SLACK: A Day in the Life of Ford Aston (Rook and Ronin Spin-off) (3 page)

“You said you have a small, Merc. Not some smallish-big.”

“Yeah, well, think of it as a biggish-small then. Roll with it, dude.”

I’m gonna regret this, I can already tell. “Nice to see you again, Merc.”

He grunts. People think I’m anti-social? This guy, he’s the anti-social one. He’s OK one on one, but get this asshole in a group and I won’t take responsibility.

I make my way down to the first level and follow the signs to the exit. Since it’s a busy day, I wait in line for ten minutes as every car is photographed and matched to the picture they took at the parking garage stop gate. They do that under the guise of collecting the fee money to use the garage, but really, they are just cataloging your vehicle in case you’re a terrorist.

“My rig’s up in Fort Collins still. I have a place there.”

“Perfect,” Merc says as he lights a cigarette. He blows the smoke out of his nose and mouth at the same time. “I got a gun deal up in Cheyenne later, so that’s perfect. You can take me up to Wyoming, right? I mean, you have no plans today. It’s Christmas Eve for Christ’s sake.”

I shoot him a look for the blasphemous humor. “I said I have a date at ten.”

“Yeah, but that was a joke, right?” I look over at him and he’s got one of those
you-fuck-with-me-I’ll-fuck-with-you-back
grins on his face.

I glare at him.

“You owe me, Ford. So just get over it. You’re in.”

“Fine, but this is beyond my debt, so you owe me a
big
once this is over. What’s the job, anyway?”

“Some senator’s sixteen-year-old daughter was kidnapped last night. Some kind of pathetic wanna-be militia in the hills between Laramie and Cheyenne is responsible. I’m going in.”

He says all this like he just said,
I’ll have eggs for breakfast
. “Why not the Feds?”

“Hush, hush, you know. The girl’s caught up in something bad. Drugs, sex, something. Who the fuck knows, who the fuck cares. They didn't really kidnap her from the way I see it. I figure she went on her own volition, but the senator is having none of that. All I know is that if I can get her out alive with no media involvement, I get five hundred tax-free grand.” He takes a long draw on his cigarette and lets it out through his grinning teeth. “Fuckin-a, I’m in.”

“What if the media gets involved?”

“Penalty,” he says though a puff of smoke. “They knock off twenty percent for media fuck-ups. I’ll shoot you ten grand for the lift, though.”

“Fuckin-a then, I’m in too.”

Why the hell not? Wyoming is not that far, it’s Christmas Eve, I’m a total
Scrooge
, and my pet date is twelve hours from now. I got plenty of time to make ten grand and get back home in time to plan some dirty sex.

Chapter Three

It’s a lot easier to get the hell out of DIA if you’re going north than it is if you’re going south. There’s an expensive toll road almost no one uses that shuttles you past all the worst I-25 traffic, and spits you out just before you hit Longmont. From there, it’s a fifteen minute ride to my apartment on the southern outskirts of Fort Collins. I pull into the complex driveway and Merc starts laughing. “You live
here
? In this suburban singles complex?”

“Guess what I do here, Merc?”

He lights up another smoke. Fucker’s been chain smoking since we left. If this was a high level job, he’d never smoke. Leaves a scent on his clothes that can give his ass away when he’s sniping. So he must feel this one is no big deal.

“Eat, sleep, shit, and fuck?”

“No, I said guess what
I
do here. Not what most people do here.”

He tilts his head, interested. “Fuckin tell me then.”

I say nothing. Just park the Bronco in the spot numbered E33, then get out and head towards the stairs that will take me up to my third floor apartment. Merc follows behind, his cigarette still smoldering. I open the door and wave him in, then reach out and snatch the smoke from his lips and toss it over the balcony. “No smoking in my gear room.”

He hands me a sly smile and I follow him in and close the door. From the entry it’s just your basic shit apartment, albeit, in a luxury suburban setting. Nondescript brown couch, two dark wood end tables with matching lamps on either side. Dark wood coffee table, an over-sized chair and matching ottoman, and a dining table.

“No TV, Ford?”

“Fuck TV.”

It’s got three bedrooms, but only one has a bed. I open the last door on the right and let Merc walk in ahead of me. “The rig room, eh?” he says as he looks over his shoulder at me.

“You bet. The rig room.”

The rig room is one long stainless steel table with one laptop and a metal stool.

“Sparse, dude.”

“It’s all I need.”

“Right, then.” He sighs his frustration with me. We’ve been friends since senior year of high school. He knows me well. All my strengths and all my weaknesses. “Get to it. I need info on…” he rattles off names as I pop off an electrical wall cover plate, fish around inside the wall for the end of the cable, then pull it through the hole and plug it into my laptop. I sit down in the chair and open the rig and start typing. The external drive inside the wall contains all my scripts, but its password protected and has an automatic trip. If you get the password wrong, just once, it nukes the drive.

We spend almost an hour in the rig room getting the deets on who may or may not be inside the ‘compound’ in the desolate hills between Cheyenne and Laramie, where this girl has apparently run away to. Just as we’re walking out, Merc asks the question I’m sure has been on his mind since he got here. “So what’s behind door number three?”

He gives me a knowing grin.

“Books,” I deadpan.
And guns
. I say to myself. Spencer has a stash here. For some reason, that paranoid fucker insists on having weapons in every place I inhabit.

“Yeah?” Merc says with interest. “Like I actually believe you have books in that fucking room, Aston. Please.”

“Believe what you want.” We descend back down the stairs and head to the Bronco. I know what he thinks is in there. Same thing that Rook thought was in there when she first questioned me about the apartment last fall. They both think I bring pets here, but that’s not why I got the apartment. I got it to bring dates. Regular dates. Like—
normal girls
.

I never even came close to bringing a normal girl home. Not even close.

We get in the truck and I head back towards the I-25 and get on going north. Merc is studying the notes he took back in the rig room, so I’m left with thoughts of my sorry attempt at a normal love life last October.

I gave it a shot. Thirty days. One solid month of trying. I went on eight dates. Hell, I had a shitload of inquiries on my Match.com account. I was even featured on the home page a few times. Under an assumed name, of course. Ford Aston is infamous in these parts. A one second Google search brings up thousands of hits and four years’ worth of questionable shit.

No. These girls went in blind. Which speaks to the stupidity of online dating. You just never know who you’re getting. Of course, I have credit cards under assumed names and most people don’t. But every one of those women wanted to have sex with me after our date. Two of them made very convincing arguments with their provocative dresses and dirty mouths as we got drunk at a local bar.

A threesome sorta defeats the purpose of the whole experiment, right? I can get two pets for a threesome and never have to exert an effort at conversation. So those two were a dead end the minute they walked into the bar together.

But the truth of the matter is, all those women were established. They were my age, they had degrees, they had jobs, they were looking for sex, sure. But they were also looking for all that other shit. Houses, and rings, and kids. And maybe they were just hiding their freak because it was a first date, but somehow I doubt it. Every one of them was respectable.

Every one of them was
boring
.

I ended four dates early, the two-for-one lasted until the bar closed, but that was all drinking and bull riding. Yes, FoCo is quite the rodeo town. There are no urban cowboys here, they’re all one hundred percent real. And these two cowgirls took me to the only bar I know of that has bulls out back for the cowboys to ride. It was one of the most entertaining nights of my life.

But none of those girls were for me.

I gave up after thirty days and admitted defeat. I’m a freak looking for a freak. A freak that can relate to me. And the pets are the closest thing I’ve come to so far.

Besides Rook, of course. She’s not a freak. Her sick ex tried to make her into one, but she’s not a freak. She wants the fairytale—I’d go for that if I could have Rook. I would. I’d give her the fairytale if she wanted it. I’m not
against
the fairytale. I’m not against marriage and all that shit. I’m just picky. I want what I want and I refuse to settle. I’d rather be alone than settle.

But, I sigh, there is only one Rook and her heart belongs to Ronin.

“So…” Merc tries for conversation as we head north. Cheyenne is only forty-five minutes away and there’s no traffic on Christmas Eve. Hell, there’s no traffic on any eve. Or any
day
for that matter. It might be the capitol of Wyoming, but I’m not sure Cheyenne even qualifies as an urban center. In fact, I think Fort Collins has double the population of Cheyenne in every season except summer, when the college students go home. “How’s life, Ford? You keeping busy?”

“I’m busy today, and today is the only day that matters.”

“Your date tonight is your mom, right? Midnight mass and all that shit.”

I laugh a little. “Please, do not even mention it. I’ve been avoiding her calls all fucking week.”

“But she’s your date, right?” he prods.

“How pathetic do you think I am?” I roll my eyes at him. “A pet I’ve used for a while. She agreed to come, so why not? Keeps me out of church and takes my mind off the holiday at the same time.”

“Yeah, hear ya, dude. That’s why I took this job, ya know? I fucking hate Christmas. Fucking hate it.”

“I’m just the ride? Or you counting on backup? Do I need to call Pam and cancel the pet?”

“When we get up there, hang out for a few while I discuss the details, if that’s alright. I’ll let you know if I can use you. If you want in, of course.”

“What if she didn’t run away?”

He takes a long drag on the cigarette and blows it out the crack in the window. “That’s what the weapons are for. But I think this girl ran away. One of the members is a guy she dated on and off for a while. Only makes sense.”

“But, on Christmas? I mean,
we
hate Christmas, but sixteen year old rich girls generally don’t. They like big boxes wrapped in bows.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. Head east on 16th when we get into Cheyenne. The pick-up is in one of those antique malls.”

I shoot him a look.

“What? It’s perfect.”

“Did the senator sanction the weapons too?” He doesn’t answer right away and this is my first real clue that he’s not as comfortable with this job as he’s making it out. “What?” I ask. “What’s the deal, Merc?”

He shakes his head a little, like he’s thinking about lying or holding it in. But we’ve been friends too long, so the words come out anyway. “It’s just strange. All of a sudden I start getting a string of high priority jobs from people with position, ya know? This senator. The last job was collecting a debt owed to a millionaire from Miami. Had to go to Columbia for that one. And the one before that was stealing some data from a small European government.”

“Virtually, I hope?” I have insane hacking skills, like Merc here, but unlike him, I’m no soldier. I can shoot and I can fight. And if I do either of those two things you can be sure someone will end up dead by the time it’s over. But I am not a soldier.

“Nah, real time dude. Boots on the ground.”

“Hmmm…. maybe it was that mercenary ad you ran in
Soldier of Fortune
?”

He puffs out some smoke with his chuckle. “Hey, I was twelve.”

“As if that makes it any less ridiculous.” We both laugh. Fucking Merc. “Well, your name’s on a list somewhere. And you seem pretty popular and the shit’s sanctioned, so enjoy it I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Cheyenne comes into view after that and Merc takes out his notes and studies them again. I don’t blame him for being paranoid. I do this shit as a side thing. This is his life. This
is
his day job. He has nothing else
but
this. So knowing that people with power have a list with your name on it is not comforting in the least. Because one of these days, the target and the gun might switch places.

I get off the freeway and had east on 16th like he said. This town looks like it got stuck in 1940 and nothing has changed. There’s a rail yard on one side of the street and a shitload of old fashioned shops on the other. I park in front of one of the brick buildings and look up at the sign.
Roundhouse Antique Mall
.