25. I See Red #2
I should be demanding answers. I should be pissed that Patrick dared to show up here.
But addressing either would mean having to talk, and I don’t trust myself right now to try.
The impulse to run is doubling on itself, and I’m not about to argue.
Jase is trying to speak with me, but all I can manage is another shake of the head, staggering out of the kitchen on numb feet.
Well, at least now I know why Patrick thought I wasn’t home.
I walk out onto the driveway to find my car gone, again.
It’s also not in the garage, but I remember what Blythe mentioned the other night on the ride back from the country club.
She has a catering service showing up sometime today for a party she’s throwing, and, like always, she doesn’t want any of our vehicles (a.k.a.
mine) obstructing theirs. Instead of, God forbid, pulling my car into the currently empty garage, she’s left it out on the street…
three houses down. If not for the car being red, I probably wouldn’t have spotted it.
And, of course, she never bothered to text or leave a note to let me know where the car was. On any other day, I would be pissed, but right about now, I can’t process much of anything. I just wander in a daze down the street towards my car, trying to make sense of what happened.
Patrick Bouchard broke into my house.
Jase nearly strangled him to death.
And then Jase was being…sweet. To me .
I have no idea what provoked any of it, and I’m feeling an awful lot like I just fell into a cosmic rabbit hole.
Seriously, am I in some kind of Bizarro realm?
Because nothing short of that makes sense, not compared to what I witnessed at the country club.
Jase had made his intentions clear. He wanted back into the Untouchable’s good graces.
So why the hell would he attack Patrick, justified or not? Getting on any Untouchable’s shit list is pretty much a death knell to your social life. I should know.
Thirty minutes later, I find myself sitting in the corner booth of Castelli’s with Maggie, who’s still recovering from her palliative care marijuana trip.
If anything, it makes her appetite all the more ravenous, because she’s just as eager as me to eat.
I may not be working, but I’m not missing Taste-Testing Tuesdays.
Nico is always experimenting, either trying out entirely new dishes or doing twists on fan favorites.
Every Tuesday, hours before the restaurant even opens, he goes in back and whips up something for us.
It’s free food, and my God, it’s delicious.
Despite being flabbergasted and having my nerves rattled, I’m kind of starving since I was in too much of a daze to eat breakfast back at the house.
The restaurant still won’t be open for another half hour, so I can tell Maggie what happened without worrying about other customers overhearing.
Well, in between mouthfuls of the Sausage & Pepper Frittata Affogato that Reed slides in front of us.
The dish is essentially a pizza and breakfast frittata rolled into one, earning the title of the greatest meal ever made in my book. Mozzarella melts on my tongue, and I’m pretty sure my mouth has a food-gasm. Still, I can’t shake my frustration from earlier, particularly over what Jase had said.
“Not so tough without your henchmen, are you?”
Patrick’s hand was bruised, but that had been the extent of his injuries.
It’s more than an aching suspicion that he was the one who beat up Jase the other night, and Patrick clearly had help.
It wouldn’t be the first time he employed such a tactic.
I saw what Patrick did to Justin Moore and Will Buckley during our Senior year.
He obviously knew his limitations, and anytime Patrick faced off against someone he knew he couldn’t beat in a fair fight, he would have hired muscle gang up on his opponent and pin him down so Patrick could “teach” him a lesson.
But what had Jase done to earn Patrick’s wrath? And what provoked Patrick to come to my house? If it was that important, why wouldn’t Patrick have backup again? And what the hell did Jase say after he dragged Patrick outside?
I immediately feel like an idiot as I voice that last question, realizing what I should have from the start.
The argument had been outside, not ten feet from the back door.
I open the security app for the house on my phone.
Sure enough, the event history shows a motion-activated video log saved thirty-seven minutes ago.
The camera angle doesn’t fully show what Jase is doing.
It just looks like he’s getting up into Patrick’s face.
Despite the heat, it’s windy as hell outside, so a distinct howling drowns out a good chunk of the conversation.
What can be heard, however, definitely perks up our ears.
“You don’t think I have a fail-safe in place?
” Jase laugh-scoffs. “If anything happens to me, your reputation is the least of your problems. My guy will make sure of that. And let’s get one more thing straight here.
You so much as go anywhere near Ali again, and I will beat the everliving shit out of you so bad that you’ll need a fucking tube to eat. ”
Even though the camera doesn’t show Jase’s fist nearly choking the life out of Patrick, the accompanying strangled wheezes are a pretty good indicator of what he’s doing.
“Do I make myself clear?”
Whatever is said after that is inaudible, but those six sentences alone speak volumes. Maggie and I just sit there blinking at the phone, even after the recording ends and the screen goes black—
Because what the hell?
“Can you isolate the vocals on a video?” I blurt the second Reed comes to our table with a plate of his own.
He’s not like some sound engineering sensei, but he taught himself the basics to help with his friend’s band, so he at least knows his way around audio equipment and software.
The question obviously still takes him aback, because can you say random?
I explain what happened and show him the footage, and to say he’s sharing in our confusion is an understatement.
Reed agrees to examine the video, but that pierced eyebrow of his stays lifted as he takes the phone from me and presses it to his ear, listening to the recording again. Something must catch his attention, because he replays a section of it multiple times before handing the phone back over..
“What?” I ask, thinking he’s heard something Maggie and I missed.
The longer Reed sits there, the more confused he looks. “This is the same guy from last night, the one who was in here the other day with Easton.”
It may be a statement, but the way he says it, it sounds more like a question.
Reed runs a hand through his bleached hair, only adding to its already disheveled state. “What do you actually know about this guy?”
“Jase?” I shrug. “Nothing that doesn’t have some dust on it.”
The tiniest hint of a smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “May I offer some advice?”
I narrow my eyes at him, because he already knows that isn’t really a question. I always welcome his opinion.
He taps a tatted finger on the screen of my phone. “I’d recommend reevaluating your take on him.”
Reed knows more about what happened to me than anyone else outside of my family, so I know he isn’t saying this lightly.
“That’s not the actions of a guy who’s looking to get on your nerves, dolcezza. That’s a guy who’s saying, ‘fuck with my woman, and I’ll unalive you.’ And he didn’t do it to just anyone. He did it to a member of Ravenswood’s dynasty. Either he has a death wish, or he isn’t fucking around.”
My eyes further narrow on Reed until I can barely see through them. I know that look on his face. There’s something else he isn’t saying. “What did you hear?” I demand, pointing back to my screen.
Despite the food still being so hot that it probably scolds the entire inside of his mouth, Reed devours as much of a frittata as possible to muffle his words. And he keeps doing it every time I ask.
“I don’t like you very much right now,” I say, though he knows I don’t mean it.
That much is clear when he swallows the last of his frittatas, grinning as he slides out of the booth to get his next serving. “You love me.” He taps my phone again, the screen now black. “Download the footage and send it my way. If my suspicions are confirmed, I’ll fill you in.”
I glare at the back of Reed’s bleached head. “Why can’t you just tell me what your ‘suspicions’ are?”
Though he’s still walking towards the kitchen, he turns back to face me. “You know what they say about assumptions, and you’ve been operating entirely on them since this guy came to town. You need facts, dolcezza.”
As much as I want to keep glaring at Reed…he has a point. Everything I know about Jase is at least a few years old. Plenty can change in that time, and given what happened with his dad, I suspect a lot did. He moved to the other side of the country to get away from it all.
Picking up my phone, I unlock the screen to download the video as Reed said, only to be given an “Unable to process request” error.
Weird. I refresh the page and—
It’s gone.
What the actual fuck?
The footage logs show me dazedly walking down the driveway, and then nothing.
The only other videos from this morning were triggered by Jase initially leaving, my family coming and going, and a delivery driver approaching the front door.
I refresh the page again just to make sure I’m not hallucinating, but nope.
Any evidence of Patrick’s little drop-in, as well as Jase’s return, has been deleted.
May I repeat: what the actual fuck?