Arnie watched with loving amusement. It was good to see the two engaging in normal father-son behavior. The three of them had been estranged as a family unit for far too long. Getting the band back together was a welcome bonus to this bizarre situation.
Snickering as if the funniest thing ever just occurred to him, his father drawled, “He got your girl’s phone number. Did you know? Behind your back and everything.”
Stan perked up and punched their dad in the arm. “Hey, what the fuck, Dad? Shut up.”
Narrowing his eyes, Arnie’s gazed bounced back and forth between the two grins. If he admitted he hadn’t heard all of what his father said, they’d needle him endlessly, so he came back with a plausible punt to see what they’d do.
“I’m bigger than both of you,” he pointed out with just a hint of threat in his delivery.
Neither man moved, so he arched a brow expectantly and waited.
Stan caved first.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” he whined. “Nothing happened behind your back. I gave her my number so she could let me know when she had time to look at stain.”
“What?” Arnie heard the words coming out of Stan’s mouth, but he acted so guilty it made him wary.
“She called the number, so I’d have hers too.”
The sound of a million buzzing bees filled his head. He blinked to clear his mind. He finally got what was making Stan so nervous. “She gave you her phone number?”
“Arnie, for Christ’s sake. Listen to yourself. Yeah, I gave her my number, but hello?” Stan mimed answering a phone. “Your NIGHTWIND guy isolated her phone. Right? That’s what you said. So, in a way, everyone has her number.”
“Everyone except me,” he shouted. What he yelled made no sense, so he made it worse with a convoluted explanation. “Okay, yes, I have her number too, but she didn’t give it to me. I stole it.”
His father’s chuckle earned him some side-eye shade. He simply continued to wipe sauce off his mouth and hands while shaking his head. Arnie was tempted to suggest he also wipe the stupid grin off his face.
“Tsk, tsk, now boys. Behave. Stan, stop trying to interject logic. Your brother’s too far gone. And Arnie? Chill, my boy. If you insist on getting the number directly from the source, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till the lady gives it to you.”
He scowled at his dad.
“The death glare doesn’t change anything, but nice try.”
Without thinking, he suddenly exploded and blurted out a stream of consciousness even he found startling.
“There’s something in the air, Dad. I can feel it.” He touched his stomach. “In here.”
Jumping to his feet, he stormed around the kitchen, practically bouncing off the walls.
“I’m fucking caught between what’s real and what’s felt.” He waved an arm at the work in progress. “This is real. Work has form and substance.”
Arnie caught the wide-eyed expression on his brother’s face. Repairing their relationship meant they talked about a lot of stuff but never Arnie’s extrasensory life—not with any specificity.
As he clutched his stomach, his eyes bored into his dad’s. “This is nothing but raw feeling. Intuition. Right brain stuff. What-fucking-ever you want to call it. For me, what’s felt is real. I can’t turn it off any more than I can ignore it. Something is coming,” he asserted as strongly as he could. “It might already be here.”
There was a long, tense silence. His father studied him, and Arnie did nothing to throw up a defense.
Crossing the space between them in two lengthy steps, his father put a hand on Arnie’s bicep. “What do you need from me?”
He thought about it for a moment. Was it time to circle the wagons? Being sure was important. Acting rashly or too soon could potentially expose their presence, and he hadn’t come this far to have it all go sideways now.
Do it. Do it quickly.
“Alert everyone with a chip in the game. It’s going down. Time to man the battle stations.”
His father sneered. “Rigged for silent running?”
Arnie could feel him thinking about how good it was going to feel when they took Giselle down.
“Stan, get the equipment ready. Everything Milo gave us. Show Dad how to use the flash-bangs.”
It took an internal debate before he called the local LAPD contact King passed along. Law enforcement had enough on their hands without riling them up unnecessarily. He explained the situation as succinctly as possible to the person taking the call. King’s contact gave off a no-nonsense tough guy vibe. His laughter sounded like what you’d expect if you tickled Frankenstein’s funny bone.
“Don’t care much for a bunch of Yankee shitheads coming to my town, trying to act big and bad. Just let me know what, where, and when. My team is ready to answer the call.”
There were better things to call Giselle and her minions than Yankee shitheads, but he wasn’t about to argue the man’s point.
As the evening stretched on, they stayed put and hunkered down. While Dad had a lengthy phone call with his girlfriend, Stan parked it on an old-school folding lounge chair he found on sale at Walmart, grabbed an iPad, and watched Cary Grant grimace his way through Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.
Needing something to do, Arnie dragged two heavy five-gallon paint buckets to the window next to the side door—the one with a view of the driveway next door and the front of the house.
On top of the buckets, he positioned a one-by-six plank of wood. Spying a moving blanket in a corner, he shook it out, folded it up, and created a seat cushion. Plopping onto the makeshift seat, he scanned the Gerry’s house and driveway from behind slatted blinds. If anything changed or moved, he’d notice.
It was interesting what you saw during a stakeout. Before now, he’d found the exercise boring, but boy, oh boy, his perspective sure did change once he had a dog in the fight.
Activity across the street caught his attention. The two guys he’d seen coming and going from what Arnie assumed was their marital home were in the front yard dismantling an array of seasonal blow-up displays. Their interaction was amusing when they didn’t think anyone was watching.
Someday, he was definitely going to get in trouble for saying it, but he f-loved everything about the LGBTQ community. Gay guys made the best friends. Several of the hard-core, ass-kicking mercenaries he’d known over the years were also rainbow-colored to their core yet could be bloodthirsty and unyielding if the situation called for it. It wasn’t always about stereotypes. What he found most compelling was the honesty. Gay guys knew who they were. Catching them at ease, in their natural habitat, offered a heartwarming glimpse of what a happy life could look like.
Someone walking a dog passed by.
Two cars, going in opposite directions, moved on the street.
He blinked. An hour passed. Everything looked exactly the same next door.
Getting up to stretch, he headed for the cooler and pulled out a Diet Coke. Cracking it open, he guzzled a third and was turning back to the window when he stopped.
Wait a minute. Everything looked exactly the same? He checked his watch. It was coming up on eleven. A question he didn’t have a ready answer for spurred him to move quickly.
Peering intently at the driveway next door and at the house, he double-checked and yep, the Gerry’s car was nowhere to be seen. Bud generally pulled into the garage, and Summer parked nearest the back door, but Lynda’s car was the giveaway. It wasn’t there.
Some lights were on inside the house, but the pattern hadn’t changed. No one was moving room to room. There was no telltale glow or flicker from a television. In short, no one was home.
Fuck. Why didn’t he put it together earlier? Shit, man. He really did suck at this surveillance stuff.
“Stan,” he grunted. “Come here a sec.”
“What’s up?” his brother whispered when he reached Arnie’s side. “You see something?”
“It’s what I’m not seeing,” he
muttered. “Would you say someone was home next door or not?”
Stepping to the window, Stan adjusted the slats and peered at the scene for a full minute. “Nope,” he murmured. “Empty house.” He looked concerned and perplexed in equal measure. “I never saw Bud or Lynda today, and I can’t remember if their car was in the drive this morning.”
They got quiet. Arnie was considering the ramifications of Summer being alone and assumed his brother was doing the same.
Despite the three-hour time jump between LA and New York, he put a call in to Milo. He answered right away.
“It’s zero-two-fuck-you in the morning, Arnie. What the fuck, man?”
“Shut up and listen. This is critical. Can you tell me if the numbers at the LA property, the two in the front house, are they pinging?”
“What? The other numbers? Jesus Christ,” Milo grunted.
Arnie imagined him waking up in a hurry and scrubbing his hands over his face.
“I haven’t been tracking the other numbers. You didn’t say anything about them.”
“Yeah, I know,” he growled. “Whatever, man. Can you tell me if they’re at the address or not? Hurry. Mission critical.”
“Hold on.” The phone went silent. A solid minute passed until Milo came back on. “I have my laptop. The program is open. Only the single number is pinging at the address. The burn phone. No name.”
“Fuck.” A million thoughts swirled in his head. “Alert the team. It’s going down.”
He ended the call and grimaced. “Goddammit. Why didn’t I install video right away? Shit!” he barked and kicked a pile of boxes, sending them scattering.
They needed eyes on the back of the house. If Summer and the baby were alone on the property, they were most vulnerable from a direct threat at their weakest spot.
“Come with me,” he barked.
Stan followed close behind.
“Get a couple of sawhorses and some one-by-tens. I want you to build a platform in the back corner of the yard. Against the wall where the bushes offer some cover.”
“Like a deer stand.” Stan snickered. “Gotcha bro. I’m on it.”
“When you’re finished, make sure the path is clear and then turn off the outside lights. It’s time to go dark.”
“How does this play out?”
“We take turns watching. I would fucking kill for night vision goggles, but this is Sherman Oaks, not Fallujah.”
“I hate to ask, but do you have a gun?”
Arnie’s jaw clenched. Of course he did, but weapons of death were on the bottom of his self-defense priority list. Short of an IED blast or laser-guided missile, he was perfectly capable of physically overpowering someone.
Instead of answering directly, he grimaced, and said, “I have to change. This weighted suit will only hold me back.”
When he came out of the only working bathroom, his dad was at the door.
“Aw, shit. Is it time to ditch the disguises? Really? I kind of grew fond of the silver fox ponytail.”
“Had fun, did you?”
He chuckled. “I told your Izzy that my ex-wife wouldn’t recognize me if I showed up naked with my name tattooed on my ass, but she insisted a disguise was the way to go.”
“Yes, well, Izzy has an interesting mentality. She likes playing dress-up.”
“It’s a chick thing.” His dad laughed. He gave Arnie’s change of clothing a critical once-over and grew serious. “The all-black wardrobe makes this uncomfortably real.”
“Oh, it’s real, all right.”
Eyeing him, his dad muttered, “Your coloring is like a beacon in the night.”
Arnie held up a black beanie. It pulled down to mask his face. “Standard-issue,” he drawled. “Dottie wants to brand a beanie and sell it on the NIGHTWIND website.”
“But there isn’t a NIGHTWIND website or anything else. You guys take flying under the radar seriously.”
He snickered. “Universal truth—the higher and more public your profile, the less effective you are. Also, and not for nothing”—he chuckled—“exclusivity comes with dollar signs. I don’t care about the money, and nobody else does either, but making ‘fuck-you bucks’ sure is sweet.”
His dad made a comically disappointed face. “So what you’re saying is, there’s no website or branded beanie, but y’all make bank?”
“It’s embarrassing how much we make playing a modern version of cops and robbers. Especially when someone with a real fucking job like a teacher or the guy freezing his balls off at the corner newsstand on a frigid winter day—things we can’t be without—struggle to make ends meet.”
He’d never been prouder of being Ned Wanamaker’s son than he was when his dad quietly admitted, “The farm is a business. I draw a salary—a salary I do not need to live, so I donate it directly to a scholarship fund for kids at the university in the environmental sciences program.”
Of course he did. His father was a stand-up guy. The man’s social conscience and generosity didn’t come as a surprise.
He turned the serious moment into something lighthearted with a sly wink. “Did you tell your lady friend about the gray hair ponytail?”
“Are you joking?” His dad snorted and offered an aggrieved smirk. “I took a dozen selfies. She’s probably still laughing her ass off.”
“Um, Dad? Did you, uh, tell her about Summer? And the baby?”
“One hundred.”
“What did she say?” Ordinarily, Arnie wouldn’t care what someone he didn’t know thought, but Dr. Tanya Welcher was important to his father. Period.
His father grew serious. “Starting as I aim to proceed,” he crisply replied. “Learned my lesson.”
“Meaning?”
“Honesty is the only way, son. Try to remember that when you’re on your knees begging Summer to listen.”
“Okay.”
“Tanya doesn’t know you, so her blunt honesty might smart a little, but she asked if you were man enough to step up and take responsibility.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Arnie snarled, affronted by the suggestion he was a dick.
“Don’t jump down my throat. Nowadays, the question needs asking. You know damn well that being a baby daddy isn’t the same as fatherhood.”
It didn’t matter if his father had a point. He wasn’t just some guy who got a girl pregnant and grimaced mentally, knowing his affront was likely nothing compared to what Summer must have endured while giving birth without his support.
“I hope you set her straight.” With his mouth writing checks the situation wasn’t prepared to cash, he boldly announced how he saw the future. “Once we take Giselle to the cleaners, I intend to claim what’s mine. Getting Summer in front of a minister is priority one.”
“Good luck.” His father’s laughter was far too amused for Arnie’s liking.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“I’ve met your lady, remember? You may have seduced a girl, but I met a strong and confident woman. Don’t be so sure she’s going to fall at your feet once you reveal yourself.”
“I didn’t seduce anyone. Shit. Dad. It was mutual, and well, fuck! I don’t want to discuss this with you.”
Ned Wanamaker’s unique ability to see inside Arnie’s head offered his father a glimpse of the whole picture.
“Oh, dear god. Wait. Wait.” Shrewd eyes bored into Arnie’s skull. “Are you freakin’ serious?” His father’s tone was borderline angry.
“Uh…”
“Jesus H. Christ, son. A virgin. For real?”
“Oh, god,” Arnie moaned. “Stop.”
He felt about a foot tall when his father crossed his arms and glared at him. “The poor girl.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” he blurted out. “Don’t you think I’m kicking myself for not stalking her like a crazy man after she slipped through my fingers? I should have run her to ground from day one instead of whining like a pussy about respecting her rights.”
His father’s glare did
not soften one bit.
“So, shoot me because I tried to do the honorable thing, okay?”
“Son, I don’t need to know the particulars, but I’m relatively sure if NIGHTWIND wanted to take a look at the president’s taxes, it would happen. Finding Summer would have been child’s play had you unleashed the power of everything at your disposal.”
“Yes, you’re correct. NIGHTWIND’s capabilities are far-reaching, and at times, scary and over the line, but you know what? I’m not NIGHTWIND. This wasn’t business. Summer wasn’t an assignment. If I couldn’t do it on my own, well, what I’m trying to say is this—if I needed an entire security agency to manage my romantic life, what does that say about me? Huh?”
“It says no man is an island. It says that’s what friends are for. It says you aren’t alone. Does it also say you aren’t a superhero after all? Why, yes. Yes, it does. And is there a problem with admitting you’re human like everyone else? I think not. I get what you were trying to do, but my god, Arnie. Pride goeth before a fall, okay?”
He grumbled, “I’m a cocky shit. Like father, like son. But this wasn’t arrogance. I truly believed if I couldn’t figure it out on my own, I didn’t deserve her. And as for the fall, I had no fucking idea how steep the drop would be.”
He watched his old man stiffen as a menacing vibe rolled off him. “Well, the descent stops now. I’m here for whatever it takes to bring you two back together. Let’s finish this and move on.”
They bumped fists.
“We’re all set. Stan is setting up a perch out back with a view of next door. If anything moves in the yard, we’ll know. I want you to keep a close eye on the front of the house. Note everything. Cars, walkers, sounds. We’ll take turns—all of us—so no one gets stale. This thing is going down. Tonight. Be ready.”
“I’m worried about Stan.”
Arnie didn’t require clarification. He knew what his dad meant. “There comes a time in every man’s life when those who care most have to trust he knows what he’s doing. This won’t be pretty, but he made his choice. After the alcohol loosened its grip and he could think straight, Stan chose. He chose knowing what it meant to take the other side—maybe it’s why he drank—because of misplaced loyalty to a mother who used him as a pawn. Maybe for him to have emotional closure, he needs to see her go down. Her reign is over. The evil queen shall be destroyed, thereby breaking the curse she placed on this family over three decades ago. I think it’s what Stan needs.”
Finding Summer (Nightwind Book 3) Page 56
