True to his word, as soon as we hit the Albuquerque city limits, Donovan was on a mission to lose them. He took a right down a big street named Juan Tabo Boulevard and, when they followed, he made a quick left onto Buena Ventura Road. The bikers didn’t miss a beat. Wherever we turned, there they were, too.
Donovan shot me a resolute look. “Keep your seatbelt on” was all he said as he cut a labyrinthine streak through the heart of the sprawling downtown.
The Sandia Mountains cradled the arid city in its majestic purple haze, but it was hard to think about the desert beauty for long with a pair of dangerous strangers just a few car lengths behind us.
After slipping through a series of deeply yellow stoplights—with the bikers always managing to follow—we finally caught a break.
Donovan crossed the railroad tracks at Lomas Boulevard, red lights blinking and bells ringing in warning, just seconds before the gates came down. We were on one side of the tracks, the bikers back on the other—with a freight train between us. And we were free…at least for the time being.
“Wow.” I breathed out some of the shallow air I’d been barely holding in my lungs. “That was some really great driving. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, Aurora.” A thin smile played at his lips as he glanced first at me and, then, down the street. He drove a convoluted route though several more city blocks in silence before saying, “Remember in St. Louis how you wanted to stay at one of those no-tell motel motor lodges with a garage?”
I nodded.
“You’re gonna get your wish tonight.”
THE MOTOR lodge Donovan chose for us was called Sandstone Suites. The sixteen-unit complex was near the intersection of both I-40, which was east-west, and I-25, which was north-south. We could, according to him, drive in any cardinal direction at a moment’s notice.
“But, if I have my way,” Donovan said, as he closed the unit’s garage door behind the Trans Am, “we won’t be driving anywhere for a few days.”
I knew he was serious about going incognito for awhile in, perhaps, the same way our brothers had done when they were laying low in St. Louis. It wasn’t just what Donovan said that gave away his intentions, though, it was what he did.
Making me hide out at a corner grocery store while he checked into the motel.
Claiming for the first time on the trip to be a single guy traveling alone.
Telling me he’d listed his name on the registry as “Joseph Walters” (which was really his grandfather’s name).
Paying by cash, of course, not by check.
And quickly stocking up on medicinal supplies as well as nonperishable, ready-to-eat food items at the store before hightailing it back to Unit #12.
Oh, and then there was the 32-ounze bottle of golden whiskey that he just bought and plunked on the table next to the TV.
“In an hour, I’m not gonna be able to drive anyway,” he informed me, as he poured himself a generous serving of the alcohol in one of the motel’s Dixie water cups. “You can have some, too, if you want. I won’t tell your parents.” He put only about an inch of liquor into a second paper cup and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”
“Here’s to Jeremy and Gideon.” He raised his cup in a toast and waited for me to do the same before he downed every last drop of the amber liquid in his.
I took a tiny, dutiful sip, but it was still enough to leave me coughing. “St-trong,” I managed.
He chuckled and poured himself another triple shot. “That’s the idea.”
I eventually finished mine, but I didn’t ask for a refill.
It was early afternoon when Donovan had his first few whiskeys—with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a chaser—but these were far from his last drinks. He was walking that razor-thin line between wanting to numb the pain and, also, knowing he had to be alert enough to handle whatever situation might arise next. But danger was unpredictable. There could be a lot of hours to kill between boredom and terror.
By the time night fell, Donovan had found a seemingly happy balance between the pain-free wave of drunkenness he sought and the overly mindful sobriety he needed.
“Hey, hey! Look what’s on,” he hooted, pointing at the television.
ABC. “The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries.” Great.
“Very funny,” I said.
“We should watch.” He turned up the volume and sprawled himself across the center of the bed. But when I studied him, laying there in his current state of willful inebriation, he scowled at me. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. There’s room for you here, too.” He patted the right side of the mattress with a small grin and added, “Nancy.”
On any other day or at any other time, I would have made a face and shoved him in the chest, probably calling him a few names in return.
But this wasn’t that day or that time.
In fact, as I sat down beside him, I found myself increasingly worried about his wellbeing.
By implicit agreement, we hadn’t talked about either of our brothers, what we’d heard from Sebastian or the fact that we’d nearly been killed that morning… We both knew we were going to talk about it all—no doubt at great length—but Donovan had a dash of Scarlett O’Hara’s attitude about him ever since we’d walked into our no-tell motel and locked the door behind us. He’d made it clear that we’d deal with all of that tomorrow.
So, instead, we snacked, we drank and we watched Nancy Drew try to solve some kind of a case involving a “whispering” statue.
“The statue’s not really whispering,” Donovan confided, having turned the show into something of a personal drinking game. He said “bottom’s up” and slugged his whiskey every time any of the characters mentioned Nancy’s boyfriend Ned.
I wasn’t watching the episode half as closely as I was watching Donovan, but even I could tell everything was not what it appeared to be in the world of Miss Drew and her friends. Bad people got away with their crimes, at least for a while. Good people were sometimes in the wrong place at the wrong time. The sleuths trying to figure out the caper often thought they’d drawn the correct conclusion, only to be proven wrong in the next scene. It was starting to feel a little too much like real life.
“Bad timing,” I murmured, as Nancy and the gang discovered another victim, moments too late, but I was thinking of Gideon and Jeremy filming that tribute clip up in Crescent Cove. I wasn’t sure of the chain of events that originally led to them meeting Ben Rainwater at some party in St. Cloud, but the tragedies that followed surely could’ve been prevented if our brothers hadn’t visited Wisconsin that weekend.
“It’s a bitch,” Donovan agreed, his eyes never leaving the screen, but I suspected he knew I wasn’t talking about the show.
While he finished out Nancy Drew, then lost himself in a repeat episode of “The Six-Million Dollar Man” and, later, the Sunday Night Movie, I mentally reviewed what we’d learned that day about the summer of ’76.
I pulled out the notes I’d decoded back in Joplin from Treak’s shorthand pages, and I studied them as if seeing the words for the first time:
Hal Chaney - Americana Trucking - Cres Cove, Chic, MO, TX, NM
Vincent Leto - Chic
Rick Brice - Chic
Sebastian James - Chic
Timothy Wick - Americana Trucking, Jop, Amar
Billy Neville - Albuq
Julian Carello - Chic
Of course, the name “Sebastian James” now jumped out at me like a Fourth of July sparkler burning in my hand. I hadn’t guessed there would be any relationship between him and Officer William James at home—it was such a common last name—and I hadn’t thought I’d meet anybody named Sebastian in Amarillo. Treak had listed the man in question as being from Chicago…which had been true two years ago.
But, in reading through all of this again, I realized Sebastian might have given away even more information than those details. He told us “his buddy Rick” had been involved in Jeremy’s death. And I
remembered from one of the newspaper articles that “Rick Brice” had been found dead at the scene. So Sebastian’s friend must have been the same Rick as the guy on Treak’s list—a man also from Chicago—which was a significant tie between them.
In the papers Gideon had given to Andy to give to me, I clearly remembered reading those two police reports. Rick Brice was a former Chicago cop who was wanted in connection with some unsolved labor disputes. A couple of union leaders had died a few years ago, and he was most likely the reason.
I checked the papers just to confirm that recollection and also dug up the report on Timothy Wick, the Americana Trucking exec who’d ordered the shipment of the explosives. That report had shown a direct connection between Wick, Chicago crime boss Vincent Leto and “Leto’s right-hand man,” a.k.a. Rick Brice.
Sebastian told us he’d started out in Chicago and had gotten a “promotion” to a higher police position in Texas as a result of putting a cap on the truck explosion and the news stories that followed. To get a kickback like that, someone with a lot of clout—like, perhaps, a major mobster—would need to pull a few strings with his “associates” in that town. Sebastian’s buddy Rick was high up in the mob, but on the run from the law. Bet it helped to have someone still involved with the police force as a friend…
Somehow Rick and Sebastian both ended up in Amarillo, trailing Hal and our brothers and killing both the trucker and Jeremy. And, while I couldn’t prove it yet, I got the distinct sense that one of these two dirty bastards was the “cop” responsible for gunning down Treak and Ben, too.
When Gideon and Jeremy were cornered on that deserted road, my brother did something to distract and hurt Rick and Sebastian, but it was too late to save Jeremy. Gideon got his friend’s body away from there, though, despite being shot himself. Where he went after that and whom he turned to for help with his injuries, I had no idea.
But, while there were still plenty of missing pieces—like how Rick Brice ended up dead in Amarillo, who Billy Neville and Julian Carello were or why the Chicago mob was transporting pipe bombs halfway across the country—the picture was becoming clearer.
Donovan, not surprisingly, didn’t want to chitchat about any of these revelations just then. Thanks to the assistance of his golden liquor and a steely determination not to think too much, he held himself together through a full night of TV and even a few hours of sleep. But, sometime around two a.m., I woke to the sounds of him retching violently in the bathroom.
I sprang out of bed and sprinted to the door that separated us. “Donovan, are you okay? Can I get you anything?”
“I’m fine. Just sick. Go back to bed.”
“How about some water?”
“There’s water in here.” He ran the faucet as proof. “Sorry to keep you up…I just—” I could hear more coughing and heaving. “I just need to be alone right now, okay? I’m…I’m gonna take a shower.”
“Okay,” I said. “But, really, if you need anyth—”
“I don’t. Thanks. I’m fine.”
Yeah, right. Because I always thought people were fine when they were gagging their guts out in a motel bathroom in the middle of the night.
I stepped away from the door but didn’t get back into bed. Instead, I sat down in a chair close to the bathroom and just listened.
Donovan had polished off half a bottle of whiskey that afternoon and evening, which would make almost anyone sick. I wasn’t sure, though, if the alcohol was also responsible for the sobs I heard, despite how well they were being muffled by the running water.
After fifteen minutes, the shower stopped and I jumped into bed, closing my eyes and pretending to sleep. Donovan still didn’t come out for a while, though. He spent a long time brushing his teeth, gargling with mouthwash and thoroughly drying off. When finally he did emerge, he was wearing only his thin pair of shorts—discarded was the t-shirt from before. He slipped back into bed without putting another one on.
I let him get comfortable and waited to see if he’d fall asleep. He didn’t.
With a sigh, I abandoned my charade of sleeping myself and turned toward him. “How are you feeling now?”
He’d been staring up at the ceiling, but he glanced over at me for several seconds—his eyes moist, his jaw tight—and shook his head.
Despite his recent shower and his lack of a t-shirt, he was sweating hard. All over. The perspiration dotted his forehead and cheekbones. It glistened on his neck and bare chest. He’d taken off the bandages I’d put on his flesh wound earlier in the day, so dark-red scabs slashed across his otherwise smooth shoulder, and beads of wetness were surrounding them, too.
“It’s not the liquor that’s the problem, is it?” I asked.
He shook his head again. “No.” It came out as a rasp.
“I’m—I’m so sorry about Jeremy.”
“Yeah, me, too. I’d hoped so much…but I knew he wouldn’t still be alive and not…not let me know somehow.”
I heard another sound, one originating deep in his throat, like an injured mammal fighting against his own agony. Donovan flipped away from me and curled inward upon himself.
That sense of helplessness I despised came upon me again, like a suffocating veil in the darkness. God, there was almost nothing I hated more than that feeling. I had to try to do something. To be of some comfort to him. But all I could see was his back and his lacerated shoulder.
I took a breath and slid toward his side of the mattress. Kept sliding until my chest was against his spine. Then, careful to avoid the site of his wound, I snaked my arm around him, spooning him. Cradling him even tighter when he entwined his fingers with mine and when the silent sobs wracked his body.
Eventually, the sobs stopped and his breathing slowed, though he didn’t let go of my hand, and I didn’t pull it away. I, too, drifted into sleep for a couple of hours. Wasn’t sure when, exactly, his position changed. Just that the next thing I remembered was waking up with my head against his bare chest and his arms embracing me.
I snuggled closer and whispered, “It’ll all be okay.”
He murmured something back, kissed my forehead lightly and said, “Thanks.”
I nodded, pressed my lips against the vee of his neck—which was very warm but no longer damp—and kissed him lightly in return. It was a simple exchange. Not so terribly different from the night I’d been crying in Tulsa and he’d tried to console me.
But then I looked up at his face. And, in the same moment, he looked down at mine. Somehow, without either of us thinking about it, our lips met in the middle.
It was just a soft kiss—at least at first. An act borne more out of a need for comfort and gratitude than out of passion.
But then it changed.
Then it was no longer this innocent, nonverbal sign of friendship and support. There was suddenly something much more powerful connecting our bodies to one another. A force that had always existed between us. I’d known it was there for years, but it had lain mostly dormant.
To be honest, the strength of this feeling scared the hell out of me—I’d begun to lose myself in his kiss—and I knew if it continued for even ten seconds longer, Donovan would never be able to forgive himself in the morning.
So, I pulled away.
Donovan instantly stopped touching me. “Oh, Jesus…Aurora, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “Really.” I gave his arm a reassuring pat and scooched back to my side of the bed.
He slid himself as far to the other side as he could go and collapsed against his pillow—staring at the ceiling again as if watching a fiery meteor shower in the night sky. The sweat started to return to his brow. He groaned and covered his eyes with his palm. “I’m not…myself. I’m not—”
“I know. Don’t worry about it.” I faked a yawn. “We need more sleep.” I twisted away from him and tried to still every one of my limbs. I only allowed myself to take quiet, shallow breaths until I knew he was asleep again.
But no matter how mo
tionless my body may have appeared on the outside, my insides were careening wildly, threatening to give me and my deepest secrets away.
Donovan and I had just kissed.
I knew better than anyone that it didn’t mean anything to him—especially since alcohol had been involved. But just the fact that it had happened, and that I’d felt what I felt while it was happening, was enough to throw me into a disorienting whirl.
It wasn’t just about my attraction to him. Those feelings had always been there. No, it was also about what I told my dad before we’d left on the trip. My lie to my own father. My insistence that there was nothing between Donovan and me other than a desire to find out what had happened to our brothers.
I guess I’d never expected that Donovan would let down his guard long enough for anything to actually occur between us. And, now that he had, I was confused.
Were my feelings for him real…or just a product of being a romance-hungry American teen growing up in a lustful generation? And what were his feelings toward me? What would he think of me the next day when he remembered my behavior from tonight? He might only be twenty-three, but he was already such a man of honor. Too much of one to ever take advantage of me, even a couple of years ago, before any tragedies had taken place, and back when I was practically throwing myself at him in the middle of a wild party.
Yet, here he was tonight—sad, emotionally distraught and under the influence—and when he moved to kiss me, I didn’t immediately stop him.
I kissed him back. And I enjoyed it.
Sure, eventually I pulled away, but I hadn’t wanted to, even knowing how he’d later consider this all to be his fault. That he’d try to take responsibility for it, like he did for everything.
I’d been acting smug and superior toward him ever since I first showed him the journal, just because I was more intuitive, but, in so many ways, he’d proven to be the more mature person of the two of us. It wasn’t because he was older but, rather, because he lived by an unshakable code of conduct. Firm guiding principles. Ethics that wouldn’t waver, even in the face of tragedy and injustice.
The Road to You Page 25
