I hope you guys are ready for what's coming up next...it's pretty exciting. Special thanks to penelo14 for helping me out with some of this chapter. You're a genius, girl. ;) Enjoy~
Roman had never been questioned by the police before, as a suspect nor as a witness.
It happened once and he didn't want it to ever happen again.
The uniformed officers forced him to recollect every harrowing detail of his discovery. The questions were unending. Neville and Cody were put under the same inquiry. What was to be learned by hounding the witnesses? The facts of the circumstances were made physically apparent from the confiscated security tapes: Abigail Wyatt and that freak giant attacked the three Escape Velocity employees, leaving two behind and capturing one.
Roman's heart was as frigid as the air and dark as the sky. He was exhausted by the questions, and it was the greatest crusade against his life to not break down crying in front of the officers.
He only had one question for them in return. "I'll get him back, right?"
A female officer tried consoling him with a smile that looked rehearsed. "It'll take time, but try not to worry. We've got the best guys on the case."
The Springs' police department's best guys weren't good enough for Roman.
He wouldn't be satisfied until he found Dean himself.
It beat the hell out of waiting around for answers.
The questions hadn't been the hardest part. Calling Seth to tell him the news was.
"No," Seth whimpered. "No, no, please God, no, no, Roman, no, no, Roman, no. No! NO!"
He had wanted to drive to the shop. Check out the scene. Why? Roman wondered. What good would that do? It would only expose Seth's safety to danger. Seth shouldn't drive in his condition. Neither should Roman, but he had to get home at some point.
Roman attempted the drive after the police finally let him go. But not before making him write down everything he'd just confessed to him. His hand hurt from scrawling out the surly details.
The quiet was deafening. He could hear nothing but his own screams.
He turned to the radio for aid.
"…perhaps one of the best-known Eagles songs, released as a single in February 1977, here is 'Hotel California.' I'm Chuck Squire, and this is 98.1 KKFM, the city's best classic rock station—"
Roman thumped the radio off. Fuck you too, universe.
He parked in the lot back home and trudged towards the door at a sick snail's pace. The lights were on inside. He unlocked the door. Seth was waiting for him, marching the floor of the living room, arms folded squeezed against his chest. Roman was weary and Seth was well aware of it. He caught a nearly fainting Roman in his arms.
Roman lost it. He wailed into Seth's shoulder.
"We'll get him back, Roman," Seth said. Roman couldn't buy the tremor in his voice. "We will."
"I know, I just…I thought it was over. I thought life would be normal."
"So did I. But we've pulled through some tough shit before…and we'll pull through this…"
"How are you so sure?"
"Because we're a team, Ro." Seth held onto his shoulders and berthed his gaze into Roman's. "You, me, Dean…we're forged out of iron. We're an unstoppable force. We're unyielding. Wyatt called himself powerful? His whole family did, but we're so much higher above all they were capable of. Look how hard they tried to knock us down. Came close, but they never succeeded. We always won. And we'll win again. Sister Abigail has fucked with the wrong family."
Roman felt his eyes glistening with tears. "You're so damn confident. How are you doing this?"
"Believe me, I'm scared as hell. But…" Seth licked his lips. "I know Dean's alright for now. At the very least, I know he's alive."
"How?"
"You told me in that video, Abigail wrote you a note…by name, she called you out to come and find them. Her and the sick bastard who helped her kidnap our boy. She doesn't just want him, Roman, she wants you, too. And me, probably, just 'cause I was there at the destruction of her entire family. He's bait. She's waiting for us."
"I will fucking deliver," Roman growled. He wanted his wrath to guide each step, not his worry or anything stemming from it. They were two separate captains in his life. He swore allegiance to revenge, not fright.
"You haven't heard from her yet?"
"No. Not yet."
"It's a matter of time, I'm so sorry to say. We just have to wait."
"No, I can't, Seth, I can't…" Roman closed his eyes. Migraines were sensual massages compared to this anguish. "I can't just sit around and wait. It's what I thought to myself when the police wanted me to just 'wait' for them to get the job done. It's up to us, Seth. We're on our own. The police can't help us against her. They don't know what they're up against."
"Neither do we."
"I have a better idea than they do. She's a Wyatt." Were they both? Abigail and her beefy associate?
"I understand you're taking this personally, Roman. I am too." Seth kneaded the taut flesh on his shoulder. "That's what she wanted to do, and damn if she didn't succeed. I wish there was a way to speed up the process. Hell, I wish I could reverse time so the two of us could be at the shop waiting for those bastards. And when the time comes, we will take care of business. We will save him. But right now…there's seriously nothing we can do. I'm sorry, Roman. I'm so, so sorry. We have to wait on her to make the next move."
Roman opened his eyes. "What if the next move is—"
"It's not," Seth said in a way that actually made Roman start to believe him. "She needs him alive. As much as this fucking hurts to say…what good is dead leverage?"
Roman winced. "Guess so…"
"It'll be Mission: Impossible to get our minds off this. But let's just put on a show, drink some coffee…wait and see. Maybe you'll even get some sleep."
"No chance."
Seth frowned. "Yeah. Guess that was a dumb notion."
The story had yet to make the news, so Roman didn't leave the TV on that channel for long. A late-night crime drama filled the next hour, insufferable, tedious, dreary. Roman didn't hear the characters on the show. He sipped his coffee—Seth prepared it black, the way he liked it—on autopilot. Seth sat on the other side of the couch, not saying a word, head most likely as loaded as Roman's.
Roman stared at Caroline, perched in her stand next to the TV. She hadn't been the guitar Dean carried into Java Central week after week, but she was a worthy substitute of a reminder. His leather jacket was draped in half next to the guitar stand. Of course he hadn't worn the damn thing to work tonight. Not that Abigail would have allowed him the luxury of a coat in the cold as she had him escorted out of the store…
Roman remembered the jacket, too. He remembered that night. The night everything changed.
"Want your usual?"
"Depends. What's my usual?"
"Tall salted caramel mocha with an extra pump of caramel."
"You're good."
Roman had that order memorized only a few weeks after Dean started playing at the coffeehouse. He remembered adding extra caramel into it that night. Dean had noticed.
"I feel like we need a Kindness to Strangers course in every university worldwide."
"Think a lot of people might flunk it. It'd be a waste of resources."
"Might be right about that, Roman."
How wonderful his name had sounded in Dean's heavenly voice, across those delicious-looking lips.
"What about you? You got a major? Other hobbies? Or even a name?"
"Name?"
"You never really introduce yourself. Just hop on stage and do your thing."
"Guess that's true." That half-smile that set Roman ablaze inside. "Dean."
They met again, this time outside the coffeehouse. Bray Wyatt blotted his perfect picture with soulless eyes, a husky figure, smoker's voice, Satan's laugh.
Roman saving him the first time of many.
"If you ever hurt him again, I will find you and finish you off my fucking self. That understood?"
"Shit, man. You must be acing Badass 204. That was sick."
Dean trying too late to sidestep Roman's presence in his life.
"I'm a weird guy, Ro. Beneath this somewhat-appealing exterior is a world of whack. In here, a conundrum. I'm not a book you can flip through and figure out completely. Hell, I don't even know what I'm thinking half the time…see, you're the type of guy that someone like me—or anyone, really—could take an interest in. College student. Working part-time. Likes comics and rock music and Halo. Me, on the other hand? Not so much…I'm kind of a freak, in case you haven't noticed? Anyone who cares to get to know me finds out pretty fast that I'm not like most people, if anyone else in the world. They don't like to be around someone who doesn't even know what's going on in his own head. Just saying, it's not too late if you wanna skip out on whatever it is we've got going on right now. I think you're great. You are worthy of someone's interest. I'm just an oddity."
"I am very much interested in you."
That was when Dean fell in love with Roman. According to him.
The first time Roman held his hand.
"Don't get to hear that very often. Could you say it again?"
"I'm interested in you."
Roman grabbed at the Superman pendant dangling from his neck. God, he missed Dean.
His phone buzzed in the pocket of his hoodie.
He reached for it instinctively, not realizing at first that Seth was staring at him eccentrically.
Reality gave him a cold welcome back from his pleasant memories.
Dean's number jumped off the screen at him. Roman hadn't even realized they'd stolen it along with kidnapping Dean.
It wasn't a call that made his phone vibrate over and over, but rather a series of texts. Roman read each one.
1-8-3-0
3-4-4-0
18-5-4-8-5-18-18-9-14-7
What? he wondered. What do these mean?
He moved onto the next message.
Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art; I shall be free when thou art through. Take all there is—take hand and heart; there must be somewhere work to do.
The last text was a picture message. A very dark photo of Dean lying on a rocky ground, most likely outside. It was hard to tell if he was unconscious or awake in the photo, even bound or free to move. But one thing was unmistakeable: it was Dean.
Roman's throat shrank. Respiration was difficult.
There was a single line of text underneath the picture. COME AND SAVE ME WHEN YOU FIGURE IT OUT ROMIE! :) :) :)
The words coiled themselves with thorns intact around Roman's throat and throttled him, forcing salty tears to his eyes. She's even more demented than her brother.
"Dammit," Roman said, droplets of affliction skimming down both cheeks. "Dammit, dammit."
"Is that Abigail?" Seth asked.
"She sent me all these numbers…then a quote from a poem." He left the part about the photo out. He didn't need Seth to panic. Not when Seth was the more serene one.
"A poem?"
"Yeah. I know it." Roman had actually read the poem in his Literature of the 19th Century class. It was Death by Helen Hunt Jackson. Perhaps Abigail was deranged, but she was literate.
The poem's title was unnerving. That wasn't a clue—that was just taunting Roman.
"Give me the numbers," Seth ordered. "Let's decode them. It's gotta mean something, right?"
"Yeah. She said 'when I figure it out.' I'm guessing they're a clue of some kind."
"Another fucking mystery, Scoob."
"Jinkies." Roman said it without humor.
Before long, Seth had a notebook and his laptop open in front of him on the dining room table. He'd written Abigail's numbers on the blank page. His fingers clacked away on the keyboard. Roman fixed them each another cup of coffee while Seth worked. Long night ahead, he thought.
"Anything yet?" Roman asked, delivering the steaming cups to the table.
"So far, not really." Seth removed his glasses to rub his eyes. "My first guess was they're part of an address or a phone number, but nothing came up on Google. Nothing useful, anyway. Laptop brands, mostly. I think they're separate, though, by groups. Notice the break between the numbers? So I think 1-8-3-0, 3-4-4-0, and this big cluster here are all detached from the others."
Roman sat down beside Seth. Seth took a sip of his coffee, then cracked his neck. He looked like a late-night reporter, working overtime to crack a major story wide open.
"One of the most basic forms of codes is numbers to letters. You know, like when each number represents a letter of the alphabet? Especially these repeated numbers here, like 18 and 5. Could be vowels."
"You don't think Abigail is that simple-minded, do you?"
"I don't know what she is. She seems pretty fucked up in the head, if you ask me. But it's worth finding out."
"Yeah. Go for it."
Seth did so.
Roman pondered the quotes from the poem still. It wasn't a clue…right? She'd just sent that as a way to torture him…right?
Was it a coincidence that Helen Hunt Jackson was an icon of Colorado history?
Seth made Roman jump when he slammed two fists against the table and screamed, "Fuck!"
"What's the matter?" Roman asked.
"I started with the longest set of numbers, and after using that basic numbers-to-letters cipher, I ended up with this." Seth dropped the pen, annoyed. It clattered against the table. Roman leaned over and saw where Seth had written out the numbers, and the matching letters underneath.
18-5-4-8-5-18-18-9-14-7
REDHERRING
"Oh, screw that," Roman said, glowering at the useless numbers. He could practically see Abigail's notorious smiley face at the end of the words.
"She knew what she was doing, and she's a bitch!" Seth hollered. With a huff, he lowered his voice again. "The other two sets of numbers have zeroes in them, and those don't fit into that particular cypher. Not unless I make 'A' equal '0' and 'B' equal one and so forth, but even that turns them into 'BIDA' and 'DEEA', so unless you know the meaning of that…"
"I don't."
"Back to square fucking one then," Seth muttered. He slurped his coffee down.
Roman stared at the remaining numbers.
It wasn't a coincidence. It couldn't have been.
He didn't even believe in those.
His Literature of the 19th Century professor had spent three weeks lecturing on the works of Helen Hunt Jackson. That's how important she was to Colorado history, at least from a literature standpoint.
Suddenly that top number was looking familiar.
"Hey, Google Helen Hunt Jackson's birthday," Roman said.
Seth knitted his brows. "Okay?" Tap tap tap tap went his fingers on his keyboard again. "Let's see…October 15, 1830."
1830.
Nope. No coincidence.
"Boom," Roman said.
Seth gasped. "Is that it? The first number is that year?"
"Thinking so. That line Abigail sent me is from a poem by Helen Hunt Jackson."
"What about the 3440? That's not a year, not yet anyway."
I'm not giving up on this lead. "Let me try something." Roman leaned over Seth, erased the word "birthday" from the search bar, and broadened the Googling to simply "Helen Hunt Jackson." It didn't help. He couldn't find the numbers anywhere related to her on these pages.
He tried something else. "Helen Hunt Jackson 3440."
At last, a breakthrough.
The third result of the page was from the website Roadtrippers. It told of Helen Hunt Falls in Colorado Springs, a waterfall named in honor of the poet.
The address? 3440 North Cheyenne Canon Road.
"That's where he is," Roman said, tapping a fingernail on the screen, over an image of the waterfall.
"You're sure?"
"Absolutely." Roman rushed across the living room and yanked the coat closet door open.
"Good thing she sent that bit of the poem. We would have been stumped otherwise. Even if you didn't know it, the shit would have been easy to Google. She gave herself away with it."
"I think her intentions were to screw with us a little bit, play with us, but she didn't want us to be completely in the dark. She wanted us to figure it out."
Seth nodded, understanding. "Because—"
"You were right. He's bait. She's waiting for us." Roman's eyes were black. The raging fire had devoured him entirely. "And like I said. I will fucking deliver."
A/N: You guys ready for the next big scene!? I know I am...I'll deliver it pretty soon. :) It pains me to announce, though, that the climax is up and coming. And what follows a climax? The falling action and of course, the resolution...this particular story will be ending within the next few chapters. I am carrying this on into a series, as most of you know, so our story with these boys is far from over, but I know wrapping up this story is going to hurt. I'll probably shake and tear up, because I'm pathetic like that. :P This is one of the longest, most fun, challenging, wonderful projects I've ever put time, research and effort into. I'm so happy to know it's been received. Not gonna lie, I didn't think it would be at first. You guys have been wonderful supporters in my journey with this story. I'm looking forward to its future as a series, and its successors. But until then, let's enjoy what we still have right here and now, shall we? :) See y'all in the next chapter~ AND THANK YOU AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT! I love you guys!