12. Doug
TWELVE
DOUG
A talking tortoise?
“Be careful,” April said before the screen went dark.
“Be careful!” Nick repeated. “We don’t know what, and who, to be careful of.” Hands on his head, Nick spun in a slow circle. “I need to take Tim outside.”
Doug had no idea how often a tortoise needed to go, but Nick clearly needed a few moments to gather his thoughts and calm down.
“Don’t take too long. We need to get moving.”
“I don’t know if it’s possible to rush a tortoise, just saying.”
“Just go already.”
They had no plan. They still didn’t know what the hell was going on.
A Velvet Elvis who possibly put people to sleep with his voice. A mysterious man who wore a porkpie hat but who, in Nick’s opinion, wasn’t a hipster. Doug didn’t like that the porkpie hat guy had approached Nick. Had placed his hand on his arm out of the blue and without permission. He worried that April and thus SPAM were keeping vital information from them. Doug wasn’t sure why they would, but he needed to figure out if they were. Because if he was right, they would never get to the bottom of this without more intel.
While Nick was outside taking care of the damn reptile, Doug checked his personal email. There was nothing urgent, but he responded to a few phishing scams because he loved to annoy the con folk. At the bottom of the page, a message from Rich popped up. Doug hit delete without reading it. He had nothing to say to Rich.
Funny, he didn’t get mad anymore when thinking about his ex. The Rich Effect had faded away to nothing. Doug was self-aware enough to admit that much of this was likely due to the goofy younger man he’d known for less than seven days.
Rich would’ve hated Nick Sedgewick. Rich wouldn’t have taken the time to figure out that, once you got past the dimwit airhead persona Nick Sedgewick showed the rest of the world, he was smart, funny, and damn sexy. Mind, before this week, Doug might not have either. But he, at least, could admit it. Nick was a hundred times more mature and thoughtful than Rich, and it had nothing to do with his age.
Rich would never rescue a random reptile. Rich couldn’t care less if a kid was lost in a crowd. Truthfully, Doug was realizing that Rich was not a nice person in general and he was better off without him.
It hadn’t taken Doug more than twenty-four hours to realize that whenever he was being a particular asshole—something that Doug was very accomplished at—Nick would counteract him with a ridiculous comment or possibly a fact about aging brains and bodies.
Well played, Agent Sedgewick, well played. Doug could admit when he’d been bested—for the time being anyway. He also wasn’t afraid to admit he enjoyed their chemistry. He thought that Nick did too.
Was he surprised? Absolutely. But now he understood that it wasn’t the fact that Rich had left him for another man, it was that Rich didn’t want to get older and was using a younger man to try and stop the process. Nick didn’t seem to care that he and Doug were fifteen years apart. And who knew what would happen when the mission was over.
Doug still planned on retiring; he was done with desk work. Maybe he would start a gym? It wasn’t a terrible idea. Maybe he’d write his memoirs. Glancing at the corner of the laptop screen, Doug realized Nick and the tortoise had been gone for longer than he was comfortable with.
“That damn reptile,” Doug grumbled as he shoved his feet into his sneakers, grabbed some keys, and headed down to the parking lot.
He wasn’t there.
Nick was nowhere to be seen.
“Nick!” Doug called out, but there was no answer. “Agent Sedgewick!”
Doug checked everywhere he could think of, even underneath parked cars, but Nick was nowhere. Vanished. Disappeared. This gave Doug a very bad feeling. On the off chance Nick had needed something from the lobby, Doug headed inside. Nick wasn’t there either.
“Motherfucker,” he muttered quietly.
Back out in the parking lot, Doug stood in a lonely patch of shade and stared out into the too-bright sunlight, looking for any sign that Nick had been there.
“They ambushed him,” a voice said.
Doug looked around. There wasn’t anyone nearby. No human being was within seventy or eighty feet of him.
“Knocked him out and shoved him into a black Ford Expedition. I didn’t get the license plate.”
“What the actual fuck.” Doug looked around again, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from.
“Down here.”
Doug moved his gaze downward. There, slowly crawling out from under a sporty red roadster with its soft top down, was the fucking reptile.
“Again,” Doug said. “What. The. Actual. Fuck? A talking tortoise now?”
Tim stared up at him and blinked once. Very slowly.
“I think you should be less worried about my existence and more worried about Agent Sedgewick, who was abducted.”
The bridge of Doug’s nose was getting sore from all the pinching he’d been resorting to lately, but he pinched it again anyway. The tortoise did have a point though.
“Did Nick know about this?” He seemed to recall Nick saying something about his aunt, turtle possession, and talking, but—“About this… talking thing?”
“We’d only recently discussed it. Again, not the point.”
Tim had a very precise way of speaking, his words short and clipped.
“Right. We’ll set the talking aside for later. Nick was ambushed and hustled into a black car. What else?” Doug retrieved his phone from his pocket, ready to call in reinforcements.
“Two men. They came right up to us, overpowered him, and that was that. I’d say they were tall, but everyone is taller than I am. They were quick and businesslike. Maybe in their thirties, looked harmless until they got close.”
“Black Expedition.”
“Yes.”
“But no plate numbers.”
“Well,” Tim said slowly, “no. But the right front fender was crumpled. Looked recent. Not that I’m an expert on that sort of thing.”
Doug snapped his lips shut, refusing to ask exactly what Tim the Tortoise was an expert on. Sand? Types of lettuce? Thank you, Agent Sedgewick.
“Which way did they go?” he asked.
“Hmm. By the time I was able to get around the corner, they were gone.”
Doug sighed. Nick was gone and he had no clues as to where.
“But, from the sound of their tires screeching, I’d say they turned right. That would mean that they’d were heading to the airport or out of town. It’s my guess that they took him somewhere past Harry Reid and out into the desert. Isn’t that where you went yesterday?”
As luck—or habit—would have it, it was the keys to the Pontiac that Doug had grabbed when he’d left the room. As much as driving in Vegas was absolute hell, he’d thought that having their own set of wheels at hand might be a good idea after the walk yesterday. Pulling the key ring out of his pocket, Doug jogged over to where they’d left Nick’s car when they first arrived.
Kidnapping had not been on Doug’s list of Bad Things That Might Happen. He’d failed Nick by not considering all angles. By not fucking protecting him. The same way he hadn’t protected Mel Schoenhut or Esther Carroll by not training them as diligently as he should have—and keeping in touch after they’d moved on. Except this was worse because, dammit, in just a few short days, Nick Sedgewick had managed to burrow through Doug’s walls and make himself important to Doug, more important than a mere work-acquaintance or friend.
“Fucking motherfuckers.” No way was Doug letting anything happen to Agent Nick Sedgewick. It had seemed like they’d gotten nowhere in their investigation, but they’d clearly rattled some chains they didn’t know about.
“Hey!” Doug heard from behind him. “Don’t leave me here.”
A growl rumbled through Doug’s chest but he turned back, scooped up the tortoise, tucked him under one arm, and again began heading toward the constipated bee-bear car. After this assignment, Doug was having a discussion with Nick about the car he drove. The conversation would probably devolve into something about age or Doug’s inflexible attitude, but it would be worth it to have Nick back.
“Front seat.”
“Why? It’s not like you can see anything.”
If a tortoise could shoot a person a devastating glare, Doug would have been dead several times over by this point.
“Fine.”
Doug set Tim on the front passenger seat and clipped the seat belt sort of around and underneath him. Safety first and all that.
“Where are we heading?” Tim asked.
“Lonely Mine Shopping Center.”
“That’s where Schoenhut was found?”
Doug kept forgetting that Tim had heard and understood everything he and Nick talked about in the hotel room.
“Yes.”
Also—Doug clenched his fingers around the steering wheel—they’d had sex while this voyeuristic turtle was under the bed. Dammit. Pressing his foot against the gas pedal, Doug sped out of the parking lot, careening down the Strip and toward Harry Reid
“Whoa there,” Tim said. “I don’t want to fly through the window.”
“I can think of worse things.”
“You woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, didn’t you?”
Doug felt his jaw tighten at the use of the word bed. “Not a fan of Agent Sedgewick being abducted,” he managed to say. An oblivious driver in a Prius veered across from the left lane. Doug pounded on the horn and pressed harder on the gas pedal to get past it before the guy took him out.
“I’d probably survive a car accident if that’s what you’re trying to do. My shell is very thick. I’d also like to point out that getting in an accident or being pulled over by the LVPD before we get to the shopping center will not help Nick, either.”
Hating that the reptile had a point, Doug slowed down.
“Maybe some deep, even breathing would help.”
“Maybe you should shut up before I decide to test your thick-shell theory.”
Doug didn’t risk a glance at the passenger seat but he suspected that, once again, Tim was shooting him a death glare.