and grinned. It looked so easy on him, so natural, that Jem got caught up looking. The tangle of wild hair pushed straight back. The thin face. The full lips. The hollow of his throat where the vee of his polo exposed pale brown skin and a tuft of dark hair. He realized too long had gone by when Tean cleared his throat.
“Right,” Jem said. “The search.”
After that, no more teasing.
They found the stash when they pulled out the refrigerator. Someone, presumably Nick or Kalista, had broken a hole in the drywall. Several ziplock baggies were stacked inside along with a flip phone. The baggies held blue crystals.
“Is that meth?” Tean said as Jem hefted one of the bags.
“It’s not pool cleaner. Well, maybe it is, but I don’t think so. There’s at least a kilo in this bag. Times three,” he gestured at the other bags, “this is probably worth more than ten thousand dollars.”
27
Jem considered the stash of drugs again and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
“Maybe Antonio needed money for his getaway,” Tean said.
“Maybe.” Jem returned the bags to the opening in the wall. Then he turned on the phone. It was relatively new-looking—the plastic wasn’t scuffed or scratched, and the small screen was clear and bright. If you got a good deal, you could have bought it for as cheap as ten dollars. No outgoing calls. No incoming calls. A single text message from a number that Jem would have bet money came from another burner.
The message read: replaces.broadly.shall 7/24/18.
“I need your help,” Jem said. “This doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“It’s not you; it doesn’t make any sense, period. ‘Replaces broadly shall?’ The syntax is off. I mean, the word order—”
“I know what syntax is. You practically whisper the word syntax into my ear at night when I’m sleeping.”
“I would if I knew where you slept. If it were a normal sentence, it would be shall replace broadly or shall broadly replace. The way it’s written doesn’t mean anything to me. And I don’t know why they’re separated by periods.”<
br />
“Maybe they’re not a sentence. Maybe they’re a code.”
“If they are, I have no idea what it means.”
“Or—” A rush of excitement hit Jem. “Or they’re passwords.”
Tean’s eyebrows revealed his skepticism.
“Think about it,” Jem said. “They’ve got the phone. They’ve got a date. They obviously prearranged the location. But whoever they’re dealing with, they haven’t met face to face before, so they need a password to make sure this is the right person for the handoff.”
Tean hesitated. “This type of country would be ideal for moving that kind of thing without having to risk cops. Nobody would look twice at someone with a heavy pack—a strong guy could carry twenty or twenty-five kilos. Heck, nobody would look twice at someone with a pack horse. It would explain why Nick, Kalista, and Tanner have been hanging around Moab. The date in that message is Tuesday, still two days away.”
“Are they handing off this shit?” Jem gestured at the stashed drugs. “Or are they getting more?”
“I don’t know. And please don’t be mad, but I’ve got to tell Ammon.”
“Can you tell him after we’re gone? Preferably once we’re well away from here so we won’t get charged with trespass, breaking and entering, vandalism, possession with intent to distribute, criminal teasing, that kind of thing.”
“It’s not criminal if it’s deserved.”
“I’m going to remind you that you said that.”
They let themselves out, drove fifteen minutes back to town, and pulled into the City Market Fuel Center. In the convenience store restroom, they ditched the gloves that were now covered in fingerprint powder and washed up. Jem combed his hair, careful of the stitches.
When they got back to the truck, the cab was already cooking, even in the shade. They ran the A/C, and Tean sent another anonymous email with pictures of the drugs and the phone and the hiding place in the villa’s wall. Tean had missed a smudge on his jawline, and Jem took him by the chin to wipe it away. The second day’s stubble tickled his palm.
“You’re looking like a regular mountain man these days.”
Tean made a noise, still staring at his phone.
“Like a grizzled trapper working the wilderness of Minnesota.”
“Uh huh.”
“I bet Proton or whatever his name is, I bet he’d like you with stubble.”
“Ragnar,” Tean said. Then he looked up. “Why isn’t Ammon yelling at me?”
“The fact that you’re worried about that explains a great deal of your relationship.”
“Jem, you were right. I sent him that stuff from Jager’s cabin, but that wouldn’t have fooled him. I just sent him a picture of drugs. Why isn’t he on the phone screaming at me right now?”
“Because you blocked him?” Jem said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Damn. I don’t know. He’s busy. He’s in a meeting.”
Tean shook his head.
“Please don’t tell me you’re worried about him. Please don’t tell me you’ve got some sort of premonition that something bad happened to him.”
“What? No.”
“Then what is it?”
“I think he’s lying to me.”
“Shocker.”
“Excuse me?”
Jem bared his teeth in what he hoped passed for a smile. “Nothing. You were saying?”
“He’s hiding something. And he’s doing it to protect me.”
“I don’t know about that,” Jem muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“I said,” Jem said, and for one final moment, he tried to stop himself. Then the dam broke. “I said I don’t know about that. And please hold all of your shouting until the end. Ammon has lied to you a lot. For a lot of reasons. Mostly selfish ones. Actually, from what I can tell, exclusively selfish ones. And I know you don’t agree with me, and I know you think I’m—I’m missing out on this great guy, that somehow I’m not seeing him. But I want to go on the record that he’s not a great guy. He’s possessive. He’s manipulative. He’s abusive. He cheated on you—”
“We were never actually a couple.”
“Bullshit, Tean. That’s bullshit. Don’t do that. Don’t—don’t let him spin things around so that you’re in this upside-down world where all his fuckups have an explanation.”
“I want to drop this.”
“Too bad.”
“I said drop it, Jem.”
“No. You’re worth a million of Ammon. He’s dogshit, and you’re the best thing on this planet. But somehow he crawled inside your head, and now he doesn’t even have to try. You do all the work for him. You’ve got this whole fantasy spun out about—”
“Shut up.”
“This whole fantasy about how great he is, how kind he is, how much he loves you. I don’t think he does love you. I don’t know if he loves anyone except maybe himself. He’s a bully. He’s a thug, actually. He’s obsessed with you, and he’s a narcissist, and he’s cruel. If you’d heard him at the hospital, hell, if you’d heard him any of the times he goes pissing all over to mark you as his property—"
“Shut your fucking mouth!”
In the silence that followed, Jem could hear quite clearly the VW bus, powder blue, that rolled past them on a squeaky axle. The driver, an old man in a rainbow serape, tapped the horn, and the bus played “La Cucaracha.”
“I’ve told you before that you don’t understand. I’ve asked you not to talk about it. Why can’t you respect that?”
“Because I love you. Because I want you to be happy.”
“He makes me happy. Ammon does. I’ve been in love with him since I was fourteen years old, before I even knew what I was feeling. He was the first person I was ever with, and he made me feel safe and cared for and protected. He made me feel worth something. He makes me laugh. He’s my whole past—my family, my friends, everything I came from. Ammon is all of that.” Tean’s voice softened. “And yes, we’ve had some rough patches lately. We’ve both made mistakes.”
Jem snorted because the alternative was bursting into hot, stinging tears.
“But I’m not going to walk away from everything just because Ammon had a rough time coming out. I don’t know if I’ll end up with him romantically. But he’s this huge part of my life, and I can’t just cut him out and pretend he never existed.”
“Too fucking bad,” Jem said, his eyes cutting past Tean’s shoulder to stare at the cars stopped at the light on Main Street.
Tean’s hand was warm. It smelled like the convenience store soap and, faintly, like pine, and he turned Jem’s head carefully until Jem was looking into those soft brown eyes. “I love you too, Jem. You’re my best friend. Honestly, you might be my only friend. And I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“Yeah.” Jem couldn’t help it; the sniffle escaped him. He popped open the door, hocked a wad of spit and snot onto the cement pad, and then slammed the door shut.
“I just wish you could understand—”
“Right, right. We’ve done this bit. Fast forward.” He made the noise of a tape screeching. “If you think Ammon is hiding something, what do you want to do?”
“Jem, please. Can we talk about this?”
“I think we should follow him.”
“I don’t want you to be mad at me. I hate when you’re mad at me.”
“You’ve got about ten seconds to decide. That’s his shitty silver Impala sitting in traffic out there.”
Tean’s eyes narrowed, but he glanced over his shoulder.
“Well?” Jem said. “Want to see what your boyfriend is protecting you from?”
The look Tean shot him was a mix of pain and a fair amount of anger, but all he did was shift into gear and guide the truck out onto Main Street.
28
It was easy to follow Ammon; even in summer, the height of tourist season, Moab was a small town, and Jem had no trouble keeping an eye on the
Impala ahead of them. After they had gone a quarter mile south on Main Street, in the direction they had just come, Tean shifted in his seat and glanced over.
In what he obviously hoped was a normal voice, he said, “That’s kind of a strange coincidence, right? Seeing him there, I mean.”
“This place is dime sized. You’re lucky you two aren’t bumping ass cracks every time you turn around, although you’d probably enjoy that.”
“This is a very mature way to handle being upset with me.”
“I’m feeling my fucking feelings, Tean. You’re lucky I’m not pulling your hair and stuffing grass down your shirt.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’m really proud of the progress you’ve made.” And for some reason, he looked incredibly satisfied with himself.
Jem clunked his head against the door, trying to knock himself out.
They kept going south on US-191. They left behind the frame houses with their bleached siding and patched stucco, the wire fences, the obnoxiously green rectangles of lawn that looked like they’d been dragged here from New England. The desert sprawled ahead of them, rippling with its own heat. Jem had never been interested in camping, but he’d loved escaping to the Jensens’ ranch in Tooele, and sometimes Mr. Jensen would build fires in the fall and winter, and they’d sit on logs and roast what Mr. Jensen called wienies, which made Benny and Jem giggle and Mrs. Jensen blush. He remembered at the end of those nights, sometimes Benny would drag a section of log closer and fall asleep on Jem’s shoulder, smelling like the fire and, usually, clothes that needed washing. The coals in the bonfire would be the same red as the rock here, pulsing like the heat in the air. He reached over, squeezed Tean’s neck, and left his hand there.
Ammon passed the Tafone without slowing, and that made Tean glance over at Jem. Jem shrugged. They drove until the highway split, and then they cut east on US-46. They passed miles and miles of scrub and dirt. More wire fencing, more brownish-green scrub, more dirt that could be pinkish-brown or whitish-brown or reddish-brown. An aluminum trailer that was so bright in the sun it left a purple-white afterimage in Jem’s vision. A pole barn with rolled bales of hay visible through an open door. A saltbox house, one wall completely gone to expose a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room. The curtains were flapping in the breeze.