“Look, maybe we should just ask our phones where we are.”
“And while we’re at it, maybe we should call work and fill them in on exactly why we’re out here.”
The last thing I wanted to do was argue. I took his pointer finger in my hand and worked the rest of his fist open so I could weave my fingers through his. “Listen. We’re on the same side. And I really do get what you’re going through.”
Jacob stared at our hands a long while, then squeezed my fingers gently and sighed. “I need to know so bad, it hurts. And yet I’m dreading whatever it is I’ll find, and somehow, that only makes me more determined.”
Say what you will about being avoidant—at least hiding from your problems allows you to give something a rest. But Jacob wasn’t wired like me, and he was simply unable to let anything go. Not until he dug up the ugly truth—one that everyone would rather stay buried. “I don’t know what you’re going to find, but I can tell you this: no matter what, I still love you.”
“Vic—”
“Let me finish. Even knowing that I’d been committed and experimented on, you gave me a chance. Even when we found out Big Brother had erased my memory and was still keeping tabs on me, you stood by my side. Whatever skeletons are buried in your family’s closet—how could I possibly care? You’re still you, and that’s all that matters.”
I gave his hand a squeeze.
“Me and you, Jacob. We’re a team. We’re a family. I know you’re supposed to enjoy the journey and not focus on the destination—maybe I read it in our workbook—but I think the destination’s pretty damn important, too. Our individual histories, however it was we got to this point…maybe it doesn’t matter. Not nearly as much as how we ended up.”
I’m not really what you’d call a hugger—but I’m not a total asshole, either. While I can’t fathom how anyone would find me particularly comforting, I’m willing to go through the motions. At first Jacob didn’t move, and it was like putting my arms around a crash test dummy. But then he cut the engine and let the tension go out of his body. The click that had been conspicuously absent for most of our ridiculous photo shoot? There it was…just waiting for both of us to stop clenching.
Kissing Jacob wasn’t my main objective, I just wanted to relieve him of the need to answer. Thanks to our premarital sessions, we’d done so damn much talking about our feelings lately. His answers? Glib, patent responses that he thought his pastor wanted to hear.
Maybe I liked it that way.
Maybe I was the one who was relieved when I didn’t need to respond to his inner hurt. I sensed it though, and I was under no illusions I could kiss it and make it all better.
But hopefully I could make it at least somewhat better.
First tongue? My fault. Nervous that maybe the chink in Jacob’s armor was now poised directly over his heart. I prodded the hard edge of his teeth before I even realized I’d done it, then took it back just as quickly. It was an awkward volley. Maybe he would have ignored it, if not for my breath catching as I realized what I’d done. But instead of pretending this maladroit come-on hadn’t happened…Jacob threw himself into it full tilt.
When I made to back off, he came at me so fast his seatbelt snapped like we were facing down another deer. He grunted his frustration as he fumbled himself free, then flattened me against the passenger door. Good thing the arm rests folded up, otherwise one of us would end up with serious bruises. But no. The Crown Vic was an early-model beast with a front seat roomy enough for two grown men to grapple. Not that we did it often, mind you. Chicago’s just got too many people around.
Here, though? In the middle of nowhere with the impossibly dark night wrapped around us? It felt like we were the only two people in the world—and without anyone else to care, our baggage was easy enough to set down. Or at least set aside for the moment.
Jacob had my fly down before I could even dig the seatbelt clasp out of my back. I wasn’t quite hard when he crammed his hand down my underwear, but a few quick strokes took care of that. I bit back the word, Wait. Because I mostly didn’t want him to wait. And the small part of me that was worried some small-town deputy would come along and cause a big scene…well, it wasn’t putting up much of a fight, so I’d say it was willing to be convinced.
When our mouths found each other in the darkness, restraint had gone right out the window. Jacob crammed me full of tongue, and damn, it was hot. Because I’d come right out and told him I dug it when he was forceful? Maybe. Or maybe he just needed to think about something other than that damn notebook.
His kiss slid off my mouth, trailing wetness to my jaw. I grabbed what I could of his hair to stop him from laying into my throat and leaving me with a necklace of bites in our wedding pictures. My neck is one of my biggest hot-spots, and the mere threat of him clamping down wrenched out a needy sound I was trying my damnedest to keep quiet.
Me, squirming like prey beneath his solid bulk? That’s what got Jacob off. Not forcing me…but the satisfaction of getting me so hot my embarrassment slipped through my fingers. When he shoved his shorts down, he was rock hard and leaking.
The hot slick of pre-come chilled fast on my hip, like an echo of the kiss he’d slid from my mouth. I had my hand wrapped around his hardness before I even realized why it felt so strange. It was my broken hand—or should I say, my healed hand. Whichever, it was awkward and weak and ached a little when I squeezed. That, combined with the both of us pawing and fumbling in the darkness, gave a precarious edge to the jacking that made Jacob’s thighs tremble.
He was close already. So was I.
Obviously, given the circumstance, it was stupid to nut all over each other—I knew it. He knew it. Yet somehow, neither of us seemed to care. His beard played across the sensitive spot below my jaw, and his hand was working me fast and hard, just shy of painful, and the hottest little huffs of effort were escaping him….
“Fuck yeah….” I groaned in Jacob’s ear as my back arched and my floodgates let loose.
I shot—God knows where. He puffed a hot breath against my throat as his cock pulsed in my awkward grasp. His jizz ended up mainly on my bare belly. Though it was unlikely my jeans or T-shirt went completely unscathed.
After Jacob was done shooting, he stilled. His forehead pressed into the crook of my neck. His cock softened in my grasp. His breathing slowed, though it was still damp against my collarbone. I wondered if I should say anything. Maybe there was nothing that needed saying.
It was almost romantic, sprawled across the seat together in the thick blackness of night. I could just about make out our hands by the tiny glow of the hazard light button, fingers loosely woven together—my right hand, Jacob’s left. The romantic sap in me suspected this was the last time we’d do it without me finding a ring there. It felt dangerous, in a way, to look forward to anything. But, hell, if we could find a pocket of safety in the midst of the shit show of our histories, maybe we were strong enough to handle anything.
I was busy patting myself on the back when light flooded the car. Not dashboard lights, but something from outside—something bright. Too bright for a cop flashlight, even one that could double as a weapon. We bolted upright and turned to see what the hell was blazing through the rear window—and even though I shielded my eyes, my pupils were so acclimated to the deep, dark night, my eyes watered from the glare.
It wasn’t headlights—there were too many of them, a whole row. I hitched my jeans, yanked my shirt down and said, “Prime spot for alien abduction if ever there was one.”
“Too slow for aliens.” Jacob scrambled for napkins from the glovebox. There were none. “Farm equipment.”
“At this time of night?”
“Farmers work long hours.”
And here I thought being a ghost hunter was demanding.
I patted myself down in search of napkins and—lo and behold: the random pair of underwear in my pocket was good for something other than shaming me in polite company…though once I was done de-splooging myse
lf, it would do Jacob more harm than good.
If I were a farmer and I came across a random car after dark in the middle of nowhere, I’d presume it was some kind of setup. Maybe it’s the cop in me that thinks that way. Or maybe my hard-earned paranoia. But the big machine pulled up behind us, filling the cab with light.
We’d reassembled ourselves by the time the farmer came up and motioned for us to roll down the window. He was maybe our age, though the sun hadn’t been kind to him, and he was wearing the sort of brown canvas overalls you only see on guys who do serious labor. “Car trouble?” he asked.
“Thanks for stopping,” Jacob said, “but we’re fine. Just…getting our bearings.”
The farmer gave the car a once-over. Though the partially unfolded map on the dash made for a pretty good prop, the passenger window was a little steamed up. He frowned. Maybe he wasn’t necessarily as gullible as I’d thought. Probably just braver.
“Cell service can be a little iffy out here. Where ya headed?”
Before Jacob could trot out some knee-jerk lie, I leaned toward the driver side window and asked, “How long have you lived around here?”
Cautiously, he said, “All my life.”
“You wouldn’t happen to remember Sacred Heart Hospital, would you?”
That got the farmer’s attention. Polite interest turned to actual interest, and he jammed his hands in his overall pockets like he was settling in for a nice chat. “Sure. Spent a few days there when I was a kid. They kept my appendix.”
I found myself vaguely surprised any actual medicine transpired there, and not just clandestine psychic experimentation. “Are we close?”
“Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty? But you can’t really get there from here. There was talk a few years back about the county knocking it down to keep kids from getting up to trouble inside. But the bridge washed out and the road grew over, and it’s just too much trouble for ’em to even bother.”
If the only way to reach the abandoned hospital was on foot, I sure as hell wasn’t about to do it after dark. Once Jacob coaxed an inscrutable series of directions from the farmer, we said our goodbyes…which concluded with him saying, “But I wouldn’t go there if I were you.” Which wasn’t creepy at all.
As his brightly-lit farm implement rolled away and our eyes readjusted to the dark, Jacob said, “Are we sure that was a living person?”
Aside from the fact that Jacob could see him too? “Definitely alive. He smelled too much like diesel to be a ghost.”
20
IT WAS A long drive, but we manage to get back to Jacob’s folks’ house just shy of midnight, and without hitting any deer. We brought the map inside and pinpointed the most likely spot Sacred Heart would have been, and then we found a decoy nearby we could track on our phones without setting off any alarms. Although Big Brother might wonder why we were so interested in Historical Marker 21: Site of the great walleye tournament of 1932.
We could always claim we were taking up fishing for one of our mandatory dates.
It wasn’t exactly the crack of dawn, but it was pretty early when we peeled ourselves off the sofa-bed and started strategizing about our trip. We had flashlights, but it couldn’t hurt to bring a few more. A burner phone to take pictures with. And plenty of salt.
All that was left to do was print out some recent satellite photos of “Historical Marker 21” and we’d be all set. Thanks to my adventures in scrapbooking, I theoretically knew how to print photos from my phone. Unfortunately, before the old printer churned its way through its starting sequence, Jacob’s parents woke up.
Shirley bustled over in her pink terrycloth robe to see what we were up to. “You need to print a picture? The yellow ink is low.”
“Print it in black and white,” Jerry called from the kitchen.
“You’d think that would do the trick. But the printer can be so gosh-darned stubborn. And why don’t you just use our computer? The password is touchdown. It’ll be a lot easier than trying to go through the wifi on the printer.”
“That never worked right,” Jerry called out.
“We wouldn’t just hop onto your computer,” Jacob told them.
His mother made a never-mind gesture. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not like we have anything to hide.”
Well, shit. Let’s hope not.
For all our sakes.
I can’t claim to fully understand the more sophisticated methods of surveillance, but I do know that these days, everything you do leaves a trail. The trick is to do enough random, mundane things that no one picks up on your shenanigans until it’s too late for them to do anything about it. Hopefully our sudden interest in historic walleye would be chalked up to “boring stuff Wisconsinites do” by whoever it was that monitored our goings-on.
Once the map was printed, Jacob grabbed us a couple of waters for the road. But when he closed the refrigerator door, Shirley was there, hands on hips. “You’re not going to visit that historical marker now, I hope.”
“Why not?” Jacob asked.
“Well, we’ve got church in twenty minutes.” She patted her hair self-consciously. “Actually, I’d better go get ready.”
Once she scurried off, Jacob and I exchanged a look. We’d never been expected to accompany his parents to church before. But now that we were marrying each other in that church, there was no good way to bow out.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Lutheran service. It was pretty much like the non-denominational generic Christian things I’d been exposed to at Camp Hell, but with more talk about love and inclusivity. Probably because Pastor Jill was gearing up to do a gay wedding—our gay wedding—and wanted to reassure the congregation that God wasn’t going to smite us with a lightning bolt.
Which wasn’t to say the entire congregation was thrilled to see us. Some folks were friendly, sure. Most were curious. But a few of them were giving us the stink-eye. Especially when, after the service, Shirley made sure her voice really projected when she announced to one of her acquaintances, “You remember my son Jacob? And this is his fiancé, Victor.”
The acoustics were startlingly good.
Pastor Jill had been standing by the door, touching base with her parishioners on their way out, but once the crowd had dwindled to small clusters lingering behind to chat, she came over and gave me a companionable shoulder-bump. Instead of her usual button-down oxford shirt and chinos, she had on a navy pantsuit for service. Stuffy. But still a far cry from my mental image of clergy.
“I envy you,” she said.
Clearly, I was doing a good job at camouflaging my actual life during our little counseling sessions. “How’s that?”
“Your height, obviously. I’ve got a great view of the room from the pulpit, but put me in a crowd and I’m invariably stuck looking at the back of someone’s head. You should take advantage of it.”
“At least people have stopped asking me if I play basketball.”
Pastor Jill might be pint-sized, but there was something authoritative about her. A charisma born of confidence. When she strolled away from the crowd, I followed along like I’d been caught by her gravitational pull. “How tall are you, anyhow. Six-five?”
“Not…quite.”
“I hadn’t realized, since we met online. But seeing you now, standing head and shoulders above the crowd, it got me to thinking about how I fell in love with vocabulary.”
“Really?”
“You know how people mishear song lyrics—like, all the time? That’s called a mondegreen. But mondegreen wasn’t the word that got me. It was excelsis. I was Christmas caroling with my fourth-grade class, and the kid sitting next to me belted out the words, In egg selfish day-oh. And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what eggs had to do with Christmas. But even worse, who was being selfish? Obviously, I couldn’t just look it up on the internet. Can you imagine what it would’ve been like if we had access to all the answers to all the questions at our fingertips back when we were kids? Luckily, though, my curiosity
was strong enough that the next time I had a hymnal in my hands, I paged through until I found it. Gloria in excelsis deo. Glory to God on high. But it sounds a lot more magical in Latin.”
So did exorcisms, but that didn’t make them any more effective.
She said, “You’re wondering why I’m telling you all this.”
“Maybe a little.”
“God made you six-four.”
“Six-three.” And a half.
“God made you gay, too. So if anyone gets snitty with you about your wedding, that’s just too darn bad. Because God doesn’t make mistakes.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Granting psychic powers to some folks but not others seemed like a surefire route to chaos.
As soon as it was possible to extricate ourselves, Jacob and I hit the road to Sacred Heart…manicure be damned. We’d lost a couple hours of daylight, but that shouldn’t make that big a difference.
Right?
The roads didn’t seem anywhere near as treacherous during the day. There were no deer. No tractors or falling rocks, either. And Historical Marker 21, a plaque on the side of the road with a couple paragraphs about walleye, was just where it was supposed to be.
But we couldn’t say the same for the hospital.
We’d been fully prepared to follow a neglected road and even wade across a creek bed. But the road wasn’t just in disrepair…it was completely gone. Instead, there was just an impenetrable wall of trees. We coasted back and forth between the two perpendicular roads that bookended the wooded area, about a half-mile stretch where there, according to our calculations, a road used to be. Then we drove around some more to see if we’d figured wrong. But between the farmer’s directions and the landmarks Jacob remembered, we were looking in the right spot. There was just nothing to see.
I can’t say I was actually all that surprised. Someone had made Camp Hell disappear. And that was nowhere near as secluded.
Other Half (PsyCop book 12) Page 13