You Need a Vacation
Triumph
The wind off the ocean blew through the strands of his hair, and he raised the beer bottle to his lips for another long swig.
Reclining in a hammock off his bungalow, one foot outside the netting pushed him from side to side as he gazed up at the stars twinkling in the clear, black sky.
Ocean waves formed a lullaby suitable for the happy couples stumbling along the resort beach to their private bungalows.
Not so much for single males in their early forties going through some sort of identity crisis.
That’s what this was, right? Like a full-on nervous breakdown. It had to be. Nothing else made sense.
The first three days here were unmemorable because as soon as the butler dropped him off in the golf cart, showed him the amenities of the space, and explained how to reach him or whoever was on duty, he stripped and fell onto the bed, face down. He was pretty sure he slept for most of those days.
Now, he finally started to feel human again. That was until Tilly dropped back into his thoughts, which required him to violently shove anything and everything about her into the deepest, darkest corner of his brain he could find.
His memory jumped to a week ago, when Tripoli decided to confront him at Regency.
Someone knocked twice, then entered Triumph’s office without waiting for an invitation.
He looked up from his monitors to see his friend, Tripoli, impeccably dressed in a black suit, a black shirt, and his signature black, silver, and white tie.
The blond immediately worked to loosen the knot of his tie and unbutton the neck of his shirt before throwing himself down onto the couch along the wall, spreading his arms across the back of the leather cushion.
Triumph didn’t bother to look up from the code on his computer screen. “Why did you bother to knock if you were just going to come right in?”
“We need to talk.”
“No, I don’t think we do.” Triumph worked even harder to project that he was busy. Busy doing nothing, but busy. He was not in the mood for another lecture.
“You’re hitting overload status, bro. We’ve been here in London for eight weeks.
You worked like a maniac for four weeks to get everything up and running in the new space.
You worked the next two weeks to make sure our staff were at one hundred percent efficiency, which they are.
You could have gone home then, two weeks ago, but your ass is still here punching this ridiculous time clock. ”
Triumph continued to ignore him.
“Tilly wouldn’t want this for you,” the man said quietly.
Here came the same argument they’d been having since after she’d died. “Well, she’s not here to ask, now, is she?” he spat out.
“No, she’s not, which is the whole point of this conversation.
Again.” Tripoli sighed. “I feel guilt too. Every fuckin’ day.
I blame myself for strong-arming her to San Antonio.
I blame myself for not keeping her at my apartment, even though she was perfectly safe with you.
I blame myself for not watching her more closely.
It eats Cosmos up daily as well. It will always live with us, but it’s no one’s fault except her killer’s. ”
“You should have shot him in the balls and then pulled his heart out while he was still alive,” he growled.
“Believe me, if I could have, I would have missed a few shots before the killshot, but there wasn’t exactly time to be that precise. Every day, I wish I could kill that fuckstick again.”
A brief pause followed, and then Tripoli refocused.
When he spoke, the change of subject was so abrupt, Triumph felt like he’d been slapped.
“You dwell on things too much. It’s not healthy.
I’m putting an end to this now. You’re on vacation, effective immediately.
I don’t care how long you take. A month, a year, whatever, but no less than two weeks. Then you go back to work at Elysium.”
“I’m not sure you can tell me what I can and can’t do, Trip. I’m one of the owners here.”
“I have a higher percentage.”
Triumph snorted. “By six percent.”
“Still higher than you.” Tripoli’s eyes narrowed, then the zinger came from nowhere. “What color are the curtains in your rental?”
All pretense of looking at the monitors officially gone, Triumph scrubbed his itchy, achy eyes with the heels of his hands. “What the fuck do curtains have to do with anything?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I have no fucking clue what color the curtains are.”
“Exactly. You know why? Because you come in at ten every morning, work until three a.m., walk home to said flat, and I’m willing to bet my entire last quarter’s earnings you don’t even bother to turn on the lights.
You collapse for a couple of hours, then get up, get ready, and walk here to be back at it by ten a.m. What part did I get wrong? ”
Triumph stared at him.
“None of it. My point exactly.” Tripoli stood, resituated his tie, and rebuttoned his coat. “Cosmos and I are escorting you to the airport tonight. No excuses, or we’re suspending you.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Remember that meeting we had today that you were too busy to attend? Guess what? You were the subject of the meeting. You weren’t there to cast your vote. It was approved eighty percent to zero, the abstention of the remaining twenty being your percentage, to kick you out.”
Rolling his eyes, Triumph asked, “What the hell am I going to do for two weeks?”
“I don’t care. Go lie on a Caribbean beach somewhere.
Go to Shadowlands and get laid.” He pointed a finger at Triumph.
“Don’t blame Cosmos. I already knew you went there and kept your secret, but you know what he’s like when he decides to play detective.
” Rapidly, he shifted back to suggestion mode.
“Hell, go home and binge some television. Read some books. Sleep would probably be good.” His voice warmed.
“People are worried. Take that to heart. It means they care.”
He opened his mouth to argue.
Tripoli stood at the door, one hand on the knob, his eyebrow raised.
Every ounce of fight went out of him.
He was simply too fucking tired to argue.
“Message received.”
“Thank fuck.”
Tripoli was all the way out the door when Triumph called out to him. “Love you, bro!”
He heard the smile in Tripoli’s voice, even through the closed door. “Love you too.”
Sighing, he took another swig from his beer bottle.
Like their friend Cosmos, Tripoli had been more than right to call him on his shitty behavior.
In this case, instead of trying to drown his guilt in meaningless, anonymous sex, he’d been working to the point of exhaustion.
He was no more straight in his head than he had been when he’d arrived in London two months ago. He’d one hundred percent fucked up.
So, here he was. Wasting away in his own version of Margaritaville.
Where the hell had he even gone? When Tripoli left his office, he’d pulled up a travel website on his phone and clicked on the first last-minute vacation deal they had.
It hadn’t mattered at the time. Wherever he was, it was warm, on the ocean, and he was in another country where the native language wasn’t English.
While sucking down cold beers and listening to the ocean waves, he’d do this right. He’d rest and reset. In the process, he’d figure out how to let go, at least a little bit, of his guilt over Tilly’s death and pick up the pieces so he could move on.
And how was that going for him?
He snorted. About the only real positive was that he wasn’t craving a visit to Shadowlands. What that said about him right now, he had no idea, and he didn’t want to think about it either.
Then again, he also didn’t want to think about work, and that never happened.
Resolved to putting his Tilly issues on the back burner for one more day, he extricated himself from the hammock and returned to his bungalow. As he entered, he heard an unfamiliar, muted beep.
Pulled from his musings, he frowned. Maybe he’d imagined it. He chucked the empty bottle into the recycle bin and headed toward the outdoor shower.
The beep sounded again. Was something running low on power? Glancing around, he searched for the smoke detector or anything else that would use batteries.
Finding nothing, he wondered if his phone or computer might be dying. A quick opening of the laptop showed it was at full power and connected to the backup battery. His phone was lying on the dresser and almost fully charged. What the hell was beeping?
The sound pinged again, this time clearly at his back. The only thing behind him was his computer case.
Crossing to the bag, he found nothing in the main compartment that would make any noise. Just as he was about to put the bag down, he heard the beep again. It was definitely coming from somewhere inside the bag.
A few seconds later, he made a tsking sound at his own stupidity.
His second phone. The one he charged religiously every day, but never used, and kept in a pocket deep inside the bag.
To be honest, he was surprised it still worked, and he really wasn’t sure why he still carried it.
It was an old, old phone. A leftover from his NSA days.
A fail-safe that was unregistered in case of emergencies.
No one had called him on it in years. Who could possibly be calling it now? It had to be a misdial. Unless…
The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
And yet…
Hurriedly, he dug down into the interior pocket of the bag, searching for the BlackBerry and slid the cover down to reveal the keyboard. On the screen was a series of texts. As he read, his eyes got wider and wider.
“Holy shit” was all he could manage.
After scanning the incoming messages, he slumped to sit on the edge of the bed and went back to the start, reading through them more carefully as he translated the old NSA code language like he’d been doing it this morning and not years ago.
G: HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY M. (Standard greeting when it had been a while.)