Spiders in a Dark Web

by Emily Senecal

  “You’d put your life on hold for me like that? Go tearing across the state or country without knowing what’s ahead?”

  Peter leaned down and kissed me once, very decisively.

  “We never know what’s ahead, honey. And I can’t think of any better way to spend my time than with you. If you ever want to call this off, I’ll respect that. But until then I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to pretend I’m a hero, or a saint—I’m not. I’m as… as flawed and scarred and screwed up as the next person. Maybe more than some. I just know that I want you.”

  “Wow,” I said, hugging him tightly.

  “Too much?”

  “No, it’s just exactly how I feel about you.”

  He looked at his watch without letting me go.

  “I have three hours until I have to be at the bar.”

  “Come on,” I said, pulling away and heading quickly back toward the truck.

  ■ ■ ■

  Osiris stayed with me for the afternoon when Peter left for work. We walked the two miles back to the beach, his favorite place, now crowded with day-trippers and families. I relaxed or wandered on the sand, he chased gulls and waves and other dogs, startling then delighting small children as they discovered him to be a large, damp, furry playmate.

  I watched him dreamily, my mind drifting between memories of that morning in the camper, to the strangely easy exchange of our difficult stories, to the choices that lay before us.

  Before me, it seemed, because while Peter was willing to discuss the pros and cons of each option at length, giving his opinions of the positives and negatives, he wanted it to be my decision.

  I knew I didn’t want to go back to the gray treadmill of life in Los Angeles. Objectively, I could see that there were benefits to living in the greater LA area—arts and culture and weather and style. But none of them appealed to me a hundredth as much as what the greater Bay Area could offer. This was my home—if not Half Moon Bay, then somewhere else up here. It was expensive as hell, but I was starting out with a prize beyond anything I’d ever earned or received: Uncle Joe’s property.

  Legal tangles aside, it was mine. He had no family to contest his bequest to my father, and I was my father’s sole beneficiary. I’d been too stunned and wounded by my dad’s death to fully appreciate what these two men had given me, but now I understood that together they had handed me an opportunity to move back to where I really wanted to be, whether I lived on the land or sold it.

  That removed returning to LA as an option. Of course I’d need to go back at some point to wind up my month-to-month lease and empty the place, but it didn’t need to happen right now. I knew I wasn’t going back to live there. I could contact my supervisor and officially quit, with the same family emergency excuse I’d used for my absence. I didn’t think they’d care much—I’d been a temp-to-hire from an agency a year ago, one of two dozen low-paid processors cycling through endless amounts of data, another insignificant cog in a corporate wheel.

  For the first time, I let myself feel relieved—more than relieved, overjoyed—that this empty, unhappy, interminable period in my life had come to an end. I’d been vaguely regretting the loss of it; regretting the choices I’d made, regretting the earthquake that had shaken me loose. But not anymore.

  I was here—free and more content than I remembered being in a long, long time. I had options. I had problems, too: Marianne, the danger I might still be in, unknown questions to answer.

  But I also had Peter.

  The memory of his mouth on my body, his body joined with mine, the feeling of him inside me and around me—smelling him, tasting him, his hands roaming and pushing and stroking my tingling skin… it distracted me from all other thoughts for several long, aching minutes. First times have an awkwardness to them, and ours was no exception in some ways. It was fast, fueled by a kind of desperate fervor, and that helped—because the second time was slow. Slow, and utterly sensual. All awkwardness had been dealt with, everything deep and private had been touched and mingled. The second time we could explore, tease, pause to kiss and speak and gasp with pleasure.

  Just remembering the second time had my skin feeling overheated, a delicious prickling just where delicious prickles are most appreciated. I breathed into the sensation, feeling a mixture of gratitude and electrified anticipation…

  A loud woof from Osiris, standing nearby over his latest sodden wood trophy, brought my attention sharply back to the present. I got up and threw the stick for him, walking and thinking about the two options left to me.

  Stay here and wait it out—at least until I couldn’t put off dealing with LA any longer—and then return here to wait some more. Spend time with Peter, drift and do nothing and hope that Marianne was all right and the problem would be solved somewhere else, far away, incomprehensible and detached from me. Whatever the danger was, it hadn’t found me yet, and maybe it never would. Peter had unloaded the gun and taken it and the bullets with him, wrapped in old rags from the shed, and was going to throw it off the deepest nearby pier before he went to work, so that problem should already be solved. For the rest, Marianne had gotten herself into this mess, gotten me into it, and had told me in no uncertain terms that she would handle getting us out of it.

  There were plenty of pros to this choice. Everything about it was tempting, the landscape and the freedom and the chance to simply drift, with Peter the cherry on top. I’d be able to help, or give any support I could, when Hal came back or the DEA acted, whichever came first. Peter was sure that something very unpleasant would go down, it was just a matter of time, and I believed that he knew what he was talking about.

  It was easy to reject his other suggestion as impossible, absurd—reckless, as he’d said. We didn’t even know what kind of information we’d be asking for, much less who would know the answers. We had exactly one lead, and I for one had never tried to investigate anything more complicated than Googling someone I was meeting for a first date, just to make sure they weren’t sex offenders or serial killers or known members of their friendly neighborhood KKK.

  Peter was fairly confident that we could at least find out something more about the commune, since it was unusual enough to have attracted attention in the neighborhood and they weren’t exactly hush-hush about it. As I recalled, they’d actually had a social media account—which I stopped following minutes after I started, it was so disturbing in its fanatic hatred of authority, with distinct undercurrents of bigotry and anti-feminism, as those sorts of things so often feature.

  But even if we did find the warehouse and learn more about the people involved, there was no telling that it had any connection to the situation Marianne was involved in now. Peter freely admitted as much, saying that the likelihood of coming up with absolutely nothing to show for the effort was dismally high.

  Taking all of this into account, the decision should have been simple. Stay here. Stay put, stay safe, wait and see. Enjoy my time with Peter. Get a new phone and a new job and live my life in peace.

  I just couldn’t seem to decide that.

  For whatever reason, maybe the same impulse that had prompted Peter to suggest the scheme in the first place, I found I couldn’t let go of it. Maybe it would mean a fruitless, frustrating trip. Maybe we’d find out nothing, or only just enough to make me even more worried about my cousin. Maybe we’d stir up more trouble than it was worth. Maybe Peter wouldn’t even be able to leave the state. I had no very clear idea of what we could accomplish in a best-case scenario. The one thing that drew me to the idea was both illogical and unlikely.

  The chance to take my power back.

  Not to wait and look over my shoulder for the next week, month, year. Years. Not to never hear from Marianne and always worry, always wonder. But to step out and actively seek answers, to rise up to meet the challenge, even if the effort failed.

  It was the very longest of long shots. It was the stupid choice to make. And it was what I wanted to do.

  Chapter 6

/>   Peter and I had arranged for me to bring Osiris down to the bar at five, before the Hideout got busy, so we could join him for the dinner run and eat together. He said he didn’t expect me to stay, since he’d be working most of the evening, but I told him I wanted to. What else was I going to do? I could have handled another long evening alone with mindless novels and red wine if Peter wasn’t in the picture, or if it wasn’t all so new, with every minute counting more than the last, but it was no use pretending that meeting him hadn’t dramatically shifted my priorities.

  “I’d rather be there than alone at the camper—even with my new best doggie friend,” I’d said.

  “We can hang out in the back office together. Or—you know what? I haven’t been serving much since the rumors started flying, but I’ll come out front if you’re there,” he said. “It’s not like it’s helped for Delia and me to stay out of sight. It just made everyone act more awkward when we did show up.”

  “No more hiding,” I’d agreed—hours before I’d consciously made my choice.

  No more hiding for either of us, not even at the ironically-named Hideout. As a team we could handle whatever came of stepping forward. Deputy Tom already knew we were together, or at least as together as walking to breakfast holding hands implied, and I didn’t think he was the type of person to keep that kind of news to himself, which meant that at least some locals wouldn’t be surprised to see me hanging around like a bar groupie. There might be stares and whispers, but what did it matter?

  I turned into the Hideout parking lot to find Peter waiting outside for me; he got in and directed me up the road to a burger joint which had an order waiting. Osiris was happy to see him, though less happy to give up shotgun and sit in the back. After that point had been settled with a few firm commands, Peter kissed me and told me to turn right exiting the parking lot.

  “I got you what Del always gets, a chicken burger—I have no idea if it’s good but she said to order it for you.”

  “That’s great, thanks. You told her about me?”

  He flashed me a rueful grin.

  “Kind of. She gets things out of me,” he admitted.

  “I’m not upset—I like that you told her. So… what did you tell her, exactly?”

  “She asked what was up with me, why did I look like I’d just landed alone on Mars and found it populated by horny female sex aliens, and—” he broke off, seeing me overcome with laughter. “That’s the kind of thing she says. It disarms you.”

  “I can see how it would. So you told her…”

  “That I’d met an incredible woman and she was coming to the bar tonight—doing the dinner run with me. She recommended the turkey burger and said she was looking forward to meeting you.”

  We reached the restaurant in five minutes. Peter jumped out, to Osiris’s dismay, returning quickly with two large paper bags full of greasy food, to Osiris’s delight. I drove back the way we’d come, a straight shot down Highway 1.

  “Delia doesn’t know you know all the sordid details,” Peter warned me as I parked in the gravel lot. “I think she’d be surprised that I’d tell someone I just met about what’s happening.”

  I turned off the engine and released my seat belt.

  “I won’t say anything.”

  “I know you won’t.” He waited a minute, looking at the front of the bar without moving. Osiris whined impatiently from the back seat, and Peter absently reached back to scratch his head. “I didn’t tell you everything.”

  “That’s OK,” I said after a pause.

  He turned back toward me.

  “No, it isn’t. I told you I wasn’t a saint. I got into some trouble in Tucson. A couple of DUIs and possession of a narcotic. Cocaine, actually,” he said, with tart resignation. “I… wasn’t in a great place after my divorce, so there were a few lost months. I’ve been clean for years—it was never an addiction. More like a distraction. But I wanted you to know.”

  His eyes met mine.

  “Divorce?” I inquired.

  To be honest, that was the most unexpected part of his confession. A good number of people I knew had meddled with cocaine, or had a DUI at some point or other. It wasn’t something to be proud of by any means, but it didn’t make you a villain. It also wasn’t my place to judge his past mistakes. His marital history, however, was something else entirely.

  “A long time ago. We were only married three years—not even three, but it hit me hard when we decided to split.” His gaze was as straight and open as ever, and in a flash I knew his pain—the loss and strangeness and disappointment he’d felt during that time. I couldn’t find the words to express my empathy, or the fact that hearing this changed nothing for me, so I kissed him instead. From the enthusiastic response, I felt confident that he appreciated what I was trying to express.

  We might have continued indefinitely if not for Osiris, whining even more loudly behind us, and the cooling burgers on Peter’s lap.

  “Come on,” he said reluctantly, getting out of the car and leading the way into building, the dog bounding between us.

  “Hey,” a woman greeted us from beside the bar as we walked in. There were a few scattered customers, nothing like the crowds from last night. We walked over to join her, and I saw that she was an older, shorter, feminine copy of Peter with dark, chin-length hair and eyes puffy with tiredness and worry. “You must be Lola.”

  “This is my sister, Delia,” Peter said.

  “Hi, Delia,” I said, smiling tentatively. “Thanks for suggesting the chicken burger.”

  “It’s the best thing on the menu,” Delia said, giving me the once-over I’d expected. “All these guys just go for the beef, they don’t even bother to try it.”

  “Beef is beef,” Peter protested, putting one of the bags of food on the bar. “There’s no substitute for the original.”

  “Amen, brother,” the lanky bartender, Lyle, agreed, rustling around in the bag. He glanced briefly at me as he pulled out his sandwich.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Peter introduced us, and Lyle stepped over to shake my hand.

  “What are you doing here, you silly mutt?” Lyle asked Osiris, who’d been sniffing the leg of one of the customers seated at the bar.

  “Causing trouble, as usual,” the guy said, laughing and patting the dog’s big head.

  “Let’s take him out back,” Peter suggested to me, indicating the other bag in his hand and whistling to the dog. With a quick half-smile at Delia, I followed him through the “Employees Only” door into a hallway, which had cramped but tidy storerooms and offices on either side and opened into the back yard. He led the way into one of the offices, barely bigger than the camper, which held a desk, desk chair and very ugly and battered brown love seat that, if the dog hair was any indication, was Osiris’s personal property. On the desk were stacks of papers, a lamp, a printer and a laptop.

  “This is where the magic happens?” I asked, sitting on the arm of the sofa, since the usual occupant had taken up the rest of it.

  “When it’s not happening elsewhere,” he said equably, but flashed me a look that brought the color and heat to my cheeks. “Down, Oss. Here, eat your dinner.” He scooped dog food from a bag in the corner into a big bowl on the floor, and Osiris fell to ravenously.

  We sat side by side on the couch munching our burgers, eating with slightly more restraint and much less noise. Again, the silence was companionable, though it was just as companionable when I broke it to ask what time the bar usually got busy on Saturdays, and Peter answered. He added that Fridays were their best night, with Saturdays a close second, filling up with a mix of locals and visitors.

  Only once we’d finished and collected our wrappings—Delia had been right that the chicken was delicious, as were the fries—did I bring up our earlier discussions about the immediate future.

  “I thought a lot today about what I want to do next,” I told him. He pulled me halfway onto his lap and nuzzled my neck, which was as gratifying as it was distracti
ng.

  “Mmm?” he inquired.

  “I’m still not convinced it’s the right choice… and I know it’s the—it’s the dumbest…” I continued determinedly, growing somewhat breathless, “but I think we should to go to Newark.”

  After a final kiss on my collarbone, Peter pulled back far enough to look at me.

  “I had a feeling you’d opt for that,” he said, smiling slightly.

  “You did? Mind sharing why?”

  “For the same reason I suggested it. So we can at least try to be free of whatever’s hanging over you—and maybe find out what it is, and do whatever we can to help your cousin.”

  “You’re a very smart man, do you know that?”

  “I know enough to know I’m not that smart. But for whatever reason,” his lips moved intriguingly down toward the point of the V-neck I was wearing, “my intuition is excellent when it comes to you.”

  “I… can’t… can’t argue,” I said, my breath coming in undignified pants that would have done Osiris proud.

  Peter sat up straight and pulled me closer, so that we were practically nose-to-nose.

  “You really want to go?”

  I nodded.

  “I really do. In spite of my better judgment.”

  “Then we’ll go tomorrow. We can catch a red-eye to Newark from SFO tomorrow night—I already checked and there are tickets available. We’re closed on Mondays, and they can run the place without me for a few days next week. Lyle can take Oss, or Delia will.”

  “So efficient,” I said admiringly, leaning over to start some nuzzling of my own. His neck smelled fantastic—not like cologne or aftershave, exactly, just the smell of clean skin that had filled my senses the previous night and morning.

  “I don’t think the DEA will have a problem with me going,” he continued, and I was glad to hear that his voice wasn’t completely steady. “I checked with my ex-wife, she said they’d probably want to have a warrant to stop me from flying—it would be different if we were leaving the country.”