Collision Course, CH 01-02 (Patreon)

The screen turns on as someone steps within its sensor range. I glance away from the disassembled fifty Cal Desert Eagle on my work table and over my glasses to watch the screen. A man is visible in high resolution.

Mid-thirties, fidgeting before the door, hand going up to knock, but runs through his hair instead. He is dressed in rumpled slacks. His white shirt is dirty, new and old stains. His reddish beard is unkept. He’s a man who hasn’t slept well in some time.

Desperation drove him to find me.

I go back to cleaning the Desert Eagle. He isn’t the police or someone here to cause problems. My phone would have rung long before he reached my house if that was the case. Jacoby, the old veteran who lives at the entrance of the reservation, is good at sizing up people with only a few words. This man talked to him. No one reaches my house without first dealing with Jacoby.

The man pounds on the door as I oil the gun. “Hello?” he calls after a few seconds. “Is anyone there? My name is Henry. I need your help!”

I don’t look up. I don’t do visitors, not those who show up at the house’s door. The people who know me know to come to the attached workshop is they need to talk with me.

He rings the bell, pounds on the door again. Yells for anyone here to answer him. He goes so for a full minute before finally uttering the words I expected.

“Please, you have to help me. I’m desperate.”

Who else would drive to a place no one remembers exist, hours away from the nearest population to knock on my door. I continue to ignore him. His desperation doesn’t mean I have—

“Please, they have my daughter.” The whisper is soft enough I shouldn’t have heard it. I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t replaced the microphone that came with the Arlo Pro security camera with one I designed.

Boxes inside of me rattle. Regret at having done the upgrade. Understanding this is why I did it. And the one that if I do more than allow to rattle, will have me running to that man, proclaim I will do everything in my power to help him. The box that will get me killed if I allow to open.

The box containing my empathy. A mental hand keeps it closed. Emotions are not useful unless tightly controlled.

The man’s sobbing reaches me, but doesn’t make me hurry. I place the partially assembled Desert Eagle on the cloth. He isn’t acting. He isn’t a trap to force me out of where I know I am safe.

I take the pants off the table as I stand, then put them on. I hardly ever need them. They are there for when a stranger makes me leave my workshop.

Somehow, only one thing unnerves people more than a scarred six-six black man with muscles that make it clear he can crush your head and a two-gun harness across his chest. That is, if that man is stark naked.

I enter the house through the attached door. Walk through the empty, sterile kitchen, the stark living room, stepping over the automated vacuum, on its quest for motes of dust.

I don’t live in the house. Like many things about me, it is simply a facade I need to appease others.

The vacuum goes hungry most of the time.

I open the door and the suddenness of it has the man back up. Then reflexively smooth his dirty shirt. He looks up and takes another step back. The Arizona heat hits me, along with the stench of his unwashed body, and sweat beads on my skin. I watch him, unmoving. I wait for him to talk.

This is my home. I will not put on an act for the people who seek me out, who get me to leave my workshop. Those who see me here do so by my rules. I leave the facades for when I must leave the reservation.

He notices the empty holster across my chest and his eyes go to my hands. The reflex speaks of a man who has had gun violence visited on him before. He relaxes slightly at seeing them empty.

“You have to help me. Please, I have no one else to turn to.”

He appeals to something I won’t allow to affect me. The implication I have no choice would have me slam the door shut and return to my workshop, but he has already said the words that let him get away with it. Get away with anything short of laying a hand on me. This is about his daughter.

Face to face, I revise his age down. Later twenties at the most. This puts his daughter at no more than eight years old. The age I was when I was taken by the man claiming to be my father.

I step away from the door, and he understands the meaning. He steps inside, then stands in the living room, uncertain what to do. Etiquette and expectations call for me to invite him to sit, offer him refreshments, to make him feel human again after the ordeal he had endured. But I am not human. In my home, I make no pretense at having any humanity.

I watch him and wait. I wait for him to realize the rules society lives by are meaningless here. I wait for him to tell me what drove him to seek me out. He sought me out. He was warned not to. How, even as he was made aware of me, it came with a warning of the danger I represent. If he is desperate enough to ignore them, he is desperate enough to deal with me without the comfort of civility.

The danger is not an act.

I was ten when I killed for the first time. A raccoon my brother, Justin, befriended despite being only 2. Our father ordered me to snap its neck. I refused and was beaten for it. When I was healed enough I could move, he ordered me again.

I am a fast learner. It is how I am still alive today. It fought me, nearly escaped, but I wasn’t getting a second beating on its account. Eight years later, I would kill my first man.

“They took her right out of school,” the man finally speaks. “They had legal documents showing I’d authorized them to take her. Given them power of attorney. They even had my signature. I never signed anything like that!” He paces but keeps his distance from me. “It’s been two months. The police haven’t found anything. The private investigators I hired just took my money.” He takes a thick roll of cash from a pocket and offers it to me. “This is all I have left.”

Usually, the only reason no one finds anything after this long is that there is nothing left to be found. If not for the paperwork, I’d tell him to finish mourning her and send him on his way. But papers good enough to fool someone whose job is to look after children when they are away from their parents require extensive resources, as does the framework to support any inquiry that someone might make.

No one goes through this extent for a quick kill; not even me.

“Who told you about me?”

He takes a step back in surprise.

My voice is deep, gravelly, threatening. In part because of an attempt to strangle me, and in part, because I’m simply big and menacing. It’s also been a few months since I’ve spoken to anyone.

The man hesitates. Not deceit; evaluation. Can he put his contact at risk? Can he live with whatever I might do to them if I decide they had no right to tell this stranger where to find me?

I don’t speak. I don’t have to threaten him. He sought me out. He will realize that to get my help, he must play by my rules.

“His name’s Emil,” he says, and somehow I’m not surprised. “He’s young. Fuck, he can’t be more than a kid. He found me at the police station. Asked why I was there. I told him. He told me how to find out. He said that once I’d given up ever finding her, that the day having you kill me looked like a good trade-off for a chance that she might live. To come find you.” Tears silently fall as he drops the roll of cash. “If that’s what it takes, just make it quick, please.”

Emil was seven when I rescued him, so he’d be nineteen now. Two months in the forests of New Hampshire, killing the men his father sent to end him. It only ended when I created enough of a respite to time to track the man down and kill him.

Emil wanted to stay with me, but I am not fit to raise a child. My father didn’t break me so much I don’t understand I can’t have the empathy needed for that work. I found him a couple who could take him in. Good people with experience dealing with trauma. Two months with me broke him too, despite my effort to treat him with care.

Being under constant attack, watching me kill so many people, there is no way to remain whole through that. But unlike me, he isn’t so broken that he can’t function in society without a facade. And the things he is no longer equipped to deal with, the wealth his father tried to have him murdered for helps him handle it.

Every few weeks he sends emails to the address I gave him with I left him. In them he lies to me, tells me he’s doing well, talks of school he doesn’t attend. Of friends he made up. Girls, I suspect he wouldn’t know how to handle if he interacted with them. He never mentions wandering the country, looking for people to send to me.

I never reply.

“Her mother?” I ask. Most kidnappings are done by a relative. Or in my case, someone claiming to be such.

He rubs where the ring should be. He shakes his head. “She loves Denita. She’d never do something to hurt her.” This man doesn’t know the level of depravity love can cause. The low I’ve used love to bring other men to.

“Did the police investigate her?”

“Yes, but she wouldn’t—”

“Other family members?” one step removed isn’t as likely, not with the level of preparations involved here. Any relative who felt the mother had been slighted would act rashly. Unless they are like me, which is unlikely. The situation that created me does not lend itself to having relatives.

“She’s an orphan. We have shared custody of Denita. The divorce was amicable.” He winces. “Or as amicable as those things get.”

The box rattle and even as I force it quiet, I feel its pull to go to him, comfort him.

I don’t bring comfort. I bring closure. The rest they can deal with on their own.

“What school did they take her from?”

“Cholla Middle School.”

“Where is that?”

“In the Northwest of Phoenix.”

I don’t show my surprise. Emil shouldn’t be in Arizona. He shouldn’t be this close to me. Is it a coincidence, or is he trying to find me?

I see the question coming before he speaks it. It’s in his eyes. The desperation. “Is—is she still alive?” he needs reassurance. He wants a lie so he can finally sleep knowing there is a chance.

“It isn’t likely.” I bring closure, nothing else.

There is no shock, only a slight deflation of his body. I will not be the first to have told him so. But he has no one else to turn to after me. If I tell him she is dead. He can’t hope anymore. I don’t press him. Now what he knows what to expect, he needs time to pull himself together, to decide what he wants.

I know he made it when he takes the roll off the floor. “Can you bring her back to me?” he offers it to me.

“I can.” I take hold of it, but I don’t take it out of his hand. He isn’t done. Fire burns in his eyes now.

“Can you make them pay?”

I smile. Not one of the facades civility demands. My smile. The one normally reserved for those I am sent against. The smile I give in those final moments before it all ends for them. For what has been committed against him, this man deserves to see the monster he is hiring. “I can.”

There’s this show I used to watch when I was a kid. Well, reruns of a show. Reboot. It’s about these people, computer programs, really, who live inside ‘Mainframe’. It’s a computer. Anyway, I was in love with that show. The idea of living inside a computer, of taking part in the games the user installed.

That was the dream. That show is why I got into computers instead of finance like dear old dad wanted.

If you want to get technical about it, I had a computer before I knew about the show. I was six when I got my first phone, but to me, a computer had to be this box that sat on a desk. I had to hear the disk spin up as I accessed the information on it.

I was a kid. How was I to know that before I hit twenty hard drives wouldn’t be a thing anymore? It’s all solid-state drive now. And with enough money, even the cooling system is going to be as silent as a country night… if they are silent. I’m a city boy, so I wouldn’t know.

So, much to dear old dad’s ever-lasting disappointment, I wouldn’t have anything to do with finances. Yet one more thing to set me apart from everyone else in my family, like being the pink sheep wasn’t enough.

Computers, those are where it’s at, the hardware, the software. When I program; when I get into the zone… I swear I can hear the computer I’m hacking talk to me.

“Crimson!”

That’s Kat. Don’t let her hear you call her that. She hates the nickname. Almost as much as what I’m about to call her. “Yes, Ma’am?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s Katherine or Boss. I’m not old enough to be Ma’am.”

See? Kat’s shorter than I am, but I’m six-one, so there aren’t that many people taller. She’s lean, but don’t let that fool you into thinking she’s weak. I’ve seen her knock a guy out once with one punch. Right into the kisser and down he went.

“Sorry, Boss.” I grin. “What can I do for you?”

“You can go home. It’s eleven at night. The office closed five hours ago.”

It is?

“You’re still here.” Never let them see you surprised. That’s one thing dear old dad taught me that stuck. The moment they think you’re off balance, you’re done for.

“I’m the boss,” she says with a hint of exasperation. “I have to deal with the paperwork the lot of you generate. Which means I don’t have business hours. Do you ever sleep?” he looked over the partition at my desk and her eyes pause at the three travel mugs lining it. They’re empty by now, as are the six others under my desk.

“It’s called coffee,” I tell her. I don’t have a problem. “This wonderful thing we came up with to replace sleep.” I just like coffee. I’d raise one of the mugs as a salute, but then I’d want to drink from it and remember it’s empty.

There is nothing more disappointing than an empty travel coffee mug.

“Go home, Crimson,” she repeats. “I’m getting tired of having to kick you out of the office.”

“I just need to close this off.”

She leans in enough to see the screen and the reports on the security check I had to run earlier. “Do not be here when I come back to open the office,” she warns. “I am firing your ass if I catch you pulling another allnighter.”

“Five minutes, tops.” I lie to her. This is going to take a couple of hours at least. Not the report, the project it’s covering up.

She looks at her watch, and I can see her considering sticking around until I leave. Maybe I need to stop exaggerating my capabilities? Fortunately, she turns with a huff and leaves.

That was my boss. Her and her husband, Thomas, who I’ve only seen three times in the four years I’ve worked here, and only twice in the office, run the company. He’s a ‘in the field’ kind of guy. First time I saw him was because I’d concluded that Kat’s mysterious husband was a fabrication, so I set to confirm it. I had a black eye as proof he exists. He throws a mean punch. That was amusing to explain when she asked about it. She was left with the impression stairs were my kryptonite. Fortunately for me, by the time he showed up for the first time in the office, he’d forgotten our encounter.

Makes you think about the life he lives when an attempted mugging isn’t memorable.

Since none of her stories about him are complaints, I figure that for as little of him as we see in the office; she sees enough of him to keep her satisfied.

They run Silt Security. Very creative, I know, but everyone here is a security expert, not an artist. We are among the best in Phoenix, and I’m not bragging. Check our reviews, no I have not altered them. They don’t skimp on the equipment needed to keep their client secure, and that includes the very best in computers, in processors, in everything a hacker like me could ever want.

She’d be disappointed to learn that the equipment is the reason I work here, not her very well delivered sales pitch. I also had to make sure I’d be the kind of guy she’d want working for her. I hacked my school and dropped my grades a few points, erased some of the complaints from my old teachers I found there. What do they care about the time I hacked their phone as a joke and leaked the pictures on them? It’s not like there was anything that could get them fired. I wasn’t that nasty back then. In the end, she was left believing that I loved what she sold me and that I was an ideal team player to work with her other cyber experts.

I can work with a team.

But really, if you want to see me shine. Leave me alone with access to the entire power of the server room this company uses.

So, you have to be asking yourself. Can a cyber expert slash hacker who has Crimson as a last name be related to those Crimson? You know the ones, financiers extraordinaire, holders of the eight, or is it ninth, largest bank account in the country?

Why yes, success a person could be the heir to all that.

If he’d been able to toe the family line.

To be fair, I was fifth in line to the wealth. One brother and three sisters ahead of me. Being the youngest can be so much fun. Please read as much sarcasm as you can into that line.

By now, it should be obvious that I didn’t toe the line. My comment about the pink sheep probably clued you in how that is, but being gay isn’t actually what got me disowned. Oh, no, dear old dad was more than willing to deal with that.

So long as I didn’t act on it. He had a closet all ready for me to inhabit, gilded and all that.

Not that I even tried, but maybe I could have been more discreet. Maybe I could have stayed part of the family if I’d just remember that I was the sixteen-year-old son of a hyper-conservative, bible-thumping, socialite. That because of that, paparazzi were on the prowl for a Crimson to do something, anything, that would bring shame to the name.

Oh wait, I knew all that. I just didn’t give a fuck.

It was a football player that did me in. A quarterback with the full equipment, if you know what I mean. It made the news. Dear old dad saw to it. It was supposed to destroy that man’s career for daring to force himself on his poor innocent son.

Of Course, that was a tough one to sell when I was the first one defending him, having no problem giving details about how wonderful our time together was—I might have given too many details—and how I would be with him forever just on account of the sex we’d had.

Said football player weathered the storm better than I did in the end. Neither of us caved into my father’s demand—read that as blackmail—and he was famous in his own right. Unfortunately for me, he wasn’t looking for a relationship, so when my family dumped me, the only thing I was left with was the clothes on my back and a suitcase with a copy of the legal documents explaining what would happen to me if I ever thought of claiming I was related to those Crimson.

Since I have far better things to do than deal with vultures, sorry, lawyers, I don’t make any such claim. Such as this project.

Meet Texas senator Gregory Rodriguez. Upstanding Republican who gives to all the right charities, goes to church every Sunday with his wife and three kids, and thumbs his bible just as hard as every conservative out there. No, my dad doesn’t know him. He doesn’t leave Arizona and those Crimson aren’t into politics.

So, senator Rodriguez is your perfect gentleman proclaiming his hate for gays, and would you know it? Just like every other one before him, he’s in the closet.

Now, I’m not one for outing other men. What we do in our bedroom—or seedy motel room—is our business, right? What is it to me if some guy is into BDSM roleplay, puppy play, or that furry stuff?

But I do draw the line at making sure your partner is of legal age. I’ll happily give leeway if he’s sixteen or even fifteen. I mean, who am I to talk? I was fourteen the first time I had sex, and he was way older than I was. A cop, built like a fridge, and amazing in bed. That was a great three months.

But, Mister Senator, if you’re going to go for a twelve-year-old boy, don’t take pictures and don’t story those pictures on a cloud server with the most atrocious security I’ve ever hacked into. They definitely don’t use Silt Security.

No, if you’re going to be that kind of pervert, have the decency of being ashamed of yourself and keeping your filth offline. Now, you have no one but yourself to blame when the FBI’s cyber division inadvertently comes across the pictures of your extracurricular activities.

There, the link to the cloud server storage is discreetly inserted in a security report written by one Madison Carnak, FBI analyst, with an anonymous tip to half a dozen media stations. I’ve learned the hard way not to only trust law enforcement when it comes to taking down politicians. Those people have too many connections and media companies of their own. So, always include their company in the lot and make sure every other media outlet knows they have it.

Nothing beats healthy competition to ensure a story spreads wide and fast.

That isn’t the end of this project, but it’s the end for tonight. I don’t know how serious Kat is about firing me. Figuring out who provided the boy will have to wait for tomorrow. Politicians don’t pick up that kind of entertainment on the side of the road. No, people like that have their perversions catered to them.

I put the travel mugs in my satchel—I don’t ask the office to provide me with all my coffee needs, and I head out, locking the office behind me.

“Hey Bart,” the guard at the front desk calls to me as I exit the elevator. “Burning the midnight oil again?” His name’s Karl. One of the few people I know taller than I am, but only by two inches. He’s muscular—actual strength, not just show—caring and gentle like you would not believe in bed. Much to his chagrin, we didn’t click. Or rather, I didn’t click with him. It was the way he held me.

And Bart’s technically my middle name. Unfortunately, Alexander Crimson is sort of famous at this point, and trying to explain it was a coincidence I looked like him and had the same name as him got old really fast. Somehow, if I say my name is Bart, people don’t see the resemblance.

“Work needs to get down,” I answer, reaching the desk. I swipe my ID in the reader, then put my palm on the screen. I work for a security company. Coming in and going out is not as simple as walking through the door.

“Hey, they’ve got me on day shift next week. How do you feel about grabbing a drink after work on Friday?”

“Sure,” I answer casually; I can do a drink on Friday night. “The Boss lady doesn’t let me work late on Fridays. She keeps insisting there’s something about the weekend that had to start early.” I shake my head in mock annoyance. “It’s like she thinks criminals take the weekend off or something.”

He smiles at me, and I can read the hope on the poor bastard’s face. He’s hoping for a second chance. Not that it would do any good, I’ve told him already, but I should tell him nothing will come of that drink. Better yet, call him tomorrow and say something’s come up, that I have to cancel.

If I were a better man, that’s what I’d do. I have a whole week to cancel on him.

But I won’t.

It isn’t that I want to hurt him, but that is the thing. He’s doing it to himself. After that second night with him, I told him it wasn’t working. That I wouldn’t sleep with him a third time, that I wouldn’t become his boyfriend. We don’t have chemistry, I finally said, hoping it would drive the point home.

It didn’t.

I know what about me attracts him. What I allow him to feel when we’re together. That’s why we’ll never work.

So, if I were a good man, I’d tell him no. I would be the one protecting him from himself.

But that’s the thing.

I am not a good man.