Aww, I'm kinda bummed that I didn't get this out in time for New Year's Eve, but hey! At least I got it out in time for New Year's Day... if you can call it that. I've actually got four minutes until it's January 2nd, so it barely counts, but it still counts. I haven't had any time to write chapter twenty six, so I'm afraid the next one's going to be a long wait, I'm so sorry! But at least this one is much longer than usual, so it's more story to tide you over until college applications are out of the way.
Also, thank you for all the reviews! I love it when you guys do that and I hope I hear from all of you again.
Chapter Twenty Five: 'Till the Wheels Fall Off
Ryan had been so sure when he had said yes to Esposito. Even though he was terrified, he knew that this was just something he needed to do. No matter how many times he worried about it and wondered what was going to happen, and what horrible memories would resurface, he never psyched himself out so much that he wanted to back out. Not when Esposito started talking about flight dates and times, not when he talked to the Captain about the week off, not when Jenny pulled out his old duffel bag and said that they needed to pack, not when he gate-checked his bag, not even as the plane took off. He didn't regret his decision once.
Not once that is, until Esposito, Jenny, and him were at the desk of the Hertz Rent-a-Car place next to the airport. He didn't know why the panic attack started at the Rent-a-Car; in all of those journey movies the flight instinct usually kicked in at some no-turning-back-now moment. He had expected to try and back out when the plane took flight, because if this was some twisted Hollywood movie that was when the freaking out would start.
But nope. He had to go and defy clichés by panicking at the Rent-a-Car in front of his girlfriend, his partner, and "Kyle" the lethargic twenty year old at the Hertz desk who probably thought that he was fresh out of an asylum or something. He only knew the kid's name because of the cheesy nametag on his Hertz shirt.
"You know what? This is pointless. Nothing good will come out of it. How 'bout we just go home?" he turned to Jenny because he knew that she was most likely to cave. Esposito would never let him back out now.
"Honey, we're almost there. You're so close, and you've been so sure," she replied sympathetically but he could hear in her voice that she was determined not to budge. Esposito must've talked to her before.
"C'mon bro. Thirty miles. You've gone hundreds already; you're not gonna let the last thirty trip you up, are you?" Esposito challenged. Normally the challenge would work on him, but Ryan knew that his partner didn't have a full understanding of how hard this was. Dares wouldn't work on him this time.
"Yes," he said bluntly. "Yes I am."
Thirty miles left until they hit his small hometown that wasn't even deemed worthy enough to appear on a state map. And no matter how small the puny little smattering of buildings and houses was, it was still the hugest, most terrifying thing on the face of the planet. That town was dwarfed by only two things; the house and his father. If the town was the size of the Earth, then his old house was the size of Jupiter, and his father was the sun. After all, he did hurt everything that came too close.
"You were so sure," Jenny said softly as she walked up to face him.
He couldn't even look at her; his eyes quickly ducked down to the floor and he shook his head nervously. How could he have dragged her into the middle of something violent and brutal? He had known what he'd left; every day Ashleigh's death weighed on his conscience, and he had brought Jenny to the place where it happened. He was practically asking for more blood on his hands, and he didn't know how he could live with allowing his Jenny to get hurt.
But the woman didn't seem to accept it. He could see by her feet that she was right in front of him, and if he were to glance up, he'd be staring directly into her light gray eyes. That seemed to be her new mission too: to get him to look at her. She moved one of her petite hands up to his cheek and lightly wrapped her palm around his jawbone; the other hand found its way to his forearm. Ryan knew what she was doing, and didn't want to fall for them. He didn't want to let his guard down and let her convince him that it was okay, and that they weren't walking into a lion's den, and that everything would work out perfectly. Because the moment he let himself relax was always the moment when something horrible happened. The second he had let himself believe that everyone was safe his father had done something else horrible and it was his fault for not fixing it. Now he was dragging Javier and Jenny into it, and they expected him to calm down? He didn't want her to say the exact right thing, not this time.
"No, no, no… I… I can't. Not again. I can't do it again. Not with you, not with Javi," he mumbled, as much of a mantra to himself as it was a plea to her. "Back then… I couldn't… I'm not strong enough. I can't do that… not to you,"
He refused to let her penetrate the walls he set up. As a cop, he had to be good with safeguards. As a family protector, he had to have impenetrable walls. But he didn't, and Ashleigh suffered for it. But his fortifications hadn't been used in so long, Jenny barely noticed them. She leaned in closer and pressed her forehead to his affectionately, and his walls crumbled into dust.
"You can, you are. So long as you know it, you're ready to face this,"
Vaguely Ryan could hear Kyle asking his partner what the hell was wrong with "that dude" and somewhere he was pretty sure he could also hear Esposito telling the kid to shut the hell up. Normally he would care that someone besides Jenny and the team saw him like this, but right now, he couldn't bring himself to be bothered with it. He didn't think he'd be seeing this Kyle again in his life. He focused entirely on the battle raging inside his head.
Jenny finally moved her face away from his and gently turned his face up, forcing him to look at her. Nervously he met her eyes and tried to decipher what was in them. He knew immediately what he'd see, and it killed him. All of the worry he'd seen in her face for him since his past had come back, all of the sleepless nights calming him, all of the back rubs, and warm honey milk made when nightmares kept him up, all of the calls and texts to make sure he wasn't shot on the job. She had put up with so much that she didn't deserve for his sake. All of his reasoning came back to him and fought against his terror.
"Okay," he finally said, his voice barely perceptible. Lightly, he took in his surroundings in that damn Hertz office. Kyle was staring at him like he expected a mental breakdown at any moment. Esposito was watching warily, while still trying to give him and Jenny some privacy. Ryan sighed, and turned his gaze back to Jenny before mumbling more audibly. "Have Esposito go and get the goddamn car before I try to back out again."
•••
Esposito went to get the car, thinking back on what had just happened. He was surprised that it hadn't happened earlier. He half expected it at the gate, not the car rental place. But he had known this was going to happen.
No more than a few hours after Ryan had agreed to this journey idea he had rushed off to find Holloway and ask what he should expect. The number one thing the psychologist had told him to look out for would be a flip-flopping verdict on whether to go through with it. The way Holloway talked about it too, Esposito was proud of his partner that he hadn't tried to back out until now.
The desk manager who was clearly some college student looking to earn a bit of spending cash – Kyle, he thought his name was – led him around to the car that they would be using. After a once-over Esposito nodded in approval, but, as the always suspicious New Yorker, he insisted on taking a better look. To someone from this area he might've looked paranoid, but it was just his way; and so he circled the car to carefully inspect each of the tires. After a full circle, he climbed in the car and tentatively drove around the parking lot to see how it ran, and checked the gas to make sure they had filled the tank.
By the time he stepped out of the car, that irritating teenager had his arms crossed impatiently, and one eyebrow way up in the air but Esposito didn't mind it. So long as he wasn't being ripped off, he didn't care how pissy the kid got at him. He was satisfied with the car, so he let Kyle drive it to the front and he paid for the rental.
Once he took the keys from the kid again, he went straight to the car and climbed into the driver's seat. The small car was nowhere near as comfortable as their undercover van, or even "cubo de basura," the car he and Ryan took most often when going on road trips. From the Spanish, it quite literally meant "junk bucket" or "crap bucket" depending on his mood. It got the name after they had gone on a road trip to Connecticut, and the battery had died in the middle of a very hilly, rural town. It didn't help that it was pouring rain outside that day. They called it the Junk Bucket, or the Spanish version of that for weeks afterwards, and the name stuck, even though they've never had another problem with it. When Castle wrote Heat Wave, he had heard the Connecticut story and included it in the book, renaming the Junk Bucket to be called the "Roach Coach."
He waited in the idle car, not wanting to return to the office and interrupt some private moment between Ryan and his girlfriend.
Instead, he started fiddling with the knobs on the dashboard to figure out how to blast the air conditioner. Of course, Ryan was the Tech God, not him. Sure, he was better in the field, but his partner had the more well-rounded experience. Still, it was a junky rental car, and even he – the technology inept one – could eventually figure out the car's temperature with some trial and error.
It was, after all, late August in the middle of the country, and an unwelcome heat wave had begun to settle in the area languorously. Not that New York was much better, but none of them expected to stay for very long; two nights at the very most. Therefore, everything Esposito needed was packed in a small leather rucksack that he had abandoned in the passenger seat next to him. Similarly, his partner was carrying a light backpack with little more than a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and the New York Times, which he'd read on the plane. After all, those were the only things that they really needed.
Except for their guns, which they had to check in a particular bag.
He turned when he saw Ryan and Honeymilk heading towards the trunk of the car to stash away her luggage. For some reason, she didn't get the memo to pack lightly, and had taken enough to last her at least a week. He had seen the overwhelming about of useless stuff when she had to dig through her bag to remove her liquids. For the life of him, he could never figure out why a woman would need seven outfits for two days, or what she could possibly do with so many little bottles. Esposito knew better than to ask.
Without saying, Ryan and Jenny slipped into the back seat, leaving Esposito alone up front. Had it been any other time he would've gotten annoyed by the role of chauffer, but this wasn't about him; this was about Ryan, and the man needed his girlfriend. He wasn't about to interfere with something so important.
So he silently shifted the car out of idle, and drove out of the Rent-a-Car place, towards the long road.
•••
With each crunching revolution the tires made to close the distance between the airport and their destination, he could feel time rewinding itself. Every inch that brought him closer to the nightmare he ran away from took days and months and years of healing away from his features, leaving him stripped and bare: vulnerable to the monsters he was about to face.
Nothing had changed since he had helped his family run away twenty years ago. He didn't know why, but he expected things to have changed slightly. He had gotten used to the ever shifting scenery of New York, and had almost forgotten what it was like to live in a place where nothing was ever demolished or renovated. His childhood memories of the road leading to town seemed to have been preserved over all this time along with the entire town. Capsulated in this protective bubble to avoid wound, the town remained unscathed by the changing world of today.
The stagnancy and expectancy of it all made Ryan's skin crawl.
They first pulled up to the cheap motel that had stood in the town, barely used, for as long as he could remember. They just checked in for the rooms they'd be staying in; Jenny and Ryan in one room, with Esposito crashing in the next room over with an adjoining door, in case of an emergency. No one bothered to unpack in their rooms though. He planned on them leaving tomorrow. Even Jenny's over-packed bag wasn't opened. The bags were thrown on the floor, the key card to the room was pocketed in his wallet, and then he left the small motel room immediately. Without a word, Esposito and Jenny followed.
The rest of the very small town was easily a walking distance from the motel, so he didn't bother with the car. In all honesty, very few people did. There were some bikes leaning against buildings, and people who lived a bit out of the way like he had brought cars, but that was a small number. Besides, taking a car would be the wrong way to go about it. Ryan needed to walk through the town step by step, the way he did twenty years ago. He needed to prove that he was a different person now; that he was a stronger person.
He started with the small movie theater that still only had two theaters for movies, and moved up. There was a book store and a small library, and a tiny park that still just meant a small, fenced off square of grass with a bench. There was the small police station that was coupled with a firetruck parked right next to it. ATM machine, the bar, and two clothing stores, and then his eyes fell on the super market/drug store. His Dad used to own it; probably still did with the way the town wasn't progressing.
He could avoid it easily. It would be easier and safer and more practical, but he couldn't.
Dimly, he was aware that his partner and his girlfriend were trailing behind him, but he didn't pay it much attention. They would move to walk next to him when they wanted to, or if they started to think that he needed it. If he really did need them, he'd ask. Otherwise, he was glad that he could feel like he was doing this on his own.
The same bell rang as he swung the door to the food market open.
He was almost getting tired of how many times he noted – each time with some unexplainable surprise – that nothing appeared changed. The shelves, the aisles, the pharmacy in the very back, the single cash register in the front, the placement of all the foods; it was all precisely the same. The paint didn't even seem worn by age or newly painted; like the rest of the town, everything seemed to be preserved unerringly from his memory. He could've gone back in time and it wouldn't make a difference. It was like time didn't pass in his hometown.
Suddenly, this didn't seem like the best of ideas. After all, if his father was at the store, then they'd almost certainly have the confrontation he feared in public, in front of this entire town. Ryan quickly scanned the small store, and was relieved when he didn't immediately spot what he thought his father would look like now.
His father would undoubtedly be one of those men who just naturally age well. His hair would have turned a respectable gray, but he wouldn't be bald. His skin may droop a little, but it wouldn't hide the strong bone structure, and he wouldn't have flabs of excess skin that had nothing to do but hang down in bags like turkey gobbles. He wouldn't be one of those old men who get very shaky in all their actions; he'd still be the sure, sturdy man he'd always been.
Exhaling audibly, Ryan made himself calm down. Now that the immediate threat was gone, he could actually absorb the building. Carefully he ran his fingers along the sides of each of the aisles, tentatively exploring each ridge, curve, and shape in the metal of the cans. He remembered when he had to stand on his tip-toes to reach the top shelf; now it only measured up to his forearms. He half expected to find dust gathering on the bags of chips, boxes of dried pasta, cans of soup, and jars of jam, but everything was fresh.
He didn't say a word and didn't pull his eyes away from the aisles until he had touched, scanned, analyzed, and memorized each shelf. He didn't know why, but he couldn't help himself; there was some strange, morbid fascination with all the foods obediently in place, fulfilling their purposes to obey his father's commend. Like soldiers.
Finally he pulled his eyes away and turned to address the young cashier. Once again, the kid was in his early twenties, and barely looked older than Kyle back at Rent-a-Car. He didn't have a nametag for Ryan to identify him, but he assumed that was because the entire town already knew him. The kid's confused stare only proved that; he was surprised that someone came in that he didn't recognize. Ryan admitted to himself that he had been behaving weirdly too. If he were in the kid's place, he would be even more confused than the cashier looked. Two people in suit-pants and a woman that he didn't recognize in a know-everyone town come in as if this was a habit, and examine the supermarket.
"Can I help you with something?" the kid asked him, uncomfortable under Ryan's curious glance.
"Yeah. Does Pete Decker still own this place?" he asked tentatively, but with an air of attempted casualness.
"Of course," the kid said with a shrug, as if it would be ridiculous to assume otherwise. Well, Ryan supposed it was a bit ridiculous. The man loved his day-to-day routine. "Why?"
"I'm looking for him. Do you know where I'd be able to find him?"
"Probably at his house, but I dunno, never thought to confirm it. He makes his appearance at the bar sometimes around seven. But otherwise, he's more of a private guy," The town really hadn't changed at all; people still had their neighbor's backs. The boy's eyes narrowed at Ryan suspiciously. "If I run into him, who should I say is looking for him?"
"Don't bother, I'll find him eventually. Thanks for the help,"
With that, Ryan walked out of the grocery store and back outside.
His father was definitely still alive; that much he knew for a fact now. He had assumed as much, but the confirmation was more difficult than he expected. He honestly didn't know what to do for a second, and was grateful when Jenny and Esposito knew to approach him. Jenny faced him silently for a moment before reaching out to grasp his hands in hers. He expected her to speak, some words of encouragement or praise, or something like that, but nothing came. Part of him was relieved when the first person to speak was Esposito, who understood guy code, and knew what to say.
"Where to next?"
"The school," he said, surprising himself. He hadn't even thought of his Elementary School as a place he'd want to visit but in reflection, it made a great deal of sense. With the exception of the woods around his house, school was one of the few places he went to escape the house. And while it was hardly a safe haven, he had spent a good deal of his childhood there. "It's just down the road."
Once again, he began walking as if isolated in a strange, floating dream state. Esposito and Jenny began trailing behind him again, but he didn't pay them much attention. He knew they'd follow to make sure he was okay.
He wondered if it would be the same too, and if he'd be surprised when he saw its inevitable similarity to his memory. He probably would, even with his knowledge of what it'd look like. It would still have that pathetic attempt at a small basketball court, the small set of two swings, and the jungle gym. It was mainly just a mountain made out of tires that kids could climb up, hide in, and sit on top of. There'd also be an empty part of the field for games like tag, dodgeball, baseball, soccer, and other basic playground games.
Being an elementary school, the building wouldn't be locked, even if everyone was gone. The office and the nurse would be locked, but everything else was more or less wide open. Luckily, it was a Thursday and if the schedules hadn't changed – which he assumed by now that they hadn't – then the kids were let out not more than an hour ago. He wouldn't feel uncomfortable walking through a completely deserted elementary school, nor would be have to deal with hoards of students. Maybe just a janitor or two; possibly a couple of teachers on their way out.
As much as he planned for the pointless shock of its identical condition to his memories, it still caught him blindsided. In the same need he'd had to touch and examine the shelves in the grocery store, he was compelled to start wandering the playground from his distant memories. Needing to slowly walk through the basketball court, circle the tire mountain lazily, reaching to feel the scorching heat of each of the tires absorbing the heat of August. He felt through the tires, checking in a few of the pockets, half expecting to find the same toys stashed away there.
He took notice of every inch of the playground that he hadn't thought about in years. When he got to a particular tree, he stopped in a daze and stared. His mind couldn't even work. He distantly heard Esposito and Jenny coming closer to make sure he didn't lose it. There was no way he could communicate to them why he was just standing there, so he decided not to bother until he checked to see if there was even something to explain to them.
Without a word, he began to climb the tree.
It didn't take more than a couple of steps to get up to the high-up area that used to be next to impossible to climb when he was younger. No one else besides him could ever climb that high. He could even go higher than that now, but it wasn't the height that was important. Halfway up, there was a hollow knot in the tree that was slanted inward to protect it from the elements. As any child knows, it's the perfect hiding place; especially when no one else could reach it.
He was afraid to look inside, and he when he gathered up the courage, he was sure that all of the color had completely drained from his face. Gingerly, he reached in and pulled out the object, slightly worn down and a bit dirtier from sitting in a thin layer of soil at the bottom of the nook, but almost completely intact. When he noticed that he was shaking, he snapped out of his trance and carefully climbed back down. He knew the questions were going to come soon.
"What've you got there?" Esposito asked carefully.
He could still feel his entire body shaking, and Jenny must've been acutely aware of it too, because she led him to the swings and gently coaxed him to sit down in one of them. She took the other on his right, and Esposito was content to lean on one of the poles supporting the structure. Ryan took a couple of heavy shuddering breaths to calm himself down. He wasn't sure if he was able to tell this story yet; it was one of the more recent memories that had been completely recovered. He had remembered the treasure he hid in the tree, but only a week or so ago did he fully remember why.
"It was during one of the really bad fights before Ashleigh and just after Beth's dodgeball fiasco. Just like the TV room was Dad's shrine to avoid all of us, Mom always had the living room. Besides her baby pictures and our baby pictures she also kept postcards of cities all over the North East, though her favorites were the three that appeared most often in her stories: New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. She also had all of these knickknacks to better tell us, like paperweights of the Statue of Liberty, mini-statues of the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia, that blue porcelain, Egyptian Hippo from the Met, a tiny replica of the Zakim Bridge in Boston, even this glass figurine of a seal that she said she bought at an aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut."
He sighed, nostalgia radiating from every fiber of his being. That living room had always been like a miniature conglomeration of the three most beloved cities in the Northeast. All the postcards just made for fantastical backdrops, almost like how girls played with paper dolls back in colonial times. It hurt to think about what had happened to that Lilliputian sanctuary.
"There was a fight," he said slowly. Definitively. This had been very well buried by the dissociative amnesia, and the amnestic barrier that broke down with this memory was particularly difficult. "He was upset about her obvious hatred of the town, and how she was so obviously in love with the East Coast. This one spread across the entire house, and when they reached the living room, I barely had enough time to usher Tessa away before getting caught in the argument. He pushed me into the wooden coffee table and William shattered."
Noticing Jenny and Esposito's blank looks, he sheepishly clarified, "we named the blue hippo from the Met, William." Once they understood the connection, he slowly continued. "I got porcelain chards all in my palm and started bleeding, but didn't say a thing. Later I cleaned it out and bandaged it. He just started breaking everything he could; ripping up postcards, smashing figurines, breaking models. Mom was sobbing so much that night. I honestly think that was the reason she believed that she couldn't escape."
Slowly and with shaking hands, he unclenched his closed fist that held the small treasure. In his palm lay a small snow globe with deep blue glass. Inside was the Hayden Planetarium from the Natural History Museum with all of the fake blue lights aglow. It looked almost exactly like the real thing would at night. Outside, around the base was an inky, navy blue blackness, hand painted with stars, the constellation of Orion, a comet, and the moon. No matter how worn it looked from age, there was still a sense of beauty about it.
"This was the only thing I could save. I knew that if he ever saw it in the house, he'd kill her, so the next day I took it to school and hid it in the tree. I had planned to come back for it before we left, but we never could," he felt tears stinging his eyes over the small toy and had to take several deep breaths to calm himself down. "I can't believe it's still here after all these years…"
He never did get to hear his best friend's or his girlfriend's reaction to that story, because an unfamiliar voice several yards to the left of them suddenly broke through the air. "Dear Lord! I'm seeing a ghost!"
A man about Ryan's age walked up to him with shock and disbelief written all over his face. He had a briefcase, but didn't look too dressed up; long khaki shorts and a plain brown shirt. Ryan met his gaze for several long moments, trying to place him. The man appeared to be a teacher at the elementary school and knowing this town so well, it was very likely that Ryan knew this stranger once.
"Excuse me?" Esposito cut in for him, something Ryan was very grateful for. In that instant, he recognized him.
"Jesus! Kevin Decker, is that really you?" the incredulity was still very apparent in his voice.
"Cal Blaire," he addressed the teacher distantly, stunned into silence.
"Son of a bitch, it is you!" he replied with just as much disbelief. "What're you doing here?"
Finally, Ryan managed to snap back to reality and uncomfortably focused on directing the conversation to as not awkward of a place as this unexpected reunion possibly could be. "Just tying up some loose ends," he turned out to include the two people behind him in the conversation. "Jenny, Esposito, this is Cal Blaire. We were friends back in elementary school. Cal, this is my girlfriend, Jenny Mason, and my partner, Javier Esposito."
The three others took the time to shake hands and exchange polite "nice to meet you"s while Ryan tried to puzzle out his feelings on this strange encounter.
"So, you became a teacher," Jenny helped him out.
"Yeah, second grade. There are some really good kids, and I enjoy teaching where I went to school," there was a pause for a moment before he asked, "What do you do nowadays?"
"I actually live in New York City, and I'm a homicide detective."
"Wow," Cal replied after a moment's pause. "New York. That's pretty impressive. Much different than down here,"
"Very different," Ryan agreed. The uncomfortable pressure of speech between them was brutally obvious.
"So, what ever happened to you?" Cal seemed to blurt it out, as if it was against his better judgment, and he had not wanted to ask it. Still, once it was out there, he couldn't take it back, so he continued, unnerving Ryan in the process. "One day it was suddenly like you had vanished off the face of the earth."
"Ashleigh's disappearance had gotten cold and was filed as one of the unsolved cases, it was stressful to continue with daily routines, and we needed to get away. Dad lived here all his life though, and he couldn't leave, so we went and he stayed." Ryan hoped that the lie was enough of an answer to get him to drop it. No such luck.
"You never came back to visit for holidays, and Pete never went on any planes," he stated bluntly, waiting for an explanation.
"Things got tense," Ryan replied pointedly. "But I'm here now, and was just on my way to go find him."
"Well, far be it from me to keep you from your schedule," he politely said in a way that suggested that he knew more than he was letting on. Finally, he picked up his briefcase, began walking past Ryan, and spoke to suggest that the conversation was over. "It was nice to run into you like that. I'm glad that you overcame your incoordination,"
Ryan ran through the curious statement in his head and spun around, calling out after him, "Huh?" It wasn't his most eloquently phrased question, but it did the trick. Cal turned around with a sad smile.
"You always came into class with bruises on your arms and legs, or your hand bandaged from walking into stuff or tripping and falling. I'm glad that moving helped you find your balance,"
"Oh," was all Ryan could reply.
"Who knows? Maybe it was the change of scenery," Cal added with a wise smile on his face that Ryan couldn't help but reciprocate.
"Yeah, maybe."
With that, the old classmate turned around and continued to walk, leaving Ryan to stand in confused reflection with Jenny and Esposito. The small quirky grin stayed on his face, running through the conversation in his mind. He had certainly grown since Elementary school, though not in the way Cal believed he had. Or maybe exactly the way Cal suspected. The teacher had seemed to pick up on all of the discrepancies in his story, maybe he guessed at the truth. Maybe Cal had known what was happening all along. Maybe he only pieced it all together just now.
Maybe, Ryan thought, it was time for the confrontation that had motivated this entire trip.
"It's time," he said to Esposito, before turning to his girlfriend. She was the picture of sympathetic concern; her beautiful face filled with such purity, he thought he could've been looking at an angel. She had been a pillar of strength through all of this. That was why he had to do this. "Jen, I need you to do something for me. I can't go through with this unless you do,"
"What can I do Hon?" she asked kindly, stroking his arm. She would be willing to see this to the end. Which is why he wouldn't let her.
"I need you to go back to the motel," he saw her expression change and he continued before she had the chance to protest. "You have your key card and my gun. It's in that bag I checked. Keep it with you and keep it loaded. I showed you how to fire it. You'll be safe there. Please. I need you safe,"
"I can't let you lay your life on the line like that while I wait around waiting for a call to hear that you're okay!" she said quietly, but with urgency and worry laced through her voice.
"It's no different than what we do every day," He reasoned with a quiet pleading. She had to understand him; he couldn't risk her life any more than he already was. "Espo's got my back. He's got a gun if necessary. But I can't do this knowing that I'm putting you in danger. I need you at the motel. Please Jen."
The desperate beg seemed to hit home with her, and she finally looked up to meet Ryan's eyes sadly. Her eyes began to water slightly, but she just nodded and kissed him deeply as if trying to convey that he'd better come back safe.
"You both have my number if something happens," she said sadly, before turning, and heading back in the direction of the motel. Ryan took a shuddering breath in relief, and turned to face his partner. The hispanic's face was carefully set to neutral, so he couldn't tell what his opinion was that he sent Jenny away.
"I had to," he justified, answering the unspoken question that hung in the air.
"I know," was Esposito's solemn reply.
Silently, Ryan turned in the direction that they had to go and started walking. He knew that his partner could read his mind and walked just as quietly next to him. They had walked like this thousands of times before, but never with something like this hanging in the air. Part of it felt like he was slowly being led to his execution. In all of the thousand times that he made the journey from his childhood home to school and back, there had always been a lingering sense of dread in the air, but now it felt magnified a thousand times over.
After years and years of time passing in his mind, the haunted house appeared in a thin wooded area just far enough away to be separate and isolated from the rest of the town. His entire body tensed, which seemed to clue Esposito into the fact that they were almost there.
"Thanks for everything, man," he got out in a strangled voice as they stepped onto the property.
"Don't mention it. 'Till the wheels fall off. Remember?"
"Yeah," he said with a shaky smile on his face to cover the pure terror that raged just beneath the surface. They were standing in front of the door now. He turned to look at his best friend one last time before reaching out to grasp the door knob. "Till the wheels fall off."
Well, you all must want to strangle me right about now. But please don't! I'll have the next chapter out as soon as I can, and until then, I'm happy to reply to any and every review that I get! Speaking of which, you were fantastic last chapter so I definitely owe you the next chapter title.
Chapter Twenty Six: The Monster Under the Bed