by Kelly Utt
There's an SUV parked beside Clive's truck, so we use it as a buffer and a staging area. In what feels like an amazing stroke of luck, he hasn't noticed us yet. Using hand signals, Roddy motions for me to go around front and approach Clive while he and Liam hang back. I get it. I understand exactly what he's planning. All three of us give a nod to indicate we’re ready. And it begins.
I walk out into the open in front of the neighboring SUV and head right for the driver’s door of Clive's truck. I stand up straight and tall like an aggressor in the animal kingdom, making itself larger to look intimidating. I even open my arms wide. I don't consciously think about making myself look bigger, it just happens. Something inside my lizard brain told me to do it.
Clive squints his eyes and looks at me, puzzled. I reach the door and motion for him to roll down the window. I can see him up close now. And I'm struck by how much he looks like me. That's odd. The thought crosses my mind that if Ali did have a romantic relationship with him, perhaps she has a type. I know of at least one other guy she dated before she met me who is the same height as me and Clive, also with dark hair and blue eyes.
I'm not sure if he recognizes me or not, but Clive decides to roll down the window. He rolls it down all the way. An indication he's not scared. Or acting like he’s not scared.
"Can I help you with something?" Clive asks. His voice is deep and gravelly. Maybe he's a smoker. His voice makes him sound like a typical bad guy from the movies.
"Yeah, I say. The battery died in my car over there and I don't have jumper cables. Would you mind coming over to take a look?”
Clive pauses a moment before answering. He’s sizing me up.
"Shouldn't you be asking me if I have jumper cables? Because if I don't, taking a look isn’t going to do any good."
"Alright then," I continue. "Do you have a set of jumper cables?"
I can’t tell whether or not he knows that Roddy and Liam are hiding nearby.
Clive turns slowly to face forward as if he's deciding how to proceed. I stand waiting, looking hard at him through the open window. I don't turn to look at Roddy and Liam so as not to give their presence away if, in fact, he isn't already aware of them. My heart pounds in anticipation. I don't feel afraid at all. Maybe that's because there are three of us and one of him. I think it's also because this feels so right.
Clive decides to get out of the truck. He reaches forward to reach the key in the ignition, turning off the motor. I step back one step as he opens the door to get out. He doesn't even bother to roll the window up.
When he stands, I'm impressed by his physical presence. His build is much like mine. If a bystander didn't know better, they would probably think we were related. They might think Clive he was related to Liam, too. What a strange feeling.
"All right, dude," he says. "Here I am. Now, what are we going to do?"
Before I can respond, Roddy and Liam break out from where they're hiding and charge towards Clive with a ferocity I did not know they were capable of. Roddy places his arm firmly around Clive’s neck from the back while Liam picks up his ankles, ensuring he can't gain enough leverage to break free. It only takes a minute for Clive to lose consciousness and fall limp, like a sleeping baby.
My blood is really pumping now and I'm not sure I've ever felt more alive. Roddy and Liam carry Clive to our Jeep and pile him into the backseat. Amazingly, no one is around, so no one seems to have noticed what we're doing. I climb in the back beside Clive as Roddy and Liam jump into the front seats. Roddy tears out of the grocery store parking lot like a bat out of hell, as the saying goes.
"Tie him up,” Roddy instructs.
"With what?" I ask in return.
"Come on, George, go back to your training,” Roddy says.
My father-in-law reaches in his pocket and pulls out a knife which he tosses to Liam. Liam then begins to cut one of the seatbelts. I sift through the back of the Jeep to find something suitable. My gray maintenance uniform is here, so I tear a long section of the shirt to make a gag. I stuff part of it into Clive's mouth and tie the rest around the back of his head. I then use the pants to tie a series of intricate knots which bind his legs all the way from the knee to the ankle.
"Where are we going?” I ask. “Are we doing this at the rental house?"
“I have a better plan,” Roddy said as he makes a left to turn back into the low-rent motel we came from less than an hour earlier.
"Isn't this going to look too suspicious?” I ask.
"It's the best option we have right now,” Roddy says. "I paid cash for a couple of rooms when we were here earlier. They're around the back of the building, farthest from the office. We’ll start there.”
Liam doesn't say anything. He just keeps cutting away at the seatbelts in the vehicle then handing me sections as he gets them free. It's curious how Liam goes along with Roddy so willingly. I'm impressed with my uncle’s wherewithal and the fact that he chooses to participate while remaining so calm about it. He and Roddy make a good team. I hope I can be a good member of their team as well. I want them to be proud of me.
We pull into the motel and around the back where the rooms are. Roddy puts the Jeep in park, then tosses me a room key. It's one of the old-school kind with a plastic keychain dangling down. It has the room number displayed in large, gold numbers.
I get out and walk to the room, careful to keep my head lowered so the maintenance uniform hat obscures my face. Although, I have to assume we're going to somehow avoid being captured on surveillance cameras. I hope Roddy has already scoped that situation out. If I had to guess, I'd say this hotel isn't sophisticated enough to have surveillance cameras. They probably wouldn't want to spring for the added expense. Or maybe, their clientele prefers it this way.
I turn the key and open the door. A blast of musty air escapes and it's all I can do to keep from covering my nose in disgust. I've become too soft. Too accustomed to comforts and luxuries.
Roddy and Liam grab Clive in the same hold they used to get him into the Jeep. They quickly carry him into the hotel room. We close and lock the door behind us. There's a chair positioned near a desk, so I pull it out into the open area for Roddy and Liam to place Clive down on top of it. They do. The three of us work together to get him tied to the chair before he wakes up.
"And here we are," Liam says.
It's the first thing I've heard him say in a while. He’s been too focused on the task at hand to chat.
"What next?” I say, wiping beads of perspiration from my forehead.
"You're going to question him," Roddy says.
"By myself?"
"We’ll be right here if you need anything," Roddy replies.
I take off my hat and set it down on the dresser, then I stand up straight and stretch my arms high in the air while shifting my weight side to side. I exhale a few times and begin to hop like a boxer warming up for a fight.
"Alright,” I say. “Wake him up."
This is a defining moment for me. I can feel the magnitude as it's happening. This is a moment I'll probably look back on until my dying breath. I can't imagine I'd ever forget it. In this moment, I'm becoming a predator. It's one thing to decide to be a predator, but it's quite another to actually move through the actions a predator would take.
I hope, when this is all over, I'll walk away knowing I did the right thing. Right now, it's the only thing.
6
Ties That Bind
It may seem like Ali and I have the perfect relationship, but that hasn't always been the case. We went through a rough patch in the middle of our marriage, right around the time she became pregnant with Ethan.
We were both working hard to build our careers back then and were putting in long hours. Ali was a young, ambitious attorney who handled tough immigration cases. Those cases often required all hands on deck almost twenty-four-seven. My work situation wasn’t any better. I was gone TDY on temporary duty for months at a time. At one point, I had to do an unaccompanied tour for an entire
year in South Korea. I was only able to come home once, for a week around the halfway mark.
That kind of separation is taxing. I've seen plenty of Air Force buddies get into trouble with their wives when deployments run long. It's a sacrifice for everyone involved. Mine and Ali’s stress was made worse because she wasn't simply staying at home waiting for me to be available. We had some real challenges connecting. There were several times when I finally got home and had some time off, but Ali’s work kept her busy and we barely saw each other. I guess that's what I got for being married to an attorney. It was hard for both of us. It’s still hard not to be resentful.
I admit that I sometimes let my frustrations out in the form of snide comments and thinly veiled attempts to get her attention. Imagine spending days, weeks, or month in some random location around the globe with nothing of your wife to hold onto but a picture in your wallet. Those days were spent missing her terribly and wishing we could be together. Wishing I could hold her in my arms and kiss her slow on the lips. Now imagine coming home with all that anticipation built up, and instead of being able to see her, you’re left sitting on the couch waiting while she's at work for twelve to fifteen hours a day. To put it mildly, it sucked.
All in all, we made it through relatively unscathed. But it was dicey for a few years.
A couple of years before she became pregnant with Ethan, she began to feel the urge to start a family. I was ready, too, and wanted the same thing. But our career demands made it next to impossible. Before long, Ali was urging me to leave the military in order to provide a stable situation where one parent would be available to our children. She wanted that parent to be me. But I knew I wanted to stay on and put in a full twenty years in order to retire from the Air Force, so I flipped the script and told my wife she should be the one to leave her career and provide a stable situation in which she was the parent who would be available to our children.
We stayed in gridlock for a long time. One of us would have to give in if we truly wanted to start a family. There was no way I could take a baby with me to my job in the Air Force. And there was no way she could take a baby with her to her job as an attorney. Both career fields made caring for an infant the way we wanted to nearly impossible.
We knew we didn't want to put our baby in daycare for long hours. And we didn't want strangers raising our child. It might've been different if one of us had an easy nine-to-five schedule. I could have seen that working if at least one parent was home to spend time with the baby in the evenings for the whole supper, bath, and bedtime routine. But Ali and I thought it would be downright cruel to stay gone from the time the baby woke up until after he or she was asleep again in the evening. We could never have done that. It was out of the question.
So, there we were, in a battle of wills. Neither of us wanted to be the one to give in. It wasn't malicious. We simply cared deeply about our careers and didn't want to take the inevitable slow down which would go along with taking a few years off.
When I was in Korea, there were times I’d call Ali and she won't return my call for days. I always wondered what she was up to and whether or not I should be concerned, but I chalked it up to the time difference and didn’t make it a big deal.
I know it was a really hard time for Ali. I know she struggled to remain her usual positive and upbeat self. She tried reaching out to some of the other Air Force wives for support, but honestly, not many of them were professionals like Ali. Her career demands added an entirely different dimension to the Air Force wife scenario. I don't think she ever found more than a handful of people who actually understood what she was going through.
I know my wife did more drinking during that time. She frequented a couple of pubs near her office and often stayed out late with friends and coworkers. I had a vague sense that maybe she had someone to lean on who was more than just a friend. I never asked her, because it seemed like doing so would breach the trust we had. It seemed like, If we went down that road of suspicion and accusations, we might never make it back.
When Ali called to tell me she was pregnant with Ethan, I had four months left in my one-year unaccompanied tour. I had been home for a week a couple of months prior and plenty of lovemaking had taken place between us. I had no reason to doubt that I was Ethan's father. And I do mean no reason at all. The thought never crossed my mind.
As it turned out, Ali came to terms with reducing her work schedule and leaving her full-time job after the baby was born, thus allowing me to continue towards my goal of military retirement. Pregnancy suited her and we were both over the moon about our baby boy's upcoming arrival. I returned from Korea and we picked up where we had left off several years prior, back before all of the tension and struggle began.
If I look at this history logically, I suppose it's possible that Ali did have an affair while I was in Korea. I was gone and she was alone. Anything could have happened. And it's not like we had family around who would have noticed something unusual. Liam and Estella were the only family members nearby and Liam was out of the country at the very same time I was.
The fact that Clive looks so much like me is pretty unnerving. I can't stop thinking about how we're physically similar. If Ali does have a type, and I imagine she does, then I can see how Clive might have been appealing.
But what I can't figure out is why she would be attracted to his bad-boy personality. That part is nearly the total opposite of me. Maybe she wanted the opposite. Maybe she resented my dedication to the military and wanted somebody completely different in her life. After all, it was my dedication to the military that was keeping us apart. I considered her long work hours just as much of a problem as mine, but she didn't agree. And I guess I can see her point. At least with her job, she came home every night and crawled into bed beside me. There was no way I could have done that from Korea.
The other thing that unnerves me is how Ethan could look like Clive as easily as he looks like me since Clive and I look so much like each other. All this time, I've been looking at my boy thinking he looks like his father. I never once considered that his father might not be me.
I tell myself to focus.
Liam takes out the handgun he got this morning and lays it on a side table between two beds in the shoddy hotel room. It's far out of Clive's reach, but it's available to the rest of us. Part of me thinks I should consider the likely outcome here and plan out how we're going to handle contingencies. But the new predator part of me wants to forge ahead, simply trusting my instincts.
Roddy looks at me to make sure I’m ready, then slaps Clive on the cheeks a few times to wake him up. It doesn't take much. In less than a minute, Clive is wide-eyed and alert, struggling against the ties that hold him to the chair.
Liam gets Clive’s attention by putting one finger in front of his lips, indicating that our prisoner should be quiet. Clive begins to shake his head in disagreement until Liam gestures to the gun on the side table, at which point Clive settles down. He doesn’t have much choice. He seems resigned to his fate for the moment.
Once Liam is sure Clive isn’t going to scream, he goes to him and pulls the gag out of his mouth, letting it fall loosely down around his neck.
"What in the Goddamn motherfucking hell is this?” Clive asks.
“Well, well,” Liam says under his breath. “I see you’re not exactly a church boy."
Roddy and Liam both look at me, so Clive does, too.
"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Clive asks, his voice sounding more reasonable now.
"I'm sorry we have to meet under these circumstances,” I begin, immediately regretting that I started out with an apology.
Predators don't apologize.
Clive squints his eyes and looks me up and down. He's still trying to size me up. I stand taller and again raise my arms out to the side as I did in the parking lot when I approached his truck. It might look strange, but my lizard brain is at work once more and it's imploring me to make myself look bigger and more threatening.
Clive smiles a sinister smile now, appearing pleased with his handiwork.
"So what if I did?" he says.
I continue without responding to his provocation.
"I also understand you told a reporter that you’re the biological father of my son, Ethan."
"That's right. And again, so what if I did?" he taunts.
"Why would you tell her such a thing?" I ask him. " We don't know you.”
"Maybe you don't know me,” he says. "But your wife sure did when I was tapping that sweet ass."
I bristle upon hearing this. I knew Clive would try to get a rise out of me, but I didn't realize he’d be successful.
I lean forward and, in one swift motion, grab Clive Roland by the collar of his shirt and push him and the chair he's tied to hard to the floor. At first, he looks surprised. But he collects himself, then stares me right in the eye and laughs. Roddy and Liam watch closely, ready to move in. But they don't. There's no need yet.
I release my hand and spread my fingers wide above Clive’s face as I consider whether or not to form them into a fist and deck him right now. It would feel so good to hit him and to feel his flesh cave under the force of my blow.
I decide to wait and take this slow. I need a lot more information. I stand up, but I leave him lying on his back on the floor still tied to the chair. It's a good position from which to assert my dominance.