We’re tied together now, at least. And he’s been helping me look for the cure.
You gotta love a man who helps you look for your cure. That’s real love in my book.
I jump down into the bed, then hop out, land on the dirt road, get in my truck, and head towards the sunflowers. Twenty minutes later I stop at the end of his driveway, suddenly hesitant.
Nick and I are people who don’t like to be found sometimes. And I’ve only been trying to get a hold of him for a couple days, so he’s not exactly missing.
But something is going on and I can’t put my finger on it.
So I’m here.
I look around, wondering if anyone is watching. This is just habit. But out here there is nowhere to hide. Unlike Kentucky with its thick woods and deep gullies, the Nebraska plains are… well, plain. I buzz my window down to listen. Birds, insects, somewhere off in the distance a tractor or some similar piece of machinery. This is the only house for miles and miles. All of this land—even the sections not owned by Nick’s shell company—are just fields. They surround his house, and the sunflowers are tall, but I scan them for a good two minutes looking for any sort of movement and see nothing. The other two fields nearby are sugar beets, and that’s not a tall plant. So I’m reasonably sure there’s no one watching.
I could do a U-turn and leave now. No one would ever know the difference. Nick’s dirt driveway is like a half a mile long. I can see the blue shack he calls home down at the end of it, but not any details. I look up, searching for drones. But it’s unlikely that anyone cares about this place. The Company is… well, not gone. It’s Adam, and McKay, and Donovan now. Well, maybe just Adam and McKay. But the point is, the Company isn’t the Company anymore. I’m pretty sure Adam does his best to pretend Nick doesn’t exist as much as possible. He would not be watching him. Especially now, with that whole Donovan situation looming large.
“I should leave.” But my whispered words get caught up in the wind. And then I just turn into the driveway and crawl my way down it. The front lawn is mostly weeds, but it’s been cut. Not recently. Maybe... two weeks ago? There are three outbuildings here. One is a legit outhouse that kinda tilts to the south. One is a chicken coop. I study it, looking for the filthy monsters. But he’s never kept chickens in there and that hasn’t changed. The third is a shop. There are lots of things going on inside the shop if you know where to look, but there are no cars or trucks in the driveway, so I don’t think anyone’s in the shop.
The house was blue once upon a time but now it’s a funky shade of sun-bleached lavender gray. The wooden window frames are trimmed in white. There’s not much else to say about it. It’s a box with a pitched roof. The front door has a skinny… well, it doesn’t even qualify as a porch. It’s more of a five-step stoop with ugly metal railings on either side. And it’s built into one of those mudroom additions that are so common in the Midwest. Every house out here has two doors, the one that leads to the mudroom and the one that leads to the house.
The AC is on. I can hear it humming as my truck crawls past the front steps. All the windows have curtains—most of them just pillowcases nailed to the wall, actually—and there is no way to see inside. So I shove the truck in park, turn it off, and then lean over to the glove box and get my gun. Another habit of mine.
But as soon as I step out of the truck, I remember why I have this habit.
The back door is wide open and the screen door bangs back and forth with the wind.
The AC is on. The door should not be open.
If someone is home, they know I’m out here. There is no way to stealthily make your way down a gravel road at a farmhouse this remote. The tires crunch. The motor of the truck hums. Everything about me is out of place and even dumbasses who didn’t grow up assassinating people pay attention to that.
So I call out, “Hey, asshole!” and wait for an answer.
No response.
“Nick?”
Nothing.
“If anyone’s in there, you’d better yell now. Because if I go inside and find you, there’s a bullet coming your way.”
No answer.
“OK. I’m coming in.” I don’t bother with caution. I can feel people at this point in my life and this place is empty.
The moment I step inside I get a chill. It’s a weird kind of empty. Like… that feeling you get when you’re being watched. This thought has me immediately looking for cameras. Surely Nick has cameras.
But he’s Nick. So they aren’t easy to find. I take a step outside, scan the back porch, and come up with two possible places where the camera could be hiding. The doorknocker. Because doorknocker? On this piece-of-shit house? And the peephole.
I step back inside and check the peephole. Not a camera. So it must be the doorknocker.
I don’t bother scanning the inside for cameras. They’re here, but finding them without a camera hunter would be a waste of time. And anyway, if I really wanted details about his cameras, I’d just break in to his control room.
I’m not going to do that. He would be pissed. He’d say things like, “What the fuck, Wendy? If you want in, just tell me and I’ll give you the code. Don’t break my shit down!”
He’s right, you know.
The house has four rooms. The front room, the bathroom, the bedroom, and the kitchen. I enter through the kitchen, so the first thing I notice is that it’s very clean. No dishes in the sink. No random papers on the crappy Formica table. No food in the fridge.
“So,” I mumble to myself. “You’re not even living here.”
I set my gun down, pull a wobbly chair out from the dining table and take a seat. Lean back a little. Think out loud. “If you’re not here, then where?”
Maybe he’s done with me?
Maybe last Christmas was a mistake?
Maybe he’s thinking, What the hell was I thinking?
Alternatively, Wendy, perhaps the asshole really is in danger?
This is a problem.
I haven’t a single clue of where else I might look, so instead my eyes track across the kitchen.
This is when I spy something. Something that may or may not be out of place.
It’s a phone. An actual fucking wall phone. The kind with a cord.
I get up, cross the kitchen in three and a half steps, and pick up the receiver. Dial tone.
I press star sixty-nine. Ringing.
“Hello?”
“… Who’s this?”
“You called me, sweetheart.”
“Because you were the last person to call this number. I star-sixty-nined you.”
“OK. So. What do you want?”
“I’m looking for the person who owns this phone.”
“And?”
“And”—this rando stranger is starting to piss me off—“have you seen him?”
“Depends.”
“OK. Well. Let’s start here. Do you know who I’m talking about? Or does that depend on something too?”
“Wendy?… Wendy?”
“How do you know my name?”
“I’m God. No, really. Listen. You’re wasting time here. Why are you talking to me? There are clues all around you. Look for them, for fuck’s sake.”
“What are you talking about?”