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

  Sitting with Ronin at lunch was enough to give any guy an inferiority complex, but add my social limitations to that mess, and it was torture for me.

  I get in the Bronco and start her up. It’s not too cold so I don’t bother letting the engine warm up, just put her in gear and head out towards Denver International. The drive is long. They made this airport a while back and it was in the middle of the Denver expansion. That was their excuse for why the fucking place had to be an hour outside of the damn city. It takes forever to get there. Literally in the middle of nowhere. Which means I have all this time to sit and stew on why Ronin gets the girls and I get the pets.

  Fucking pets.

  Not that I don’t enjoy them, I do. I like the sex, they’re good at it. And the girl this morning is not bad. She’s pretty in her blonde way. She’s trying hard to please me. She keeps her mouth shut. She’s acceptable.

  But I want Rook.

  Rook is all those things the pet is, times a million. She’s obedient, she’s submissive, and she’s beautiful—far, far more beautiful than the girl this morning. And Rook is smart. She might not think so, she’s always down on herself about school. But she’s smart in all the ways that count. Plus, she likes to run. I love that. Love that. I miss her running with me so fucking bad. It kills me to run alone after having her as a partner for half the year. I hate it. It takes all the joy out of it.

  I miss her.

  I really, really miss her.

  The traffic on I-70 is horrific—must be an accident up ahead. Colorado has the worst drivers. They say California drivers are bad, but that’s not true. California drivers know what they’re doing. They might speed the hell down the freeway, but they can cut over six lanes of traffic, find a song on the iPod, check their teeth in the mirror, and flip off the slow driver they’re passing, without even blinking.

  Here—every day is a major fuck-up on the freeway. And there is really only one way to get to DIA from Denver unless I want to drive up north and cut back around on the toll road. And I don’t. So I sit in traffic.

  Back to Ronin. God that guy just pissed me off from the minute I met him. Getting into my truck, chatting and laughing with Spencer like they’re best friends since birth or something.

  I was Spencer’s friend all growing up. Spence comes from money, like me. My parents inherited our house and Spencer came from the same situation. Our families have lived across the street from each other for close to fifty years. But there was Ronin, inserting himself between us like be belonged, even though he wasn’t even from Park Hill. He was from fucking Five Points. The slum of Denver. And he was practically the son of a porn photographer.

  I mean, looking at it objectively, that’s exactly what the situation was.

  I inch past the accident and finally the freeway opens up just past the 225. I get over in the right lane so I can get on Pena. One long-ass road that only leads to one lonely-ass place. The airport.

  But every girl at school loved Ronin the minute he got out of the truck that day. It was like something out of a movie where the action is all slow-mo, the dude drags his hand through his perfectly messed up, yet still coiffed, hair, and all the girls drop their Trapper-Keepers and gawk at him with their mouths open.

  I hated him.

  I still might hate him a little. Maybe even more than a little.

  He’s just lucky that loyalty is my number one moral value. Maybe my only moral value. I do, after all, steal, cheat, lie, and lust. I have most of the vices covered. But for some reason, my whole worldview begins and ends with this absolute dedication to Spencer and Ronin. I’m not even sure how it started since I hated him immediately.

  But it’s there. I can’t not be loyal to Ronin. I simply can’t change it. We’re bound together in this life whether we want to be or not. I’m sure he hates me as well. Maybe even more, since he knows Rook loves me in her own way, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

  DIA eventually shows up off in the distance. They say the white peaked roof is supposed to remind people of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, but it looks like some futuristic circus tent of you ask me. I always get a strange craving for cotton candy when I come here.

  I get in the lane for the west terminal garage and then follow the road around to the ticket station. Fucking Merc. Making me get a ticket and pay for parking. Why can’t he just show up like normal people instead of being all paranoid and stealthy? Now security will have my plates when I leave because I have to stop at the exit and pay as they take pictures of my car. If he would just stand out at Arrivals like everyone else, then I could swoop in, pick his ass up, and swoop back out. No plates. No pictures. No payment.

  I pull up in front of the stop gate and roll my window down so I can take a parking ticket. The gate lifts and I drive through, trying to get my bearings on which way is north so I can find the south elevators on level two.

  In California, west equals the ocean. In Denver, west equals the mountains. I find the mountains so I know where south is, and then take the ramp up to level two. This place is packed since it’s Christmas Eve, and there are holiday travelers everywhere. Kids are crying, moms and dads are stressed, and grandparents are happy to be with them, even though it’s an all-out nightmare trying to get in and out of this garage.

  I drive past the south elevators, looking for a station wagon and come up short. So I try the old-fashioned method. I roll the window down and yell, “Merc!”

  Every set of stressed-out eyeballs turns at my call and stares at me.

  I stare back and have to tuck down the urge to say something nasty.

  Then the passenger door opens and a man slides in, half ducking down thinking no one can see him, and tugging on his hat to cover his eyes. Merc is a huge guy, at least six foot four and two hundred pounds. So him thinking he can duck in the seat and hide himself is almost funny. His hazel eyes are darting all over the place, checking the parking lot. His hand rubs the stubble on his chin, and his cropped brown hair is covered by a trucker hat that proclaims he’s a bacon lover.

  “Good going, Rutherford. Just call out my fucking name in one of the busiest airports on the planet, on one of the busiest days of the year.”

  “You said call you.”

  “No, I said, do The Call, Ford. Not just scream out my name.”

  “I do not scream. And the last call we had together was a duck. Quacking out a duck call in an airport parking garage is gonna be less conspicuous than your name?”

  “Whatever,” he says as he turns to check behind us like the paranoid freak he is, “just drive.”

  “Well now we have to stop at security to get our fucking pictures taken, so this is all moot anyway. You should’ve stayed in Arrivals.”

  “Fuck that, I saw a few suspicious people back there. One on the plane and one in baggage. I went to baggage because it’s what people do and I was blending in, plus I wanted to see if this guy would follow me. And he did.”

  “Let me guess, he picked up bags from baggage as well? Suspicious.”

  He sneers his lip at me in typical Merc fashion. “Don’t patronize me, just take me to your rig. I got a smallish-big, I said.”

  “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 the
re.”

  “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 pi
cky. 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.”