23. We’ll Take Him

TWENTY-THREE

WE’LL TAKE HIM

D awn was kissing the sky, and I’d switched out the night vision binoculars to regular ones.

The camp was waking up.

It was almost time to leave.

And my man was out .

I looked to him slouched in the chair, his feet up on the sill, ankles crossed, his arms crossed over his wide chest, his chin dipped into his neck, like he was the sheriff of a Wild West town, out on the front porch of the jail, catching some shut-eye between gunfights.

I was relieved to see he finally looked cute.

I thought this so I wouldn’t do something girlie, like count my lucky starts that this guy was mine.

Since he’d fallen asleep, and I wanted him to keep doing it, I’d taken the last hour of watch.

I could report it still wasn’t fun, specifically because it was super chilly that night. Eric had checked the forecast and gave me a heads up, that was why I was wearing a black knit cap with two huge pom poms positioned precisely so they would look like a certain mouse. When Eric saw me in it, he laughed so hard, I thought he’d injure himself. But I wasn’t insulted, considering I was proud of my love of that mouse, not to mention, still laughing, he started making out with me, which felt really nice.

This shit was also unfun because it continued to be mega boring .

The camp was as quiet that night as it had been the night before and the one before that (I guessed, I wasn’t awake to know, I just knew nothing happened outside my brother being taken in for questioning, but that didn’t happen in the actual camp).

So Eric and I gabbed about the kind of cat I wanted (I didn’t care, just as long as we vibed), the supplies I’d need and where I might put a litter box (I was going to buy one of those furniture-looking ones that hid it). Also my desire to make the perfect burger (I suggested mix-ins, like mustard, garlic and Worcestershire, Eric approved of this plan), my ideas on the signature cocktail for the Oasis Holiday Extravaganza (I was vacillating between a take on a French 75 with pomegranate juice, or some kind of mule that went heavy on the ginger, Eric suggested a seasonal switch up of a cosmo, which led me to learn he was a vodka guy, though he didn’t turn away from gin), and what kind of safe house Clarice would offer (Eric chuckled at my fur rugs and Waterford idea, but he also admitted I probably wasn’t wrong).

Of course, this led me to quizzing him on why an attorney would have a safe house at all.

“She likely doesn’t. My guess, it’s her summer place to get away from the heat,” he’d replied.

That made sense, so that was undoubtedly it.

And that was the end of our discussion about it.

Then he fell asleep, and I returned the gift he gave to me the last couple of nights by letting him do it.

I heard a car door slam, which surprised me, since for hours I’d heard nothing but Eric’s low, beautiful voice with the occasional whistle of wind through the warehouse, so I lifted my binoculars to have a look just as another door slammed.

I trained them at the road beside the massive lot where the camp sat and saw a handsome, middle-aged Black guy waiting for a pretty, same-aged Black lady to take his outstretched hand.

I felt Eric come up beside me (the car doors must have woken him), so I lowered my binoculars and looked up at him.

“Shit,” he murmured, he dropped his binocs and looked down at me. “That’s gotta be Johnson’s parents.”

“Johnson?”

“Chris Johnson. The General.”

Shit .

I turned to the camp as Eric ordered, “Pack the shit, babe, we gotta try to head them off.”

I looked back at him to see he’d already folded up a camp chair and nabbed the tripod with camera.

“I’ll hoof it to the car,” he said. “Gather the rest of this, I’ll swing by and pick you up.”

He didn’t wait for my response. He took off.

Although I agreed we needed to intervene ASAFP (who knew how the General would respond to his parents suddenly showing?), and I was happy not to run back to the SUV laden with stuff, “the rest of this” included a couple of pairs of binoculars and a chair.

I was also mildly embarrassed that he knew I’d slow him down.

But only mildly.

I didn’t dally in folding the chair, dropping the strap on the night vision binocs around my neck alongside the regular ones, and getting down the stairs.

I hid in a shadow in the doorway until I saw the Denali roll up. This took far less time than I expected, which told me Eric hadn’t jogged back to the truck, he’d run. And he’d done it carrying a camp chair, tripod and long-range camera.

I headed out and wasted no time opening the back door, shoving the camp chair in and pulling the binocs from around my neck before I dropped them on the floor. Then I hauled myself up into the front passenger seat.

I turned to him while doing my belt as he circled out, and I expected him at least to be sweating.

He was not.

I mean, really.

Did Zeus have jet black hair?

We pulled up behind the General’s parents’ shiny, white Ram, parked and got out.

Homer had exited his tent and was standing, staring into the camp.

He turned to us when we approached.

I alternately smiled at him and scanned the camp looking for the Johnsons.

They were not to be seen, and this meant they’d wended their way deep into the camp.

I hated the idea that the General went on patrol, and why he did, but I hoped he was out of the camp now.

When we stopped by him, I greeted, “Hey, Homer.”

“Are those General Grant’s parents?” he asked.

I nodded. “Where did they go?”

He turned toward the camp. “They went in. But I don’t think he’s here. And I don’t know if he wants to see them.”

Yeah. As mentioned, I didn’t know that either. And that was the worry.

I tipped my head back to look at Eric. “Were the boys planning an extraction today?”

He shook his head. “Don’t know. Do know, when they figured out who he was, they reached out to his parents to see where they were at. But we didn’t invite them to the party.”

From what I could tell through the binoculars, where they were at was out of their minds worried about their son.

Which meant they learned where their son was and came looking for him.

Understandable.

But not optimal.

“I called Cap and Mace on the way to you,” Eric told me. “They’re en route.”

I switched back to Homer. “Do you think you can find him? Bring him back? We’ll handle his parents.”

“It’s time to go get him anyway,” Homer said. “I’ll grab some guys.”

He took off, and Eric and I followed him into the camp.

Once our paths diverged from Homer’s, I said to Eric, “I really want to talk to Scott and Louise about seeing if we can help Homer.”

This made him stop, stopping me as well by catching my hand.

I looked up at him again.

“I get he’s touched your heart too,” he said carefully. “But you need to manage your expectations, sweetheart.”

“I know,” I whispered. “But it’s worth a try, right?”

He squeezed my hand, said nothing, and set us again to moving farther into the camp.

We found the Johnsons deep in the bowels. Mr. Johnson was staring off into the distance, a haunted look on his face. Mrs. Johnson was staring at someone’s grocery cart filled with junk, openly struggling with tears.

Mr. Johnson turned to us first, then he wrapped his arm around his wife to hold her close while we approached.

“Mr. Johnson, I’m Eric Turner. I work with Nightingale Investigation and Security,” he said, holding out a hand for Johnson to take.

Johnson let his wife go and shook. “The firm that found our son.”

They disengaged as Eric nodded and looked to Chris’s mom. “Mrs. Johnson.”

“Is he here? We can’t find him,” she said.

“He goes on…” I searched for a word that wouldn’t trigger them, “walkabout at night sometimes. Some of the community are looking for him. Can we escort you back to your truck?”

“I’d like to see my son,” Mrs. Johnson said.

“Let me rewind. I’m Jess Wylde,” I introduced, glancing between them. “I was looking for my brother, which is how I became acquainted with the camp, and met Chris.” I gestured to Eric. “This is my…”

Oh shit, was I going to say it out loud?

Oh yes.

I was.

“…boyfriend. He met Chris too, and one of their team is former Army, so they got the balls rolling to see if we could get Chris some help.”

“We know. They told us they found him a placement,” Mr. Johnson said. “But he doesn’t have insurance. We stepped up, our families kicked in, but we couldn’t find a facility that could keep him?—”

“Nathan,” Mrs. Johnson whispered as Mr. Johnson cut himself short. “Chris escaped,” she put in quietly. There was pride tinged with sadness when she finished, “He’s good at that.”

The man cleared his throat and continued, “The VA should take care of this. They put a lot of effort in training them to kill. They order them who to kill. Then they come home, and they put no effort at all into helping them deal with killing people. It doesn’t matter if those people were a threat. It doesn’t matter if they’d done horrible things and hurt people. That obviously doesn’t make my son feel okay about taking lives.”

“No argument, they should,” Eric replied. “But in the now, we have a relationship with a couple who work at a place that offers assistance to folks like your son. They dove into this situation. We’ve spoken to the administration of the facility they identified. There are funds available, which we’ve secured. His place is assured, the fees are covered, we just need to strategize how we’re going to extract him from the camp and get him to help without causing any more damage.”

I wondered if the “funds available” were from the miraculous slush fund NI&S seemed to have to pay Mary’s hotel bills, as well as Chris’s mental health facility bills.

If it was, then it was hemorrhaging money.

“And we don’t know if seeing you will help or hinder that process,” I said cautiously.

I didn’t go cautiously enough. Mrs. Johnson’s face got hard, as any mother’s would at the very thought that her presence wouldn’t be a balm to her child.

Her husband put his arm around her again and tucked her close, murmuring, “Shay.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That came out bluntly. I know how hard it is not to know where someone you love is and how they’re doing.”

“Did you find your brother?” Mr. Johnson asked.

I nodded and shot him a rueful smile. “He didn’t want me to, but I did. It wasn’t fun, but we worked it out. He got help. He’s a lot better now.”

At least he was in one important way.

Mr. Johnson looked beyond us, so we turned around and watched Cap and Raye walking toward us.

“These are the Johnsons,” Eric introduced when they arrived. And to the Johnsons, Eric said, “This is Julien Jackson and Rachel Armstrong.”

“Julien,” Mr. Johnson stuck out a hand. “It was you I talked to on the phone.”

“Yes, sir,” Cap said (Julien, obviously, was his real name), taking Mr. Johnson’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

They broke and he offered his hand to Mrs. Johnson.

She took it, they squeezed, and he stepped back and looked at Eric.

“Where’s Chris?” he asked.

“They’re finding him. We’re uncertain he should see his folks, though,” Eric told him.

Raye looked at me for guidance.

I shrugged and asked, “Scott and Louise?” as my suggestion of who would know.

“I called them on the way. They’re coming. But I’ll call again and see what they think,” she replied and stepped away, pulling out her phone.

“Scott and Louise?” Mr. Johnson asked.

“The people I mentioned,” Eric explained. “They run a non-profit that deals in affordable housing and the unhoused.”

“Oh,” Mr. Johnson mumbled.

“Mace is coming too, bringing Roam,” Cap told Eric. “Scott said the best way to do this, is you and me explaining things to Chris, then escorting him to the hospital.”

“Explaining things?” Eric asked.

Cap nodded. “In a way he understands.”

“A mission?” Eric suggested.

“Or R and R?” Cap replied.

“What are they talking about?” Mrs. Johnson inquired.

I had to think quickly about how much I’d want to know if Chris was my blood.

Since I’d want to know it all, I shared, “Cap, or Julien, was the one who was in the Army. Eric was in the FBI. Your son senses that they’ve served in their ways, and as such, he views them as his superiors and accepts orders from them.”

“Makes sense,” Mr. Johnson said on a nod.

Mrs. Johnson turned her face away because it made no sense to her seeing as her son wasn’t in the military anymore.

God, this was the worst .

“Maybe we can go and get some coffee somewhere while Jess and the men figure things out,” Raye proposed.

Mrs. Johnson definitely didn’t like that proposition.

Mr. Johnson dipped his head to hers and said, “Let’s let them see how Chris is, darlin’.”

Her lip trembled before she got a hold on it, and she told her husband, “Nathan, I want to see my son.”

“I want to see him too, baby. But if there’s even the slightest chance we’re going to make this harder on our boy, harder for them to get him to people who can help him, I want no part in it.”

Mrs. Johnson warred with this.

It took a while.

We all waited that while silently.

Finally, she turned to Raye and nodded.

I was careful not to make it noticeable when I let out a relieved breath.

Raye shot me a look then stepped to the side with a small smile on her face, an offer for them to precede her.

The Johnsons moved, but Mrs. Johnson stopped them when they came abreast of Cap.

“You need to know, we’re proud of him. We’re proud he served his country and did it bravely.”

“Of course,” Cap murmured.

“But we’re also mad as hell,” Mrs. Johnson went on.

“I’m the same for you,” Cap agreed.

“Thank you for going out of your way to—” She stopped, swallowed, then forged ahead. “You didn’t have to.”

“Yes, I did. You know I did. You know if Chris was me, and I was him, Chris would too,” Cap returned.

Oh hell.

That did it.

Tears sprung into her eyes.

Which meant I had to fight the same happening to mine.

Mr. Johnson huddled her close and moved her to Raye.

Raye led them through the camp.

Now Cap was staring into the distance.

I got near and bumped him with my shoulder, so he looked down at me.

“All right?” I asked.

He shook it off, put his arm around my shoulders, shook me too, then he let me go and turned his attention to Eric.

I decided to take that as he was. Or he was as good as he was going to be.

“We need to wait to get input from Scott and Louise, but I’m leaning toward mission. He seems stuck in that mode. I think he’d be wary of any mention of R and R,” Cap remarked.

“Agreed,” Eric said.

I tried to mentally calculate time.

Cap and Raye were the closest to the camp. Both Mace and Roam as well as Scott and Louise were at least twenty minutes more away, and making that worse, it was rush hour.

We headed back to Homer’s tent to wait.

In the meantime, I got a text from Raye that said Scott and Louise told her they were close, and they’d talk to us when they got here.

Mace and Roam showed first. Scott and Louise showed about ten minutes later. And Scott confirmed there was no easy way to do this, and it was anyone’s guess how he’d react. He simply cautioned that if Chris balked, they needed to back off immediately and get a professional opinion on how to reapproach.

The sun was up, the heat was coming on the day, my hat was shoved into my jacket pocket, which was shoved into the Denali, and we’d adjusted the stakeout equipment to the back. All of this by the time Homer and his boys returned with Chris, which was maybe about forty-five minutes after Scott and Louise showed.

Chris looked tired, like he hadn’t slept all night, and perhaps that was what made what happened next go so easily.

Eric and Cap told Chris they were there to transport Chris to a new location. Chris got right into the Denali with them, and they drove away.

Homer took Mace, Roam, Scott, Louise and me to Chris’s stuff, and I called Raye to let her know what was happening so she could tell the Johnsons.

Tex came out, and without looking into any of our eyes, silently helped as we packed Chris’s stuff (it was meagre) and hauled it to the sidewalk outside the camp to see what Mr. and Mrs. Johnson wanted to do with it.

Tex slunk back into the camp, still not having fully looked at any of us.

I was impressed by his commitment to his cover.

When the Johnsons returned, they told us they wanted to take Chris’s things with them.

So we loaded them in their truck. Mr. Johnson handed out handshakes. Mrs. Johnson gave Raye and me hugs, the men handshakes. They took off. Roam and Mace angled into their SUV. Louise gave us hugs and “Proud of you girls,” whispered in our ears.

But before I got in beside Raye in Cap’s kickass Porsche Panamera, I looked to Homer standing outside his tent.

He dipped his chin, lifted a hand to give me a salute, and then he disappeared behind the flaps.

That was his version of “Thank you for seeing to one of our own.”

Raye set that baby to purring and drove us to the Oasis.

When we were going through the security gate, Martha was coming out.

She took one look at us and said, “Hells bells. You both look like you’ve been hit by a truck.”

“We just took part in helping a man with severe PTSD be taken from a homeless camp to an inpatient psych facility,” I stated.

Martha blinked before she said, “It’s not even ten o’clock.”

“We didn’t get to pick the timing,” Raye said.

Martha took us in.

She then declared, “I don’t do hot chocolate. But I sure as shit do shots of whisky.”

I appreciated whisky, even if it wasn’t a fave.

Regardless, I asked, “Is that an offer?”

“The best one I got,” Martha replied.

“Sounds pretty good to me,” Raye said.

“Me too,” I put in.

Whatever she was heading off to do, she abandoned it by marching toward the courtyard, ordering, “Follow me, girls.”

Raye took my hand.

I held hers tight.

And we followed Martha.

* * *

“You don’t have to do this now.”

“No, I don’t. But I think I need to do it. Though, you don’t have to do it with me. I can come back.”

“You’re not picking a pet without my input.”

We were sitting outside Halo Animal Rescue.

I won’t get into what Eric told me happened at the psych facility. We could just say that getting Chris there was a whole helluva lot easier than getting Chris admitted. In fact, since he refused, they had to call the Johnsons back so they could admit him as members of his family.

The bad news for Mr. and Mrs. Johnson was that they still hadn’t been allowed to see him and were told the staff needed a few days to evaluate and get him settled before he could have visitors.

The good news for Mr. and Mrs. Johnson was that they knew where their son was, it was safe, clean and there were people there who could help him.

So I decided to take that morning as a win.

“Let’s do it,” Eric said.

I nodded, we both got out, we went into the shelter, and we explained to the staff what we were looking for.

They asked us to complete a questionnaire. We did, they assessed it, and then they took us to the cats.

It was then I realized why Eric was hesitant about me doing this.

Regardless that they were double-decker and gave the fur babies room to move, just looking at the cages of unwanted animals that found themselves in their own homeless camp was so crushing in that moment, I took a step back.

Eric slid an arm around my waist and bent to me.

“We’ll come back next weekend,” he said quickly.

The staff member was studying me quizzically.

“No,” I said. “Fuck no,” I went on. “We’re doing this now.” I caught the staff member’s gaze. “Which one has been here the longest?”

Her eyes lit, she beckoned with a hand and took us to a cage where a black cat lay, curled into himself. He had lovely thick fur and a chunky body.

I hadn’t even seen his face, and it was love at first sight.

He didn’t lift his head out of his fur, but he opened his big yellow eyes to look at me.

The staff member opened the cage.

The cat finally lifted his head.

Carefully, I offered my hand for him to sniff.

He sniffed it, then he stood and would have walked right out of the cage and fallen to the floor, if I wasn’t there to catch him in my arms.

He curled up there and blinked.

“What’s his name?” Eric asked the staff member.

“Homer,” she replied, and I went still. “But we call him the General because, when he’s in the community room, since he’s been here the longest, he keeps the other cats in line.”

My gaze shot to Eric, but he was staring at the lady in stunned surprise.

“You’re shitting me,” he said to her.

“No. Why?” she asked.

Eric didn’t answer.

I did.

“We’ll take him.”

* * *

I snapped a photo of El Generalissimo (I renamed him, for obvious reasons, and I was calling him Henny for short), who was lying on my chest, kitty nose turned in the air, eyes closed, purring.

I then sent it to Jeff with the text, Meet El Generalissimo, Henny for short. My first child .

It didn’t take long before Jeff returned, YOU GOT A CAT WHILE I’M STUCK IN A SAFE HOUSE!?

Yes, it was in shouty caps.

Told you we’d both always wanted a pet.

The world keeps turning, my brother . I replied.

He looks bored. When I get home, he’s coming over to Uncle Jeff’s to play .

He’s ten. Eric bought him 5,921 cat toys. He just sits there and follows them with his eyes as we jiggle them around. Then when I sit down, he crawls in my lap. He’s a lover not a player.

We’ll see .

Yes, we would.

El Generalissimo yawned, I clicked a quick shot and sent it to Jeff.

My baby has excellent teeth , I captioned.

He looks like he’s roaring .

I checked.

It was true.

I also decided to print that picture and frame it, since it was awesome.

He wasn’t. He was yawning , I told Jeff.

That’s because you’re boring .

I chuckled.

I also sent a middle finger emoji to my brother.

Eric came from cooking in the kitchen (we were having chicken tacos, the maiden voyage of my Crock-Pot) to stretch out on the other angle of my couch, his head close to my head, reaching to scratch between Henny’s ears.

“Not sure all cats adapt to a place as quickly as this guy has,” he murmured.

Henny had to sit with me in the car while Eric did an emergency pass through a PetSmart to stock us up on supplies. When we got him home, there had been some sniffing. We showed him his box when we got it set up. His food when we got that set up.

After that, he just jumped up on the couch, curled up on one of my throws, and fell asleep.

That said, he’d been at the rescue for eighteen months, so, I figured he knew home when he smelled it.

“Jeff’s jealous,” I told him.

“He can get his own cat.”

“He’s plotting on stealing mine.”

“Then maybe you should tell him I own a gun.”

That made me laugh.

Henny opened his eyes to share the vibrations were disturbing his rest.

I stopped laughing.

Henny closed his eyes again.

“He’s got you wrapped around his paw,” Eric noted.

“We’re down with that, aren’t we, Henny?”

Henny kept purring.

Oh yeah.

We were so down with that.

There was a knock on the door.

“Bets on who it is?” Eric asked as he angled up. He was definitely getting the hang of the Oasis.

“Raye,” I told him. “She knows we were going to the rescue today, so she’ll be all about meeting Henny.”

Eric opened the door.

I was right. It was Raye.

Along with Cap.

Raye looked at me, and then Henny, but she didn’t come to us. She and Cap just stopped once they were in enough to close the door.

I wasn’t surprised about this, considering the feel they brought with them and the looks on their faces.

Eric felt it too.

“What’s going on?” he asked Cap.

“We gotta go into the office, brother,” Cap replied. “Someone in the camp got word to Mary. Mary got word to us. They took someone else.” He paused and said, “Then Tex phoned in a report from the police station. He tried to stop them, but they shot at him, and he had to abort. Fortunately, no one was hit. Another bonus, Tex confirmed this Clown guy was with them. So we have confirmation on the crew we’re dealing with.”

My heart lurched, and I cuddled Henny to me as I shot to my feet. Henny didn’t like the sudden movement, and he squirmed to get away, so I dropped him on the couch.

“The sun isn’t down yet,” I said to Cap.

“They’re getting bolder,” Eric noted darkly.

But Raye and Cap were both still giving off weird vibes, and I didn’t like it one bit.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, Jess,” Raye whispered.

My lungs stopped functioning.

“What?” I wheezed.

“Honey,” she kept whispering. “This time, they took Homer.”

At this news, my heart flatlined.