9
Tri-Cities Airport
“Uncle Ty!” Aiden screamed, running toward the terminal, her flip-flops flapping on the airport’s terrazzo floors.
Airports made Ty nervous and he usually tried to maintain a low-profile, anxious to get out of there as soon as possible. There was nothing low-profile about Aiden. She lived life at full-volume and he couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm.
He dropped his pack to the ground and opened his arms to her, sweeping her up in a hug. “Someone must have missed me. This is the biggest hug I’ve gotten in a long time.”
Suddenly realizing that she’d forgotten she was a mature, aloof tween, she tried to regain her composure. “Mother said I should do it so you wouldn’t feel sad and unloved.”
“Don’t believe a word of it,” Deena said, leaning in to kiss Ty on the cheek. “She’s the one who insisted on dropping you off and picking you up. She's missed you terribly.”
“Yep, I remember that too,” Ty said. “I could have driven myself here when I left but you weren’t having it.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Uncle Ty. I’m just here for the food. Mother said we might go out to eat.”
Deena rolled her eyes at Ty. “She’s taken to calling me mother lately. Not sure what that’s all about.”
“Would you prefer I call you Deena?” Aiden asked.
“Would you prefer I spank you?”
Aiden clutched her belly and laughed dramatically. “That’s funny, Mother.”
“She knows you won’t do it,” said Ty.
Deena glared at the two of them. “I might.”
Ty winked at Aiden, then he started laughing too.
Aiden picked up Ty’s pack and struggled to get it on her back. It wasn’t heavy, containing just clothing, but it wasn’t adjusted properly for her, hanging halfway down her back. When she was ready she took Ty by the hand. “Let’s blow this joint. I think I want Chinese. You do too, right?”
“Of course. Chinese would be perfect," Ty agreed.
Deena insisted on letting Ty drive, which he was fine with. It soothed his mind more than sitting idly in the passenger seat while someone else was in control of his life. He didn’t even have to ask where Aiden wanted to go. If she asked for Chinese there was only one place she was referring to and he went directly there. She liked the buffet so she could sample a little of everything.
Deena asked questions about his job in the generic way you’d ask anyone about a new position they’d taken. She hadn’t worked anything but “banker’s hours” in her adult life and had a hard time grasping the concept of his schedule.
“It’s different,” Ty acknowledged, “I get paid a regular salary but basically I work when I’m needed.”
“When duty calls?” Deena asked.
“Like a superhero!” Aiden suggested.
She had questions too but most of hers were about people he worked with. She wanted to know if there were girls where he worked and what they did. She wanted to know if any of his friends had cool call signs since he’d long ago explained that practice to her. When the questions strayed too close to the core of what he did, he redirected them. It was nothing he wanted to talk about, or even think about, during this moment with the closest thing he had to family.
They lingered over dinner, letting Aiden open all the fortune cookies, but Ty found his mind wandering. He’d been fine in Arizona, fully-engaged with the new job and his new colleagues. Back in familiar territory, he could feel his old life gnawing at him again. Like a drug-addict fighting a craving, Ty could feel old demons dropping in to say hello. While they weren’t pulling him down in the hole with them yet, they were reminding him that they were still around. He’d been feeling a lot better with the changes in his life and the new meds Cliff’s doc had him on, but this was a sobering reminder that he still had a long way to go. The fight wasn’t over, nor was the suffering.
It was dark when they left the restaurant, heading for Ty’s townhouse. They were near his exit now, preparing to get off the interstate.
“You’re quiet,” Deena said. “Everything okay?”
“Just tired. The change in time zones is throwing me off. A good night’s sleep will help.”
“When do you have to go back?” Aiden asked.
“I’m scheduled to go in a week unless they call me in earlier.”
“School started while you were gone,” Deena pointed out.
Aiden groaned. “Can we not talk about that?”
“I thought you liked school?” Ty asked.
“I like my friends, but I don’t like having to see them at school. You think hanging out in a sewer would be better just because you had friends there?”
“Aiden!” Deena snapped. “Proper young ladies don’t talk about sewers, especially not about hanging out in them.”
Aiden cackled, thrilled that she’d found something new that provoked such a reaction from her mother. Ty knew she’d be talking about hanging out in sewers for days now. They were still laughing about hanging out in sewers when they swung into Ty’s complex. He gave Aiden a warm hug, then grabbed his gear from the back seat.
Deena walked around the vehicle to take his place in the driver’s seat, giving Ty a kiss on the cheek before climbing in. “Welcome back. Don’t be a stranger.”
“I don’t know,” Aiden said. “He’s pretty strange.”
Ty slung his pack on and closed Deena’s door for her. He leaned toward Aiden’s open window. “At least I don’t hang out in sewers!”
He could hear her laughing as they pulled out of the parking lot. He stood there for a moment, enjoying the feeling of home. The summer night was pleasant and glaringly different than Arizona. The air almost felt tropical with its moist heat. When Deena’s vehicle was gone from sight, Ty extracted his truck key from his pocket and retrieved the Glock he'd left in the center console.
He climbed the steps to his unit and set his pack on the ground. He’d been gone for a while and there was no way he’d be comfortable until he cleared the house. It was an old habit and perhaps not a healthy one, but you did what you had to do to get by. This was how he got by. He swung the door open, activated the weapon light, and went inside.
He’d cleared this house so many times he could do it with his eyes closed. He knew every step, every turn, and to the second how long the entire process took. When he was done, he collected his pack from the entry and dumped it out on the bed in the spare room. He wasn’t ready to deal with those clothes yet but a lot of them were sweat-soaked and rank. He had no interest in leaving them to ferment in the confines of his pack.
The only item he took from the pile was his laptop. His trip west had been busy. There had been a lot of meetings and training exercises. He’d spent time at the range getting to know his teammates. At night there had been dinner and drinks. Once there had even been a formal event put on by some of the organization’s patrons. The people who ponied up the cash to keep the lights on enjoyed meeting the men who carried out the operations, the actual door kickers of DKI.
Between all of this, he’d had very little time to text Deena and Aiden, and he’d neglected his friends in the Wasteland, an online community for vets struggling with PTSD. It was a pretty dysfunctional place but it was the closest thing he’d had to a community of friends since leaving the military. Weird as they were, they were his people.
Assuming he'd fallen behind on their activities, he got a beer and opened his laptop. He busied himself sending messages and responding to posts. He tried to ignore the disconnected, dissociative state he’d been experiencing for the last part of the ride home. He tried not to think about how natural it had been to fall back into the pattern of checking the house and trying to ignore the whispers of the demons trying to get inside his head. He put in some earbuds and found a Corrosion Of Conformity playlist on his phone. He turned it up until it drowned out everything.
10
Ty’s Townhouse
Abingdon, Virgini
a
The sound of his phone ringing through his earbuds startled Ty awake. He'd forgotten to take the stupid things out. He jerked bolt upright on his couch, heart pounding. The phone slid off his chest and onto the floor, violently tugging the earbuds from his ears. Ty snatched it up and looked at the screen. It was Lieutenant Whitt.
Ty groaned but swiped the screen to take the call. “Good morning, Sunshine.”
“Uh, excuse me? Is this Ty?”
Ty cleared his throat. “Yes, Lieutenant. It’s me.”
“I didn’t catch you at a bad time, did I?” Her tone was hesitant, uncertain.
Ty sagged onto the couch, draping a hand over his eyes. “No, I just flew in from Arizona last night. I was up late and I guess I overslept. I’m still getting used to the time change.”
“Well, sorry for waking you but I was wondering if you might be up for lunch.”
Ty was the hesitant one now. He said nothing as he turned the offer over in his sleep-sluggish mind. He and the lieutenant were not exactly friends. In fact, she'd once tried to arrest him.
“It’s not a trick. I assure you,” Whitt said, sensing his suspicion.
Ty could hear the smile behind her voice. “Are you sure this isn’t some ruse to arrest me?”
“If I wanted to arrest you, Tyler Stone, we’d be having this conversation in your living room right now and you’d be wearing handcuffs.”
“Good point. Where do you want to meet?”
“I’m leaving Wytheville now and getting on the interstate. How about Bella’s Pizza around 1 PM?”
“What time is it now?”
“10:30, Sleeping Beauty.”
Ty nodded. “I can do that. I’ll be there.”
“Good. See you then.”
Ty ended the call and tossed the phone onto the coffee table. There was only one thing that was going to clear his head at the moment and it wasn’t an energy drink. He needed to burn the fog away. He threw on some running clothes and strapped on the two phone cases he wore on his biceps. One held his actual phone, the other a compact .380 pistol.
Not allowing himself time to procrastinate, he relied on a technique he’d used to get through some of the hardest challenges in his life. He laid on the negative self-talk in a big way, calling himself every manner of slacker and loser as he got ready.
What do you think you’re doing, Stone? You going to lay down and take a nap. You going to nap like the little baby that you are? You’ve already slept half the day away. Where do you think this country would be if it depended on laggards and lard-asses like you to win its battles? We'd all be pinkos! Now get your ass moving!
The rant started in his head but by the time he rushed out the door, he was actually whispering it to himself. This kind of self-talk wasn’t like the corrosive, negative voices of the demons he sometimes heard in his head. This was good-humored encouragement, psyching himself up to power through and harden up. It was a role his instructors had fulfilled in boot camp, but now he had no one else to keep him wound tight. Fortunately, he was good at doing it for himself.
He did a three-mile loop, running into the town of Abingdon and down a quiet back street of Colonial-era homes. He circled down Main Street for the return trip, passing the federal courthouse and the Martha Washington Inn. He passed the Barter Theater, the state theater of Virginia, which had gotten its start during the Great Depression when locals could barter food to see performances. Gregory Peck had gotten his start there and other performers, like Patricia Neal and Ernest Borgnine, had cut their teeth there. Ty loved the dichotomy of running these historic, small-town streets while performers like Five Finger Death Punch, Leo Moracchioli, Pantera, and Metallica blasted through the one ear-bud he wore.
When he got to his neighborhood he slowed to a walk to cool off. He felt halfway normal now. He ran up the steps to his townhouse, unlocked the door, and went inside. It felt normal, like home. He opened all the blinds and let the summer light pour in. He ground some coffee beans, an East African mix, and started a pot of coffee.
Despite the dark moments, his life was the best it had been in some time. There were moments where he felt like a stranger in a strange house, wearing his life like it was someone else’s clothes. He felt none of that at the moment. He was just a normal stinking guy in sweaty clothes making some kick-ass coffee.
11
Bella’s Pizza
Abingdon, Virginia
Ty wasn’t local to the Abingdon area. Although he’d only moved there after his discharge from the military to support his sister, it hadn’t taken him long to sniff out this pizza place. He’d learned long ago that you could judge the quality of a community by the texture of its crust.
He whipped his truck into the parking lot, immediately noticing that there were two unmarked police cruisers parked alongside each other. After parking his truck, he walked past the pair of vehicles and studied the tags. One was a Virginia public use tag, the other a federal government tag. Despite knowing that he’d done nothing wrong, at least not lately, Ty couldn’t help but feel a twinge of paranoia. Still, he couldn’t turn around now. He’d already caught the smell of pizza.
He shoved through the door and the aroma of baking Italian goodness blasted him full in the face. That moment of bliss was cut short by the sight of Lieutenant Whitt and a man in a suit Ty had never seen before. They were seated at a corner table and the lieutenant was waving Ty over. He checked his six, noted the exits, and headed over. He took the pulse of the dining room as he crossed through it. Nothing but working folks cramming in a lunch before getting back to work.
With Lieutenant Whitt on one side of the table and the unknown Fed on the other, Ty wasn’t sure where he’d sit. Did he take the devil he knew over the devil he didn’t? Yeah, he would.
They were standing by the time he reached them, the lieutenant extending her hand for a cordial shake. Her smile appeared genuine. “Ty, I’d like you to meet Special Agent Mike Baxter. You might call him our local Fed.”
Agent Baxter extended a hand and shook. “Good to meet you, Mr. Stone. Please join us.”
Ty took a seat by the lieutenant. It wasn’t optimal because it put his back to the front door, which left him uncomfortable even on a good day. Searching the wall, he found a framed print under glass. It wasn’t as good as a mirror but provided a decent reflection of the front door. He could at least keep an eye on who came in.
“The lieutenant was just telling me a little bit about you,” Agent Baxter said.
Ty pulled his eyes away from the reflected image of the front door and met Baxter’s. He must have looked uncertain about what that meant because the agent quickly clarified.
“About the position you’d taken with the Door Kickers International organization. I’ve never had any personal interaction with them but I’ve heard good things. They’re making quite the name for themselves.”
“Yeah, that organization was exactly what I needed in my life,” Ty said. “The right thing at the right time.”
“Civilian groups like that serve a noble purpose in our nation,” Baxter said. “Law enforcement doesn’t have the manpower to do everything. We have task forces and interagency coalitions to target trafficking but it’s only a drop in the bucket. The problem is too big.”
Ty was unsure how to respond to the man’s statement of the obvious, but was spared from having to do so by the appearance of the waitress. Starving, Ty ordered his favorite, the Syrian pizza. It was Mediterranean-style pizza with no tomato sauce but lots of cheese, garlic, and onions. Baxter and Whitt ordered subs, which was fine with Ty. He was starving and ready to devour an entire pizza on his own. Even though he’d had Chinese last night with Aiden and Deena, he felt like he was low on carbs and intended to correct that deficiency with a vengeance.
When the waitress returned with their drinks, they sat there uncomfortably for a moment before Ty broke the silence. “So, this feels a little weird to me. I’m a direct kind of guy so let’s just cut to the chase.
Why am I here? Why are we here? I doubt it’s because the lieutenant missed my smiling face.”
While Baxter may have been unaccustomed to Ty’s directness, the lieutenant was not. She glanced over her shoulder to gauge their level of privacy, then turned back to the table. “Ty, I got a weird tip the other day. It might be nothing but it could be something. It likely extends beyond my jurisdiction, which is why I contacted Agent Baxter here.”
Baxter smiled and jumped in. “In our discussion of this tip, the lieutenant mentioned the case where you two met.”
Ty chuckled. “She mention that she came all the way to Arizona to throw my ass in jail?”
Baxter’s eyes flickered to Whitt’s and he grimaced slightly. “Yes, she mentioned that. She also mentioned though that she did some advocacy for you with the Commonwealth Attorney. I think things worked out for the best in the end, didn’t they? The charges against you were dropped and a little girl was reunited with her family.”
Ty nodded. “I do appreciate the lieutenant’s efforts to clear me. I was just a little surprised to get her call this morning. I didn’t think we’d start dating this soon.”
Whitt was stunned at the comment for just a second, then recovered. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Ty felt a sense of satisfaction at having taken her by surprise. Agent Baxter was too professional to acknowledge the comment, but Ty didn't care.
“Ty, are you familiar with suboxone treatment?” Baxter asked.
For a second, Ty’s mind flashed to the thought that this was an intervention. Were they going to accuse him of being addicted to painkillers and encourage him to seek treatment? “Yeah, it’s something like methadone right?”
“It’s a little different,” Baxter countered. “Methadone is an opioid replacement therapy, which some say is just the act of replacing one addiction with another. Suboxone weans you off the opioid but contains blockers that are supposed to counter the effects of any opioids you take during recovery. A person can get suboxone from their own doctor, as long as he’s been trained on the administration protocol and follows a set of standardized guidelines.”
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