Hush (6 page)

I hadn’t thought about her in the three months, not since we’d last seen each other for that quick bite to eat.  There hadn’t been any other reason to see each other, not until my phone rang.  “Callem Tate,” I answered.

“Callem, hello,” a sweet voice cooed on the other end.  It took me a second to realize who I was talking to.  “It’s Olivia Reinbeck, how are you?”

“Dr. Reinbeck, uh, Olivia, I’m doing well, thank you.  And yourself?  It’s been awhile.”

“I’m doing great and yes, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it?  Have I caught you at a bad time?”

“No, not at all.”  If she had called me a half hour earlier, it would have been a bad time.  I just dropped off a client at the airport and was heading back to the office.  “To what do I owe this call?”

“Well, I’m calling about business.  You see, I was asked to step in for one of my colleagues for a conference going on in Chicago.  I’ve never been to Chicago, not that I’m incapable of going on my own, but I thought it’d be easier to have an escort, you know, reliable transportation to get me to and from the conference and the hotel and the airport.  It’s probably too short of notice to ask for your assistance, but I thought I’d try.  You’d mentioned you had a lot of other men working for you so I didn’t know if there was someone available.”

“Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t be a problem.  When’s the trip?”

“This weekend, just for the weekend.  I fly out of LAX on Friday morning and then back Monday.”

I smiled.  “Well, today’s your lucky day.  I’m going to be in Chicago this week working out of our office there.  I’d be more than happy to pencil you in while I’m there.”  I lied.  I had no such arrangements to go to Chicago, but she’d just given me a great excuse to check on the boys over there.   “Do you have an itinerary you could send my way so I have an idea of your schedule and how much transportation you’ll need?”

“Absolutely.  The office is expensing your services so I can send you the billing information as well.”

“That’d be fine.  Do you have my email?”

“Um, yes, I see it’s here on your card.”  She kept my card.

“Great.  Just send me the addresses and your schedule and I’ll confirm pick-up at the airport Thursday night.  Are you traveling alone or is another colleague going with you?”

“I’ll be alone for this trip.  I really appreciate you squeezing me in on such short notice.  I would have called earlier, but I just found out about it last night and was kind of scrambling to make all the arrangements.”

“That’s not a problem.  It happens more than you think.  You have to be flexible in this industry.”

“Great.  Well, I’ll send everything your way and I look forward to hearing from you on Thursday.”

“Sounds good.”

As soon as I hung up with Olivia, I called Red.  “Hey it’s me.  Look, I've got a change of plans.  I’m going to Chicago tomorrow.  I’m taking one of the jets and I won’t be back until next week.”

“Why, what’s going on?” Red asked me.

“Just got a client going out there.  I’ll just work out of the office when I’m not on the road.  Can you take care of my meetings while I’m gone?  I can dial into them in case anything comes up you can’t speak to.”

“Yeah, I’ve got it under control.  Who’s the client?”

“Remember that doctor from a couple of months ago?”

“The one who almost got date-raped by that pop star?  Yeah, yeah I remember her,” Red said chuckling lightly.  “Isn’t she like a teenager or something?  What are you so interested in driving her around for?”

“It’s not like that.  I just want to help her out.  She’s never been to Chicago and her company is picking up the bill so why turn down the work?”

“Uh huh, you’re not convincing me, especially when you’re trying so hard to dodge this conversation.  Is she cute?”

I shook my head.  Typical Red to think with his dick.  “To be honest, she looks like Camilla, a lot like Camilla.  I was kind of freaked out the first time I saw her.  It was like seeing a ghost.  That’s how much she looks like Camilla.”

Red paused for a second.  “Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

“I haven’t thought that through yet.”  I sighed.  “It’s probably a little bit of both.  I know that has a lot to do with why I felt so compelled to look out for her that night at Staples and why I’m dropping everything to do her a favor.  Now that I think about it, it’s probably a bad thing, a really bad thing.”

“Nah, I’m sure it’s alright.  You’re not as dumb as you used to be and if she’s a doctor, I’m sure she’s a lot smarter than Camilla was; smarter than you, too.”

I nodded.  “Right, well call me if you need anything from me.  I’m going to be heading out of town as soon as the jet is ready.  Oh, and could you call Todd and let him know I’m headed his way.”  Todd was the manager at the Chicago branch and would probably like a little bit of heads up before his boss drops in for a surprise visit.

“Will do, boss.  Safe trip.”

Red and I have been working together for so long he understood what it meant when I told him about the resemblance between Olivia and Camilla.  He knew Camilla and he knew her well.  He knew what she meant to me and what it did to me when I lost her.

Let’s just hope I’m not making attempts to have that back through Olivia.  Olivia isn’t Camilla.  I couldn’t forget that.  I can’t let my past cloud my eyes and my mind.

I sighed heavily. 
Oh, this was a bad idea.

“How much did she see?”  Red asked as he and I stood in front of the open safe.

“All of it,” I spat, stuffing the documents and files back into the safe.  “She saw everything.  Why the fuck was this thing open?  How could you have been so careless?”

“Cal, that’s beside the point,” Red said calmly, trying to calm me with his cool tone.  “You’ve been tiptoeing around this for seven years.  It was only a matter of time before she found out.”

I squeezed my jaw.   I had it in my mind to grab Red and beat the life right out of him.  “Not like this.  I didn’t want her to find out this way.  Don’t try to defend yourself.  You know you fucked up royally.”

Red cocked his head to the side.  “Come on, man, I would never choose her over you.  You know that.  You know me.  You’re not thinking straight right now, alright?  We’ll figure this out.  We’ll find her and then you can work this out.  Okay?  We just need to get our shit together.  We’re professionals, remember?  We’ve done this before.  She can’t hide.  We’ll just start with Erin, the cab companies, and we’ll go from there.  If she’s not at Erin’s then she’s at a hotel.  There’s no one else to call; nowhere else she’d go but those two places.  You know she wouldn’t involve her parents in this.  And if she’s at a hotel, she used a card to get a room.  This is a cake walk for us.”

“We need to get rid of it.  All of it,” I mumbled, eyes glazed over as I stared into the safe.  “Torch it all.  She’s my wife, but she’s also a liability now.  I’m not worried about finding her.  I know that’s not the problem.  The problem is getting her back.  She won’t want me now.”

“She doesn’t get to make a choice,” Red said quietly.  “We can’t take that risk.  She’s seen enough to,” he paused, “well, it doesn’t matter because we’ll get her back, one way or another.  It may not be pretty.  It may not be neat, but we have to do what we need to do, right?”

I looked at Red for a long moment.

“Are you prepared for that, Cal?  Are you prepared to do what we need to?”

“Don’t fucking talk to me like that,” I whispered, dropping my gaze.  “We are going to do everything we can to ensure it doesn’t get to that point, do you understand me?  We’re brothers, right?  Thick and thin, we’ve got each other’s backs, but I promise you, I promise you I will kill you myself if you touch her.  I will.”

Red’s lips pursed.  I hit a nerve and I could see that in his eyes.  He nodded slowly.  “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, man.  For both our sakes, let’s hope it doesn’t go that far.  I’d rather it go as far as last time than it come to that.”

And now he’d hit a nerve with me.  I pulled back and slugged Red right across his face.  The blow surprised him and he flew backward, falling into the wall.  Before he could right himself, I was on top of him, pulling him to his feet by his shirt.

My face was only inches from his and my clenched hands held fistfuls of his shirt.  Red wrapped his hands around my wrists, but didn’t fight me.  He knew better.  He knew it was a fight he didn’t want to be a part of.  The tension surging between us was palpable.  “I won’t be able to forget you said that,” I managed to whisper through clenched teeth.

I had to force myself to look him in the eye.  He was my oldest friend and colleague.  Despite that, I wanted nothing more than to bloody my knuckles on his jaw.  The first punch was such a tease.  Finding my cooler side, I slowly released my hold on him and stepped back.  Red kept his eye on me as he straightened himself, afraid I may have another go at him.

“I’m going to call Erin,” I mumbled after I caught my breath.  “Get on the phone with the cabs.  Find my wife.”

I smiled when I so easily spotted Callem in the busy airport terminal.  He pushed through the crowd to meet me.  “Olivia, great to see you,” Callem beamed at me.  We awkwardly shook hands.  He leaned his chest in towards me, as if he were intending to hug before settling with a cordial hand shake.

“It’s so good to see you, too,” I responded.  He looked dapper in his suit, no doubt custom made, and it was hard for me to think of him as ‘hired help’.

“How was your flight?” he asked as we headed for baggage claim.

“It was fine.  My ears popped on the descent, though and they’ve never hurt so badly before,” I exclaimed dramatically.  “I felt like someone was shoving a pick in my ears or something.  It’s never been that bad on a flight before.”

“Have you ever flown private?”

I shook my head.  “No.  Just commercial.”

“Private’s where it’s at.  Next time you travel, call me and we’ll just get you a flight on one of my jets.  You’ll never want to step foot on another commercial plane after that.”

I smirked.  “I see what you did there. Great product placement for Tate Enterprises.”

He chuckled, “You caught that, did you?  I guess I’ve got to work on my delivery a little bit.”

After Callem helped me collect my suitcase, he led the way to his car.  I was not at all surprised to find a sleek and shiny black Lincoln waiting for us.  “So what’s this conference for?”

“It’s the Society of Surgical Oncology’s annual cancer symposium.  There will be some innovative medical equipment on display.  There are a few presentations I’m interested in.  One in particular about multidisciplinary cancer care teams.  We’re looking to expand our practice so Dr. Sladek is hoping to get some take-away from that presentation.   There are a few others, one on melanoma, one on hepatobiliary malignancy, and a few medical professionals I’m interested in meeting.”

“Have you ever been to one of these things?” Callem asked.

“Nothing on this scale.  This is an international meeting of some of the most renowned cancer specialists.  It’s targeted specifically for my field.  This should be well worth my while.”

Once we got in the car, I was distracted from our small talk by the city.  This was my first time in Chicago and I could see why it was so intoxicating.  The urban jungle stretched before me as far as the eye could see.  Everything moved so quickly around me, not completely unlike L.A.  It was almost like a dance, cars moving this way and that, people ducking and dodging in an un-choreographed waltz.  You could hear shouts of an impromptu aria from one Chicagoan to another coupled with the honking horns of the brass band cabbies, giving the city its own elevator music.

“I hope I’m not pulling you away from anything important,” I said to Callem.  “You could have had one of your other guys drive me around.”

“The only thing you pulled me away from is desk work,” Callem replied.  “Really, I prefer to be out and about.  I’m not good in an office.  It’s my pleasure.”

Just like the night he picked me up for my date with Damien, I had difficulty interpreting that statement.  It’s my pleasure.  Did he say it because he was working or because he meant it?  I couldn’t tell.  I guess it was one of those things that deserved ambiguity.  Best leave it to my own personal interpretation.  Sometimes it’s safer that way.

“How often do you come out here?” I asked him.

I could see his wide shoulders shrug from the front seat.  His eyes were now on me through the rear-view mirror.  “I try to hit each site a couple of times a year.  It’s not hard to run the locations without me, but I like to check in on things every once in a while.  I keep in touch with my GMs through conferencing so unless something big comes up, I primarily work out of LA.”

“But you do a lot of traveling, for your clients?”

“Yeah.  Most of our clients only use our services for a few days at a time.  It’s rare our services are needed for an extended period of time, but it happens.  I’ve had guys on personal security duty for actors and production companies during filming of movies, which sometimes can take a month or more.  I personally stick to the quicker jobs, give the hard work to my lackeys,” he chuckled.

“Delegation,” I added.  “A good tool to use when in a managerial position.”  Listening to myself, I grumbled at the cheesiness of my nervous words.  “I have to commend you, though.  You’re the head honcho and you’re out here working with your employees.  You don’t see that very often.  It must really give you a lot of respect for the job and adds a level of perspective to your decision-making.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say it does,” Callem said.  “And like I said, I don’t do well stuck in a room all day.  I think I’ll always be doing this because it’s who I am.  It’s why I’ve got this company in the first place.”

“How often do you have instances, like where you have to, uh, I mean occurrence of…” I couldn’t put what I wanted to ask into words.

“How often do I have to man-handle someone?”

I chuckled.  “Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say.”

“It happens more than you’d think,” Callem responded in a flat tone.  “I get reports from those kinds of incidents from the other sites.  Those types of situations don’t always involve the police, but if they do, I have to have record of it and have to have all my ducks in a row.  That’s something I keep a close eye on.  I like to avoid lawsuits if at all possible.”

I nodded.  “I can imagine.  Have you ever been sued?”

“Yes, twice, but I won both times,” he said, matter-of-factly.  “It helps to have a good lawyer, too.”  His wide smile reflected to me in the narrow mirror.  “I’ve had multiple suits out against one of my workers or my company, but only the two have gone to court.  Normally, these people try to sue because they felt they were assaulted, but a personal security professional isn’t a civilian when they’re on the job.  There are different laws that govern us, which is why we all have to be licensed.  It’s a slippery slope that normally always slides away from us.”

We arrived at the hotel.  Callem brought my suitcase inside and waited for me to get checked in before escorting me up to my room.  “Do you do this for everyone?” I asked, when the elevator doors closed.  “I’m not used to this kind of treatment.”

“Absolutely.  We’re in the business of five-star care at Tate Enterprises.”  I had to look at him to find out if he was being serious or not.  I knew he wasn’t when I saw a wide tacky grin on his face.

I smiled in reply.  “It’s very hospitable of you.”

“So has your agenda for tomorrow changed at all?  Everything still the same?”  He whipped out his phone and pulled up his calendar.

“Yes, nothing’s changed.”

“Okay, it’ll take us about a half hour to get to the conference from here so I’ll be here at 7:30 to pick you up, does that sound good?”  He stuffed his phone back in his pocket as the elevator stopped and the doors parted.

“That will be fine, thank you.”

“Great.  Well, have a pleasant evening, Doctor, and please feel free to call me if you need anything.”

I smiled, holding the door to my room open.  “Thank you, Mr. Tate.  I hope you have a good night, too.  See you in the morning.”

He nodded before turning down the corridor.  I closed the door behind me, locking the deadbolt and chain.  Even though I was used to being alone, looking around the glorious hotel room, I hadn’t felt that alone in quite a while.  Maybe I was just anxious or wound-up from my trip.  Something made me want to chase Callem down and ask him for some company.  

“No, that’s unprofessional,” I said to the empty room as I threw my suitcase onto the foot of the bed.  “Just put your nose in your laptop and distract your night away.  It’ll be morning before you know it.”

And I did just that.