The XXX Files Season Two (Episodes 5-8) (13 page)

She wanted to call him, but hated feeling needy. Courtney refused to track Willow since that road would certainly lead nowhere good, either personally or professionally, even if it was the right thing to do. She was about to head back outside the hotel, then sit and wait by the curb for Brad and a cab, still reeking of sex, when she thought to try the one obvious place she’d not yet searched — the first place she would have looked if it wasn’t still so relatively early. Sure enough, Brad was nursing a drink in the lobby bar.

Courtney swallowed, hoping the fight was finished and that their reconciliation could start the second their eyes met, then crossed the lobby, stepped down the three stairs into the bar, and took her seat beside Brad at the bar.
 

“A bit early to be getting drunk, don’t you think?”
 

“It’s 5 o’clock somewhere,” he said. “And besides, we’re in a hotel, that means it’s 5 o’clock for a lot more people than the national average.”
 

“We have a plane to catch.”
 

“No, we don’t,” he took a sip of whiskey. “We have a plane to reschedule. Our flight’s already flown, or will have by the time we get there.”
 

The bartender asked Courtney what she wanted. She shook her head, but he idled for a moment until she said, “No, thanks.”
 

“So, I guess you’re not with your girlfriend, then?”
 

Brad ignored her, and Courtney wished she’d not said that. It could only make things worse. A missed flight wasn’t the end of the world. It would piss Cooper off and be another ding on her Division record, but that was par for the course when Brad Hammer was your partner, not that she’d have it any other way.
 

All Courtney cared about was making up.
 

“I’m sorry,” she said, even though that was only half true. She was sorry they’d fought, but not for her feelings. Courtney never thought through things in a vacuum, and didn’t get upset for no reason. She wouldn’t have been jealous of Willow, or suspect Brad of cheating — at Saint Ursula, before they met at the airport, and maybe an hour before with Willow — if she didn’t have a perfectly good reason, given to her by him.
 

But they had a lifetime to make things right between them, so long as they weren’t too wrong now.
 

Brad still said nothing, sipping his whiskey. His silence slid through Courtney’s heart like the cool steel of a mean blade. “Hammer,” she said. “Please, don’t ignore me. I’m sorry, come on, let’s make things right.”
 

He took another sip, then set his whiskey on the bar and turned to Courtney.
 

“Look, I understand why you feel how you feel, but I truly am doing my best. If that’s not good enough for you, then I don’t know what else to say. I just ... I just can’t put up with the jealousy. Not anymore. It hurts too much.”
 

“And you don’t think it hurts to feel it, Brad? It’s terrible being on this side — never feeling like you’re good enough, knowing that all you have to do is slip inside your mind and you can fuck another woman, who’s like a million times better than I can ever be because she’s
ruined
.”

Courtney hissed the last part, too loud. Brad shushed her, his eyes turning sympathetic. “You’re the only one I love, Grayson. And you’re beautiful. You have nothing to be jealous of. Yes, the Red Breath is in my blood, and it has changed me. It’s hard to resist, but I’m doing my best. And yeah, I’ve slipped, a lot, but I’m not that guy, at least not anymore. Now I’m the guy who’s trying his best to make this all work, telling you everything you need to know while still following my sharpest instincts — which means sometimes I’m not going to tell you shit that might do more harm than good, like seeing Willow this morning. I got a tip, that’s all. I swear on my life and our love, and every good thing inside me, I
didn’t
fuck her.”
 

“Did you want to?”
 

“Of course, I did, Courtney! But what the hell does that prove? I’m a man — I would have wanted to fuck her no matter what, and the Red Breath inside me only makes shit harder. What you
should
be focused on is that I saw Willow, wanted to fuck her, and didn’t. I ran back to the room and fucked you instead, because that’s what I
wanted most.
”

“Please,” Courtney begged. “Tell me you love me.”
 

“Of course, I love you. That’s why this is so difficult. “When I fall in love, I don’t do it for pretendsies. And I don’t fall often, but when I do, I fall hard. And you, Courtney Grayson, are as hard as it gets.”
 

Brad fell into a deep silence, then tried to disguise it by putting his lips back on the glass. But Courtney saw straight through it, and into the heart of what he thought but would not say. Like many of his long, lingering silences, Brad was thinking about his ex-girlfriend, yanked from his life without warning when taken by aliens a few years before. Like usual he wanted to hide it, pretend it wasn’t killing him when it was a pillow over the face of his every breath. There was a certain look he got when the pain overwhelmed him, sagging his shoulders and aging his face; haunting his eyes and making smiles impossible.
 

He took another swig of whiskey. Courtney held up her hand, called the bartender over, then ordered the same for her and another for him. She waited for her drink to arrive, then for Brad to finish his old one and take the first sip from his new. Courtney followed, gulping the fire into her throat before she said a word, reassuring him that they were on the same side.
 

“So,” she finally said, setting her glass on the bar and sliding it a few inches in front of her, “how are we supposed to work a case if we’re told to back off? What’s next for Shady Palms?”
 

Brad smiled, definitely thin but the best she could hope for. He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I guess we start by tapping our sources, see if we can dig something up that might help us trace this back to Helix without deep-throated hearsay.”

“Sounds reasonable,” she said. “And assume it works like it usually does, and this time tomorrow we’re looking at a direct lead back to Helix — what then? What will we do with it? We take that to Cooper, and he’ll be pissed to shit. I swear, he’s in rare form these days, raging over everything. We won’t get reprimanded this time, Brad, and we won’t get sent up to Alaska, or even fired. We’ll be thrown in some super secret Division detention center and left to rot for treason. You do realize that, don’t you?”
 

Brad’s mouth twitched as he nodded. He lifted his glass but didn’t bother to sip. Instead, he poured it down his throat, winced through the fire, sighed, then slammed his glass on the bar and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
 

“OK, Grayson, you’re right. Fuck it. This job just isn’t worth it. Let’s let the sleeping Soylent Green Bukkake lie. We’re finished here.” He winked, letting her know everything was fine between them. “Ready to figure out a makeup flight?”
 

“Definitely,” she said, then quickly started sipping her whiskey so they could get back to the room, then maybe have one more tumble before finally showering their stink away and leaving the hotel.
 

Her heel landed on the top step of the hotel bar when their phones buzzed in tandem. “You or me?” Courtney asked.
 

“I’ll take it,” Brad said. “Hammer,” he answered.
 

Three seconds, then, “No, we missed the flight ... yes, we’re on our way now ... are you fucking kidding me? Again? OK ... yeah, for sure.”
 

Brad killed the call and turned to Courtney. “There’s an escaped Bigfoot on the loose. We’ve been ordered to bring it in. Up by Inferno Falls.”
 

“Again?!”

Brad nodded. “Again.”
 

“OK,” Courtney sighed. “They’ve gotta get that shit under control. Seems like there are
always
Bigfoots leaving the sanctuaries now. Ugh, what if we don’t have time to shower, or have sex again?”
 

“If you can only pick one, which will it be?” Brad asked.
 

She laughed. “Definitely the one that comes with your dick.”
 

“Excellent choice, Grayson,” he smiled. “Let’s hurry.”
 

XXX

CHAPTER 4 — Brad Hammer

“What the fuck, Brad! Wait for me!”
 

Brad was running as if he had a fresh set of batteries, as he had been for the last 20 minutes, ever since they first caught the Bigfoot’s pungent scent.

“I can’t,” he called back, “we’re going to lose him!”

Brad didn’t want to lose their Sasquatch, the massive, hair-covered beast that most of the world either didn’t know about, or didn’t believe existed, despite their multiplying numbers, which had been gradually growing for nearly 30 years, fueled by their undying sexual appetites. It was a miracle that the entire Bigfoot population had managed to keep themselves from getting photographed, especially considering they were as clumsy as a two left-footed village idiot and everyone and their brother now had a camera in their pocket. It was even more remarkable that Division had been able to bury or completely discredit nearly every photograph taken. The few they had missed were too dubious to authenticate, leading the photographers to seem half-insane at least.
 

There were more than enough Sasquatch to keep the population steadily growing, or even exploding. Problem was, they didn’t much like fucking each other. They
could
do it, and did, but there was nothing a male Bigfoot liked more than a tight human pussy. Brad had never been inside a Bigfoot pussy himself, but during the longest conversation he’d ever had with a captive Bigfoot, Jethro was his name, he had referred to Sasquatch snatch as being about “yay big,” while holding his hands about body length apart.
 

Regardless of gender, Sasquatch were
always
in heat. The females you could smell a county away since their pussy juice was about as ripe as a dying cow, though not quite as pleasant. The males had erections that were slightly smaller than a telephone pole, making them extremely painful for all but the most adventurous women — the sort of woman a smart Sasquatch loved to find, and knew by her scent. Unfortunately for most women, Sasquatch weren’t especially smart. Fortunately for them, the telephone pole sized boners didn’t have splinters.
 

While it was true that the Sasquatch had bizarre, and almost barbaric sexual lusts eclipsing anything else in the human experience, they were extremely kindhearted creatures. And because they didn’t want to hurt anyone, they could usually be found at the edges of forest and campsites where humans were playing, stroking themselves — not unlike the ghost jacker he and Courtney had tracked just a few days before.
 

This particular Bigfoot had been spotted at the edge of Moorehead College in Inferno Falls, peeping at the girl’s Lacrosse team while they were putting their tight bodies on full display during their morning workout. Normally in a situation like that, Division would have let the reports fade into rumor, and discredit the reporters as crazy. Or if things started to get really out of hand, they’d start with the memory wipes. But Inferno wasn’t rural like the places typically targeted by Sasquatch in heat, and they were worried about an infiltration deeper in a big city. If there was one, there could be many. Brad and Courtney had to contain it. If there were more Sasquatch deeper in the forest, they had to know how many, then bring them in one by one.
 

Bigfoot’s odor and trail were both easy enough to follow, away from Moorehead, up north through the woods following I-69. The scent wasn’t strong enough to be female, and the shredded branches peppering the path — clearly made from the Bigfoot’s enormous boner, confirmed their target was male. Brad and Courtney weren’t supposed to bring the Bigfoot in so much as bring it down. Each carried a high powered tranquilizer gun, with darts capable of downing a Bengal tiger. They had been ordered to incapacitate the Sasquatch, then call in a trapper who would move it to the Bigfoot Sanctuary deep in the Canadian wilderness, far from anyone. The important thing was not to lose it.

Brad was running fast, and had made it so far ahead of Courtney that he figured she had to be about a quarter mile behind, but he had to stop — and fortunately catch his breath — when the trail went suddenly dead. He couldn’t see any sign of, nor smell the Sasquatch, though down a narrow, winding bluff and a few hundred yards ahead Brad could barely make out the wide-open mouth of a smallish cave. He waited for Courtney to catch up, then pointed toward the open mouth and said, “Think he’s in there?”
 

Courtney nodded. “Seems like just the sort of dumb place a Bigfoot would go.” Then she said, “Come on,” and took the lead. Brad let her stay in front, mostly to keep her from getting edgy, until they reached the cave where he reassumed control. He was, after all, the man in their partnership. In bed that meant he was the peg, and she was the hole. In the field it meant he was first to get slapped by danger.
 

“You’re not planning on going in there, are you?” Courtney asked as Brad raised his tranq gun and started inching in a crouch toward the cave’s pitch black entrance.