Give and Take (Ties That Bind Book 1)

by Claire Cullen

  “It’s only temporary. Until things start to settle down.”

  “Yeah.” Matt gestured to the second chair in the room. “Join me for some stimulating conversation.”

  Sam sat, ignoring his friend’s sarcasm. “How’s it going so far?”

  “It’s… I think they’re going easy on me, letting me settle in. They did start a medication this morning, but it takes weeks to kick in so all I’ll get is a healthy dose of side-effects to start off. I’m meeting with that psychologist later.”

  “I liked him,” Sam replied.

  “Yeah? I don’t know. He seemed a little ‘tell me about your childhood’. I had a picture-perfect childhood. All it took was ten seconds and a small blast radius to destroy me.”

  “Except it wasn’t you that was destroyed.” The words were out before Sam could stop them. Matt’s eyes met his.

  “Then why does it feel like it was?”

  Sam shrugged. “I guess that’s why you’re here. Because, yeah, maybe the explosion killed Jon, physically, but he wasn’t the only casualty.”

  “That’s why I like you, Sam. Even though I know there’s a part of you thinking what most people think, ‘It’s all in your head. Pull yourself together. So many people have it worse than you.’, I know you’re able to look deeper. You don’t see suicide and think ‘selfish’. You don’t see PTSD and think ‘weak’.”

  The whole conversation was deeper and darker than Sam would have liked. But maybe it was something Matt needed to say. Something he needed to work out.

  “You’re not weak. Or selfish. Or any other name people who don’t have a clue will try to label you with. You saw your closest friend, the man you loved, die in front of your eyes. Literally torn apart. The fact you’ve held it together this long tells me you’re one of the strongest people I know.”

  Matt smiled wryly at that. “I feel far from strong right now.”

  “So let other people be strong for you. We owe you that.”

  Matt nodded and neatly changed the subject.

  “What are you planning to do about Drew’s little problem?”

  “It’s not so little,” he replied. “We’re going to get on the right side of it.”

  “Which is?”

  “Get what we need to take that bastard down before he can hurt Drew or anyone else.”

  “And Drew agrees?”

  “He’s scared of getting other people hurt and wants to go it alone. But it’s not a fair fight. Russell has money and influence, enough for Drew to disappear and never see the light of day again.”

  “Way to be dramatic,” Matt said with a laugh, sobering when he caught the expression on Sam’s face. “You’re serious?”

  “I looked into one of the incidents Drew told me about. The owner of a small company that was leasing software a lot of bigger companies wanted to buy outright. This guy didn’t want to sell and was being put under a lot of pressure to. In the middle of all this, he takes a vacation, goes scuba diving, and dies after making an error with his equipment. He’s been diving since he was twelve, Matt. Re-certified regularly, taught one-on-one, took groups out. It was ruled an accident, misadventure contributed to by stress.”

  “Wow. So Drew is telling the truth.”

  “Seems like it. I won’t know everything for certain until I see the evidence he collected, if it exists.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “We know a few people living off the grid. It wouldn’t be so hard to spirit Drew away.”

  “Are you planning on clueing Logan in about this at any point?”

  “Why? He’s too far away to be of help and it would only worry and distract him. He has enemies closer to base that need his attention, and he needs to be in the right frame of mind. Why do you think I agreed to take in Drew in the first place?”

  “Because you’re a saint. Have you ever said no to a request for help?”

  “Plenty of times.”

  “Name one.”

  Sam threw out a few examples, which Matt quickly tore to shreds. “Okay, no sane person would have said yes to that first one. The second one they didn’t ask you, they asked me, and I turned them down. The third one was our CO telling them ‘hell no’. You’d have smiled and said ‘of course’.”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  They were interrupted by the intercom announcing the end of visiting hours.

  “When do you and Drew leave?” Matt asked.

  “First thing tomorrow morning. I’ll have my cell on me the whole time if you need anything.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’m here, in the most harm-free place in the city.”

  Sam didn’t believe that. He was sure plenty of harm could be done in a place like this.

  “Besides, my sister and my mom are here,” Matt continued.

  “Okay. I need you to promise me two things.”

  “Fine, name them.”

  “You won’t leave before the doctors discharge you. And you’ll give this whole thing a chance. They’re experts for a reason, Matt.”

  “As loathe as I am to agree to your terms, it’s hard to argue with your logic. Alright. No leaving against medical advice and no covering my ears and singing ‘la-la-la’ until they let me out.”

  “That’s all I ask,” Sam said, getting to his feet. He crossed the room as Matt stood, and pulled him into an embrace.

  “Take care of yourself, and Drew,” Matt said. “Watch your backs and don’t underestimate this Russell guy.”

  “I don’t intend to.” Sam clapped Matt on the shoulder one last time before making his way to the exit.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It only took an hour of poring over maps to work out where they were going and how they would get there.

  “When you said, ‘middle of nowhere’ you weren’t joking,” Sam said when he first saw their destination. “How the hell does someone like your friend survive in a place like that. Surely there’s no internet?”

  “Actually,” Drew corrected, “he chose it because there’s a nearby commercial warehouse housing servers, so all the infrastructure that he needs is in place.”

  “And he needs all this stuff because…” Sam had an idea but he needed Drew to say it. The other man was even more reticent about Diego than he was about Russell and that put Sam on edge. He wasn’t walking into this guy’s territory blind. If he was a survivalist or something like it, they could be walking into anything from the guy holding a loaded weapon to the place being booby-trapped with explosives.

  “How did you two meet?” he tried instead when Drew stayed silent.

  “Gaming and chat rooms when I was a teenager. We both had an interest in programming and security networks. I guess you could say our interests were divergent.”

  “Meaning you were interested in internet security and he was into what… hacking?”

  “I was hoping to leave the h-word out of it. But yeah, I guess you might call it that. He’s mostly legitimate now though.”

  “Do I even want to know what that means?”

  “Probably not.”

  “And your own interests, did they start with… less legal adventures?”

  Drew blushed. “I dabbled but never anything serious. I was more interested in the how of things than causing chaos. I used to watch for people boasting about hacks on the forums and try to find out how they got in and how you’d change the firewalls and systems to stop them. That’s how I landed my job with Russell.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “There was a guy on one of the private forums I was on, bragging about how he’d hacked their corporate systems through their retail interface and was blackmailing them. Either they paid him a lot of money or he’d start wiping their files. I figured out how he’d done it and worked out a way to kick him out of their system.”

  “Then what, counter-offered?”

  Drew made a face. “That would also be blackmail. And I’m pretty sure it’s a felony. So no, I offered my services for free, gave th
em all my information so they could save their systems. They set up a meeting with me. Then Russell asked to meet with me alone. I thought it was a restaurant in a hotel, it turned out it was his private penthouse suite. He was offering me a job in one breath and telling me how sexy I looked in another.”

  “He does know how to turn on the charm,” Sam agreed, causing Drew to stare at him in confusion. “I watched a video interview he did. The interviewer was falling over herself by the end trying to please him. I can imagine having his full attention on you was a lot to handle. Not to mention the mixed messages; personal, business.”

  “I was hoping they’d maybe offer me an entry-level position in their IT section and I could do night classes and work my way up. Instead, Russell offered me a consulting contract, at rates you’d normally have to be a decade in and highly qualified to attract. I guess the fact that he’d come on to me so strongly kind of got lost in the surrealness of the whole thing. What they were paying meant I could go to college part-time and start my degree. Plus save enough that I could study full-time or put down a deposit on an apartment.”

  “But you didn’t take that money with you?”

  “The first time, I went to the bank and withdrew the maximum daily amount, which was a few thousand. Enough to lie low and set myself up somewhere cheap for a while. One of Russell’s stipulations, when I returned, was that he have some control over my finances. He had to co-sign for amounts larger than a thousand.”

  “And he still has access to your accounts?”

  “No, his name wasn’t on them, he can’t get to the money. It just meant I couldn’t withdraw enough to leave the country and live elsewhere. The plane ticket alone… Besides, his security were keeping a close eye on me. I was afraid to even go to the bank without telling him why.”

  “So you have money, you just can’t access it.”

  “Not without Russell’s signature. He also took the keys to my car. I had to ask him if I wanted to go anywhere, tell him where and when. I’m pretty sure he put some kind of tracker on it. I found this thing under the back of the car, soldered on so I couldn’t remove it.”

  Even just the fact that Drew was worried Russell was tracking him pissed Sam off. He should have been enjoying life, working and studying, and not afraid of a controlling asshole who liked to wield power just a little too much.

  “So no car, no money—”

  “And he replaced my phone with one that recorded messages and calls. Told me not to interfere with it or he’d know. I left it on one of the buses I’d bought a ticket for, going nowhere near where I was going.”

  The extent of Russell’s actions was both worrying and reassuring. He’d thought he had Drew under his thumb and cared enough to want to keep him around. He also believed Drew didn’t have any actual evidence of his wrongdoing. As soon as that changed, so did the game, and Drew’s life would be in real danger. Sam intended on him being somewhere very safe before that happened.

  “Okay,” he said, turning his attention back to the map. “We’re looking at a two-day drive, factoring in a short stopover tomorrow night for us to get some sleep. We’ll take the most common route out of the city, so anyone following us won’t get an inkling of where we’re going. We’ll do a few short loops, to check if we’re being followed, then we’ll take this route here.” He traced it with his finger. “Stop somewhere around this place, Bolton Falls, for the night, then we should reach Diego’s place by late afternoon. We might have to crash in the car that night if we can’t stay there. Or take turns driving and sleeping. Preferably, I don’t want you driving. If we’re pulled over and they run your driving license, well, all it would take is for Russell to have a few well-placed friends for that to lead trouble right to us.”

  Drew shuddered at that. “That’s part of why I didn’t want to report the assault. Russell might have reported me missing or something like that. If they searched the system for my name and it came up, there’d be questions.”

  “He still found you, anyway. Any idea how he managed that?”

  With a shrug, Drew said simply, “Resources. One person alone probably couldn’t have waded through the mess of transport I used to get here. But half a dozen could. And I guess there’s a chance he found out I’d communicated with Logan. The military base keeps logs of incoming and outgoing calls. I called Logan, Logan called you. Not a hard trail to follow, if you get access in the first place.”

  “They don’t give out that information to just anybody.”

  “Russell’s not just anybody. He has lots of friends and knows plenty of people he can put pressure on when he wants things his way.”

  “All the more reason we need to make a move before he does. First thing tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay. How exactly am I getting out of the apartment unseen with Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee watching?” They had nicknamed the two men who were taking turns watching the place. Sam had toyed with calling the local precinct and reporting them but decided against it until after Drew and he were gone.

  “Vex is giving us a hand with that,” Sam assured him. “It’s all ready to go, trust me.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Vex wasn’t what Drew was expecting. He was easily six foot six, his presence making the apartment feel small. At a guess, he was in his early fifties, with his head shaved and a body that spoke of working out, a discipline he clearly hadn’t lost since his discharge.

  “So you’re the troublemaker,” he said, looking Drew up and down.

  “It’s not exactly trouble of his own making,” Sam said.

  “That was always my ex-wife’s excuse. You’d better watch this one,” he said to Sam.

  Before Drew could get worried, Vex broke into a grin. “Sam told you the plan?”

  “He said you were going to get me out of the building without being seen.”

  “Yep. I work at a gym about twenty minutes’ drive from here. I leave the same time every day. Only difference is, you’ll be in the car with me today.”

  “It’s not like I can sneak you out on my bike,” Sam added. “Vex will get you out and we’ll meet at a gas station ten minutes from here. I’ll leave first, take a longer route in case anyone’s following.”

  It sounded straightforward and certainly not the cloak-and-dagger antics he’d been expecting. Sam had packed a backpack with supplies, including the food Drew had prepared.

  Vex walked out with him, promising to be back for Drew within half an hour. Sam had said not to leave the apartment looking like they wouldn’t be back. Drew took him at his word, cranking open the bathroom door and leaving a wet towel hanging over the side of the shower. He rinsed the breakfast things but left them sitting on the sink to drain instead of tidying them away. He left food out on the countertop, still wrapped, so it wouldn’t attract rodents or insects.

  He returned to his room and unpacked his backpack, putting his clothes in the dresser and his toiletries on top before stuffing the backpack in the bottom of his wardrobe. He didn’t make the bed, leaving the bedclothes crumpled. A stark contrast to Sam’s tidiness.

  That done, he stood at the door and surveyed his work. The room looked lived-in, like he’d made himself at home and had no plans to leave anytime soon.

  Vex knocked on the door promptly at six forty-five. Drew followed him down the stairs to the parking garage and across to his car.

  “I figure the easiest thing is for you to lie down in the backseat and I’ll cover you with this.” He held up a gray blanket. “You stay quiet and still until I tell you otherwise. Okay?”

  “Okay. I appreciate you doing this.”

  “Sam’s a good sort. Hard to say no to. I hope you’re not leading him down a rabbit hole.” Vex held his gaze, challenging him.

  “I’ve been down that rabbit hole, I have no intention of going back or dragging Sam down with me. He thinks he can help me get out. But if it looks like I’m putting him in harm’s way, I won’t hold him to that.”

  Vex nodded slowly.
<
br />   “Good. Sam has the sort of generosity a person could take advantage of. He might not see it that way, but his friends would.”

  Warning delivered, Vex opened the car door. Drew climbed in, stretching out along the backseat. The blanket landed across him a moment later and he pulled it over his head. The blanket was heavy and warm. He could feel Vex tugging it this way and that before the door shut, and another opened a moment later as Vex got into the driver’s seat.

  “Alright, just stay nice and still back there, Drew. I’ll have you out of here asap.”

  It was already growing warm under the blanket but as the car rolled up towards the exit, a wave of cold swept over him and he held himself still to hide a shiver. The car leveled out, then turned, his body rocking with the motion of the vehicle.

  They were out and onto the street, he guessed, though no hint of daylight passed through the woven blanket. Another turn and he breathed a sigh of relief. No one and nothing had stopped them. Vex didn’t speak, but he did turn the radio on, music filtering through the car. Drew let himself relax, the motion of the car soothing, each twist and turn assuring him that he was making his escape.

  The heat under the blanket quickly grew uncomfortable. He was thankful it was early morning, and that they weren’t traveling far. The car slowed to a stop.

  “You can come out now,” Vex said, and with a sigh of relief, Drew pulled back the blanket and sat up, blinking at the sudden brightness.

  A knock on the window startled him and he turned his head to see Sam.

  “Out you get,” Vex said. “I have to get to work.”

  “Thanks for your help,” he replied, pushing open the door and stepping out to greet Sam. Sam exchanged a few words of thanks with Vex through the open window before the other man drove off.

  “Ready?” he asked, turning back to Drew.

  “Ready,” Drew said, following Sam to his bike. Sam pulled a spare helmet from his backpack and Drew put it on.

  “Have you been on a bike before?”

  “Once, as a kid.”