“I’m laying here trying to talk myself out of becoming you.”
“Fuck you bro, you wish.” He pulled the chair over from my desk next to the bed and straddled it.
“Talk.” He gave me one of his ‘I’m not leaving until you spill’ looks.
“Somebody fucked with her, I don’t know how yet but it’s bad Joshua. I asked her about getting her transcripts from school and she said ‘he’ll find me’.
“What the fuck, who’s he?”
“I don’t know yet, she asked me for some time to tell me and I agreed but…”
“Fuck that, can you imagine if Carrie was in that predicament that I would let that shit slide? Or dad, do you think he would let some shit like that linger where mom was concerned?”
“I’m not like you and dad…”
“I know Matt, you’re worse.” That jolted me enough that I lifted my eyes to his. He couldn’t know there’s no way. I’ve always kept myself in check, always walked the walk.
“I’ve always known Matt, you forget who you’re dealing with? But I think now is the time to let yourself go. You’ve always kept that tight rein on yourself, afraid of what will happen if you let you be you. You know I used to wonder what you saw in that crazy ass viper; then I figured it out. You were playing it safe, she didn’t bring out the Steele passion in you and you convinced yourself that that was best. You let her do her thing because at the end of the day you weren’t really invested. You were willing to marry her, spend the rest of your life with her just so you could play it safe. Look where that got you bro. Now this girl has you tied up in knots and that beast is rearing its head. If ever there was a time to let that shit loose it’s now. If your woman is in danger bro you’ve got to step the fuck up. Is she yours Matt?”
“You better believe it.”
“Well alright then let’s get this shit started. Did you get a name at least?”
“No nothing.”
“Fine we’ll trace back from her.”
“What do you mean trace backwards from her? I get the feeling that this guy whoever he is has eyes on her if not here then back home. If we go looking he’s bound to see and then if he doesn’t already know where she’s hiding out we’ll just be leading him to her.”
“That’s why you have me bro, all I have to do is tinker with the router he’ll never know where the ping is coming from.”
“The what?” Brainy fucker.
“Watch and learn bro.” He moved over to my computer desk and cracked his knuckles as if he was about to go to battle. I stood over his shoulder as he fiddled with keys and some shit came up on the screen that looked like gibberish to me but he was reading it off like nothing, mumbling to himself as he hit even more keys and got to work.
“Now where should we send this fuck? Hmm, Russia looks good right now maybe he’ll hop on a plane and head over there. We can only hope he gets caught in the middle of the fuckery that’s going on in that part of the world right now.”
“I don’t understand, what’re you doing?”
“I’m reconfiguring the router so it would appear that we’re in Russia instead of Sea Crest, this way if anyone’s tracking her digitally and they see inquiries coming from Russia they’ll think that that’s where she is.”
“Slick.” I watched him for the next hour or so as he did his thing; by the end of it he had her transcripts downloaded. My girl was smart as fuck; maybe she could give the brain a run for his money.
“Fine now that’s done, now all I need to do is find out who this guy is and exactly what he’s done to her before I go fuck his shit up.”
“That’s next, you want to do this part? We have the state and town she’s from all you have to do is work backwards from her name like I said. If there’s any record of him we’ll hit on it.” I shooed him out of the chair and took his seat. My heart decided to act up at this point. I was about to cross a line here and I knew it. I’d given her my word to wait but was that really me? was I being honest? If we were going to have a life together wouldn’t it make more sense to begin as I meant to go on?
I couldn’t see me leaving her safety up in the air like that in the future and just because this, whatever it was, had happened before we met, that didn’t change things. I’ll deal with the fallout from her later, right now her safety was more important than whether or not she would be mad at me for going behind her back.