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“And sometimes keeping both twins around feels unnecessary when one is enough,” Ty shot back.
“Fair enough,” I said.
I looked up the ski chalet on my phone and showed them where we were going. They huddled around the screen and oohed and aahed over the photo carousel.
“This place is incredible. It looks almost just like a place I saw in Switzerland,” Ty said.
“These mountains are much closer than the Alps,” I said. “I can have us on the ground at the airfield near the resort in under ninety minutes.”
“It sounds perfect,” Jasmine said. “A long weekend with all of you in a cozy cabin in the mountains? Sounds like a dream come true.”
“We’ll make sure it is,” I said, my voice dropping a little. Jasmine met my eyes and stepped into my arms.
“Thank you. I’ve never had a vacation before, like this. Once when our pipes burst when I was a kid my mom and sister and I stayed two nights at the Super 8, but that’s probably the closest I’ve come,” she said.
She was smiling when she said that, like it was a lovely childhood memory. Like the story wasn’t sad at all. And maybe compared to the rest of her memories it wasn’t that bad, relatively speaking.
We could do better for her, I resolved. This could be the first of a lot of vacations together, and we could make it memorable, a wonderful trip for her. Somehow, I felt even more protective of her now than I had already.
17
DREW
“Eli, I’m glad you scored this trip for us, because with the gala canceled, the timing couldn’t be better. And because Jasmine is about twenty-five years overdue for her first real vacation,” Jake said.
“We had such a good childhood. It showed us again how lucky we were. It’s not guilt even. It’s just this sinking feeling of how wrong that is, for her mom to struggle like that with two kids,” I said.
“And no dad to step in and make sure that they had what they needed. It’s bullshit. I never wanted to start a nonprofit in my life before today. Right now, I’d sign off on a charity where decent guys contribute to a monetary fund that women with deadbeat exes could draw from to pay for what they need, and in exchange, all that they have to do is give us his full legal name and we’d take it from there,” I said, resisting the urge to crack my knuckles.
“I don’t think that’s what charities do. I mean, the ones I’ve donated to are more on the side of benefiting the needy and less about extorting identifying information from them so you can perform vigilante acts of violence,” Eli said wryly.
“Then this is a better business model for a charity. Everyone gets what they deserve this way. I’d get pure personal satisfaction from being karma’s delivery boy,” I said victoriously.
“That’s a hit man, dude. Not a charity. That’s a civic minded hit man.”
“Exactly. Like Robin Hood, but homicidal,” I said with a harsh laugh. “It scared the shit out of me the way I reacted to her ex. I saw that motherfucker in the car outside here and all I could think was that if I ended himnow, he wouldn’t ever lay a hand on anyone again.”
“You wanted to do crimes,” Jake chuckled.
“I did. I can’t seem to stop thinking about it. I’ve never wanted to break the law before. I’m not that kind of guy, the type that thinks I can do whatever I want, no repercussions. Tell me why I went psycho on this dirtbag. I don’t like losing control.”
“You? Don’t like losing control?” Jake said sarcastically.
“Says the man with the app that shows where we areat all times? Control freak much?” I shot back. “That is nothing more than the pot calling the kettle black right there.”
“Hey, before we get in argument about which one of you is the bigger control freak, can we focus? I think your question is, why did you lose it and also how can you keep that from happening again, right?” Eli said.
I nodded and went ahead and dropped my head in my hands, elbows propped on my knees.
“You’re crazy about her. That’s why. We all are. You grabbed him and roughed him up, threatened his life. I understand how that’s freaking you out. I wish I could say that I would’ve responded rationally in your shoes, but I don’t trust myself to claim that. When I thought about it, I decided I probably would have dragged him out of the car and into the street so I had room to beat his ass thoroughly. You know, where all the security and traffic cameras could pick up on every single move I made so I’d end up in jail. Not a real intelligent move. My point is, I don’t think I would have reacted better than you did in the same situation. That’s not a boast, it’s acknowledging the fact that we’re all too close to this situation to see clearly. I don’t know how to get her out of this without getting our hands really dirty.”
“We didn’t go into security to keep our hands clean,” Jake said. The most by the book of all of us, Mr. Law and Order, let the authorities handle it himself, was coming down on the side of dirty justice. “I felt bad about it at first, that it was unethical and flies in the face of everything we all fought to uphold and protect in the Armed Forces all those years. But I thought about this too, and the thing is, I don’t care. I don’t care as much about my ideals as I thought I did. Not if it comes down to a choice between protecting Jasmine and clinging to our reputation for integrity in our operations. She’s family. You don’t fuck with our family and live to tell about it. Agreed?”
We both stared at him for probably a full minute. Jake was the very last person I expected to say something like that.
“What’s the plan?” I asked at last.
He dipped his chin, a slight nod of thanks or acceptance of my agreement to get on board with whatever strategy he had in mind. It would be high tech in some way I didn’t fully comprehend, I expected that much. But I didn’t expect the rest of it.
