Chapter 11
Travis‘s eyes felt gritty and dry. He blinked hard, closing one eye and then the other, trying to find some relief without taking his eyes off the road.
He had snatched a few hours of sleep the night before, not nearly enough to make up for the sleep deprivation of the past few weeks.
Rachel haunted him now more than ever, an unpredictable figure who could turn his life upside down with just a few words spoken to the wrong person. She had told him that she would keep his secret, but how trustworthy was she, really?
He tried to put her out of his mind, but the day-to-day worries of his life were no easier to face than the looming threat of incarceration.
They didn’t know yet what was wrong with Scot, but it was clear that there was something wrong. Seriously wrong.
The doctors had ordered a wide range of tests. Scot was being poked and prodded and measured endlessly, and he had dark circles under his eyes from the stress and exhaustion of it.
That morning, just before Travis arrived, they had put needles into Scot’s muscles for a test called an electromyogram, which recorded the electrical activity. They were working to figure out why his hands and legs weren’t obeying him the way that they used to. He was scheduled for an MRI, and there was even talk of a lumbar puncture. Just thinking of it made Travis wince. The day before, they had done a biopsy, taken pieces of Scot’s nerves and muscles to peer at beneath a microscope and find out why his body was failing him.
Travis could only pray that it was something reversible, something that Scot could overcome.
Up until now, he had never realized the extent to which Scot was the stable axis around which his world spun. He was his employer, yes, but it was so much more than that. He was the one person in his life who had always been there for him, ever since he had started washing dishes at the Bottlenose as a teenager.
After a difficult childhood and a rocky adolescence that left him with no adults in his life that he could rely on, Scot had become the one study and stable person in Travis’s life. The one person that he could look up to and depend upon. To have Scot’s health unraveling just as Travis was facing an unsustainable amount of stress felt like it would break him.
But he couldn’t collapse. He couldn’t break. Scot was depending on him.
He rubbed his aching eyes again as he turned off of the highway and onto the narrow coastal road that led to Pelican Point.
His phone buzzed, and he checked it after coasting to a stop at a red light.
It was a message from Nick.
Hey man, do you have some time before work? How about a hike?
Travis tossed his phone aside and kept driving. He wanted nothing to do with Nick, not today. Nick who had come into Pelican Point and destroyed the easy life that Travis had built here. Nick who had come away from the vigilantism unscathed, his sister safe, with a shiny new life in Pelican Point. Nick whose sister couldn’t take a hint. Even on the days that she didn’t text Travis, she haunted his dreams.
No, he wanted nothing to do with his old friend.
So why was it that he turned onto Nick’s street instead of his own? As if driving itself, his car coasted slowly down the street and pulled up in front of Nick”s house. He sat there for a minute, too tired to think. Then the front door of the house opened, and Nick stepped out. Travis climbed out of his car and closed the door behind him.
”Up for a hike?” Nick asked. He seemed subdued, more like his old self than the uber happy boyfriend he had been since getting together with Chloe.
A good friend would have wanted him to be happy, but Travis felt a strange satisfaction at seeing his friend subdued, which was immediately followed by a kick of remorse.
What kind of friend didn’t want their best friend to be happy? Nick was probably worried about Scot, just like he was.
”You drive,” Travis said. ”I’m exhausted.”
”We can go another time.”
”No, I need to clear my head. A walk in the woods would do me good, I think.”
”Cool. Let’s go.”
Travis climbed into the passenger seat and stared silently out the window as Nick drove them back out of Pelican Point. Nick tried to make conversation, but Travis was too tired to engage. After a few short answers, Nick stopped asking questions.
Nick turned off of the highway and drove up through the trees. The torpor that hung heavy on Travis‘s mind lifted when he realized that they were driving toward the place where they had last seen Adam. A familiar fear gripped him, pushing back some of the exhaustion that clouded his mind.
”Where are we going?”
”I’m sorry I got you tied up in all of this,” Nick said. ”You shouldn’t have been there that night. But if you hadn’t been, that girl probably never would’ve gotten away.” He glanced over at Travis as he drove. ”She did get away, didn’t she?”
”Yeah. She got away.”
”She got away because of you, didn’t she?”
Travis swallowed. ”I guess so.”
Nick pulled into the dirt lot and parked near the trailhead.
”Did you kill him?” he asked, looking forward into the trees.
Travis opened the door and got out of the car, his ears beginning to ring. He headed up the trail at a pace that fell just short of a jog. Nick ran to catch up with him.
”I wouldn’t blame you. You know I wouldn’t.”
Travis stayed silent for a long while, then let out a sigh. ”It was an accident,” he said. ”Self-defense.”
”Any court would see that, would know that it was an accident.”
”A second time?” he asked harshly.
Nick stumbled but said nothing. Had he forgotten?
He knew that Travis had been arrested all those years ago, but he hadn’t been here for it. He had already been off flying military helicopters somewhere. He didn’t know what Travis had gone through then, not really.
The only one who had been there for him was Scot.
”I get why you didn’t turn yourself in,” Nick said at last. His voice was quiet. ”What can I do to make this right?”
”There’s no making this right. This is never going to go away.”
”It’s been a while. If they were going to come for you, they would have already,” Nick said.
”Which they? The cops or the criminals that Adam was working with?”
Nick went quiet.
”The girl who was there that night, her name is Rachel. She came to the Bottlenose. Found me at work, talked to me where anybody could see.”
”And? Is she going to say anything? Turn you in?”
”She says that she won’t. But I don’t know her. We were supposed to meet the other day, but I went to check on Scot and, well, I didn’t show. I don’t have any way to contact her.”
”The investigation stopped a long time ago. There’s been nothing in the papers for ages.”
”Just because the news lost interest doesn’t mean that the cops aren’t still investigating.”
”Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to minimize it. I just hate seeing you like this.”
They were quiet for a while as they walked through the trees. The whole mountainside had been clear cut a few decades back, and the forest here was a mix of young redwood trees and invasive undergrowth. There was poison ivy everywhere, ready to burn your legs and poison your clothes if you stepped off the trail.
They passed the scene of the crime without pausing or deviating from the path. “What tipped you off?” Travis asked.
“A conversation with Keely. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it sooner, to be honest,” Nick said. “I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention. I’d just assumed your bad mood lately was about Scot, but the timing doesn’t line up. He was already showing symptoms before your mood changed.”
Travis nodded. “Has the shift been that noticeable?”
“It has,” Nick said simply.
Travis let out a sigh, following the trail as it snaked back toward the parking lot. The same way he’d gone, cold and covered with another man’s blood, after trying and failing to find Rachel.
”I wish you would lean on us more,” Nick said. ”Lean on me. We all care about you. You don’t have to go through this alone.”
Travis nodded and gave a grunt of acknowledgement but kept looking ahead.
They finished the hike in silence, but just the steady motion of walking through the forest with his friend had allowed the worst of his stress to drain away. When Nick finally dropped him back at his house, he patted him on the arm and gave him a long look.
”I’m here for you, man. Anything you need for work, Scot, anything else. I’m here.”
”Thanks,” Travis croaked. ”I just need some sleep. I’ll be all right.”
”Yeah. It’ll all be all right.” But he saw a new worry in Nick’s eyes and wondered if some of his fear had transferred over to his friend.
He felt tired as he unlocked the front door to his house, but tired in a healthy way. Moving his body had helped. Maybe he could get some quality sleep in before he started his shift at the bar that night.
He opened the door to find an envelope sitting on the wooden floor just past the door frame. There was no name on the envelope, no writing at all. He closed the door behind him, picked it up, and then walked into the kitchen and sat down before he opened it and started to read.
There were no names on the note either, but he knew as soon as he started to read that it was from Rachel.
First off, everything‘s OK. Don’t worry. The cops brought me in for questioning, but your name never came up. They were asking about the other girls that Adam trafficked, the guys who paid for them, the guys that he got his drugs from. I didn’t know much about any of that, but it’s obvious that they aren’t looking for you. Seems like he was tied up with some kind of organized crime. Anyway, you can breathe easy. You’re in the clear. I understand if you don’t want to see me again, but if you do, I’ll be there next Friday. Same time, same place. No pressure. Thanks for everything.
She had signed it with a series of hearts.
Travis slumped back in his chair.
They weren’t looking for him. Maybe Nick was right. Maybe he was in the clear.
A new worry prickled at the back of his neck. How had she known where he lived?
He waved the thought away, letting it go. It was nothing compared to his other worries.
He stood and lit one of the burners on his stove, held the note to the flame until it caught fire, and set it in the kitchen sink until it was burned to ash.
Maybe everything would be okay.
The incident would fade like a nightmare. Scot would come home from the hospital and take up the helm at the Bottlenose, and Travis could move on with his life. Go back to the way things used to be. Maybe he and Keely could even – he shook his head and pushed that tenuous hope back down. Some things were too painful to hope for.
But his normal life, the comfortable smalltown existence he’d had before… he could get that back, couldn’t he? Feel easy in his work at the bar again, sleep soundly through the night.
Was that too much to hope for?