The absolutely last thing he needed. He didn't shake her hand. “Where is Laura?” he asked, not caring that he was being blunt, pointedly ignoring all the eyes on him.
“She went home sick.” A deep male voice answered, to Dylan's left. The man was middle-aged, greying temples, a bit of a paunch. Nice suit. Her boss? He nodded to Debbie, who skittered over to her station and began answering phone calls, eyes glued on the two men.
“Oh. Is she OK?” He frowned, concerned.
“I won't comment on that, but after she watched the news report featuring you, she clearly wasn't doing well.” Ah. This guy was a straight shooter. A little angry on Laura's behalf. Dylan could understand that.
And respect it. Even if it pained him deeply to have caused her pain.
“Thanks. I'll try to catch her at home.” Debbie's eyes widened and she reached for a smart phone, texting furiously. Gossip. Great. Poor Laura.
Poor Laura? He was the cause of what made her poor Laura. Holy fuck. He'd never considered that the fallout could do this to her.
A hand on his arm. Firm. Unyielding. His hackles went up and a thin thread of fight grew in him. The boss's eyes were cold steel, pointed directly at Dylan like a weapon. “I wouldn't do that if I were you. If she wants to see you, she can contact you.” This wasn't advice.
This was a veiled threat. Or, at least, that's how it sounded to Dylan's hypersensitive ears. Who was this tool to tell him how to handle Laura? He shook the man's hand off him roughly and got right in his face.
“I'll talk to her if I want to.” His face was inches from the boss, who stood up and matched Dylan on height. This guy was twenty years older and probably out of shape, but he was a fierce dude who wasn't backing down, even in the presence of a very muscled fire fighter.
“If she wants to talk to you. Otherwise, you're just an angry stalker.”
There was that word again. Stalker. “You don't know anything about – ”
Ding! The elevator behind Dylan slid open and he heard two heavy steps, then Mike's breathless voice. “Is she still here?”
Debbie just about had a heart attack, her jaw dropping so low her mouth could have been a dustpan. “Thor,” she whispered. Dylan nearly barked out a laugh, the comment shaking him from his stand off with Laura's boss.
“No. She's gone,” the boss said, then looked at Dylan. Hard.
A new hand on his arm, this time Mike's. “Let's try her apartment.” He jabbed the “down” button for the elevator as Debbie removed her telephone headset and stood, smoothing her tight skirt, then sauntering over.
Mercifully, the doors opened before she got to them, Mike practically dragging Dylan in. With a pneumatic hiss his last view of Laura's work floor was Debbie's disappointed voice and the back of the boss's head.
Good riddance to both.
Mike stared up at the ceiling and blew out a huge breath of air. “Has she answered your texts or voice mails?”
“Nope. You try?”
“Once, for each. No luck.”
“Where were you when that stupid television report came on?”
“At work.” A low whistle from Mike, whose eyebrows shot up, made Dylan wince. He took in Dylan's uniform and cringed. “Yeah. It was bad. Let's just say I am no longer gainfully employed.”
“Joe fired you?”
“No. I resigned peacefully.”
“Peacefully?” Mike smirked. Damn it, he knew him too well.
“It's complicated.”
“It's always complicated,” Mike said bitterly.
“I'm getting really tired of hearing that.”
“I think you started it.”
“Do we really need to go there right now?”
“No. We need to go to Laura's place right now. But tell me what happened with the chief.” Mike didn't seem to care on an emotional level; he was just asking out of voyeuristic curiosity. The difference in tone and demeanor was starting to freak Dylan out.
Dylan laughed, a cold, harsh sound that hurt his own ears. “He said there was a waiting list out the door for the jobs, that if I was a billionaire I sure didn't need the pay, and that I was welcome to join the volunteer force.”
“Ouch.”
The volunteer guys were welcomed by the regular staff, but often considered weaker contenders when it came to running calls. There was more to the conversation he wasn't going to tell Mike right now, how the chief had looked in the envelope and found all the cash Dylan had stuffed in there, how Dylan asked about sending a much larger amount directly to Murphy, and how within the course of a painful fifteen minute talk he'd managed to lose his only career but gain some insight into how his future could unfold, using Jill's money for good.
“Yeah. So I guess I'm free now.”
“Free.” Mike snorted. “If this is freedom, I think I prefer...ah, I don't know what I'm saying any more.” Definitely not the time to tell Mike anything.
Ding! The elevator reached the main lobby and they walked out of the building, the August heat hitting them like a wall of soup. “You drive here?” Mike asked.
“No.”
“Good – I'm over here,” he nodded, “so let's get to Laura's. You remember her address?”
“Yeah. In Somerville, over near Tufts.” They walked down the cold, concrete staircase, descending two levels to the underground spot where Mike's Jeep sat, patient and still. In silence now, they were perfunctory. Get in car. Turn on car. Screech tires on painted concrete to exit. Pay. Leave. Dylan hoped like hell she was at home. It's not like there were many more –
“Wait. What about Josie?” he asked as Mike made a tough left turn.
“What about her?”
“Maybe she'll know where Laura is. Or maybe Laura's with her.”
“Let's get to Laura's and see what's going on. Josie's kind of...” Mike made an inscrutable face.
“Batshit crazy?” He didn't relish seeing her under these circumstances. Getting whacked with the plastic balls at Jeddy's had been bad enough. Now that they had f**ked up even worse, what would she use to arm herself? Eek.
“Not what I was going to say. My words would have been 'fiercely loyal'.” He paused, then added, “I don't think she's truly crazy. Just a little unbalanced.”
“She whacked my real balls with the fake ones and teabagged them in the restaurant while you were talking to Laura.”
“Says the man who actually f**ked a blow up doll.” Mike's droll delivery didn't surprise him. The words did, causing his to choke with shock.
“How did you know that?”
“Who actually names a blow up doll? You were so bizarre that first year of college.”
Dylan laughed. “That's true.”
“Besides, I didn't know you f**ked it. You just confirmed it, though.” Smirk.
Shit! “Oh, please. It was a dare and we were drunk and I was stupid enough to want to be in the fraternity and they...just. Ugh. Let's drop this.”
By his judgment they were five minutes or so from Laura's place. Parking would be a problem, until Mike pulled into a “Permit Only” spot and turned the car off.
“What are you doing? We'll get a ticket.”
The look on Mike's face was so out of character as he said, “We're billionaires, Dylan. Who gives a f**k about a $25 parking ticket? That's like losing a penny now.” The same wolfish look, a deeply-engrained expression of cold, brutal action, that he'd seen only once before on Mike's face, when...when...
When he'd told Mike about Laura.
Bounding up the steps to Laura's landing, Mike poked the buzzer over and over, like a little kid calling on a friend for a play date. No answer.
Dylan reached over and rang the bell, too. “Right. Like it didn't work the twelve times I just pushed it,” Mike practically growled.
What the fuck? “So sue me,” Dylan scoffed, rapidly getting pissed. He grabbed his phone and tapped rapidly. Search, search, search – there! Her last name was Mendham, he remembered that much, and she said she lived in Cambridge, and –
Score! Josie Mendham's phone number. Some charity thing she organized in Allston for old people, the number and email were posted on a web page. He furiously tapped out a text and hit “Send.”
“I just texted Josie.”
Mike pushed the buzzer again. Like it would magically work now? Laura clearly wasn't home. Gone from work. Not at home. She must be with Josie. He tapped on his phone.
The look on Mike's face made Dylan freeze, a preternatural instinct putting him on hyper alert. “You what?”
“I found her phone number on a web page and I just texted her. Let's see what happens. Maybe Laura's with her and we can figure this all out. And if not, I'm searching now for her address.”
Tapping his foot, Mike leaned against the metal railing on Laura's stoop. “So you can stalk the f**k out of women and find eleven billion ways to try to contact them, but we can't have an open, mature conversation with Laura about the money? You're such an a**hole, Dylan.”
Bzzz. Someone, hopefully Josie, texted him. The word “a**hole” hovered in the air between them, like a drone seeking a target. And it had found one. He was the a**hole here? He's the one who found Laura in the first place. Mike's the one who had lied to him! And who did –
Wait. Read the f**king message. More important. He squinted and read aloud: “Laura says to tell you Don't chase me. Give me that one shred of respect. Why? Because it's complicated.”
The sound that came out of Mike was like an animal that had just been hit and wounded by a well-placed, though not fatal, arrow. “Jesus Fucking Christ,” he groaned, hand over his heart as if pierced there.
A huge lump formed in Dylan's throat. They'd really blown it, hadn't they? No, you did, he thought. You, Dylan.
Without thinking, he typed back: “It's always complicated. :)” and hit “Send.” Mike didn't seem to notice, his back turned to Dylan as his arms flexed, gripping and releasing the metal railing, shoulders hunched over and tight with grief and fury.
“Josie lives nearby. In Cambridge. I found her address.”
Mike inhaled deeply, his shoulders spreading like a cobra rising up to strike, then descending as he exhaled. Five long, deep breaths later he turned to Dylan, blinking rapidly, his blonde hair a complete, wavy mess and his eyes shadowed and cold.
“Let's go before this gets any more complicated.”
Too late, thought Dylan, but he wasn't going to argue. He'd done enough damage as the leader. Time to let Mike take over.
All those years Mike had spent sitting meditation, going to retreats, reading books by Jack Kornfield and Pema Chodron and the Dalai Lama, all the time he'd invested in breathing techniques and the miles pounded out on his feet, in skis, swimming and biking in triathlons to maintain a sense of inner centeredness was a waste.
As complete, f**king waste. Because the rage that rose up in him, like a megamonster coming up from the sea in some cheesy B film, was very real, rapidly growing, and so quick to activate that he wondered how he had fooled himself all these years into thinking he had tamed it.
Control? Hah. Control was an illusion. Awareness? Fuck that.
The ache that grew its own voice and began keening within him was what hurt most. Why had he listened to Dylan? Why hadn't he blurted out the truth to Laura when he'd been ready? Trusting Dylan had been such an enormous mistake. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he berated himself as he drove the quick hop from Laura's place to Josie's, her triple decker near a baseball field and a large playground, the typical setting for dogs off leash and an impossible parking situation.