A Perilous Pursuit

by Diane Gilmore

  “Well, can I come in?”

  Steve paused, as if he were contemplating the idea of keeping her outside.

  “Yeah, sure, come in,” he said finally, moving out of the way.

  He shuffled to the bar that stood in the corner of the living room. “You want a drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  While he poured himself some whiskey from the half-empty bottle on the counter, Taylor looked around. Steve’s apartment was a mess. Empty liquor bottles and fast-food bags littered the kitchen counters. The rich mahogany coffee table in the living room was cluttered with an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, along with an oversized water pipe. His clothes lay scattered on the floor and the unmade bed in his bedroom. Even though it was afternoon, the rainy weather made the room look dark and dismal, for Steve had no lights on in the apartment.

  Taylor studied his face. Tiny stress lines had formed around his eyes, and by the looks of his tousled hair and tired expression, Taylor wondered if he had slept at all in days.

  “Is Sheila sick?” Taylor asked of his housekeeper, trying to keep her voice light as she bent forward and turned on the living room lamp. She figured she’d start with the small talk, to give her time to feel out his mood.

  Steve leaned against the bar, his drink in hand. “I told her not to come for a while because I wanted to be left alone.” His eyes narrowed on her. “I thought you understood that as well when I didn’t return your calls, Taylor.”

  Taylor turned to face him. She got right to the point. “Look, Steve, I know you’ve been avoiding me. I came here today because we have to talk.”

  “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

  “No?” Taylor responded. “Maybe we can talk about how you have disappeared lately. Or maybe we can talk about why you haven’t returned my calls. Or how about how you’ve trashed this place for no identifiable reason. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” Steve reacted harshly. “I don’t have to explain to you every time I don’t feel like being sociable. You’re my manager person, not my keeper, miss.”

  “Don’t you give me that ‘miss’ bullshit,” Taylor countered, her tone hardening as well. She got right to the point. “You’ve been intentionally avoiding me. If I did something to tick you off, I’d like to know what it is.”

  “You haven’t done anything,” Steve said, his head lowering to his drink. His voice began to soften. “I’ve got things on my mind, that’s all, okay?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like things that don’t concern you.” Steve’s head snapped up, his hackles rising again. “This isn’t an inquisition, you know. I think you should keep your mind on your own business and not on mine. Maybe I just want to be on my own.”

  “And maybe you’re a lousy liar,” Taylor shot back. “You can’t just send me away. Besides, I have another reason for seeing you. I haven’t heard from Craig since he left for New York last week and he would never just disappear like this. I just know something’s wrong. What do you know about his trip?”

  “I don’t know anything about what he’s been up to lately.”

  If there was one thing about Steve that Taylor knew for certain, it was that he was incapable of being deceptive. His expression gave him away every time.

  “I think you do,” Taylor countered, then asked him point blank the question that burned in her mind. “Steve, is Craig having an affair?”

  He stared at her, the question catching him completely off guard. Then he burst out laughing, easing the tension that hovered over them.

  “Are you serious?” he asked. “No, no, darlin’, I know for a fact that Craig is not having an affair. He loves you too much for that.”

  “Then why hasn’t he come home or even called?”

  Steve didn’t answer her, and Taylor saw the look in his eyes before they clouded over. It was the same look she had seen back in London when he came to Craig’s flat, half-conscious and severely beaten. The same uneasy look she had seen come over Craig when she asked him about the stranger who visited him in Bath.

  “Please, Steve,” she said, almost pleadingly. “You know something about Craig. You’ve got to tell me where he is!”

  He looked down, unable to meet her eyes. “Sometimes you’re better off not to question what you don’t know,” he answered quietly.

  A wave of apprehension swept over her. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Please, Steve, you must tell me!”

  Steve’s eyes shot up. “No,” he said firmly. “Taylor, don’t push me! Why don’t you hurry on back to work before you’re missed?”

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on,” Taylor said with finality. “Steve, I know you too well. Don’t keep secrets from me now, not after all this time. Level with me. What is it? What’s happened?”

  He said nothing at first. Then his eyes came up slowly to meet hers, to study her face as if he were struggling with some agonizing decision in his mind. She had never seen him look so desperately grim, and it scared her.

  “You might not like what you’ll hear,” he finally said. His voice was tight with tension.

  His tone chilled her, yet there was no turning back now. She had to go on.

  “Just say it,” she grated, half in anticipation, half in dread.

  Steve drew a long, audible breath, then walked with heavy steps to the couch. He sank down into the soft cushions, then patted the seat next to him.

  “Sit down, luv, it’s a long story.”

  As the Swiss clock on the wall ticked away the gloomy hours of the afternoon, Taylor listened as Steve talked. In the first shockwave of hearing what had happened, she felt numb, unable to feel anything but disbelief and denial. Nothing Steve was saying seemed to be making any sense.

  Then, as Steve’s words sank in, a variety of emotions tumbled through her in all directions. Fear, anger, grief and, finally, dread, all shook her as if she were in the center of a raging storm.

  A tumble of images hurled through her mind. The time she spent with Craig in England came back clearly, and all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The stranger’s visit in Bath. Craig’s frequent “appointments” or “solo gigs” he’d urgently keep after taking her back to her hotel. His evasive answers to her questions about his spare time or part-time work. Even the night Steve showed up at Craig’s flat, badly beaten, and his abrupt change in attitude. It all replayed in her head perfectly. It all fit. Damn, why didn’t she see it before?

  Her pulse beat wildly as she tried to understand, tried to cope with all she had learned so suddenly.

  “Why didn’t Craig tell me about his connections with the drug syndicate before?” she asked finally, trying to keep her voice level, though she was literally shaking inside.

  “He didn’t want you to know about that side of his life,” Steve explained, dragging on a cigarette he’d just lit. “He only told your old man because he had to.”

  “My father knows about this?” Taylor gasped. She couldn’t believe it. Her father knew all along and never told her a thing!

  “I suppose Craig would have told you eventually, when the time was right. Now, I’m afraid he’s got more trouble than he can handle.”

  “Who is this guy?” Taylor prodded. “Who runs this operation?”

  Steve shrugged. “How should I know? Big people don’t have names, and if they do, you learn to forget them pretty quick.”

  Taylor shook her head. Steve was playing his dumb, I-don’t-know-nothin’ routine again, and she wasn’t falling for it.

  “You know more than you’re telling,” she said. “Steve, you and Craig have been best friends for years. You were both in on these activities back in London. So don’t
tell me now that you don’t know anything.”

  Steve leaned back and entwined his hands behind his neck. He closed his eyes. “Okay, so I do know who he is,” he mused. “You only need to know that he’s very big, very powerful. He has connections in a lot of places.”

  “So, what’s his name?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Steve said, turning to her. “If he has Craig and Shaun, then he’s probably got a whole fucking army down there protecting him. We could all end up in dog food if we exposed him.”

  Taylor persisted. “Steve, you have to tell me who this guy is—”

  “No,” Steve vehemently cut her off. “That, luv, you will never get out of me. If he ever learned I sold him out to anyone, I’d be dead within hours. Keep snooping around like this, and you’ll get us both killed. And other than the fact I suspect he’s still in Mexico, I don’t know anything else about why he wanted to see Craig or even why they got Shaun involved.

  “I’ve told you too much already,” Steve continued, his voice softening, “but I’ve been so crazy worrying about Craig that I guess I needed to talk to someone about it. Either way, you don’t know nothing about this. Got it?”

  “But what are we going to do?” Taylor asked. “We can’t just sit back and wait for something to happen. We have to find them, find Shaun—” her voice faltered on her words.

  Steve put a protective arm around her shoulders. “They’ll be all right, you’ll see.” Although he sounded cool and confident, the slight tremor in his voice told Taylor that he was as shaken about what was happening as she was.

  Steve walked her slowly to the door.

  “You do think Craig is all right, don’t you?” Taylor asked.

  Steve shrugged. “He’s been in shit before and always came out on his feet. I can only hope that this scrape is no different from the rest.”

  “You’ll call if you hear anything at all, won’t you?”

  He touched her arm. “Yeah, okay, and you do the same.”

  Taylor hurried back down the elevator to her car, her hands trembling so badly she could hardly unlock the door. Once on the freeway, she let her pent-up emotions tumble free while she thought about all the things Steve had told her. The entire situation was almost too incredible to be true, yet it was. She felt shocked and frightened. The drug trade was nothing to take lightly.

  Although she was afraid for Craig, she was also angry with her father, and more so every second as her car sped down the freeway. He had known about Craig’s disappearance for days, yet told her nothing. How could he do that to her?

  By the time she returned to the office, it was well past five. She parked her car in the nearly empty garage and quickly took the elevator up to her father’s office. She walked in to find him lounging back in his chair, feet propped on his desk, reading the company’s latest budget figures. He glanced up when she entered, then shifted back to the report in front of him without saying a word.

  “I have to talk to you,” Taylor began curtly as she walked pointedly toward his desk, her voice strained with unshed anger.

  “Good afternoon to you, too,” he mumbled absently, concentrating on the columns of figures before him.

  “Will you put that thing down?” Taylor said, her voice barely containing her anger. She defiantly pulled the report out of his hands and placed it forcefully on the desk. “I said I have to talk to you now, Dad!”

  He gazed at her, startled at her outburst. His feet came off the desk and he sat up in his chair. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Taylor?”

  She laid her temper into him. “You knew about Craig,” she spat out, a sob catching in her throat. “You knew what was happening to him all this time, and you didn’t even have the decency to tell me!”

  Bruce said nothing at first. “Who told you that?” he finally asked.

  “Steve,” Taylor replied. “Don’t deny it. He told me everything.”

  Bruce’s eyes darkened. “Steve. Damn him!”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Taylor said in his defense. “I went over to his place to talk to him and it just came out. But that’s not the point. You could have done something to put a stop to this entire situation before—”

  “Now wait just a minute, Taylor—”

  Taylor stood her ground. “No, you wait a minute,” she pointed her finger at her father defiantly, her rage now fully engaged. “You could have done something for Craig. You could have called the police, the FBI, anybody! The band could have gotten added security. But you didn’t do a damn thing, did you? Now it might be too late for both Craig and Shaun!”

  Bruce uttered a curse under his breath and stood up. His movement made papers fly off his desk.

  “Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady,” he admonished, his anger rising. “What the hell do you want from me? Do you think I have all the answers when a sensitive situation like this comes up with a client, just like that? I can’t wave a magic wand and keep clients out of the trouble they get themselves into, especially when they tell us after the fact. I have a responsibility to this company, and if my decisions don’t conform to yours, I’m sorry about that. Besides, I didn’t tell you about Craig’s problems because he asked me not to.”

  “Asked you not to?” Taylor fired back, incredulous. “And you just blindly went along with whatever he wanted, never mind it could turn out to be the worst decision you both ever made? Come on, Dad! You can do better than that. And worse, you kept all of this from me. Where is your loyalty? Your loyalty to the company, to me—”

  “Don’t you talk to me about loyalty!” Bruce thundered. “My loyalty to you and this company is to give both the best rational judgments I can about a given situation. I was made aware of Craig’s problem, and I made my decision about handling it. I acted in the best interest of both you and the company. Now will you please let me take care of it!”

  “Let you take care of it? I can see how well you’ve been taking care of it!” She snapped back, her eyes ablaze with anger. “How could you think this was the best plan of action, letting him fly off to Mexico into the open arms of the drug syndicate, not knowing if or when he and Shaun would ever return? Tell me your rationale for that decision, dad!

  “I had no choice, kid,” Bruce said, his voice firm. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “I think you did have a choice,” she answered bitterly.

  Bruce didn’t reply. Their heated exchange left Taylor feeling limp, and she sank down into a chair breathless, her anger spent. Tears began to flow.

  “I’m just so upset about this I can hardly think straight,” she said, taking a shaky breath through her tears.

  “We all are,” her father said, sitting back down. His voice sounded as tired as hers.

  “If I had just known about what was going on, we could have thought of something together to stop what’s already happened,” Taylor said. “Now we may never see Craig or Shaun again!”

  “I know it’s ripping you up inside,” Bruce said. “It’s ripping me up, too, but getting involved may make the situation worse. Craig made the decision to go to Mexico, and what was I supposed to do? Lock him in his room like a child? I had no way of stopping him even if I wanted to, and he was adamant about not calling the authorities because he was afraid for Shaun’s safety. I had no choice but to defer to his judgment and keep this thing under wraps until he returns. That’s what he wanted in the first place.”

  “So, what are we going to do?”

  “We can’t do anything but wait.”

  “Wait?” Taylor asked incredulously, leaning forward in her chair. “I’m sorry, dad, but I can’t just sit by, twiddling my thumbs while Craig is in Mexico, perhaps in dire trouble. Oh, but I see you have that pretty well covered!”

  “Don’t start again, Taylor,” Bruce thre
atened, his voice edging with anger again. “What do you propose I do? Go down to Mexico and just sweep Craig and Shaun out of the country tomorrow in some dramatic rescue? It only works that way on television, and you know it. The people Craig is involved with are ruthless, and besides, I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for him. Even if I went to the authorities, there’s a process to undertaking this kind of investigation. He told me he would contact me after he got there, and I have to believe that’s what he will do.”

  “But we’re wasting time!”

  “And you have a better solution?”

  Taylor didn’t answer at first, lost in thought. Then she stood up abruptly and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  She turned to him. “I’m going home to think about this problem and how to solve it, something you should’ve done days ago!”

  She slammed the door before he could retort.

  Taylor drove home in the evening traffic on autopilot, her insides twisted in a vice-like grip while her tears of anguish tumbled free. Desperation entwined with pure fear. Craig couldn’t be in trouble. He just - couldn’t - be! It was all a big misunderstanding, a bad dream that she would wake up from any minute, to find him lying next to her in her bed, his arms wrapped protectively around her, sound asleep.

  No, it was no dream. She knew deep down that Craig’s disappearance was very real and very serious. No matter how frightened she was, however, she had to keep her wits about her and think. She had to do something to find him, but when and how, she had no idea. Her mind made complicated plans that spun off into nowhere as the car sped along the freeway.

  She finally arrived home. The house was quiet as usual but her mind was too preoccupied to notice the time.

  Frightened and agitated, she paced nervously around the living room the entire evening like a captured wildcat, pounding her brain for a solution to find Craig and put an end to this insanity. She put the television on to fill the silence, but the monotonous drone of the programs seemed far away while she concentrated on the problem at hand. Her brain was active, thinking, weighing the whole structure of events that she had learned this afternoon, trying to put it all together.