Don't... (3 page)

That took us until dinnertime, and at least I’d had the chance to go over a few facts and figures for the Strachan deal. Sam sauntered over, but I put him off for two hours, much to Steve’s roll of eyes, and the rest of my afternoon was spent in the office chasing parts and getting my thoughts on paper. Bar the Strachan deal, we had two big jobs over the next few weeks reconditioning two old Mustangs. Getting the parts was proving to be a bit of a bastard. I’d been promised an e-mail and a definite date for delivery, but when I sat at my desk and signed on, there were no e-mails, no parts. There was some spam from some .com shit that notified me of a private message, nothing else.

The fantasy site from last night attached itself to the only spam message I had, and I frowned wondering how the hell they’d gotten my e-mail address, and why the hell they were sending me a message. I clicked on the link and scanned to the bottom of the profile set-up page. Shit.
Stupid fuck
. I should have checked the profile box, because it had an option there to notify me by e-mail if I had a private message. This was why I didn’t do social. Last thing I needed now was Steve having a chuckle at how I spent my private time.

I took the necessary steps to get my inbox blocked, thought about getting the account deleted, and then noticed the name and title on the private message.

The Unknown.

If Fear Encourages Aggressive Rebellion, don’t...

I clicked on the message.

...
FEAR me.

Jack.

That jolted me, not the message as such, well, maybe the message, but also the name. I was signed on as “Jac.” Maybe it was a typing mistake, maybe The Unknown had just added the
k
. Instinct told me not to reply, to back away, but something about that message played on my mind, and I opened the reply box.

The name’s Jac, jackass.

I grabbed my snail mail off the desk just as another private message flickered on screen. This one came with no title, and curious, I opened it.

Don’t...

...reply to this message, J. A. C. K.

Huh? What the hell was this guy playing at? Assuming said guy was a guy writing this. Main point being, very few people got to tell me what to do. I wrote my reply.

You weren’t loved as a kid, were you, you fuck? Don’t... message me again.

I logged out and shut the computer down just as a knock came at the door. “Boss,” said Sam, poking his head into the office. “You wanted to see me? Now a good time?”

Oh yeah, now was the perfect fucking time. I nodded and let him slink in through the door and shut it quietly behind him. Hands in his back pockets, eyes finding sudden interest in his feet, Sam let his shoulders drop as he came and stood in front of my desk. “Listen, ’bout yesterday—”

“You’re fired.”

“Huh?” Eyes were all on me. I swear they were red from crying. Christ, the kid
really
loved football.

“It’s what I’ll be saying if you pull that stunt again,” I added eventually, and Sam seemed to find a way to relax with a whistle, adding a cheeky grin afterwards.

“Christ Mr. H—”

“Harrison.” If he reduced me to a bloody initial one more time, I swore I’d make him sit through the whole fucking match again.

“’Arrison,” he corrected a little too quickly. “Thought my ass was a gonner then.”

“You piss about on my day off again and it will be, we clear?”

“As unused engine oil.” He scratched the back of his head. “I screw some golfing plans up or something?”

Jesus. The only appeal golfing had at this precise moment was blunt objects in the form of a club, and maybe knocking some sense into Sam. “Flower arranging class.”

His eyes widened slightly. “Seriously?”

“No, Sam, not seriously.” For fuck’s sake.

“Ah.” That infectious grin of his. “Sorry.” He seemed to squirm on the spot. “Dinner. Steve said it would be a good idea to buy you some. Say sorry. Um.” Again that nervous flick of eyes back toward the doors (an escape?). “The guys and me are heading off to the Brass an’ B. You, you want to come, boss?”

Steve played dirty; he knew I couldn’t resist the B and B’s steak. Besides, I wasn’t
that
pissed with Sam. I grabbed my coat and pushed back on my chair. “Sounds good, Sam. Just quit with the ‘boss’ tags, yeah?”

He went over and held the door. “Sure Mr. H.”

I briefly closed my eyes before locking the office behind me. It was so tempting to lock him in.

“You catch the match yesterday, Mr. H?” called Sam, already halfway down the stairs.

“No.” I scowled. “I was working, Sam.”

“Oh.” I could see Sam blush as he glanced back. “We lost, anyway. Chelsea. 2-1.”

Steve had been running a book, one for overall score, another for how many days it’d take Sam to stop whining about losing. I was winning on the latter one.

“We deserved a penalty second half,” he said, grabbing his coat off Sue, my receptionist. I gave her a smile; she gave me a roll of eye, the
no matter how many days you put his whining down to, double it for me
look. I bit back my grin.

“Serves you right for scabbing the day off,” I said as I saw Steve huddled, talking to the guys. No doubt going over tomorrow’s schedule. Fuck knows what I’d do without him. He nodded he was nearly done.

“Point being, Mr. H....”

I looked at Sam.

“I’m kind of skint until Friday. Any chance...?”

Sue’s snort of laughter assaulted the office as I looked for the nearest club to hit Sam. I swore, one of these days....

Range Rover or Jag; I mean, c’mon, there’s a big fuckin’ difference between the two, which is why I couldn’t understand the intensity on my old man’s face as he sat opposite me in my kitchen, thumbing alternatively through the two car brochures and trying to decide which one, Jag or Range Rover, would look best as an accessory.

“Dad,” I said, palming my eyes and sitting back, “the only time you’ll use diff-lock on the Range Rover is when it snows around here. You’re not going off-roading, and, let’s face it,” I picked up my mug of coffee off the breakfast bar, “your boy-racer days are long over.”

The old man waggled his eyebrows before licking his thumb and continuing his fingering of the Land Rover brochure. “Stick an old geezer behind one of these beauties, I won’t get any tailgaters. They’ll think I’ll lose it and bruise it.”

“The Jag would suit you better.”

He glanced up at me. “Because I’m old?”

Watch your reply here, Jack.
“No. Because of the 149G/KM CO2 emissions on that one there compared to the 253 on the Range Rover you’re eyeing.” I sighed. “And about thirty-odd grand in the pocket too.”

“You think money matters?”

No. And that’s where the worry lay. My old man was a shrewd businessman, but he sat opposite me in his Gucci suit, black hair swept back off his face revealing sharp blue eyes. Tall, maybe not as slim as he used to be, he could still pass for a guy touching fifty, which took eighteen years off him. He was tanned from earlier years spent in the field fixing cars by the roadside, but his hands and nails were long since cleaned and polished to perfection, a sure sign of shifting gears and going into the administrative side of the business. He was everything you needed in a businessman, but since my mother had left him a few months back (money really wasn’t everything), he’d undone the lock to his wallet a little more. One of the cracks in my old man’s armour that showed; he hadn’t exactly made a fuss of my mother since I’d left home at twenty, and now he was making up for it in all the wrong ways.

“Besides, the option of grandkids is out of the picture.” My old man’s face wasn’t as serious as the words, and I gave half a smile.

“You could always foster, Dad. Get yourself a straight.”

“Huh. I blame your mother.”

“What?” Seriously? I had to stop myself from adding. “For me being gay?” We never spoke about it much, and he was already lost to his brochures.

“For taking my Jag and forcing me to buy a new one.”

Ah. So that’s why he was sitting here hovering over a different make and model. I tapped the Range Rover. “Looks good to me,” I said, and he seemed to ease away from the businessman back to my old man.

“You think?”

The old man could detach at work and go on the attack with a clear head. When it came to his heart? He’d been used to making personal decisions under the sharp eye of my mother, and he wanted to break away from what had been her favourite car. He just hadn’t quite got the heart to call the decision himself. “You want me to call?” I said after a sip of coffee. But the old man said no. “I can book via e-mail.” He pointed upstairs. “Mind if I?”

“Knock yourself out,” I said and waited for him to collect up the Range Rover brochure and head upstairs. I frowned at the discarded Jag brochure and inched it into a more respectable place on the table before clearing the mugs away. The meal with the guys after work had filled me up, and left me a hundred down in my wallet (think golf clubs, just carry on thinking golf clubs). I’d never admit to my staff that I didn’t mind, they worked hard for it, but I had an image to keep up. Yeah, right. But I knew my old man; he wouldn’t have eaten unless someone put food in front of him, so I set about preparing a light meat salad followed by a Bud.

My phone rang and I fished the phone from my back pocket. “Hello.”

“How does a week today sound for a test drive?”

Sighing, I tipped the salad onto a plate. “Dad, you know I’m downstairs, right?” Something stronger came to mind, but I didn’t swear around my old man. End sentence, shut it away and never bring it up again.

“Not my fault you have this thing up here,” he said, bringing me back. “You should have bought a house big enough to home an office.”

“I’ve got an office at work.” I knew the shit that bringing work home caused, especially when it came to engine parts in the kitchen. “I try and make sure I keep it there, Dad.”

“Yeah, and we all know how well that works; you were doing accounts last night, right? Any secrets on here surrounding your proposal for the Strachan deal?”

“Because I’d leave something like that on there for you to nose through?”

“Awww, son. If you’re struggling and need me to help you work out how to carry a few decimals, you only have to say.”

Cheeky git. “Because you’ve not got a vested interest in the deal and aren’t into playing head games with the opposition?”

He laughed. “Only the ones that I know are unpredictable enough just to steal it from under my nose.”

“Dad,” I warned.

He sobered up. “Okay, okay. So next week, how about that test drive.”

He won another sigh. “You know how to drive, Dad.”

“Yeah.”

“And you know sales bollock-rubbish when you hear it.”

“Point being?”

I reached for some ham and beef, resigning myself to the inevitable. “Next week’s fine, Dad. Just make it after work, yeah?”

“Yeah, you know me.”

Didn’t I just? I slipped my phone back in my pocket and took the old man’s plate and beer over to the breakfast bar. I’d just finished with the knife when I heard the creak of stairs. “All done?” I said as the old man came in the door.

He smiled over. He looked tired. Tired and lonely. “Why Gray now, huh?” he said as he pulled up a breakfast barstool and sat down.

That had come out of the blue. The old man and me didn’t do Gray talk. “What?” I asked, not really wanting to tread on this ground. I started to put things back in order in the kitchen, but there really wasn’t much room to hide in there.

“That Polaroid.” The scrape of knife and fork on plate was almost ear shattering. “You—”

“You touch it?”

“Huh?” My old man glanced back. “No,” he said with a frown before starting on his meal again, and I took a breath. “You know I’m here, right?” he said quietly. “It looks recent. You had enough shit off him in your teens—”

“Not exactly true, Dad,” I mumbled.

“Yeah? Hospital, a few broken ribs, a six-month trial, that the norm is it for an eighteen-year-old?”

“Because I didn’t deserve all that bollock-backlash, right?”

He looked back at me. “Jack, you have,” he waved at me, “all that going to waste. Christ, you punish yourself enough with not getting serious with anyone. You don’t need Gray as a reminder now.”

“You know he was the good guy back then?”

Knife and fork slammed on the table. “You weren’t the bad one.”

With all the shit he was going through.... I loved him to pieces, but like hell would I talk to him about Gray areas in my life. He started to eat again and I relaxed a little more.

“When did you get the webcam?”

I stopped wiping the units and looked back at my old man. “What?”

“The webcam.” He had his back to me and his head bobbed up and down as he tucked into his dinner. “You don’t do social.”

I threw the cloth on the unit before heading upstairs. No one had convinced me that the pull up into the land of techno-bullshit was worth it, not even Gray and his disgruntled growls over trying to pull someone ten years his younger into this century. Being brought up without a net connection, I’d learned not to rely on it too much.

I made it to my bedroom and checked around my computer desk. What the fuck did a webcam look like? The computer itself was the state-of-the-art, Intel-inside desktop, something Gray
had
managed to convince me was necessary. Up until then it had been all files and cabinets. There was still an array of papers on my desk next to the keyboard, all tidy and stacked in a tier of trays (a sure sign old habits died hard). The desk drive itself was at my feet in its own alcove, still humming gently to let me know my old man hadn’t switched it off. The flat screen sat on a little shelf just above that. It hadn’t switched to standby yet, but the Polaroid had been moved, and it made me pause.

Outside the manor that day, the sun had been hot enough to force Gray to wear sunglasses, hiding the Lapis Lazuli of the sea, that strange gem-like quality to his eyes, and just as equipped to take a man under and never let him surface for breath. Yeah, ghost was apt with Gray. You knew he was there, somewhere, just always out of sight, but there nevertheless.