Blast From The Past 3 (3 page)

“What kind of information do you suppose he’s after?” J.R. asked.

We’d moved from hugging in the doorway to sitting on my couch beside each other. J.R. had his arm around me, and I was curled up the crook he created, leaning against him. Not even twenty-four hours earlier, we had still been awkwardly reacquainted old acquaintances and he’d wanted to avoid me—and now we were sitting back, mulling over something like a couple.

But, I wondered, was that we were? We’d had sex only
once
during this new stage of our lives, and neither one of us had said anything about dating, commitment, a relationship, or the like. We certainly were acting like there was something between us—but was there? And, if so, was it because of the situation we were in, or because we wanted it?

In other words, I was very confused and a little worried. I didn’t know if J.R. was holding me to comfort me as a friend, a lover, or a girlfriend—and I didn’t know if my status had been elevated to any of these roles because of me or the horrible things that were happening all around me.

“I don’t know what information he was after,” I replied. “And I don’t know if he got it.”

There was soooo much I didn’t know.

“Maybe he just wanted to probe you,” J.R. said. Had we been in any other situation, I probably would have laughed at his choice of words—but, considering where we were at the moment, I didn’t.

“Maybe,” I said. Again, I was reminded of how much I didn’t know, and I cringed at the thought of what I
could
have told Tommy. If roofies could make an acrophobic person go skydiving, could they have made me reveal where I was in my investigation or, worse yet, disclose J.R.’s and/or Julie’s involvement?

I was sure J.R. was wondering the same things, though without the guilt I felt.

“There’s no way to tell,” I added, resenting the validity of my statement.

I leaned into J.R., wishing this all would go away, but knowing it wouldn’t. We sat there in silence for a moment, our minds both flooded by thoughts, maybe even feelings, we could not express.

It was J.R. who finally broke the silence. “What about Julie?” he asked.

“Hmm?” I asked back, lifting my head from his body.

“Should we tell her about everything that happened?” J.R. clarified.

“I guess we should,” I replied immediately. With all that had gone on, I hadn’t even thought about whether or not we should update her. I was so overwhelmed with other considerations. But, now that I thought about it, I realized that we
had
to tell her.

“I guess we
have
to tell her,” I said, revising my statement. “For her own safety, we have to let her know what Tommy did to me… If he found out she’s involved, he might come after her for information too—so, she needs to be prepared for that possibility.”

“You’re right,” J.R. said, stating what was now obvious.  “Do you think he’d go after her though?”

“I don’t know,” I said, getting up off of the couch. I walked over to my desk and grabbed my phone, then found Julie’s number and called her.

“Can you come over?” I asked, interrupting her as she tried to talk my ear off. She was worried that she hadn’t heard back from me—and, indeed, she had good reason—but she could sense the urgency in my voice, and said she’d be over right away.

As I hung up my cell phone, I looked at it for a long, hard moment. I realized that, in addition to whatever I might have said while drugged, my phone could have also given a lot away, or could further contribute to my downfall. Tommy could have very well looked at it while I was passed out, and he could have viewed my text messages and missed calls without actually opening them—which would have been enough to reveal Julie’s phone number and the basic nature of her text messages.

My skin crawled when I thought about what else Tommy could have done to, or on, my phone. Beyond viewing my missed calls and texts, he could have viewed all the ones I’d already received; he could have accessed my contacts list; and, as a tech geek, he could have installed something on my phone that would track, record, or otherwise trail me.

No matter how I cut it, there was a very high likelihood that my phone had been compromised.

J.R. saw how I was regarding my Android and asked, “Is everything okay?”

I looked over at him, then back to my phone. I held it up in the air. “I think I need to get a new one,” I said, shaking the piece around. “There’s a lot a guy like Tommy could have done with this.”

“I hadn’t even thought about that,” J.R. admitted. “Good thing I’ve been calling you from ‘Unknown,’ blocked numbers… But, bad news for Julie, huh? Good thing we decided to tell her. He could very well have her contact info, and could very well try to contact her.”

With Julie on her way over, there was no way I could do anything about my phone at that moment… Well, there was
one
thing I could do, and I decided to do it. I powered down the piece and tossed it back on the desk. “This really is getting ugly,” I said, tears pooling in my eyes again.

“Come here,” J.R. said, holding out his arms. I went back over to the couch and collapsed into his embrace. He ran his fingers through my hair and drew my head closer to his chest, planting several more sweet kisses on my crown.

Those kisses soon strayed to my forehead, then to my cheek, and finally to my lips. Soft, gentle, and compassionate at first, they gradually took on more shape and meaning. J.R.’s tongue darted into my mouth, and I lapped mine against it as his hand traveled from my shoulders, down my back, to the top of my ass.

J.R. slid his hand beneath the waistband of my pants and started squeezing my ass cheek, with his fingers grazing the increasingly moist slit between my legs. I drew closer to him and placed my hand on his upper thigh. His erection had made a tent in his pants, and I was drawing closer to the pitch.

My problems hadn’t gone away as I’d hoped, but I had a break from them, which was exactly what I needed. The fluttering in my belly felt much better than the earlier nervousness in it, and I ached for J.R. to be inside me.

We continued to tongue each other’s mouths and grope each other’s bodies until a knock at my door jolted us both.

“Fuck,” J.R. said, obviously frustrated that our make-out session had to end.

“Not now,” I said, taking advantage of the double entendre, “but definitely later.”

“Hi,” Julie said when she entered my apartment and saw J.R. casually situated on my couch. I hadn’t mentioned he was there, and she was clearly surprised to see him.

J.R. made a “hello” gesture with his head. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute,” he said, standing up and making his way to the bathroom.

As soon as his back was turned, Julie gave me an inquisitive look, and I raised my hand in a familiar motion, telling her to hold her horses.

“What the hell?” Julie asked in a whisper as soon as the bathroom door clicked shut. “What’s going on here? Did he spend the night or something?”

“I wish,” I answered back. “It’s a long story… I’ll fill you in on stuff with J.R. later, but, right now, we have some more serious issues to discuss.”

“What?” Julie asked. Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped in anticipation.

I raised my voice back to a normal volume and started explaining. At first, she seemed disturbed that I hadn’t told her about seeing Tommy the other night—but, soon, her own hurt feelings were replaced by concern for me.

At some point during my account, J.R. returned from the bathroom, and he remained quiet as I went on. Julie, too, remained quiet—but, her quietness was due to shock. It wasn’t until I got to the point in the story where the doctor left that she said something in response—and all she said was, “Shit.”

I reemphasized a few of the major points from what I’d just told her, focusing on the deception and drugs, and, after she had a moment to digest it all, she spoke again.

“There’s obviously more to this than we initially thought,” she said.

“Maybe,” J.R. said, jumping in. “Or maybe not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Julie asked.

“I was thinking about it,” J.R. answered, “and I don’t think there’s very much information Tommy could have gotten from Trish. If he was looking for more on rEcore, he was barking up the wrong tree. She only worked there for less than a week, after all—and, of course, in light of what happened, we changed all of our security measures after she left, and he would’ve definitely known that we would.

“So, there’s no way he could have expected to get any inside information on rEcore from her—which means he probably was just checking up on things and protecting his own ass. He probably just wanted to know what
she
knew, to see if she had any idea he was involved.”

“And you have no idea what you told him?” Julie asked, looking at me.

“No clue,” I replied. “I could have told him everything or nothing for all I know.”

“Well,” Julie went on, scratching her pink-haired head, “given the way you said he acted toward you this morning, you probably didn’t tell him much, or else he would’ve been much colder.”

“You’d think so,” I responded immediately, suddenly picking up on J.R.’s line of reasoning and pursuing it in my own right. “But, remember, I was playing a part with him last night—so maybe he was playing one with me this morning.”

“Damn,” Julie said, relegating to the realization. “So, where do we go from here?” she asked.

“Nowhere with Tommy,” J.R. stated firmly. “He’s too unpredictable and dangerous. If he’s involved—which I know he is, somehow—we have to discover it some other way…and I say we do that by shifting our attention back to Gretchen.”

“What about Stephanie, or her brother?” Julie asked. She’d spent a lot of time chasing those leads and obviously didn’t want all her hard work to go to waste.

“I think that’s pretty much a dead route now,” J.R. said. “I mean, we should definitely keep alert and bear in mind what we know about them—but I don’t think they’re responsible for any of this… Tommy is a smart guy, and, clearly, he’s relentless—but, to do what he did, he’d need inside help, and it seems more likely that that help came from Gretchen, who also seems pretty damn relentless, given the way she fired people to save her personal reputation. The fact that she fired Evan seems coincidental to me, and it doesn’t really provide motive, other than revenge.

“But this seems to be about more than revenge, and there’s no connection between Tommy and Evan, so I think following up on Gretchen is still our best option.”

I considered J.R.’s reasoning, and it made sense to me. Granted, I’d underestimated Stephanie before, but I had to agree that Gretchen’s skill set, connection to Tommy, and possible motives fingered her as the more likely culprit.

“If you want to keep researching them, that’s fine,” I told Julie. “But I’m with J.R. on this one. I think Gretchen’s the ticket here.”

Julie sighed and tilted her head a bit. “Okay,” she said. “But, just to be safe—let’s all do something that we should have done earlier.”

“What’s that?” J.R. asked.

“Let’s make sure we know who’s who,” she said. “If Trish had shown you Tommy’s picture earlier, we all would have known he was Gretchen’s ex a lot sooner…and maybe she wouldn’t have ended up passed out in his bed… So, let’s all get on the same page here. All of these people—Tommy, Gretchen, Stephanie, and Evan—have online social media profiles. We need to check out their photos to make sure there are no other unexpected connections we don’t know about—and to make sure we’re ready in case we encounter any of them in a dark alley.”

“Good point,” I said. I walked over and retrieved my laptop, while J.R. pulled out his phone and Julie started scrolling through hers.

As I was booting up my machine, Julie was mumbling to herself—and then she mumbled to us. “What the hell is a ‘Farm Parm’?”

Those words sounded strangely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place them, and, from the way J.R. was shaking his head, it was apparent that neither could he.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Why?”

“Gretchen’s profile,” Julie responded. “Someone posted on her timeline about having a ‘Farm Parm’ tomorrow.”

Just then, something clicked in my head, and I clicked my way to Gretchen’s profile. Though I didn’t tell my friends, I was starting to vaguely remember what a “Farm Parm” was, and I was entirely aware of when and where I’d seen the term before.

Sure enough, at the top of Gretchen’s timeline, there was a comment from a woman named Liz.
Can’t wait till I’m done with work tomorrow
, the post read.
I’m having a Farm Parm
.

I wracked my brain a bit more… Farm Parm. Farm Parm—marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese, and a sunny-side-up egg atop ten ounces of Kobe beef, if my memory of Burger Bistro’s kitschy menu served me correctly.

“Hmm,” I hummed. “I have no idea what
that
is, but it’s probably not important.”

“Probably not,” Julie chimed back. I watched as she continued to scroll through her phone, and I was satisfied that she hadn’t detected my lie.

My computer was huffing and puffing, making its wake-up noises. I stared at it aimlessly as the wheels in my head kept spinning. I was coming up with a plan, but I had to keep it to myself if it was going to work.