Flirting With Disaster (18 page)

“Before my freshman year in high ssschool, she t-told all my teachers I was sh-shy and convinced them not to call on me in c-class. Ssaid it was a ssocial anxiety d-disorder, and she could get them a d-doctor’s excuse if they needed to see it, though that was bullshit. She was
their new c-colleague, so they went along. And I sat through two years at Mount Pleasant High c-c-completely fucking m-m-m-mute.”

She saw him on the bus. Sean Owens, alone in his seat, reading his book, shutting out everyone else. Silent.

She’d thought he was shy, but he’d been miserably alone.

“She gagged you.”

“She d-didn’t m-mean to.”

Katie leaned across the couch to place a hand on his forearm. “Sean, she
gagged
you.”

She’d expected to see anger in his eyes, or maybe nothing, if that tight control had its way. What she found was something else. Something like loathing.

“She wanted me to b-be p-p-perfect, and wuh-when I wuh-wasn’t, she t-t-took it as an attack on her. I t-t-told her I wanted to g-go to ssspeech therapy. She sssaid no. Ssomeone would find out I was in therapy, sh-she said. They’d think less of m-me, but of c-c-course she meant they’d think less of
her
. Then I ffigured, maybe if I juh-just g-got away from her, I c-could get ssome help, so I applied for a scholarship to the academy in C-columbus. I thought if I b-boarded there, I’d have to t-t-talk, right? And somebody wuh-would hear me and
help
me. I got a ffull scholarship. Room and b-board and tuition.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Sh-she wouldn’t let me take it.”

“Why not?”

“She was sso pissed that I’d applied behind her back. I d-don’t think I’d ever seen her that angry, and she got angry a lot. She said when I guh-got my ‘social anxiety’ under c-c-control, she’d c-consider it, but until then, it wuh-wouldn’t be ‘appropriate’ ffor me t-to go.”

“So what did you do?”

“My b-buddy Mike Anderson, you remember him?”

She shook her head, though she thought maybe she did. She could picture a guy Sean had hung around with, dark-haired, really into computer games and laser tag and that kind of stuff. More outgoing than Sean.

“Yeah, well, he was my b-best friend. A c-couple years ahead of us in sschool. When he went to c-college, I went with him. M-mom told p-people I’d transferred to the academy, but I actually dropped out. Moved to C-california with Mikey and sstarted working whatever juh-jobs
I c-could get to support myself. I got a juh-judge to legally emancipate me. The ultimate ‘ffuck you’ to my mother.”

The wind picked up outside, sending a fusillade of icy snow tapping against the windows. Katie’s thoughts whirled around with it, patternless.

She’d heard that he transferred to the academy. She’d thought she knew his story, but she hadn’t known anything about Sean. Not one thing.

What must it have been like, at sixteen or seventeen years old, to be thrust into adulthood on the other side of the country?

No wonder he was so hard. He must have needed all that stony self-control just to function. A teenager, alone and broke, and every word that came out of his mouth chaos.

“You did all right in California, though?”

“I never came home.”

“When you say ‘never,’ you mean …”

“Never. Not once. Not ever again. Maybe I sh-should’ve tried to ssee her, but when I c-called, sh-she wuh-wouldn’t speak to me. I only knew she told p-people I went to the academy because Mikey heard that from his mom. I didn’t sssee the house again until she d-died.”

His eyes had shuttered, his expression set. Granite Man.

“And your mom?”

“I never saw her again, either.”

Katie turned her cheek into the cushion and let herself feel it. The bleak recrimination in his voice. The loneliness and craving and guilt. He’d come home to bury his mother, but clearly, she wasn’t buried yet.

“Mikey and I guh-got into hacking,” Sean continued. “Juh-just for kicks in c-college, but it turned out to b-be useful. We sstarted this security c-company, Anderson Owens, and it took off. I got therapy for the sstutter and thought I’d managed to shake it. Ssome people do, you know. They juh-just manage to k-kick it to the curb. Permanently.”

He raised his mug to his lips for a deep swallow. She knew without asking that he’d thought he was one of the ones who’d managed a permanent recovery, and he wasn’t happy to discover otherwise.

“And then she d-died, and I came back to Camelot to p-pack up her stuff, and now I sssound like this, at least ssome of the time. Not just with you, either. It’s sspreading. The wuhwonders
of the human b-brain, eh?”

“You sound fine,” she said.

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“I mean, you don’t. I’m not trying to say you’re not stuttering, or that I don’t notice …” Katie sighed, feeling like a moron. She didn’t know what the protocols were for a conversation like this. Somehow, she and Sean had gone from barely knowing each other this morning to blundering into what felt like every possible avenue of personal revelation. It was awkward, and part of her wished they could just go back to the way things had been a week ago, with her thinking he hated her and him never speaking.

Except that had sucked, too.

“I don’t care how you sound,” she said finally.

“Thanks.”

She wondered if there was something more she was supposed to say. Something nice, like,
I like you, so what does it matter what you sound like?
Or empathy.
Parents really do screw us up, don’t they?

But Sean didn’t invite further conversation. He stared at the TV as though naked girls were going to jump out of it any second. He stared at it as though his life depended on it.

So she stared at it, too, and drank her wine, and listened to the snow fling itself against the windows. And when the movie ended, she touched his shoulder with two fingers, said good night, and went back to her room to sleep.

Judah didn’t get Sean.

Tapping a Sharpie against the clipboard that bore the set list, he dropped into a folding chair with enough force to send it skating along the concrete floor. The green room of Nellie’s, the seedy bar that boasted Buffalo’s best wings and a surprisingly excellent sound system, was not high class. Folding chairs and card tables were the only furniture a dive like this ever had backstage. Anything nicer got trashed.

From across the room, Judah watched Katie’s partner issue directions to Ginny as if she worked for him, and he tried to make the guy add up.

Katie, he’d expected to be good. She’d done a hell of a job getting him to spill his guts, after all. This morning at breakfast, she’d questioned Paul, tucking into her pancakes with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old and asking him a dozen pointed questions that his manager had answered in gruff monosyllables.

Paul lived to manage, and for the past fifteen years he’d lived to manage Judah. He tolerated interlopers, but only when Judah pulled rank and told him he had to.

Eventually, Katie had abandoned the full frontal assault and started lobbing Paul fan-girl questions about his influence on the recording sessions and how he’d handled the logistics of the heavy touring years. She worked the conversation around to Paul’s wife and nineteen-year-old twin daughters back in Chicago, and by the time the check came she had him laughing at all her jokes and volunteering the answers he’d kept to himself earlier.

She was a pro. Judah had known it, even if she didn’t.

Sean was something different. He was supposed to be an hourly employee of Caleb’s company, but he wore a deceptively modest ten-thousand-dollar watch and carried himself like someone who was used to getting his way.

Most of the time, he looked as if he’d just as soon shoot you as talk to you, but Judah had caught him watching Katie when her back was turned with this small, secret smile on his face.

Then there was the computer-detective thing. Judah didn’t know how Sean had gained access to all the incriminating shit he’d dug up, but the man clearly had skills.

“Ginny,” Judah said, and her head snapped up, her eyes finding his from across the room and softening the way they always did.

The girl was nuts about him. It was getting bad enough that he’d started thinking about firing her. Admiration was one thing, but all that syrupy sweetness in her eyes made him irritable. He’d flat-out told her she was too young for him, but it made no difference. Ginny seemed content to wait for his love to blossom. She’d been especially attentive when he was in rehab, no doubt hoping he would hit rock bottom so she could scoop him up on the rebound.

It never failed to amaze him, how women would contort themselves to fall in love with him. He made it difficult as hell, and still they persisted.

“What should I close with?” he asked.

Annoying as she could be, Ginny knew his songs better than he did, and she had an intuitive knack for knowing what the fans would want to hear.

She cocked her head to one side. “ ‘Destroying Ahab,’ ” she said after a moment.

He hesitated, marker hovering over the page. “That’s such a sad one.”

“It’s a sad town.”

He nodded and wrote it down, the chemical-marker-induced lump in his throat reminding him of a thousand other rooms like this. A thousand other shows.

She was right. The Rust Belt cities liked the sad songs. He’d have to do one of the old crowd-pleasers as an encore, though. They’d want to wave their non-ironic Zippos in the air and belt out all the words of their favorite Pratt tune before they buttoned up and braved the cold to drive home.

Sean spoke to Ginny for another minute, and then she left. The cowboy pulled up a chair.

“You see the new one yet?” he asked.

The message had come to Judah’s personal email account. Judah hadn’t given Sean the address of that account, much less the password. Still, he wasn’t surprised.

“Yeah.”

“When were you going to get around to telling us about it?”

“Didn’t want to make life any harder for Katie than it already is,” Judah said with a smile, and Sean looked down at his hands.

He’d guessed as much. Sean didn’t look like a man who’d gotten lucky last night. He looked like a man who needed to find release before he rattled apart at the seams.

Katie hadn’t caught him yet.

“She can take it,” Sean muttered.

“Can she? She’s not as tough as she acts, you know.”

“She’s tougher than you think.”

Judah leaned back in the chair and asked, “How long have you two known each other, anyway?”

“Depends how you c-count.” Sean settled against his own chair, making his body a mirror of Judah’s. “He knows where you are,” he added.

“He?”

“Your psycho.”

“Yeah.” The message that had greeted him when he woke up mentioned the snowstorm that had Buffalo in its grip and questioned whether cowards’ blood ran red or yellow.

Not the most pleasant way to meet the day.

“Did you hack all my accounts before I gave you the log-ins yesterday?”

Sean snorted. “I only had to hack one. You should really c-come up with more passwords.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“What do you want her for?”

“What do
you
want her for?” Judah replied.

Neither of them would answer. Stalemate.

Sean scrubbed his hand across his face. “I’m going to figure out where those messages are c-coming from.”

“It might be a dead end,” he said. “They all come from different accounts, plus—”

“It’s not a dead end. But it would be a hell of a lot easier if you’d let me talk to the service providers.”

“No. Somebody will leak it.”

“I know a few guys at Google, and—”

“No. Figure something else out.”

“Fine. Like I said, it’s not impossible. Just hard. In the meantime, she’s going to want to talk to you again about who knows you’re in Buffalo.”

“Okay.”

“And we’re taking off right after the show. I have an idea, but I need to work on my own equipment back in Camelot to get it done. We’ll catch up with you next weekend.”

“Fine.”

Sean stood and started to turn away, then stopped. “If she ends up hurt because of you, I don’t c-care who you are,” he said. “I’ll k-kick your ass.”

Judah laughed. “Right back at you.”

“I’m no threat to her.”

“If you’re not even smart enough to know that’s bullshit, I’m more likely to owe you an ass-whipping than the other way around.”

For a long moment, they took each other’s measure. Sean guarded his expression carefully, and Judah couldn’t get much of a read off him. The man didn’t like him; that much was obvious. No doubt it was payback for Judah’s attempt to get Katie into bed. Given the nature of his failure, he figured Sean would warm up to him eventually.

He didn’t know why he wanted him to, except that he trusted him. Not with Katie—though if Sean screwed that up it would be the result of self-destructive stupidity, not of meanness. But with the rest of this mess. With his life, he supposed, if it came to that.

Maybe it was because the guy reminded him of Ben. He had the take-no-prisoners confidence of someone who’d come out the other side of an ugly childhood.

“You know, I think you and I are going to be friends,” Judah said with a smile.

Sean shook his head and walked out. Grinning, Judah watched him go. He was as easy to rile as Ben, too. Men like that looked tough, but they kept their emotions right under their skin. All you had to do was scratch them in the right place, and you found out how deeply they felt everything.

He spun the marker in a slow circle on the card table, wondering for the thousandth time if Ben was the one sending him the threats. If it
had
to be Ben, or if someone else had found out what happened that summer.

How hard could it be to track his movements and discover he was in Buffalo? Everywhere Judah went, he got noticed. The woman at the front desk had taken his picture with her phone. He couldn’t slip through the world in secrecy. Hadn’t been able to do that in fifteen years.

It wasn’t necessarily Ben, but it could be him. And a nagging voice in Judah’s head kept
saying,
Find out. Hurry up
.