Otherwise Occupied (Evan Arden)

by Savage, Shay

  Forcing myself not to roll my eyes, I sat back down in the chair and looked at him.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked.

  “All I really know is the part that is a matter of public record,” Mark said. “Anything you want to tell me that isn’t still classified would be a good place to start. If you’d rather talk about the known stuff, that’s fine, too. It’s up to you.”

  There was a lot that was still classified as far as I knew. It wasn’t like there was anyone coming out here to debrief me of any changes, of course. Regardless, it was best to go with the things that could be found by anyone who did some digging.

  “You see the video tape?” I asked. An involuntary cold shiver went down my back, and my stomach tightened up.

  “I have,” he admitted. “I watched it again when you were assigned to me, but I had seen it on the news before then.”

  “That guy – that writer guy,” I said. Inside my head, tiny little explosions began to commence in the center of my skull. My hands clenched without my permission, and my mind fought to only say the words, not actually see the pictures. “You know the one? When they had us all on our knees in front of the camera – right after the bags were taken off our heads – he was on my left.”

  “I know who you mean.”

  “He kept saying he had a wife and kids,” I remembered. “He kept begging them and talking about his two little girls.”

  I hesitated. Most of this was on the tape – the one they played over and over and over again. There were probably five hundred copies of it up on YouTube. Most of it, but not all of it. There was a whole bunch of it before that part that never got out of the government’s hands.

  “Before they had us on camera, when the guy was talking about his kids – there was one of them – one of the insurgents – he said someone had to die, and I told them to just shoot me instead of the writer guy because I didn’t have a family. It didn’t make any difference though. They shot him anyway.”

  Pain in my lungs made me stop speaking for a second. They were trying to go into overdrive or something, and it took all my concentration to stop myself from hyperventilating. My fingers gripped onto my knees in an attempt to stop shaking, but at least my voice remained steady.

  “Sometimes I think he got off easy,” I said. “Thinking that sometimes makes it hard to sleep, too.”

  “That’s a change in your thinking,” Mark said. “At least, as far as what you talked about when you were here before. There’s nothing about the video in Doctor Hartford’s notes.”

  “Maybe it’s still classified and no one remembered to tell me.” I shrugged. “If you see any MPs coming up the driveway, give me a chance to run, okay?”

  I laughed, but he didn’t smile, and I couldn’t really hear the humor in my voice, either.

  “It was on the news a lot.”

  “I was still in Saudi Arabia when it broke out,” I said, “then Germany, and then the hospital in Virginia. I didn’t see it for a couple of months – not until they were discharging me. It was a year old by then, anyway. It’s not like I had paparazzi following me or anything when I got back. Instead, I had freaking MPs. The whole media circus didn’t have any effect on me.”

  “You think something like that just goes away after a year?” Mark asked.

  “No,” I said, “but it wasn’t the worst anyway.”

  “What was?” he asked quietly, but I shook my head. He must have realized he wasn’t getting any of that because he changed tactics.

  “Did you dream about that time?” he asked. “Did you dream about the video?”

  “No,” I said, “just the hole.”

  “Your focus when we first met was on the others who were with you when you were captured. Your dreams then revolved around feelings of guilt – that you should have been able to do something to save them.”

  “Yeah.” I cleared my throat, and my head began to pound a little under the effort of not remembering. “Not those dreams. None like that this time.”

  “You still blame yourself,” he observed.

  “I fucked up.”

  “You were ambushed.”

  “I was the one tasked with not letting that happen,” I said. “I was their officer. I was in charge. I fucked up, and they died.”

  “Do you expect yourself to be omnipotent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Evan,” Mark sighed, “you know that isn’t reasonable.”

  “I don’t give a shit about reasonable,” I said. “It’s what I should have done. They were counting on me.”

  “I have the files,” he reminded me. “Full investigation. You were found to be completely without…”

  “I don’t give a shit about what they said!” I snapped.

  Mark’s eyes went wide for just a half-second before his carefully constructed therapist’s mask came back into play. He couldn’t completely hide his shock from me. I could almost hear little gears clicking in his head as he considered this new information. He wrote on his notepad while his eyes stayed on me. I could just imagine the words on the page.

  Evan Arden does actually have an emotion in there somewhere.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “I guess I’m a little on edge. Work has been a little hectic, and with the nightmares…well, I’m not sleeping much, like I said. Very sorry for my outburst, sir.”

  Mark stared at me for a moment, undoubtedly wondering what he could say to make me explode again.

  “What you went through was horrific, Evan,” Mark finally said.

  Like I needed to be reminded.

  “You’ve come a long way since then, haven’t you? You still work at the gym?”

  “Not right now,” I said. “I took a little extended vacation. Just got back into town a month ago.”

  “So where are you working?”

  “Nowhere at the moment.”

  “You just said work had been a little hectic.”

  Shit.

  “I…ah…” Damnit! What the hell was wrong with me? I never made such stupid mistakes. “I don’t have a real job. I’ve just been helping out a friend.”

  “Evan, I can’t help you if you keep things from me. You have to trust me if this is going to work. You know whatever is going on, you are completely protected by doctor-patient privilege. Unless you tell me you’re going to hurt yourself or someone else, it will all be totally confidential.”

  Well, that was the problem there, wasn’t it?

  “It’s just…not completely on the up and up,” I said as I tried to buy a little time for a plausible story. I was falling into a pit of lies, and I needed something simple so I could keep it straight. I had already said far more than I had planned to say.

  “Doing what?” he pressed. He wasn’t going to let this go until I gave him something he would take to be me opening up – trusting him more. What I had said before was in the files – he could have read it already. He needed something new.

  The story actually came pretty quickly.

  “Well, it’s just…” I hesitated and rubbed my fingers in my eyes. I was surely the perfect picture of angst. “It’s not totally legitimate, you know? I’m doing some roofing work for this guy’s brother. Strictly cash, all under the table, you know?”

  “Yes, I know.” He did a wonderful job of not showing his disappointment. I was just pleased he bought it.

  “You’re not pissed?” I asked, supposedly surprised.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I can’t say I think it is the best thing for you because legitimate work will always be in your best interest, but I’m not pissed, as you put it.”

  “My Marine buddies would have a fit,” I said. It was the truth, or at least would have been if I had any Marine buddies. “Everything has to be on the up-and-up, you know? It’s a matter of pride.”

  “And does doing that kind of work hurt your pride?”

  “Yeah, a little,” I admitted with a shrug. In my mind, I considered what I actually did to make my illegitimate cas
h. “I know it is ultimately illegal and immoral, but if I don’t do it, someone else will. The gym wouldn’t hire me back since I didn’t exactly tell them I was going to be gone for a while.”

  “So where did you go on your trip?”

  “Arizona.”

  “You went to the desert on vacation?”

  I looked up at him, and we just stared at each other for a minute.

  “Yeah…um…I guess I did.”

  “And you’re wondering why the dreams came back?”

  “Well, now that you put it like that…”

  I leaned forward and rested my forearms over my knees. The throw rug in Mark’s office really wasn’t all that interesting, but I stared at the blue, swirly patterns in it anyway.

  “Did your vacation remind you of the Middle East?”

  “I didn’t really think about it while I was there,” I admitted. “I mean – it wasn’t the same at all. Just a little cabin, me and the dog…it never even crossed my mind while I was there.”

  “What did you do while you were there?”

  “Nothing,” I said. It was accurate enough.

  “Sounds like an exciting vacation.”

  I glanced up and raised an eyebrow at the sarcasm, but Mark wasn’t apologetic.

  “I wasn’t looking for any excitement,” I said. “I’ve had enough excitement in my life. I just hung out in the cabin. I didn’t go anywhere or do anything, really.”

  “Did anything significant happen while you were in Arizona?”

  My eyes dropped back to the rug, and my tongue darted over my lips. I could still taste her there, the brunette beauty who stumbled across my path in the middle of nowhere, spent the night in my bed, and then disappeared from my life.

  Lia.

  Did she ever go back to that rickety old cabin? Did she call my name, wander inside, and find the lame-ass excuse for a note I left her?

  Would I ever know?

  “No,” I finally said. “Nothing happened while I was there.”

  *****

  Much like the other times I had visited a counselor before I had been discharged, I was left feeling empty inside, more unsure than I had been before I walked into the office, and in need of a lot of distractions to keep my mind from dwelling on whatever was said. Keeping myself occupied usually came in one of three forms: throwing myself into exercise, spending all my free time with a hooker in my bed, or focusing on my work.

  Sometimes doing all three was the only way to keep my mind off of whatever was bothering me. When I wasn’t even sure what was quite literally keeping me up nights, even that didn’t help. For the moment, my best distraction was work, which meant digging into my target’s life.

  Brad Ashton was not an easy guy to get close to, that was for sure.

  The whole Hollywood scene sucked, whether you were in LA, New York, or downtown Chicago. Red carpet events weren’t overly common in the area, but I guess when you’re into a mob boss for a shitload of gambling money, you do what you need to do.

  The premier of Ashton’s new movie was all over the place, and this was just the Chicago leg of the tour. I knew I wasn’t going to get close enough to him tonight – not with all the insanity going on at the AMC River East 21. There had to be at least ten thousand people there, and every one of them was trying to get up close and personal with the dude. The vast majority were women, mostly in their mid-forties, and mostly crazy.

  They had to be.

  I mean, some of them were actually carrying cardboard cutouts of the guy and trying to get him to sign his own face.

  That shit’s weird.

  There were at least two dozen people acting as a human shield at any given moment. They were all decked out in basic B-movie secret service attire – black suits, receivers in their ears, sunglasses regardless of the weather. They were pretty comical to watch.

  As far as my cover went, they were going to be my best chance to get to him.

  I heard Ashton was staying at the Embassy right next door, so I made myself comfortable in the bar there and sipped club soda while a scotch sat untouched next to me. It was a long while before the noise of screaming females alerted me to the star’s arrival. He was escorted by the caricature guards to the bank of exclusive elevators and disappeared.

  Just a little longer.

  A few more patrons were hanging out and watching various sports on the large screens around the bar, but no one paid any attention to me except for the bartender. The next time he came around, I ditched the soda and started sipping the scotch.

  Two guys in black suits, sans ties, and unbuttoned white shirts came out of the same elevator where Ashton had disappeared and headed towards the bar. Not surprisingly, they opted for a bar-side seat instead of a table.

  I watched from the end of the bar.

  They were both in their mid twenties, which was convenient. As they talked, I picked up that one was named Jim, but no name was mentioned for the other. They drank cheap beer in bottles and watched football until closing time but didn’t talk about work. Jim was apparently a Raiders fan.

  They sat reasonably close like they knew each other, but not close enough that they might accidentally touch one another in passing. They both had short hair but not military cut like mine, just neatly short. There were little marks around their right ears where the receivers had pinched them.

  They were career guys, not just hired for this event. They would go with Ashton when he left Chicago, which was exactly what I needed. I kept my head down, turned my body away as they passed me, and finished my scotch before heading home.

  The next day was a television appearance for the popular actor and then back to the same hotel for some beauty sleep before he flew out to LA. The same two guys came down to the bar again the next night. I sat in the same spot as well, but this time I was wearing a Raider’s jersey.

  Fortune was on my side, and after the first drink, Jim’s buddy called it a night, but Jim didn’t seem ready to turn in just yet. It didn’t take long for him to approach me and start talking football.

  Too easy.

  “Raider’s fan, huh?”

  “Like anybody with a lick of sense,” I replied. “Best team in the fucking world!”

  I held up my glass of beer and clinked it against his bottle. The beer was still light, same as his, but just different enough not to appear suspicious. This guy knew security, and I couldn’t be that obvious. Even wearing his team’s jersey on a day when they weren’t playing was a little risky.

  “Damn straight!” Jim replied. “I’m Jim Conner – mind if I join you?”

  “Marshall Miller,” I said as I shook his hand. “You staying here at the hotel?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be heading out in the morning. I work security, and my boss is staying here.”

  “That’s cool,” I replied. “I hear the rooms here are really nice.”

  “You aren’t a guest?”

  “Nah,” I said. I wiped the back of my arm across my mouth. “I just like the bar. Other sports bars around have kind of a crappy crowd, you know?”

  “I do,” he agreed.

  I made a point of scooting my chair a bit so he could sit down without going all homophobic on me or anything. Sports guys could get kind of uptight sometimes, and I didn’t want something that simple to blow my chances. We talked about the team’s performance over the season and their chances for the Super Bowl and then went on to politics.

  I argued with him about one of the viewpoints expressed on the nightly newscast. I took it just to the precipice of pissing him off and then dropped back down. We eyed each other cautiously for a moment before touching our drinks together once more in a truce sort of toast.

  It was all about as perfect as it could be until he insisted on shots. I probably should have known better – really wasn’t much of a drinker. I’d have a drink or two, yes, but that was usually it. Being out of control wasn’t my favorite feeling, but sometimes the job called on you to do shit you didn’t want to do.
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  “Did you play?” I asked Jim as I tipped back the third.

  “Nah,” he said. “I love the game, but I was never good enough to play more than JV. You?”

  “In college, yeah,” I said with a frat-boy grin. “Tight end freshman and sophomore years and then screwed up my knee. There went my scholarship. I couldn’t keep up with everything after surgery, and I never was the same again.”

  “That sucks, man,” Jim said. As some sort of celebration-slash-condolences he bought the next shot, which we both downed too quickly to count, so we had another.

  “I always thought I’d play for the Raiders someday,” I mused. “I guess since that didn’t happen…well…you know. Life and shit.”

  “I do know that,” Jim agreed.

  I didn’t really think he had any idea what he was agreeing with, but it didn’t really matter. We did another shot, and my head was getting a little fuzzy. I didn’t drink often, and it was hitting me a little harder than I expected.

  “I got laid off a week ago,” I told him. “I was a mall cop, if you can believe it. It was kind of a crappy job – mostly chasing teenaged shoplifters – but it paid the bills.”

  “Have you been looking for something else?” Jim asked.

  “Looking, sure,” I responded. I waved down the bartender for two more shots since it was my turn to buy them. “Finding is a whole other thing. I like the security stuff, though.”

  We did a couple more shots, talked more football shit, and bitched about the economy until the hotel bartender finally tossed us out. Jim and I shook hands, and he wished me the best of luck. I jotted my cell number down on the back of one of the cardboard coasters used at the bar and asked him to call me if he heard of any work.

  Once Jim was out of sight, I pushed my way through the revolving doors and hailed down a cab to take my drunk ass home. I hadn’t actually planned on drinking as much as I did – I didn’t like the out of control feeling of intoxication – but it seemed to have served its purpose as far as “bonding” with Jim was concerned.

  I stumbled into my apartment and nearly fell over Odin twice as I attached his leash and took him out the back door. My head was swimming, and I had such a rough time just getting Odin outside in the first place that I decided to forgo the leash law and just dropped the people-end of the thing. Odin never wandered off anyway, and it allowed me time to lean against the wall of the building and debate the merits of puking in the bushes versus puking on the rocks.