by Cecilia Tan
It takes me a while to realize that what I’m staring at is the ceiling of the cabin. The day is bright and I have no memory of how I got here. Hypothermia-induced amnesia? Seems likely. When I sit up, I’m dizzy. I can see that I’m alone.
I’m naked under the sleeping bag, and the air is warm from the stove. I can almost believe the whole thing was a bad dream except for the bandages. My ankle is crisscrossed with first-aid tape and my toes are bandaged. I count them and am somewhat surprised to find they’re all there. I’m almost ashamed of the relief that sweeps through me. My toes mean nothing compared to the more precious things I could have lost in my stupidity and the storm. Chase has to be nearby.
My clothes are all hung up to dry the way he would have hung them, and shame crisps my edges again. I wonder how I’m going to apologize to him, or if he’ll accept it. A bottle of water sits beside the bed. I sip carefully at first, then more quickly as it strikes me how dehydrated I am. My dizziness ebbs as the water seeps through my system.
I can see the lockbox is open. I ease my way over to it, trying not to put weight on my ankle, but my arm won’t hold my weight either, so it takes a while. None of our phones are in the box, only the tablet, which is useless to me without wi-fi.
I wonder what the fuck happened between me crawling in the snow and now. I’m going to assume Chase heard me screaming and brought me in here . . . and then what? Convinced me to call for help? Or to check the weather? I must have given him the phones.
I remember the sudden fear I had that he’d try to take the Zodiac on his own. I’m much more afraid of him drowning than I am of being stranded on this island.
I test my ankle. It won’t take all my weight, but if I’m careful, I can take baby steps. If I lean on something, I can almost walk. I get dressed and search the cabin for any more clues about what happened while I was out cold. The knives and most of the bondage gear are gone, too, and now my skin really starts to prickle with fear. I know he’s gone, but I’m trying to imagine that he’s not. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m often wrong, right?
He’s left me a pair of binoculars and all my cold-weather gear. Outside the cabin the sun is so bright I have to put shades on, or I can barely see from the glare off the snow. Once I do, though, his footprints leading to the beach are obvious, more evidence of what I already know. He’s fled.
My chest aches like I’ve been shot.
I turn a branch into a walking stick. I go along the ridge toward the watch point. My hope is a stupid, fleeting one—that he hasn’t gotten so far away that I can’t get one last look at him.
One last look.
My heart leaps into my throat as I crest the ridge and the buzz of an outboard engine reaches my ears. I hurry as best I can onto the windswept promontory where only minimal snow and ice clings to the rock. It’s a challenge to get my shaking fingers to focus the binoculars, but even before I do, I know I’m not looking at Chase. There are two men in a Zodiac, and it’s coming toward the island.
I have no doubt they’re coming for me.
I can hide. I can fight. Or I can give myself up. If I hide, I have no doubt they’ll be able to find me—I’m in no shape to keep running, and the snow makes me easy to track. If I fight, it’s all too likely someone’s going to end up dead. No one deserves that just for taking Aiden Milford’s money. I didn’t get into this to kill anyone.
I go back to the cabin. I’ve got probably just enough time to close things up before they arrive. Maybe longer if it takes them a while to locate the landing beach.
I prep the place for another long vacancy as best I can while hobbling around, the buzz of the Zodiac’s engine reaching me every so often. They circle the island completely, probably looking for the best landing site. That gives me plenty of time to secure the outer latches on the cabin and limp down to the beach. I’m waiting there when they arrive, wondering if they’re just going to shoot me on sight.
They don’t. I recall Aiden’s message about hiring SEALs as I watch them beach the craft, the same one Chase escaped in. At least one of them knows how to handle a Zodiac, anyway. They’re both bigger than me. One has his firearm drawn as they approach me.
“Eric Sakai-Johnson?” the other one asks.
“Yes.”
That’s the extent of our conversation. They tie me up to drag me back to Massachusetts, but they don’t shoot me. I half wish that they did, but I know that’s heartbreak talking. That feeling like you want to die when you realize you’ve lost something—or someone—you loved.
I have a lot of time to think while lying there in the back of the van. Three or four hours back to the Milford mansion. Most of what I’m thinking is how stupid I was. Clarity comes too late for me to do anything about it. I don’t regret making Aiden suffer. What I regret is involving Chase in the first place. I hope he gets over what I did to him. I hope he’s far away from here. In hindsight, I know how much of an idiot I was to think he’d want to go back. How many times did he tell me all he wanted was to escape from Aiden?
I’m untangling the layers of lies in my mind, and I keep finding new truths. Chase thought I knew that he knew who I was. Chase didn’t think I was “kidnapping” him. He thought I was rescuing him.
And I was going to give him back. Why? Because I’d promised I would. To a man who doesn’t respect promises in the first place. It wasn’t my honor I was stroking with my puffery about promises—it was my fucking ego.
I haven’t felt this red-faced about being naïve since Hell Week. Was my so-called honor actually more important than the living, breathing man I hurt? No, it wasn’t. Yeah, sure, without principles, without loyalty, without an idea bigger than ourselves to devote ourselves to, we’re nothing more than killers and thugs. Once upon a time I would have killed for my country. Now I’m not sure there’s anything I would kill for short of saving Chase’s life. Not even to save my own life. After all, there’s no one to miss me now.
The only ideal bigger than a man that I still revere isn’t God or country or keeping promises. It’s love. It’s the biggest bitch on the planet. Only love could’ve made me hate Aiden so much I went after revenge. Only love can make me regret so deeply all the pain I caused Chase.
I feel ill as I remember the look in his eyes as he realized I’d been lying to him. That I’d been fucking him under false pretenses. That none of the things—even the true ones—that I’d actually said or done could be believed anymore. If I’d been trying to destroy a man from the inside out, I couldn’t have planned it better.
Please be okay, Chase, I pray to whoever’s listening up there. Forget me and move on.
Clarity. It’s such a strange thing. From where I’m lying in the back, I can see the color of the sky changing as the sun sets, but I can’t see any detail of where we are. One of the toughs in the front seat says something to the other that makes me realize we’re close to the Cape, though: “Fuck Route 3. Go down 24 to get around this traffic.” And it hits me I probably have an hour or less left to live. What’s Aiden going to do? Slap me on the wrist, tell me I was a bad boy, and let me go? Not likely.
I don’t want to die. When I’m faced with the actual thought, my survival instinct kicks in again. I did some questionable things in Aiden’s employ, but I never killed anyone. And I can’t believe an ex-SEAL would kill another ex-SEAL. Aiden, on the other hand, would probably have no compunction about putting a bullet in my brain if he thought he could get away with it.
I’ve already erased myself from the grid. Assuming he gets rid of my body thoroughly enough, he can definitely get away with it.
I have to try. The two of them are still arguing about which highway to take. “Hey, up there, I gotta hit the head.”
They go silent, but there’s no other response. I don’t actually have to piss. I’m just trying to get their attention with some Navy jargon. I try again. “I promise, no trouble. Don’t need a meat gazer.”
The one in the passenger seat sticks his head into the back. Good. If only
one of them was a SEAL, my money’s on him. His hair’s mostly short except right at the front where he has a few dirty-blond curls. “At least wait till you get out of the van before you piss yourself.”
I don’t have a lot of time to make an impression. “Were you Team Four? I was in Little Creek—”
“Meat wants me to think he was a SEAL,” he says to his partner.
“He was a frog hog from what I heard,” comes the reply. In other words, a SEAL groupie. Very funny, Aiden.
I forge ahead. “Where’d Aiden find you? He has a thing for veterans down on our luck.”
Curly laughs. “You don’t look old enough to be a veteran, son.”
“Enlisted as soon as I was old enough,” I say. They both look ten or fifteen years older than me. “And was kicked out right before they nuked DADT.”
“Gay. Told you,” the driver says.
“What else did Aiden tell you about me? Did he tell you I took a bullet for him?”
Curly shakes his head and turns to face front again, trying hard to ignore me now. I have nothing to lose. I keep talking. “I did everything that man asked me to right up until he fired me for being gay, no reason other than that.”
“Shoulda walked away and kept going,” the driver says.
“He’d promised to pay my mother’s medical bills. Hooked her up with special doctors, oncologists, experimental drugs, the whole nine yards. After he cut me off, he cut her off, too. Left us millions of dollars in debt. Left her to die.”
Stony silence.
“And she did die. Did he tell you that’s why I kidnapped his kid?” I leave out the part where I wasn’t actually planning to pay the four million to the insurance companies and hospitals. “I know you’re wondering why the fuck I would do something like that. That’s why. Aiden Milford killed my mother.”
I can’t see either of their faces, but it feels to me like the silence gets even stonier.
The driver cracks first. “Just because you’re gay?” He sounds puzzled. “There must be some other reason.”
I know, I think. Homophobia never makes any sense once you stop and think about it for half a freaking second.
“Shut up,” Curly says. “Just shut up. We’re almost there.”
I am out of ideas. And he’s right. I feel the van pull off the main road, and before long we’re easing into a garage. The automatic door shuts behind us as we come to a stop.
The driver yanks me out of the back while Curly keeps his distance, his firearm ready. He isn’t stupid.
They march me into the house, and a painful twist of nostalgia corkscrews through me as I smell the mix of furniture varnish and leather and ash that is this house’s scent. I never really noticed it before, but it brings back memories of a hundred other times I walked this hallway from the garage to Aiden’s office. If the boxes full of wreaths and garland along the corridor are any indication, Aiden’s domestic help are in the midst of putting up Christmas decorations, but I hear no voices, no sound at all. I suppose if you’re going to kill a man, you send the help home early.
I’m startled that my handlers steer me up the stairs to the private parts of the house instead of to Aiden’s study. The grand staircase is thickly carpeted, making our footfalls almost silent. It’s slow going with my sore ankle, but they keep me moving. They bring me into a bedroom with barred windows. Bars to keep thieves out? Or the inhabitants of the house in?
Curly pushes me into the en-suite bathroom, unbinds my hands, and steps back to raise his weapon again. “Boots off. Pants off. There’s a toilet. Use it. When we kick the shit out of you, we don’t want it to be literal. Mr. Milford’s carpets are new.”
That almost makes me laugh. Aiden wants to hurt me, but he’s worried about getting blood and shit on the carpet. If I rush them now, they’ll shoot me . . .
But I don’t want to be shot. I do as ordered, shedding what I’m wearing from the waist down and taking care of business.
Driver comes to the door with a cell phone to his ear. “Understood,” he tells the caller, and hangs up. “Strip all the way,” he says over Curly’s shoulder at me.
I tamp down a prickle of nerves. They don’t need me naked to kill me. A naked body’s harder to hide than a clothed one. This doesn’t bode well either way.
As I pull my shirt off, Curly asks, “Were you really Team Four?”
“I was. And my dad before me,” I add for good measure.
“Come on,” Driver says to us both. Out in the bedroom, he has set a metal folding chair on a half-folded tarp. “Sit.”
The metal is cold against my bare ass. He binds my ankles to the legs of the chair, the rope biting painfully into my bad ankle, forcing my knees apart. Then he ropes my forearms together behind me and secures them to the back of the chair. How ironic to have spent weeks in the wilds of Maine in winter and never to have shivered as much as I am right now with my balls against the metal chair. Goose bumps rise all over me.
Driver picks up his phone again. When he speaks, all he says is, “We’re ready.”
A minute or two later the knob turns on the bedroom door and in comes Aiden. He’s in neatly pressed slacks and a russet-red V-necked sweater. He shuts the door behind him and looks at me, then at Curly. “I’d keep your gun on him if I were you.”
Curly raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. His hand emerges from behind the flap of his long duster and he shows Aiden his firearm, his finger along the barrel, ready to slip to the trigger if needed. Aiden nods and returns his attention to me.
“Eric, Eric, Eric.” He sighs heavily. “What are we going to do with you?” The question isn’t rhetorical, as he goes on to ask the other two, “What can we do to him that won’t leave visible marks?”
“Excuse me?” Driver asks.
“You know.” Aiden looks distinctly uncomfortable, swaying slightly by the door, not because they’re discussing violence but because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “Like in that movie. Soap in a sock, right?”
The three of us in the room who are ex-military suddenly understand what he means. Curly speaks. “If you’re thinking of Full Metal Jacket, Mr. Milford, I have to say the idea that soap in a sock leaves no bruises is a Hollywood myth.”
“When they say ‘no visible marks,’ they usually mean none on the face,” Driver adds.
“Shit. I was hoping . . .” He trails off as he pulls a long black dress sock with something heavy inside it from his pocket. “Well, I suppose if he’s going to bruise up, anyway, I may as well still use this.”
I wonder what he sees as he steps gingerly toward me, almost sidestepping as if he’s afraid of me. He is afraid of me. I’m naked and tied to a chair, and he’s afraid of me. I look him right in the eye as he nears.
I can take this, I tell myself. It’s what I told myself all through BUD/S, all through hazing, all through everything Garrett and Ruiz and Cass put me through. I can take this.
Aiden swings the sock like David getting ready to fling a rock at Goliath and then whacks me right in the chest. He dances backward on the balls of his feet like he thinks he’s Muhammad Ali now and like I might have a counterpunch despite my arms being tied. I breathe through my nose. He’s never beaten a man before. That much is obvious.
He comes forward again, still bouncing on his feet like a cardio kickboxer. Wham. This time the bar of soap gets me in the stomach and I grunt a little. The only way to take this is to tense at the moment of impact. If he knew anything about working a guy over, he’d blindfold me so I wouldn’t be able to tell when the blow was coming.
He’s emboldened by each strike, though, and he starts hitting me harder and faster, giving me less time between wallops. I start to sweat with the effort of keeping myself together, of meeting each hit with tensed muscles. I can smell the fucking soap now, too. Ivory.
And then he gets me in the face, right on the temple, which snaps my head to the side. That rings my bell more than the impact of the soap itself. I blink as the sudd
en vertigo makes my mouth and eyes water.
Aiden’s voice sounds like it’s echoing through a coffee can. “Aww, look, I made him cry.”
I strain against the ropes without even realizing that’s what I’m doing, and Aiden backs up suddenly. If I weren’t tied down I’d have my hands around his throat right now, and he knows it. I hear the click of a hammer being drawn, but my tunnel vision shows me nothing but Aiden’s face as he struggles to put on an expression of fake bravado.
There’s no way to win this war, but I feel I’ve won a battle.
“Keep an eye on him,” Aiden says. He exits a bit more quickly than bravado should allow.
The door shuts. I catch Driver’s eye roll before he schools it off his face. A minute later he checks the hallway, then says to Curly, “I’ll get us some chairs.”
Curly merely nods and takes up a stance with his firearm beside the door.
I let myself breathe again. I’m going to need my strength if it’s going to get worse from here, and I’m certain it will.
Assess. Doesn’t feel like any ribs broke. I can see the bruises coming up on my chest, though. It’s sheer luck he didn’t tag me in the solar plexus. Or in the eye. I still feel a little dizzy from the blow to the head, but it’s not like I’m going anywhere.
Driver comes back. Curly takes a chair from him. “How about this. I’ll take first shift. Who knows how long Milford’s going to be at this?”
“At least until morning,” Driver says. “I’ll be in the kitchen making a sandwich.”
I wonder what’s meant to happen to me in the morning.
Curly positions the chair between me and the door and sits.
“So which branch of the service was he in?” I ask.
He doesn’t move a muscle, not even a twitch, at first. But then he comes to some kind of decision. “Army Reserve,” he says with no inflection in his voice whatsoever.
I just nod and then we sit together in silence.
Time stamp: 0004 Saturday, Milford Mansion, Duxbury, Massachusetts
It’s shortly after midnight. I know because the grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs just rang. Curly leaves and Driver takes up his post at the door as Aiden prepares himself for round two.