Chapter 42 #2
Sam heard Jules laugh again as he finished zip-tying Dumber and fetched the weapon from the front yard.
Distant sirens signaled the approach of the local police and Sam got out his phone to call Lindsey and get tied into her LAPD buddy, to ease the coming potential friction.
Phone to his ear, he gave Lindsey the sit-rep as he went to join Jules at the trunk where, yup, there he was.
Mick O’Rourke, aka Wig-Milt, the former Milton Devonshire Junior, squinted up at them in what must’ve been, for him, the sudden glare of too-bright light. His face was bloody—he’d been hit in the head and it was still oozing—as Jules helped him sit up.
“Hang on a sec, Linds, switch with me, Doc,” Sam ordered, taking over the whole gun-in-Harper’s-face thing while Kevin holstered his weapon and ran for the rental car where he’d stashed his first aid kit.
Jules meanwhile had pulled the gag out of Mick’s mouth, and the first thing the man said, “Is Emily safe?”
“Yeah,” Sam heard Jules say. “She’s with Rod; she’s very safe, but she’s worried about you. Let’s get you out of here, and while Kevin takes a look at that cut on your head you can use my phone to give her a call.”
“I’ll never forget it,” Rod said as he sat with Emily in the parking lot of Palm Springs’s 24-hour Starbucks. They’d gotten coffee from the drive-through, to help them through the excruciating agony of wait mode.
She’d moved into the front seat where he’d told her the story of how he’d met Jules—and Kevin, too. A rapist had targeted girls in their rural high school, including Rod’s little sister, along with a girl who’d been one of Kevin and Jules’s best friends.
Jules had led an investigation and he and his friends had actually found—and caught—the boy responsible.
“I’ll carry that memory to my dying day,” Rod told her quietly.
“Watching Jules jump on top of the fuck-up with the gun when everyone else was running away, or ducking for cover. And maybe it was because we were small-town kids. Lot of us were raised around firearms and we knew what that kind of ordnance did to flesh. And maybe Jules simply didn’t know—he grew up in the suburbs—but he just launched himself at this kid who was much bigger than he was.
I mean, you look at him today and you don’t think That guy can probably beat the shit out of me, but.
..” He laughed a little. “You’d be wrong.
He took that kid to the ground, knocked his gun away.
And then, he’s bleeding—he caught an elbow to the nose—but now he’s talking me down from the ledge, because I picked up the gun and well, I was dead serious when I aimed it between that fucker’s eyes and.
.. Jules put his body between the gun I was holding and that kid—and he didn’t do it for the kid’s sake.
He did it for me. After all the shit I gave him, the way I treated him and Kevin and. ..”
Rod cleared his throat. “After it was over, and I went to thank him for stopping me, he just kinda brushed it off. No big deal. Don’t worry about it.
One thing he said, though, I still remember it so clearly.
.. He said it was something this one teacher, Mr. Harrison, said to him—that the special kids always somehow manage to find each other, and I remember thinking, This fucking fearless gay kid who is obviously brilliant and courageous and.
.. he thinks I’m special? I’m pretty sure that being friends with him—with all of them, especially Kevin, God. .. It changed my life.”
Emily sat there, sipping her coffee, thinking God, please, let Jules be as amazing as Rod believes him to be. Let him find Mick and bring him safely home...
“What ever happened to Sadie?” she asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Rod admitted. “We lost touch. You know, in high school everything’s so intense.
You fall in love and you think it’s gonna be forever, but.
.. Although Belle and Tom still are. Together.
They were living in... Guilford or Madison, I think.
Somewhere on the shoreline. Last time I checked, anyway.
” He laughed a little. “They always did love going to the beach.”
Rod’s phone rang.
He’d disconnected it from his car’s speaker, no doubt because he wanted to intercept any bad news that might be coming. But he did tell her, “It’s Jules” as he picked it up, putting it up to his ear.
Emily’s heart was pounding, but Rod quickly told her, “Mick’s okay. They’ve got him,” and she exhaled for real for the first time since Mick’s phone went dead.
Thank God, thank God, thank God...
“He’d like to talk to you,” Rod said, uncertain if she was open to that, because yeah, he’d heard her We’re done speech back in his living room.
But she was already nodding and holding out her hands, so he gave her his phone and... “Mick?”
“Em, are you okay?” Mick asked.
“Yeah, are you?”
“Yeah, I’m... They’re taking me to the hospital. I’m okay, but I got hit in the head and Kevin thinks I need stitches.”
“Which hospital?” Emily asked as Rod started his car, clearly ready to take her there.
“It’s probably Desert Regional, it’s pretty close,” Rod said as over the phone Mick told her, “I’m not sure, but it’s the one where Kevin works.”
“Is that where Kevin works?” she asked Rod as he pulled onto the main road, and he nodded, so she told Mick, “We’ll meet you over there—God, I’m so glad you’re alive.
You know, I got a taste of what it would be like if you were gone—if we really were done, permanently, and. .. I didn’t like it at all.”
“Em,” Mick whispered. “I know I fucked up, but... I was so afraid of losing you. I love you so much.”
“Yeah, well,” Emily said. “I love you, too, asshole, but I also hate you, so that’s gonna be problematic, but... Good news! Your not being dead means it’s probably something we can fix. Okay, we’re pulling into the hospital parking lot. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
She hung up the phone and handed it back to Rod, who smiled at her. “Connie would’ve loved you,” he told her. “She would’ve told you to really make him grovel.”
“Oh, I will,” Emily said. “Believe me. I will.