10. One of Them

TEN

ONE OF THEM

T o say the ride to the Oasis was tense was an understatement.

And all the tension was coming from me.

There was so much of it, Eric couldn’t miss it.

And he didn’t.

I knew this when he grabbed my hand, squeezed it tight and held it to his thigh.

I wasn’t a virgin (far from it), and I wasn’t inexperienced with relationships.

I’d even had two long-term ones.

One lasted a year, then the guy moved to Michigan for a job. He’d asked me to come. But as a native Phoenician, no way in hell I was headed to cold and snow six months of the year, humidity the other six.

So that told us both how I felt about him down deep.

The other one was the biggie.

Braydon.

We were together for nearly four years and lived together for over two.

Then one day, he came home, and he’d been acting weird for a while, so I was sure he was going to propose.

And I was going to say yes.

He didn’t.

He sat me down and shared that my having no ambition, other than to be a kickass mixologist, troubled him. He then confessed he’d been waiting for me to change my mind and exhibit some kind of loftier life goal. But he’d learned that wasn’t going to happen, and even though he felt deeply for me, he couldn’t waste any more time with a woman like me.

I’d been destroyed.

I’d loved him. Saw a future with him. Wanted to have his kids. And I didn’t see his betrayal to who I was—the woman he’d spent four years with—coming.

No, I thought he was going to produce a ring.

In other words, he’d totally blindsided me.

It would take a long time for me to understand he was a snob. That his issue with me had no teeth.

I made okay money. I was very good at what I did. I loved my job and the people I worked with (and for) and brought home zero stress, which was as good as a trunk full of gold. Especially in the life I’d lived with my parents (a life Braydon knew all about, he’d even met them), and then after Jeff started having symptoms, and got diagnosed, where every day was stress, until I struck out on my own and finally found SC.

But I’d still been heartbroken at Braydon’s personality betrayal.

Now, I could see how huge a bullet I’d dodged.

Braydon could hold hands, sure.

But if he was in this situation, he’d be urging me to calm down or telling me I was overreacting.

Wait.

No.

He wouldn’t rush to shave and dress so I didn’t drive when I was fretting and my mind was messed up.

He’d say, “Let me know how it goes,” and turn on the NFL pregame.

On these thoughts, I tightened my fingers around Eric’s and said, “Thank you for driving me.”

His response was to lift my hand and touch his lips to my fingers.

Totally dodged a bullet.

He swung into the Oasis lot and parked in my spot.

We hit the courtyard to see my fellow tenants Patsy, Shanti, Bill and Zach putting up holiday decorations.

Shanti, by the by, was a new addition to The Surf Club. When Tito started sniffing around that he needed extra help during the final shift, Raye recruited her. She worked the evenings. She was around the age of my posse, and I’d been meaning to connect with her to get to know her better, because, from what I already knew, she was the shit.

“Heya, Jess!” Patsy called.

Shanti had straightened from organizing fake evergreen boughs, and she was staring at Eric.

Zach was organizing red bows at the outdoor table while his partner, Bill, was in a corner of the courtyard arranging massive Christmas baubles that came up to his waist that were red and green plaid.

They’d also stopped doing what they were doing and were staring at Eric.

It was rude, but I didn’t stop to introduce them to Eric.

And it told you where my head was at that I also didn’t stop and ask where the hell they stored all that shit. We all had small storage units that came with our apartments. But no way in hell those baubles would fit in one, much less that humongous pile of boughs.

We were again holding hands, and I was tugging Eric toward the stairs to Luna’s place, when I called back, “Hey, guys.”

We made it to Luna’s door, and I only got one knock in, my hand raised to keep doing it, when the door was pulled open by Harlow.

“Oh my God!” she cried. “Get in here!”

She then tugged my free hand, and I was in there.

Since Eric was attached to me, he was in too.

“Oh, uh…hey there, Eric,” she greeted timidly.

“Hey, Harlow,” he replied.

Luna’s pad was a study of Urban Outfitters with CB2 and West Elm thrown in. She had much the same UO design aesthetic as Raye, but Raye’s coordinating stores were Anthropologie and Z Gallerie.

And now, shoved into her pad were Luna, Harlow, Raye, along with Cap, and oddly, Knox (Cap and Knox’s inclusion didn’t give me warm fuzzies), me and Eric.

It was a lot of people for not a lot of space.

More, there was Jacques, Luna’s French bulldog, who usually adored me.

But he was sitting on Cap’s lap when we arrived, and he jumped off and made a bee-line not to me, but to Eric.

I watched Eric pick him up, and I watched Eric scratch his ears as Jacques bathed Eric’s freshly shaved jaw with his tongue.

Now I was jealous of a dog.

“Sit down.” Luna took me out of my covetous thoughts by shoving me in a deco-inspired, russet velvet tufted swivel chair.

“She didn’t finish her coffee,” Eric murmured to Luna, but his gaze was shifting from Knox to Cap.

Oh yeah.

He didn’t have warm fuzzies either.

Though, a weak one fluttered in me that he noticed I didn’t finish my coffee.

“Got it,” Raye jumped up.

“You guys are freaking me out,” I informed them.

“We got confirmation on this intel too,” Cap told Eric.

“What intel?” Eric asked.

“Yeah, what intel?” I demanded.

“Hurry up with that coffee,” Luna ordered.

“Coming, coming,” Raye called from the kitchen.

“Just tell me!” I almost shouted.

Cap sat in Luna’s mod curve, yellow couch at the end closest to me. He angled his body my way and leaned his elbows into his knees.

With his posture, still no warm fuzzies.

“Okay, Jess, there’s some shit going down in a few of the homeless camps.”

Oh God.

Oh no.

“What kind of shit?”

“People going missing,” Cap said.

Oh God!

Oh no!

“I…” I didn’t even know what to ask.

“And they’re not going into shelters or other facilities. They’re just…disappearing,” Cap went on.

Raye shoved a mug of coffee at me. I took it and looked up at her.

“Trafficking again?” I asked.

She shook her head. “We don’t know.”

Cap kept at it. “As you know, the people in those camps aren’t big on sharing with outsiders.”

I nodded.

“Even so, they have a manner of taking care of their own.”

I nodded again.

“And if there was an issue, they’d share it.” There was a meaningful pause. “With one of their own.”

I had a feeling I knew where this was going.

“Jeff,” I whispered.

“No. A guy that goes by the street name Mountain,” Cap told me.

I was confused. “Who?”

“We’ve heard about this guy a lot,” Knox put in at this juncture. “People who don’t get scared of shit, they get petrified of this guy.”

“Is he like, big as a mountain or something?” I asked.

“We don’t know that either. None of our team has ever seen him. The stories about him make him out to be larger than life,” Knox said. “What we do know is that he doesn’t hesitate to take care of business, even if he has to get dirty doing it.”

“What kind of business?” I pushed.

“The kind of business where, he gets wind someone is trolling homeless camps and snatching humans for whatever reason, he rallies his crew, they patrol the camps and deal with these fuckers if they run across them,” Knox shared.

Oh, Jeff.

What are you doing?

“Your brother,” Cap brought my attention to him, “we believe, is a member of his crew.”

“Why do you believe that?” I asked in a small, terrified voice, even though I knew he was because the General told me.

“Because, we’ve just learned, they refer to themselves as Shadow Soldiers,” Cap said.

I closed my eyes and slouched in the chair.

I opened them when I felt a strong hand wrap around the back of my neck and saw Eric had seated his ass on the arm of my chair, therefore it was his hand there.

Jacques remembered my existence at this juncture and jumped into my lap.

Eric made to grab him, but I cuddled him to me because I needed some doggie love. Nothing in life was certain, but in that moment, my need for doggie love was.

I got a jaw bath, and, fortified, I looked to Cap.

“What else do these Shadow Soldiers do?” I asked.

“Clear dealers from doing their business around schools. After the shit you women dealt with a couple of months ago, they started offering presence on patches where sex workers do their business.” Cap took a big breath, which spoke volumes even before he laid it on me. “And we believe they go undercover in criminal organizations so they can anonymously pass information to the police.”

I lost Eric’s hand when I stood and snapped, “Oh my God!”

Jacques barked in solidarity.

“Your brother is young, fit,” Knox stated. “We think Mountain saw him sleeping rough, noted his potential, helped him get his shit together, and folded him into his operation.”

I put my coffee down on Luna’s coffee table and started pacing, taking Jacques along for the ride, something he enjoyed if his happy panting was anything to go by.

I looked among the women. “We need to find this Mountain guy.”

Eric was suddenly in my space.

Jacques made a lunge for him and Eric caught him easily, tucked him under his arm and spoke to me.

“Honey, look at me.”

I tipped my gaze from pup to him.

“I didn’t know Jeff was involved with Mountain. Now that I do, I gotta ask you to let us take this from here,” Eric requested.

Yep.

You guessed it.

Now even less warm fuzzies, and when there were none to begin with, the negative ratio of warm fuzzies was a sensation I never wanted to feel again.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because this guy is serious,” Eric answered. “And his crew is serious.”

He drew breath into his nose, and I braced.

“This is blood pact shit, Jessie,” he said carefully. “This is, you’re in it until you die. They get ink. They take oaths. It’s like being in a gang, or a motorcycle club. You aren’t inducted unless they know you’re one of them, and when you’re inducted, everything you used to be is gone, and all you are is one of them.”

I took this in, grabbed my mug, sat back down and sipped coffee.

Everyone stared at me.

I kept sipping coffee.

After about my fifth sip, I set the mug aside and dug my phone out of my bag.

I pulled up the number and hit go on Katelyn.

“Oh my God, I’m so glad you phoned,” Katelyn said by way of greeting.

“My brother joined a gang,” I replied dully.

“Wait. Did Jeff get hold of you?” she asked.

Confirmation.

“No. I’m friends with some PIs,” I told her.

“Oh,” was her only reply.

“Jeff isn’t answering his phone,” I noted.

“Jeff has a new phone,” she told me.

Out with the old, in with the new, I guessed.

“Can you give me that number?” I requested.

“I can’t, because I don’t know it. Only Joshua has it, and he won’t give it to me. He also didn’t lie to you yesterday, Jess. We don’t know where Jeff is. But we do know he’s doing okay. I mean, this group that he’s in, it’s not a gang. They’re good people. They look out for each other. They look out for him.”

“Is he undercover in some criminal organization?”

“What? No! Or, I don’t think so. Why would you ask that? Is that…is that what these people do?”

I didn’t answer her question.

I said, “Please reiterate to Joshua what I asked him yesterday, and that is, to contact Jeff and tell him I need to speak to him.”

“I’ve seen him, Jess, and I wouldn’t lie. You know me. I wouldn’t lie. And I honestly can say, whoever these people are, he’s the best he’s ever been with them. He seems bright. Clear-headed.”

“Of course he is. He has a purpose.”

“He does seem to have that,” Katelyn mumbled.

“Please, Kat, just ask Joshua to ask Jeff to call.”

“I will, Jess. But you’re worrying me. You don’t sound good.”

Because my schizophrenic brother is being seen to by street vigilantes! Of course I don’t sound good!

“I’m fine. Just still worried. I don’t know these people.”

“I’m overseeing his medications, if that helps. And they got him into some cognitive and behavior therapy. He does one or the other on alternating weeks.”

Fabulous.

Street vigilantes with therapeutic connections.

I wondered what kind of doctors enrolled in their plans.

“It really seems to be helping,” she continued.

“Right.”

“I don’t mean for you to take this wrong. I know you’re worried. I know it was on you for a long time to look after him. But he’s a grown man now, Jess. And he’s found a way to take care of himself. I can tell his confidence has boosted. I wish Joshua had told you all of this yesterday so you didn’t have to worry. But like I said, he’s the best I’ve ever seen him. And I think part of it is that he doesn’t have to depend on you, or anyone. Not anymore.”

“Kat, you’re a nurse. Having decent people around him doesn’t cure his psychosis. If it did, he’d have been cured long ago.”

“Jess, please know, I hear you. I understand you. And again, I beg you, don’t take this the wrong way. But helicoptering your adult younger brother doesn’t help manage it either.”

Yes, I one hundred percent checked in with my brother frequently.

Yes, I often pleaded with him to move in with me so I’d know he was safe, but more, he’d feel that.

Yes, when he had an episode, I stopped at nothing to find him under one of his two favorite overpasses or camped by the dumpster behind that Mexican restaurant where the owner had a soft heart and gave him stuff other people didn’t eat at closing time.

And clearly, Jeff thought I was over-mothering him.

So Jeff bitched to Joshua.

Joshua shared with Katelyn.

And now this.

“Right,” I said shortly. “Thanks for letting me know I don’t have to worry anymore. Time to plan my vacation to Euro Disney. I’ll be in touch.”

“Jess, don’t be like that.”

“Your brother was a running back for the Sun Devils and is finishing his residency,” I retorted. “My brother has a new family I haven’t met, a new phone number I don’t have, and he’s in contact with his bud, but he hasn’t bothered to get in touch with me to tell me everything is hunky-dory. Don’t tell me how to be.”

She gave me healthcare-professional speak. “I hear you and understand your issues.”

I knew she did.

I knew I was being a bitch.

But my brother was tight with some dude called Mountain and was a Shadow Soldier, maybe undercover with some bad guys, and stress was a trigger.

What happened when shit went south, and he started hearing voices?

What then?

Fuck!

“I’m sorry. I’m being a bitch,” I said on a sigh. “But I do want to talk to him.”

“I’ll push Joshua.”

“Great.”

“Try not to worry, Jess,” she urged.

“I will,” I lied, and it wasn’t a lie because I wouldn’t try. It was a lie because I knew it’d be impossible, so why try? “Take care.”

“I will.”

I hung up.

Eric (with Jacques still in his hold) immediately crouched in front of me.

“You gonna give us this?” he asked.

He meant, was I going to let the NI&S team find my brother?

Abso-fucking-lutely.

“Yes.”

His face changed.

And damn it all to hell.

Seeing that expression on it, determination and pride and tenderness and worry for me, all mixed up with his normal handsomeness, I fell in love with him on the spot.

We’d had several non-official dates, one official one, and I hadn’t even fucked him yet!

He pushed up from his crouch only enough to move in and press his lips hard to mine (Jacques swiped at both of our jaws at the same time and succeeded in a double puppy kiss).

He pulled back, locked eyes with me, and asked, “Is this day gonna end at your place or mine?”

Even if I knew this meant we weren’t spending the day together, the fact he was saying we’d end it together, well…

That was the best question I’d ever been asked.

He had a bigger TV.

And a bigger bed.

“Yours.”

“I’ll get you a remote and key.”

With that, he straightened, handed Jacques to Luna, looked to Knox and Cap and ordered, “Let’s roll.”

In the time it took for Cap to drop a kiss on Raye’s lips, they rolled.

The door closed on Knox not with a slam, but it was firm.

Men on a mission.

My chicks gathered around me.

“Are we really gonna let them have it?” Luna asked.

“Yes, and no,” I answered. “We asked the wrong question of Jinx. We need to know if she’s heard of this Mountain guy or the Shadow Soldiers.”

“Got it,” Luna said, getting up and moving away to grab her phone.

I looked between Harlow and Raye. “Either of you have memberships at Costco?”

Both of them shook their heads.

Well then.

“We have to hit Fry’s. Then we have to go talk to Homer, and if we can, the General.”

“I’m gonna dash back to my pad and put on tennies,” Raye murmured.

She jumped up, gave me a stand-up (her), sit-down (me) hug, and she was out the door.

I needed to change clothes too.

But Harlow took her seat, which was where Cap had been sitting.

“You spent the night with Eric?” she asked.

I nodded. “We fell asleep watching movies. Or I did. We were going to spend the day together. But not now.”

“So I take it, it was a good date.”

“I fear his ex might be a narcissistic stalker. But overall, it was fantastic.”

Her brows hit her hairline. “Narcissistic stalker?”

“It’s a long story. I don’t have it in me right now to explain. But Eric has it in hand, so whatever she does, it’ll be okay.”

“Okay. So, um, did you… do it ?”

Do it .

Only Harlow could make me smile right now.

“No. But he’s an unbelievably good kisser.”

She sat back. “Wow. You guys act like you did it.”

That was a strange thing to say.

“What does acting like we did it entail?” I asked, curious.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve had, like, one official date, and you’re super comfortable with each other. Like you know each other, you know, as in know each other . You know?”

I kinda did.

“Well, I’ve slept with him twice. We just didn’t have sex either time,” I noted.

“Maybe that’s it,” she said. “I mean, Raye and Cap were like you and Eric before Raye and Cap did it. But they slept together too, before they went all the way. So that makes sense.”

Only Harlow would be twenty-nine years old and refer to fucking as “going all the way.”

God, I loved my chick.

“They’ll find him or we’ll find him, Jessie,” she said softly. “I’m not going to tell you not to worry. But I think you’ll see him soon.”

Oh, I’d see him soon.

The NI&S team solved a nineteen-year-old mystery of a kidnapped girl in about two weeks.

After Jeff being missing six months, I’d see my brother soon.

The question now was, how was I going to keep my cool when I did?

Because Katelyn was right.

Jeff was a grown-ass man, and his life decisions should be his own.

But he was also my baby brother.

And what it seemed he was doing scared the living daylights out of me.