by Austin Bates
Chapter Fifteen
Three months had passed since Rick’s disappearance. Ernest’s P.I. hadn’t been able to track him down, though he suspected that Rick had been to his apartment at some point. At Jules’ insistence, he’d checked the cabin as well, and said that nobody had been there since winter ended; according to him, the entire bottom floor was covered in a foot of silt and pine needles from the flood. Jules thanked his lucky stars that Ernest had been able to get them out before that happened.
The police hadn’t turned up anything either, and Rick’s disappearance had made the news. Jules had spent two solid months doing nothing but fielding frantic calls and emails from fans, none of whom had seen the author, but who all wanted a personal update when he resurfaced. Jules had spent two weeks parked outside of Rick’s apartment; long enough to see the apartment manager clear everything out of it. Rick wasn’t coming back.
“You’ve got to take on some of these clients,” Ernest told him one morning.
“I can’t, Ernest,” he snapped. “I still haven’t found Rick.”
“He’s probably in the Bahamas by now,” Ernest said impatiently. “Look, the only activity we have for him is a chunk of change pulled out of his account the day he went missing. He hasn’t been to either house, he hasn’t contacted you, his phone is shut off, and his email is dead. He wanted to disappear, and by God he did. You have to move on, Jules.”
“How?” Jules asked miserably. “What if he was kidnapped? What if he’s hurt, or dead? He disappeared on my watch, I’m responsible.”
Ernest studied his face thoughtfully.
“It’s more than that, isn’t it,” he said.
“What are you talking about,” Jules sighed, pushing his fingers through his hair.
“I think you know. You weren’t just his agent, were you?”
“Well no, we were friends too.”
“Friends?”
“Good friends.”
Ernest leaned his massive bulk on the desk.
“How good?” he asked, uncharacteristically gentle.
Jules’ lip quivered and he fought back tears.
“I’m in love with him,” he whispered.
“Maybe he felt the same,” Ernest suggested. “Maybe it was too big an emotion for his tiny little frame. You think maybe he was overwhelmed by it?”
“Maybe,” Jules choked. “But I know him, Ernest, he gets overwhelmed and then he sorts through it and deals with it. He’s been gone three months. Three! Even if that is what happened, he would have just gone home, hid out for a while, and then resurfaced. But he didn’t, and he hasn’t, and how am I supposed to work like this?”
“Seems to me you used to work because of things like this,” Ernest pointed out.
“It isn’t working,” Jules sighed. “Burying myself in work, distracting myself with tasks… it’s not working. I’m not good at this anymore. Rick’s disappearance is this massive failure on my record, and I can’t get past it, personally or professionally.”
“You’re going to have to,” Ernest said. “I can’t run this place without you.”
He set two glasses on Jules’ desk and filled them with his private bottle of scotch, the one he kept around for meetings with highly important and powerful people.
“Drink up,” he said, clinking his glass to Jules’. “Drink, mourn, get back to work. You can’t let one guy ruin your career. And hey, I’ll make you a deal! You get five books published and two new names trending on twitter and I’ll let you take my boat out on the lake.”
“Deal,” Jules chuckled.
He sipped, appreciating the smooth burn.
“Hold on,” he said suddenly. “Say that again.”
“Hm? Oh, five books published—”
“Not that part, the last bit,” Jules said impatiently.
“I’ll let you take my boat out on the lake?”
Jules knocked back the rest of the drink and leapt to his feet, scooping his laptop, phone, and address book into his briefcase.
“What are you doing?”
“I know where he is,” Jules said with a grin. “I know where Rick went!”
“Jules, come on now, we just agreed—”
“Gotta go, bye!”
Jules sprinted out the door and onto the elevator, frantically pushing the button.
“You know it doesn’t go faster the more times you push it,” a familiar voice said behind him.
Jules spun.
“Steven! What are you doing here?”
“Came to see you,” Steven said with a liquid shrug. “I miss you.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Jules said.
“Hold on, hold on, don’t go. Please, just hear me out.”
“Look, Steven, you made yourself perfectly clear the last time I saw you. What could you possibly have to add to that?”
“I was wrong.”
The doors opened, and Jules froze, torn between his desperate need to find Rick and his desperate need to hear Steven say those words.
“Come on,” Steven said. “Let me buy you lunch.”
Jules’ stomach growled. He’d eaten poorly since Rick disappeared, and he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t hungry. He might as well finish his search on a full stomach. He followed Steven into the cafe. They ordered, then Steven looked at him across the table, his emerald eyes glittering with emotion.
“I was wrong to let you go,” he said. “We had our issues, but I’ve come to realize that I gave up on you too soon. It was the ring, it freaked me out. It was all me, and I’m sorry. Can I come home?”
Jules stared.
“You want to come home?” he repeated lamely.
Four months ago, he would have jumped at the chance to get back together with Steven. He could still remember how good they’d been together, how Steven would drive him crazy every night. Comfortable lunch dates, their weekend trips to wherever, nights spent dancing until their feet bled. Steven was vibrant and fun, nurturing and distracting, everything that Jules had once thought he wanted.
Something had changed, though, inside Jules. He no longer felt lost in his own mind without Steven there to interpret him. He no longer craved wild nights, though he still liked to dance. His drive had changed. He didn’t want to go back to the way things were with Steven; the ache in his heart pulled him to another time and place.
Their meal came, rescuing him from having to answer immediately.
“Well?” Steven asked. “Are you going to make me wait all day? I miss you, Jules. I love you. I want us back.”
Jules chewed slowly, staring at his plate. Steven wriggled impatiently in his seat.
“I’m sorry, Steven,” Jules said carefully. “I loved you. I did. But I’ve had a lot of time to think, and I need to be honest. There is no future for you and me. Staying with you as long as I did allowed me to remain ignorant of my own mind. When you left, I lost it. I acted irrationally, behaved erratically, and couldn’t catch hold of anything long enough to figure it out. I drowned in it and nearly killed my career and a potential relationship on the way. I’m still recovering. Getting back with you now would not only stick me back in that place, it would undo everything I’ve worked for over the last four months.”
“So there’s… there’s someone else,” Steven said with a heavy sigh.
“Maybe,” Jules said, gazing out the window at nothing. “If I can find him. But at least now I know how to be a whole person, emotions and all. If it doesn’t work out with him, I’m confident now that it could work with someone else.”
“Why not me?” Steven asked with tears in his eyes.
“Because I can’t risk getting comfortable in my own narcissism again,” Jules said gently. “You’re too kind to me. Somewhere out there is someone who won’t leech that kindness out of you, who will maintain the balance on their end. That just isn’t something I’m capable of, not with you. I’m sorry.”
Steven’s eyes flashed.
“Did you really just reject me�
� because I’m too nice?!”
“No, no, not really. I mean, at the most literal level I can see how—”
“Shut up,” Steven snarled. “Okay, fine. Go find your bad boy asshole. I didn’t want you anyway.”
Steven pushed away from the table, radiating fury. The waitress brought the check, and Jules sighed.
“That went well,” he said bitterly.
He shook it off. He didn’t have time to feel responsible for Steven, not now. He had to get to Rick’s mountain property. He paid and left, hurrying to the airport. He waded through thick déjà vu all the way through both terminals, and it only got stronger as he rented a car. Sliding into it, he could swear it was the same one he rented the first time.
The mountain had changed, blossomed into summer. Golden grasses lined the foothills, while the mountains themselves were a thick patchwork of greens and blues. Branches tangled together like lovers, casting jewel-toned shade on the forest floor. His heart beat painfully as he approached the trail leading to Rick’s cabin.
His palms began to sweat as he pulled up. No cars were parked outside the cabin; if he hadn’t been so certain that Rick would be up here, that fact would have been discouraging. He climbed out of his car and looked around. The door on the covered porch had been broken off at the hinges, and was leaning haphazardly against the house. He walked in, and discovered the front door in a similar condition, hanging crazily from a single screw. Silt smooshed beneath his feet as he crossed the patio, and continued on as he entered the cabin.
He looked around at the damage. All of the windows had been utterly destroyed. Birds and bugs flitted around over the countertops, through the rafters; a pair of ducks had built a nest in the fireplace. The only sign of human life were the single set of boot prints crossing the floor, leading to the stairs. They gave him an instant of hope, until he remembered that Bones had been there to investigate.
Regardless of the apparent futility, Jules climbed the stairs. They complained as he put his weight on them, and he crept along the edges, holding tight to the bannister. The crunch of splintering wood made his adrenaline pump, and he flew up the remaining stairs on his tiptoes, trying not to put his full weight on any of them.
There was something wrong with the bedroom. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it; it wasn’t the wasp nest buzzing in the corner, or the family of field mice tucked into the bed. It wasn’t even the flock of doves who had decided that a bookshelf made for a fancy high rise, though there was something about that sight specifically that caught his attention.
“Where are the books?” he asked out loud.
Realization struck, and he slapped himself in the forehead. Every last book was gone, replaced by animal life and dust. There was no evidence that they had been destroyed, and the library was too high off the ground for the books to have been washed out by the flood. No, there was only one reason the books would be gone, and that was if some human had taken them. A human who not only knew the books were there, but was willing to overlook some mustiness if it meant protecting the books from further harm.
Satisfied that Rick had been here, but wasn’t here any longer, Jules crept back down the stairs. He was still confident that his instinct had been correct; he was certain that Rick was out here. There was one place on this property that Bones wouldn’t have looked, because it didn’t match anything they knew about Rick, either his spending habits or his personality. But Jules had a hunch, and he was willing to follow it until he was proved wrong. He hoped his excursion wasn’t in vain.
Outside the cabin, Jules pulled out his phone and checked the map. The lake was three miles northeast of him, and he would have to go on foot. There were no roads leading to the lake on this side. He circled the area around the house, searching for a footpath. He nearly missed it. Narrow and faint, the path led into the thick of the woods, twisting and turning so he couldn’t see farther than a few feet ahead at any given moment.
It seemed to be exactly the sort of place that Rick would come. It was quiet and cool, completely cut off from civilization, like the fantastic forests in the books he wrote. Calm infiltrated Jules’ mind, a calm he hadn’t felt since Rick disappeared. He breathed the sweet mountain air deep into his lungs, tasting the pine-spiced purity. He saw no signs of Rick; but Rick wouldn’t have left any.
The forest path gave way to a narrow beach and the lake spread out before him, wide and green and covered in mist at the far end. Waterfalls cascaded down the slopes into the lake on two sides, shooting rainbows into the air over the rocks. It was pure magic; and it was completely quiet.
“Come on, Rick, where are you,” he muttered.
He found the dock. It was solid and old, like the cabin. A small wooden boat floated beside it, with two oars crossed inside. Everything was dirty and old, and held a feeling of ancient stillness. For the first time since he left his office, Rick began to wonder if he was wrong. Maybe Rick was just gone, dead or lost in some foreign country. He walked out to the end of the dock and looked out, scanning the water. Nothing disturbed the stillness. Mist rolled in lazy waves across the water, changing the scenery from moment to moment; but he didn’t see anything in that scenery that could point him to Rick.
“It’s not about what I see,” he told himself. “It’s about what I don’t see. The books. The houseboat. Somebody took them, dammit, so where are they?”
He paced the dock. How would someone move a houseboat from here without leaving a trace? It would really depend on how big it was, he decided. Even then, Rick wouldn’t have been able to get it out by himself. He would have had to get help, and with the publicity blowing up about his disappearance, someone would have come forward.
He checked the shape of the lake on the map. From the looks of it, the wide lake was shaped like an hourglass; the opposite side from where he stood was actually a narrow channel which fed into a smaller lake beyond the peaks. It would take days to hike around it. He shot the little wooden boat a dubious glance. It appeared to be watertight, but would it hold together across the lake? He would have to take that chance.
He climbed into the boat shakily, testing the wood with his boots. It thumped reassuringly, though the bench creaked when he sat. He gingerly lifted the oars and positioned them in the notches worn on to either side of the boat. As he rowed away from the beach, it felt as though his world was falling away. The pressures of his job, his life back in New York, even his friends felt fictional, while the fantastic wilderness could easily have sprung off the pages of an epic novel.
The lake was wider than it had appeared to be from the beach, and his shoulders ached before he was halfway through. He wished that he’d thought to bring food or water on his excursion, but he’d been too optimistic. He’d imagined that he would find Rick floating in plain sight by the dock, living his reclusive life in the houseboat.
He took a break, floating aimlessly in the still water. A hawk screeched overhead, and mist rolled over him, chilling him to the bone. He shivered and began to row again. The activity, as painful as it was, would keep him warm. His dry mouth and growling belly would have to wait. He had faith that Rick was somewhere out here, and he hoped he would be willing to share whatever provisions he had.
The longer he rowed, the more his faith waned. He scooped water from the lake to drink, pushing thoughts of parasites and bacteria out of his mind. He needed the water; he could handle whatever consequences came later. Assuming he could make it back to the shore and civilization. A thought crossed his mind, the impulse to turn around and go back; but he was nearly to the cliffs at the opposite side of the lake. He’d come too far to go back without getting an answer.
He reached the channel and felt small. Peaks rose up on either side, grey and severe. Stubborn trees and shrubs clung to the cracks between boulders, their branches reaching out to each other as if to grasp their lovers’ hands and pull them across. There was a subtle current here that pulled him through, and he set his oars in the boat, massaging his sore shoulders.<
br />
The sound of rushing water made him turn around; the channel ended in a waterfall, and he was heading directly toward it.
Chapter Sixteen
Jules frantically grabbed the oars and rowed backwards, away from the waterfall. He saw the water end in a smooth, rainbow-encrusted bow, but couldn’t yet see where it fell. His arms were weak from the journey across the lake, and the current flowed swiftly; he had no chance. He threw the oars in the boat and gripped the sides, curling into himself, bracing for impact.
The channel opened, and he fell. It wasn’t far to the bottom, less than ten feet, but the drop was straight down. It was too much for the old boat, and it cracked like a nut down the middle. He paddled frantically away from the waterfall, toward land. He didn’t get far. The boat went down and he treaded water, looking around.
There were no beaches to speak of. The peak rose up around the small lake on all sides, straight, sheer walls of rock. A large boulder sat in the center of the lake, a bare, jagged island. It was the only thing in the water that he could see, and his heart sank. His last hope dashed, he swam tiredly toward the island.
With aching arms and a heavy heart, Jules pulled himself up onto the boulder. It was sharply angled with narrow ledges; there wasn’t anywhere to rest on this side. He gripped the stone and crawled around to the other side, seeking any space wide enough for him to sit on. It was slow going. Exhaustion crept into his muscles, and he nearly lost his grip. Breathing hard, he rounded the rock. He saw a wider spot out of the corner of his eye, and made his way toward it. He made it just in time. Quivering and weak, he collapsed onto the ledge, closing his eyes to block out the pain.
“Jules?”
Jules’ eyes flew open, and he gasped. Rick looked up at him from his houseboat, which was anchored on the hidden side of the island. The blood had drained from his face, and he looked terrified.
“Jules… what are you doing up there?”