Chapter 22 Reed
REED
“It all started when my mom died four months ago,” I say, speaking quickly to move past it.
I don’t want his sympathy. My grief is unique in that I was glad to see her go, even though it meant I was left alone in a disorienting world.
With no one left to turn to, my isolation sealed me up.
“I found this box of clippings and photos of Wendell Blitz in a storage unit I didn’t know my mom had, along with a copy of Wendell’s book. ”
For weeks, I read Wendell Blitz’s book before bed every night and picked it up on audio during every morning run, searching for even the barest hint of how my mother could’ve entered the picture of this man’s life.
I followed podcasts he guested on and watched YouTube videos of old business talks he gave all over the country.
I imagined my mother wooing him in a hotel bar over gin martinis or chatting him up in a brewery he wandered into where she waited tables.
I’d even gone so far as to put Wendell’s and my photo into online feature match generators and thrilled each time we scored above eighty percent.
“I had this theory that I couldn’t prove.
I had no way to ask him if he’d ever even met my mom.
How do you access the world’s most inaccessible man?
He might as well be the president,” I say.
“I started following him on all forms of social media and keeping track of his speaking engagements. When one came close enough, I got in my mom’s old clunker and drove across the border to Denver to be front row, hoping he’d spot me in the crowd and get this look on his face, and I’d just know. You know?”
Dax nods. Whether he means it or not, he is listening. That’s all I can expect.
“By the time I went looking for Wendell, his private jet had long flown,” I say, the disappointment and exhaustion of that day returning.
“The following afternoon, he was set to speak at an e-commerce summit in Las Vegas. Afraid to miss it, I drove over seven hundred miles through the night without stopping. I drank energy drinks and pounded protein bars. I slept for twenty minutes in my car before waltzing into the hotel and freshening up in the casino restroom. I flirted my way into the talk after I caught a very smarmy ticket-taker checking out my ass.”
“It’s a good ass,” Dax says in the hushed tone of someone sitting on death row. With the black humor of someone who understands this might be the last story they ever hear. I better make it compelling.
“Afterward, I lied my way into a press room, mumbling something about new media and losing my press badge at a roulette table. That didn’t get me close enough to speak to Wendell one-on-one, but still, as he fielded questions with the unmitigated air of a true professional, I thought, That must be my dad.
“By that point, I’d heard rumblings in my college alumni groups that he was going to give a speech at the University of Wyoming at the start of the new semester.
He’d been born here, after all. Weeks later, I drove out to my alma mater and snuck into the War Memorial Fieldhouse using my old student ID, which somehow still worked.
It wasn’t hard to find the athletic offices where Wendell was waiting, but the security posted outside the doors was intense.
Once I figured out a way around, the door swung open, Wendell made eye contact with me, and I thought, This is it.
The moment. He sees me. He knows who I am,” I recount.
“But then, I was rushed away by an old professor who recognized me. With how wild I felt in that hyper-focused state, I could’ve strangled him if he hadn’t had me escorted out first.”
“Reed Thompson has his own violent impulses?” Dax asks, a smirk curling the right side of his mouth. Despite everything, I still like impressing him.
“When I got the idea to try for the housesitting gig at this newly completed place, I figured I wouldn’t get it.
More than that, I figured he wouldn’t remember me.
I was one face in a sea of them he’d seen over several months.
But I guess he was right. He knows everything,” I say.
“He anticipated my plan before I’d even formulated it. ”
“He might be able to predict the future, but he doesn’t get to control it,” Dax says.
“We’re a pretty fucked-up pair, aren’t we, Dax?” I ask.
Dax. His true name suits him. The short, blunt sound. The unique X at the end. I already enjoy saying it.
The situation isn’t funny, yet we laugh anyway. It feels like if we don’t, we might both walk out into the Wyoming night, lie down beside that elk carcass, and wait for the wolves to come back. Everything has been turned upside down, and now we’re both dizzy and directionless.
Still, Dax’s green eyes blaze through the room, a stabilizing force amid the chaos we’ve created.
Dax unties me. Clearly, he doesn’t know what else to do.
My phone rings again. Is it Erin? Wendell calling back to apologize and make amends?
“Carson,” Dax says.
“My friend, the lab tech,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “Should we answer it?”
His question is telling. We. Once again, like this is a team effort. “I usually do when he calls.”
“Does he know where you are?” he asks.
“Approximately. I wasn’t allowed to give him the address, but—”
“But I’m not the only lawbreaker in the room,” Dax fills in for me.
I shrug, admitting nothing.
By the time he hands me the phone, the call has gone to voicemail.
Several more notifications chime in. A voice message and a string of texts cluster across the cracked screen.
“Normal for him?” Dax asks, looking over my shoulder.
“No,” I say, eyes moving as quick as they can.
Call me
It’s urgent
Shit
U there?
Call me!!!!
Dax plays the voicemail. Carson sounds petrified.
“Reed. I—I don’t… Fuck. Okay. The police are on their way.
But—” There’s shuffling, footsteps, a door closing, perhaps?
“I’m on the overnight shift. Somebody…somebody broke in.
They had a gun. Damn, I was scared. They—they trashed the place, raided our samples, and wiped out a lot of our tests.
Yours is gone, Reed. I hope you printed that shit out because—” A muffled voice enters the crackly mix. “Gotta go.”
I replay the message to make sure I heard it correctly.
“There’s no chance this is a coincidence,” I say.
“Not one,” Dax says.
Stupefied, I stare down at my lap. “How did that happen so fast?”
“With enough money, you can make anything happen any time you want,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
I recoil. “For what you’ve done?”
“No. I won’t apologize for doing what I needed to do,” he says, resolute in his words.
And I’m more convinced now that his use of need is accurate.
Nobody would go through all this trouble if they weren’t in dire straits.
“I’m sorry that you’re finding out that Wendell Blitz is both your dad and a massive dick. ”
Rage rumbles up from my gut. It’s fine if Wendell wants to slander my dead mom and play roulette with my life, but I have to draw the line somewhere. He doesn’t get to harass my friends. He doesn’t get to walk away from this unscathed when I’m scraped and bruised.
This house is one of eight that Wendell Blitz owns, that I know of. There could be more bought under various holding companies or assumed names. Whatever’s in the safe in this house, it costs a fortune, and it’s a fortune Dax and I—we—deserve.
“Are you going to call him back?” Dax asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t even know what I would say.”
“Then what now?” he asks. I’m surprised he’s looking to me for guidance. Hours ago, he had me at his mercy, following his every command. Now he wants my direction. Maybe he’s more of a switch than his Kink Camp profile let on.
After a moment of consideration, I say, “We find the safe and get out of here before the sun comes up.”
Dax is quiet for a long beat. “Reed, no.”
I hadn’t expected a refusal. “What do you mean, no? Isn’t that what you came for?”
“It is,” he says, “but I can’t bring you into this.”
“It’s far too late for that.”
He bows his head. “I work alone.”
I stand from the chair, muscles cricking from being stuck in the same position for so long. “After all this, you still don’t trust me?”
He throws his shoulders back, but I can tell it’s a projection of bravery, not a true display. “I don’t trust anybody. I can’t. I don’t have it in me anymore.”
“What would you have me do then?” I ask, still shaking, hands finding purchase on my hips.
“Pack a bag, call a car, and leave. You can get away from this unharmed,” he says. “I can’t. He’s got too much on me.”
“We’re back to that? You hunt me down, have your way with me, out me to my dad, and you won’t even let me in on your plot?
I’m just expected to leave and pretend this never happened,” I say, disbelieving.
I thought he was stronger than this childish behavior.
I thought he possessed a ride-or-die quality—and not just in the I-need-to-ride-him-or-I’ll-die kind of way.
“The chances of getting caught now are too high. Even if I were to let you in on it and we were to find and crack the safe—which there’s little guarantee we will—and we got away like I planned, there’s still a chance Wendell has every TSA agent, every border patrol officer, every customs personnel on red alert for us.
Just because he made it sound like we’d go unpunished doesn’t mean we will. Men like him lie,” he says.
“You lied too,” I pose, so he can’t let himself off that easily.
“Not in the way he’s capable of,” Dax argues.