Adrenaline fueled me in a way I didn’t think it ever had before. I took great deep breaths and flew down the stairs. Nobody was on them, and it was a good thing because I think I skipped three or four in every flight on my mad dash down six flights of stairs. I had to remind myself to slow down, I was getting tunnel vision. I patted myself down to make sure I hadn’t jostled anything loose as I got to the door leading to the lobby. I pushed the pocket knife in my left pocket down since it had ridden up as I ran and then took one more big, deep breath, and walked out into the hotel lobby.
The picture of Tina and Opus had a mountain in the background. Somebody was here.
The message… Was it a warning?
I didn’t know which way to go, so I went outside and stood, looking around in the parking lot. A bark caught my attention, and I jogged around the corner toward the rear of a restaurant, almost missing the stunning backdrop of snow-capped mountains all around us.
Tina.
She was standing on the sidewalk, between two men who were walking toward her, a good twenty feet away from her on each side. I started that way, watching them and my hand itched as the man facing her pulled something from his side.
Gun?
Was my first thought, but I was too surprised to act with the practiced hands of a gunslinger. Instead, the man facing her threw a frisbee easily over Tina’s head toward his companion walking from the other direction.
“Get it,” Tina called, and Opus took two running steps and leaped, catching it in his teeth, getting almost six feet of air.
I jogged over, feeling stupid for my mental freak-out, but I was still worried.
“He’s a natural,” the man said, retrieving the frisbee.
Opus sat on his hind legs, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth as he breathed hard.
“He never used to like to play fetch or with a Frisbee, but in the last year he’s really come around to liking to play,” Tina told them. “I have to run back inside now. I’ll see you all later!”
“Bye, Miss,” the second man said, as he walked past her, already getting his friend in a discussion about an upcoming baseball game.
“Oh, hey!” Tina said as she saw me. “Did you change your mind and want to jog?”
“No,” I said, my voice a little shaky. “Come on inside. I want to show you something.”
“Oh really?!” she asked, dropping me a wink. “Working on your story got your engine all fired up?” she teased, but she was walking with me, Opus now in lockstep, on Tina’s left in the grass while I walked on the right, closer to the road.
“No, the person who was messing with my Mac sent me a message,” I told her.
“Are they holding your files ransom? Did they get into your bank stuff? I know you were worried about—”
I’d pulled my phone out and showed her the picture. She looked at it, frowning, and almost walked into the door I’d pulled open so we could head into the lobby. Opus nudged her at the last second, and she looked where she was going and stepped into the safer area, within the jambs.
“This was from two summers ago,” she told me handing the phone back, “Creepy message, but that’s not from around here.”
“But the mountains—”
“There’s no snow on them. I was in Arizona near the Grand Canyon. They pulled this off of my Facebook,” she said, pointing.
The screen was small, and I hadn’t paid attention to the color of the stone, and now that she mentioned it, I felt like an ass. Still, it was creepy as hell. I tapped the picture of the band of money with the eyeballs.
“That’s the same thing,” I told her. “That was the song that was left on my Mac.”
“I sort of remember that commercial. Since I’ve been doing a ton of social media for you, maybe somebody was being clever and letting you know they’re following along?”
“Why would they have downloaded a picture of you to send to me though? I mean, it’s not really a secret that we’re a thing, though I haven’t done much on Facebook until recently.”
“Because I do, and I drop links whenever your book goes live,” she said, as I hit the button to the elevator.
“You’ve been promoting my books?” I asked her, feeling even dumber now.
“Yeah, I’ve been coordinating with your VA. She thought it was kind of cute and said that because you’re a man writing in a woman’s genre, it might cut down on all the stalker-lady types from sending you unsolicited sext messages.”
“Sext messages?” I asked, knowing what the term was, but not believing it because I knew my lady author friends got unasked-for penis pics from time to time.
I chalked that up to idiot guys giving our gender a bad name, not something that normally went on. Besides, the one nude pic somebody had sent me was of Pamela Anderson through messenger, and it was an old one from Playboy. Did people really do that? I guessed there was weirdness all over the internet and it made everyone much, much closer than they used to be in the world. Twenty-four-hour news cycles, Facebook, Facetime. It all made everything instantaneous.
I suddenly felt relieved.
“Yeah silly, where girls send you pictures of their… you know.”
“Not really. I don’t get those,” I admitted.
“I know. I saw,” she said, and stepped in the elevator as it opened.
I was surprised by that, but she had had my phone for a good portion of two days. It only seemed natural she’d have looked at whatever popped up on the screen.
“Okay, it just… I got creeped out and worried somebody was out there on the street, taking pictures of you. It felt kind of threatening in the moment.”
“I know,” she said, and touched my arm. “But this time, I think it’s just somebody trying to be cute.”
“Okay,” I muttered, and then stepped forward when the doors opened and walked toward our room.
Tina didn’t say anything else until I got the door open. Opus bounded inside and barked happily, spinning in a circle and then sitting at attention near the snack bar.
“You didn’t tell me you ordered me lunch!” Tina said rushing forward and sliding onto the stool next to my computer.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her as I watched her dig in, even drinking the beer I’d started on for myself.
“Good thing I got some exercise in,” she said around a mouthful.
I watched for another moment then walked over to the phone and dialed 1.
“Room service.”
“Yeah, I need to order another burger, and a beer,” I said and heard a whine behind me, “Better make that two burgers and a big basket of fries. Oh, let's add two more beers, this is going to be a long day.”
“Hungry?” Tina asked, then took a long swallow of the beer and offered me the bottle.
“That’s it,” I said and hung up the phone. “Starving.”
14
Rick
The day went by faster than I thought it would have. Opus and I got our food soon after the call, and I was deep into my editing. The sheer panic that had dumped buckets of adrenaline in my veins had washed away, and when I was done eating, editing and cleaning up my manuscript, I was tired. I fell asleep before 9pm, a record for me.
“I printed off the tickets,” Tina said, waking me.
“Huh?” I asked her.
“Before we left Michigan. I got our tickets online and got the VIP pass to get in early,” she told me.
I rolled over and was amazed that she had beat me awake. I was always the first one up in the mornings, by a long shot. I looked at the patio doors and saw it was black outside, I walked over to the doors and looked outside. We were high enough up that I could see the lights of the city.
“It’s a beautiful view,” Tina said, wrapping her arms around me.
I leaned back into her a little bit, feeling her warmth and put an arm around her.
“You bought and printed tickets out for the event before we left Michigan?” I asked her, finally feeling awake enough to fina
lly understand.
“Yes, for all three days. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”
“Is the event dog-friendly?”
“Oh yeah, and I’ve already found out there’s going to be a vendor there who does doggie vests. Opus can wear his own Kevlar and look tacktikool.”
I laughed softly and turned to see the time on the small stove. Five a.m... it was early after all.
“Why are you up so early?” I asked her
“I’m kind of looking forward to going later on this afternoon.”
That was… really kind of cool. She wasn’t just pretending to be interested in something because I was. She was genuinely interested. Maybe I needed to quit thinking that she was only going to appease me and quit trying to find something for her to do that I thought she would think was interesting. In my goal of trying to keep her happy, I was working against her. The realization, I will admit, made me almost break out into an inappropriate grin. At least I’d realized it before it became an issue.
“I’m looking forward to having you and Opus come along,” I told her truthfully. “There’s going to be a lot of neat stuff to look at there.”
“Did you know they have some RVs there?” she asked me quietly, her hands moving around to my back, kneading the spot in the middle of my shoulder blades that always seemed to hold my stress.
“Stan, the tire guy, and I talked about that,” I said and heard Opus let out a groan as he stood and stretched.
“The tire guy? Oh yeah. The one who kept watching me run.”
“I’m sure he was just a dog lover.”
“Hey now,” she said sharply, and the hands to the back were gone, replaced with a pinch to the side under my arm.
“Owwwww, I meant Opus,” I said, realizing my slip of the tongue could be taken out of context.
The pinching fingers stopped and rubbed the hurt before I could say more. “Uh huh, I was just making an observation, and you implied I’m a dog—”
“No, I wasn’t. I saw him checking you out, too. I was just deliberately not pointing that out.”
“Because you’re a big ball of maturity,” she said, and came around the front to crack open the patio door.
Almost arctic-feeling air rushed in, and I felt Opus push his head between my knees as he studied the cool morning from behind the safety of a warm human. It was probably in the high thirties or low forties, but Tina stepped outside and walked to the edge of the balcony and took a deep breath. After a moment, I followed her, even though I had on only my sleeping pants. They might have featured a cartoon character, but I didn’t care.
“Maybe I was a little bit immature,” I admitted to her.
“Good. Now that’s out of the way, let’s get coffee going, go to breakfast somewhere and then go check out the town! Preppercon does its soft opening this afternoon, and there’s a ton I want to see!”
“I’ve been asking for… Wait. What do you want to go see?” I asked her.
“The Great Salt Lake,” she said, without a moment's hesitation.
“Okay, let me go get the coffee going,” I said and turned to head back to the kitchen. “You coming Opus?”
He chuffed, and I felt him brush against my leg in the darkened suite. After a moment, Tina came inside as I was finding the room’s coffee pot and trying to decipher the directions to use it in the dark, with a caffeine-free brain. Always a recipe for disaster—
Tina turned on the light, and once I got my vision back, I finished the process. While it brewed, I grabbed my stuff and headed to the bathroom to get ready for the day.
Once I was showered and cleaned up, I headed out to the heady aroma of coffee. Tina was sitting next to my laptop I’d left up on the bar with two mugs. I sat down and looked into the one she slid over to me.
“It’s empty,” I said quietly, noting the pot was as well.
“Yeah, this was sooooo good, I had two cups. The only other coffee they put in the room is decaf.”
Of all the evil things, stealing the last cup of coffee and leaving a caffeine junky with something that’s been washed by formaldehyde or worse is cruel and unusual—
My mental whining was interrupted by a knock at the door. Tina slid off the stool, and I noticed she was wearing one of the big fluffy bathrobes that the hotel provided. I was about to ask her what was going on when she grabbed her small purse and opened the door. She pulled out some bills and said thanks and turned and walked back in, letting the door swing shut behind her. She set a large white insulated carafe down in front of me.
“They had your brand,” she said, taking a sip and making a face. “The stuff you brewed is a little bit better than battery acid, but that’s about it. This came from the restaurant downstairs.”
“I love you,” I said simply, and poured a cup.
Tina had been taking another sip of her coffee when I said that, and it spewed across the snack bar.
Tina wanted to swim in the Great Salt Lake, but it really wasn’t warm, and she hadn’t brought a suit. We could have bought one, but we walked the shoreline instead. Opus went into the water up to his knees, stuck his tongue out as if to take a drink and let the water run back out of his mouth immediately. He made sure to walk out slowly, so not to splash it all over.
“It looks like a regular lake,” Tina said. “But I can smell the salt from here.”
“Yeah, I did a little google research, and it looks like three rivers feed into here. The causeway sort of splits the northern sides up a bit, so the water looks different from the air. I guess it’s something to do with what kind of algae can live at different salinity levels and stuff.”
“You’re such an adorable geek sometimes,” she told me and leaned into my side.
I was about to hug her when Opus snarled at something that darted at the tree line, fierce barks erupting.
“Opus, Nein!” Tina called, and the dog came to a stuttering halt, his great paws making lines in the sandy area separating the beach from the shore we’d been walking down.
Opus’s fur stood up, and he made a weird growling noise but didn’t move. I got closer to him, and after a moment's hesitation, Tina did too. I put my hand on his scruff and realized he’d gotten quieter when I’d gotten closer, but his growl was that weird one he’d done before when he’d warned me at the house. I gave him a quick pet from scruff to tail and then in an almost unconscious act, patted my right side where I’d been carrying the Beretta.
“What is it, boy?” Tina asked, her voice shaking.
“He’s making the same sound I told you about. I don’t know what he’s telling me,” I told her.
Something crashed through the brush, and Opus almost took off running, but Tina caught his collar while he barked. His fur stood on end, and if it was possible for an already mutant looking hellhound to grow in size, he totally hulked out, saliva starting to run from the edges of his mouth.
“Opus, what is it? Bear?” Tina asked, looking at me.
“Does he know what a bear is?” I asked her.
“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen him do this before,” she told me.
“Let’s get out of here,” I told her.
“Right behind you,” she whispered, and I noticed she had goosebumps running up and down her arms as she rubbed them.
“Opus, you keep an eye on your mom for me, buddy,” I told him.
He barked a little louder than I expected but when I moved, he walked between Tina and the woods. We made it back to the van without incident, but almost bumped into somebody who was walking down the sidewalk. I stepped out of his way, and Opus bumped Tina over.
The man had his head down and was reading something on his phone intently by the look of things. Even still, I didn’t have as much room to move as Tina did and I bumped shoulders with him.
“Sorry about that,” he mumbled.
“Sorry,” I mumbled in response, feeling better about what had happened.
Maybe Opus had seen a relative of the fuzzy-assed squirrels that he’d
declared war on where we parked War Wagon. Maybe he was just angrily telling the squirrels out here in Utah that his ass was fuzzier and he would eat them for taunting him. Still, that weird growl had thrown me off. After hearing it again, it almost sounded like… fear?
“Want to get some food, or just go to the show?” I asked Tina.
“I want to go to the show,” she admitted. “There’s a booth I want to stop at.”
“Oh? I didn’t know you were going shopping?” I asked, feeling like a good teasing might cheer her up.
“It’s a company that breeds and trains dogs like Opus.”
I grinned. “Thinking about getting a puppy?”
“No, but they’ve got some cool stuff there, and one of these days, the trainer I bought Opus from is going to stop up there, and I wanted to say thanks to him.”
I grinned, finally realizing her master plan. Well, I didn’t realize it, she’d kept back that key piece of information and probably only let it slip now that she was a little bit unsettled. Hell, I’d joked with Opus that we’d have to get him a girlfriend someday, though I was jokingly telling him it was going to be a big Standard Poodle we’d name Fifi or something fancy in honor of his latest canine friend.
“What do you think, bud?” I asked Opus.
He barked.
“What did you ask him?” Tina asked me as I put my key in the lock of her door, opening it for her.
“If he wanted to go see the dogs and puppies at the show.”
“I was standing right here. I didn’t hear you say that.”
I let Opus in the side door, and he was inside the van in a flash. I walked around and unlocked my side and got in as well. You can’t reach the door locks unless you get out of the other seat and I always beat Tina to it anyway, so she’d quit trying to get it open for me.
Opus, of course, was already sitting in the middle of the seats, near the doghouse where the motor was still warm from the drive earlier.
Opus Odyssey: A Survival and Preparedness Story (One Man's Opus Book 2) Page 10