Chapter Fifteen
Gavino
There were a hundred different ways I could have imagined the night would have gone after Caitlin fell out of her bunk onto me.
Me with my cock buried in her mouth was far better than any of those fucking scenarios.
And despite how great that was, finding that I liked having her asleep on top of me might have even been better.
I’d never been a touchy-feely guy.
I didn’t understand why the men in my family were always grabbing their women’s legs, touching their lower backs, or absentmindedly toying with their hair. I didn’t understand why people in movies and books were always cuddling up together.
Now, though, now I guess I got it.
There was intimacy in it.
And a comfort I never could have expected.
For both of us, I would guess, seeing as Caitlin slept like a fucking rock, only moving to snuggle her face in closer to my neck.
Not even my whole right arm going numb would let me move, relieve the pressure, risk her waking up and getting off of me.
And it was a good thing I was willing to endure the pins and needles because feeling her rock against my cock, her soft little noises filling my ear, and driving herself up and through an orgasm had been worth it all by itself.
The blowjob had been an unexpected perk.
Getting the perfect opportunity to peel off her shorts and panties and taste her, that was the fucking icing on the cake.
Though knowing how loud she got when she didn’t have a hand over her mouth kept me constantly distracted the whole morning as we drove the final leg to her father’s last known location.
Caitlin was quieter than usual, and I had no idea if that was because the fun of the road trip was over and the reality of what we might come upon was dawning on her.
Or if she was simply overthinking everything that had happened between us.
With her, it could have been either, neither, or a combination of them.
I was armed with my knife and a heavy-duty flashlight, and Caitlin had a serious-looking bottle of bear spray and a stick she found in the field as we scoured every inch of the grass leading from where the semi would have been parked and the tree line.
“We would cover more ground if we split up,” she said as we stepped under the canopy. Even with some of the leaves changing and falling to crunch under our feet, it was still significantly darker inside the woods than out.
“No.”
If this was a situation where we were going to come upon her father’s body, there was no fucking way I wanted to risk her being alone when it happened.
“But…”
“I don’t want either of us getting lost,” I told her, gesturing into the expansive woods.
I didn’t get claustrophobic, but it felt like the woods were closing in on me. I couldn’t imagine she was faring any better. Especially considering she was already probably amped up with concerns about her old man.
“Okay,” she agreed, sighing. “We’ll stay close but look on opposite sides then.”
“Sounds good to me. Point anything out, no matter how small it seems. Footsteps, fabric, even candy wrappers. Never know what might be significant.”
With that, we started moving, checking up into the trees and down under our feet, kicking freshly fallen leaves out of our way to inspect the forest floor.
I didn’t expect to find much within the first few dozen yards. I didn’t have a lot of faith in cops, but I figured even some backwoods force would check the first fifty or sixty feet inside the woods when they suspected a missing person.
It wasn’t until the trees obscured even the road from view that I really started searching off in the distance.
She told me that her father was a big guy—tall, broad—but this many weeks in, if something happened to the guy, there might not be a whole lot left of him to find. So I had to really look.
And that was what we did.
Up and down, changing sides, spreading out wider. For hour after hour. The flies bit us up. Then, as dusk came down, so did the damn mosquitoes.
But I wasn’t about to give up until Caitlin was willing to.
Eventually, she leaned back against a tree, sweaty, flushed, eyes sad.
“He wouldn’t be any further than this,” she said. “Not even if he was disoriented or being chased or anything. We are so far in.”
“You okay?”
“I don’t know what I thought we would find. I mean, he went missing weeks ago. If he was here… he would be… he wouldn’t be…” She swallowed hard before continuing, “He wouldn’t be my dad anymore.”
“We had to check,” I reminded her. “It would have eaten you alive if we didn’t.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, exhaling hard. “But if he’s not here, if his body isn’t here, where the hell is he? People don’t just… disappear. If he didn’t go into the woods, what happened? Did someone have car trouble? Did he go with them and something happened?”
“I don’t have answers for you. Maybe we should go back over the tractor. See if there is anything we missed. And your father’s phone. Maybe my brother can uncover things you can’t.”
“Zeno? The hacker?” she asked.
“Yep. He can do wonders with this kind of shit. I should have thought to give it to him before we left the city.”
She nodded at that, her head hanging, trying to hide her face.
“Caitlin…”
There was a small sniffle.
“Cait,” I tried again, moving close enough to snag her chin with my thumb and forefinger, forcing her head up. Even with the dying light, I could see the tears shimmering in her eyes. “Come here,” I said, sliding my hand to the back of her neck and pulling her against me.
She tried to keep herself together for a minute or two. But it wasn’t long before her arms were closing around me and her soft sobs were rocking my body.
I didn’t know what to tell her. I couldn’t exactly say she didn’t have anything to worry about. Who the fuck knew what happened to her old man at this point?
All I could think of to tell her that was true was, “You’re gonna get through this.” And, “It’s okay. I’m right here.”
The tears wet through my shirt before she finally stopped crying and pulled away, wiping roughly at her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I guess we should get back. Before it gets any darker.”
And with that, we made our way out of the woods and back to the tractor.
“Do you mind if I maybe… get on the CB and talk to my father’s friends while you drive?” Caitlin asked once we’d pulled away from the curb.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
It seemed like the truckers were the biggest part of Daniel’s life.
It made sense to speak to them. While she talked, I was going to listen between the lines, try to tell if there were things the other truckers were implying without saying, things maybe Caitlin wouldn’t pick up on.
Especially as it pertained to his mental health or any stress he might have been feeling.
I didn’t plan to do such a big chunk of driving the first day.
Some part of me wanted to drag out what was left of this road trip.
But when Caitlin got on the CB, she lit up at first. It was clear that she was connecting with old friends, people she’d known basically her whole life.
That light fell away, though, whenever she had to inform some of these people that her father was missing.
Daniel’s friends had a lot to say, since many of them talked to him a few times a week.
The thing was… no one implied anything was wrong.
“He was his old self,” was what everyone had to say.
I could tell Caitlin was starting to get to her max after talking to a woman named Mona.
“Hey, why don’t you call it a night?” I asked, seeing her lower lip quivering.
“I knew I wasn’t wrong about him being his normal self. No one thought any different. If anything, they seemed to think he was excited about life.”
“Yeah.” I hadn’t heard anything that raised any red flags either. “Do you have access to your father’s bank accounts?”
“I… no. No. But I could probably guess his passwords. He usually uses the same ones for everything. Why?”
“I’m curious if all his money is sitting there.”
“The money from you?” she clarified.
“Yes. If not, where is that money?”
“Because if he had a lot of cash laying around, that could be a motivation to… take him?”
Kill him.
But if she wasn’t going to say it, neither was I.
“Yeah.”
“Was it that much money?”
“I’d have to go back and see when he started working for me, but it would be sizable, yeah. About half his yearly salary for each haul he did for us. Was he living like he had that kind of money?”
“Not at all. As far as I could tell, he was still being frugal. He sent me pictures from old motels we’d stayed in over the years.”
“Is there any chance your father had a gambling issue?”
“I mean, I don’t think he really ever went to Vegas or Atlantic City.”
“Gambling on the phone is easy now.”
“He can barely text!”
“Hey,” I said, angling my head down as I glanced over at her. “I’m not trying to talk shit about your dad here, okay? I’m trying to come up with plausible scenarios for why he isn’t here right now.”
She nodded at that. “I know. I didn’t mean to snap.”
“That wasn’t snapping. I just wanted to clear that up. I’m not bashing your old man. I’m trying to understand.”
“Yeah. Me too. Even if he did have a gambling addiction, why would he be missing?”
“Because gambling addicts almost never stay within their means. That’s kind of the whole problem with it.
No one would give a fuck if people were addicted to something and all they did was win.
The problem is that they chase that high until they lose the house, their life savings, and the money for their medical treatments.
They ruin their lives over the high. And then, when there is nothing left to ruin, they do the only thing they can think of.
They borrow money from shady fuckers who jack up the interest rate so high that no amount of winning could pay it off. ”
“You’re wondering if he was taken by a loan shark.”
“Or so indebted to one that he disappeared just to get the heat off.”
She sat with that for a moment, and I appreciated how well she was trying to compartmentalize this. It couldn’t be easy when you hero-worshipped someone to learn that they were capable of some unheroic shit. And she already had that evidence when she learned her father worked for me.
Finding out that he might have done so to fuel a gambling addiction might have even been a sort of relief to her. It was easy to excuse something so crazy if she knew he couldn’t help himself, that he had to do it, that his life was in danger if he didn’t.
“We’ll know more when Zeno gets his phone and we get into his bank accounts.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
I reached over, giving her thigh a squeeze, then focused back on the road.
We had to stop, again, to grab her car at Ira’s lot before finishing the last leg into the city.
Neither of us discussed stopping. And as much as some selfish part of me wanted to grab a hotel room and spend a few hours rolling around together before we went back to our lives, I didn’t object when she offered to drive so I could nap.
“You’ve got this,” I said, reaching over to grab her leg and squeeze as we approached the GWB.
“But what if I don’t?”
“You do. But if you don’t, we can hop out and change positions.”
“Really?” she asked, looking over.
“Yep.”
Just having that reassurance, that back-up plan, seemed to be all she needed to be able to keep her panic down and make it across the bridge.
“I can drop you at home,” she offered.
“Nah. Been in the car too long. It’ll feel good to stretch my legs and walk.”
So we went to the garage.
Parked her car.
Exchanged numbers.
“Would it be okay if I went with you to see your brother?”
“Yeah. But I want to go tomorrow. Get this ball rolling.”
“Okay,” she said, sliding into the taxi I hailed for her.
“But just knock,” I said, shooting her a smirk. “No need to hold me at gunpoint this time.”
I closed the door on her little laugh.
Then fucking smiled the whole way home.