Chapter Two

Vix had an anonymous source, a contact, who knew where Orion Broderick lived. Sort of. At least, I had an address that Google, with all its satellites and creepy surveillance vans, could not find.

Cold Snap Cabin, Route 4, Bakers Mine, California. A mere six and a half hours from where I lived in ... let's call it the greater Los Angeles area. In a 450-square-foot studio that cost more in rent each month than the three-bedroom house I'd grown up in back in the distant suburbs of Conquistos, which was up the coast from LA and, not coincidentally, also where Orion had played soccer until I-slash-cultural-homophobia-and-toxic-masculinity had destroyed his career.

Would I have taken him living in the closet so personally if I hadn't been connected to the place where he was doing it? I'd never have known. I was way less likely to have had a friend taking random photos on a golf course one night when Orion was making out with his physical therapist in a Porsche parked under a clump of eucalyptus trees, though.

You ever really want to go back in time and kick your past self in the literal-or-figurative nuts? Or is that just me?

Whatever, I had a lead. Cold Snap Cabin. Bakers Mine. Since the last reported population of Bakers Mine was fewer than a thousand people, I didn't think it could be big enough to hide a famous soccer player. When I asked Vix how she'd gotten the address, she went exceptionally cagey. Enough to make me wonder if Orion had someone on his end who thought he needed a fresh start just as much as Vix did.

She probably didn't mention the fact that she was sending the Destroyer of Careers in to do the job. I know I wouldn't have.

In any case, I did some math, estimated time frames, and figured if I left home around eight in the morning, gave myself an hour to figure out where Orion Broderick lived, then thirty minutes for him to tell me I was a horrible person and to get lost, I could be home by midnight. Vix had given me a Starbucks gift card for caffeination purposes, which I used for the first time at 8:15 on a triple-shot mocha and promised myself I would not overdo my coffee intake due to stress.

Half an hour later—when I was roughly seven miles away from my apartment and the mocha was just chocolatey seams in the bottom of the cup—I realized that my original estimate of how long it would take to get there might have been erroneously calculated for 11:00 p.m. (when I'd looked it up), not 8:00 a.m., when I was actually driving it, therefore failing to take morning traffic into account. Crud.

When I finally got to Bakers Mine, three Starbucks stops later, I pulled into the first place I saw that looked like a welcoming port of yellow light in the increasingly gray day. The sign read, in bold black paint strokes, MINER'S WASH AND brEW . A combination laundromat café. Which, once I got over my knee-jerk snobbery, actually seemed like a pretty cool idea. You're sitting there washing and drying your clothes, and instead of twiddling your thumbs, you could get a cup of coffee and a pastry.

I was debating between a slice of a chocolate croissant and some sort of raspberry tart–type thing when a mostly raven-haired woman with a few streaks of white in her ponytail approached. I felt a pang of disappointment; I'd been hoping the super-hot guy with the pink apron who was chatting with a couple of little girls in tutus would excuse himself to chat with me instead. But such is life.

Since I'd had enough coffee to last forever, I asked for a recommendation and ended up with something called a "cheese braid." It looked (and, to be fair, tasted like) something that would have made Paul Hollywood's eyebrows perk up in that condescendingly surprised expression he got when someone's baking wasn't as crappy as he'd expected it to be. I thought about that as I stared out the window at this ... town? village? whatever it was, wondering what life would be like here for someone who'd once entered stadiums full of people shouting his name.

Bakers Mine was wholesome. Did places like this really exist? Except as the setting for gruesome murder in all those true crime podcasts where they always went out of their way to talk about how (intoning voice) One horrible thing had changed the town forever .

I was too messed up to be taking part in this Norman Rockwell painting of a village café. Even if I could hear the rhythmic thump of the laundromat through the big archway in the wall. Maybe because I could hear that. I was some flavor of terrible person. Not the worst type of terrible—I didn't serial kill anyone or torture baby animals, and no one was going to make a true crime episode about how my sad childhood had made me a murderer—but being a milder brand of terrible still wasn't great. Didn't make me deserving of sitting in this picturesque painting of a laundromat café.

I was still the worst thing that had ever happened to Orion Broderick, and I'd (regretful voice) Changed his life forever . Vix could say whatever she wanted about toxic masculinity, and I agreed with the critique, but when it came down to reckoning with the person I saw in the mirror—that dude had fucked up badly enough so I couldn't trust him in the wild. Which was probably why I'd lost touch with my friends and limited my social outings to hookups.

The cheese braid gurgled in my guts with way too much coffee as I stood to take up my dishes and ideally cadge the location of Cold Snap Cabin from the nice lady at the counter. Time to find Orion Broderick, submit to the humiliation of him hating me, then drive home. Hopefully before the storm hit. It was coming in from the west, so if I could start south before it got to me, I'd probably be able to dodge it altogether.

I set my dishes in a washtub and said, "Is there any way you can help me find someone who I think lives around here?"

The woman, who didn't have a name tag, probably because in a town this size you didn't need one, smiled. "Sure thing. If they live around here, I know them. Who you looking for?"

"Orion Broderick. He used to play pro soccer and we know some folks in common, so I thought I might say hello, since I'm passing through." This line of BS had also sounded better when I came up with it in my apartment.

The smile wilted, and she glanced behind me at the door, then met my eyes again. "Passing through, hmm? You've lingered quite a while for someone passing through, bud."

"Oh, well, I've never had a cheese braid before, so." It was true, which saved me from being a bald-faced liar trying to charm a woman into telling me how to find a dude who probably wanted nothing to do with me. But the whole thing was starting to feel pretty gross. I'd considered explaining about the campaign as a sort of Look, I'm not a stalker, I'm working, see argument—and at least this project was actually a good one, not a bullshit carbon-offsetting attempt, or even a patent popularity grab—but I didn't think the proprietor of the Wash and Brew was going to fall for my brand of charm, so instead I added, "No biggie if you can't help. I should probably start home anyway."

"True enough. Would you like anything to go?"

Damn. I'd been hoping my extreme casualness would make her relax enough to give me a lead. I managed to smile and said, "Maybe a latte for the road."

She nodded, though she was nowhere near as friendly as she had been. Reality: 1; Cleary: nil. I waved goodbye and left the shop.

It was a hell of a lot colder than I remembered it being when I'd gotten out of my car, though I was definitely a wimp about true cold. Things got cold occasionally in LA, but not like this. Not so extreme and intense. Or maybe the word I wanted was "enduring." You might get a chilly blast off the ocean that would cut through your hoodie, but this mountain cold felt like it wanted to freeze your toes off.

It was a hungry sort of cold, and I was grateful to climb back in my car and turn up the heater as the first drops of rain began to fall. So much for my bright idea of avoiding the storm. Time to get done with my chore and get back to the real world, where I could languish in my irrelevance in peace.

Hell, maybe three years would have made him realize how much he missed sports, just like Vix said, and he'd be eager to sign a contract to get involved again. That was at least possible. Having seen Bakers Mine, it actually seemed more likely. Wouldn't anyone in his right mind want to get his life back after living in total obscurity for so long?

Right, steady on, Cleary. I decided to look for the cabin instead of the man. I drove back to the only gas station in town. No card reader at the pump and a sign that read P AY INSIDE . C ASH PREFERRED . I fumbled around in my wallet and finally extracted a twenty I had tucked away for emergencies. At least it would get me enough fuel to get out of the mountains. More math in my head. Or, okay, it would at least get me enough fuel to get to the next gas station back in civilization, where I could use a credit card.

Inside I stumbled upon a tableau that felt recognizable enough for me to veer off and carefully select a bag of Peanut M he was not impressed with my lie, but not quite ready to call me out on it.

"Yep." Danger, danger. I plucked my card out of the kid's hand and waved cheerfully, making my escape before Gramps could think twice. "Thanks for your help. Hope a raffle ticket hits for your guitar."

I got out of there as fast as possible, using all my willpower not to look guiltily back over my shoulder. I hoped the kid wasn't getting in trouble for basically pointing me right at Orion Broderick. He didn't know that's what he was doing! I thought at the old man.

Oh well. Done was done. I found Route 4, set my trip odometer to zero, and started scanning trees for triangles.