When Joe shoveled a fork full of eggs into his mouth—
“Hey, you eating my food?”
“I was out of bacon.” Joe shrugged without contrition. “And if you woke up dead, I wanted dibs on your stuff. Bacon and eggs seemed like a good place to start.”
Payton scrunched his face. “Can’t argue with
Joe leaned back in his chair and looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time.
“You’ve got a point.” He nodded, pursing his lips. “Guess I better raise my standards.”
“You don’t have any. That’s why we’re friends.”
A rare smirk flashed across Joe’s face. “I made you breakfast. Get your sorry ass over here.”
“Not hungry. It’s too early.”
Payton stood on wobbly legs in his boxers and trudged to the bathroom. Not bothering to close the door, he took care of business.
“In some countries, you might be right. But here, the morning’s already come and gone.”
Thinking over the vague memories of last night, Payton flushed and washed his hands and face, then looked over his shoulder as he toweled off.
“Hey, how did I get home last night? You took my truck keys, right?”
Joe chuckled under his breath and shook his head. “You were in no condition to drive. Your truck’s out front. You gotta gimme a ride home. But last night, that Jessica Alba look-alike offered to tuck you in bed personally.”
“Sandy Kirkwood? I must have been drunk…
For a woman, Alaska was a target rich environment, with the male to female ratio nearly four-to-one. With her looks, Sandy could have her pick. Yet for some bizarre reason, she had culled him out of the herd, targeting her red hot brand on his hindquarter. The feeling wasn’t mutual.
“She’s got all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I didn’t get married last night, did I?” He quickly brushed his teeth.
“No, you turned her down flat and walked home. That really pissed her off, but I got a feeling she considered it foreplay.” Joe narrowed his eyes and crooked a lip. “Playing hard to get, that’s not a maneuver most guys can pull off. And Sandy’s not the kind of gal who hears no too often. You’ve got balls of brass, boy. Speaking of an overdose of testosterone, what got into you last night? You nearly tore my place apart.”
The brawl at The Moose Nugget nudged his conscience. Joe’s bar and grill, his pride and joy. After rinsing his mouth, Payton stood in front of the sink and stared at the stranger in the mirror. The harsh light made the dark circles under his blue eyes worse. And the bruises on his jaw were raw and swollen.
“Sorry about that.” Payton winced. “I’ll pay for everything.”
“Yes, you will, but that doesn’t answer my question.” Joe walked over and leaned against the doorjamb to the bathroom, his face reflected in the mirror over Payton’s shoulder. “You let that loudmouth jackass get to you. What happened to the Iceman?”
Joe referred to the nickname he’d been given when he played pro football for the Dallas Cowboys. Folks in Texas thought everyone from Alaska lived in friggin’ igloos and mushed dogs, so the name stuck through the end of his career. His last stop had been with the Chicago Bears, a period of his life that had gone from bad to worse in a hurry. After Chicago, he wanted to crawl into a hole and forget he ever played the game.
But he’d been dubbed the Iceman mainly for his nerves of steel in the pocket, in the face of a fierce blitz. A quarterback who could take the punishment of a linebacker freight train. Those days were long gone. He’d pissed them all away, with no one to blame except the man in the mirror.
“The Iceman is nothing but urban myth. The agony of defeat replayed over and over on some TV sports channels.” Payton grimaced in the mirror, his blue eyes turning stormy gray.
His gut gnarled. And it had nothing to do with “the morning after” or the nauseating smell of bacon and eggs lingering in the air like a hostile cloud. He was a has been at the ripe old age of thirty-two. Natural athletic ability, scholarships, and prime opportunity, he’d been handed keys to the gates of heaven—to make something of his life after the tragedy of his parents’ death. But he’d fucked it up, for him and for his sister Susannah. And every day he looked in the mirror, it reminded him of the betrayal to his parents’ memory. Utterly pathetic.
“You were always hardest on yourself, Payton. Even growing up, you always set the bar so high. That attitude kept you reaching for the impossible. But when you fell, you fell hard, boy. I never wanted that for you. I wish—”
“I know, Joe.” He brushed by the old man and reached into a trunk to pick out a T-shirt, jeans, and an oversized blue flannel shirt. Mostly, he couldn’t look Joe in the eye.
As Payton dressed, Joe talked.
“You’re alone even in a crowd. I can see it in your eyes, you’ve tossed in the towel. Your whole life is in front of you and you act like it doesn’t count.” Joe stuffed his hands into his pockets but kept his eyes on Payton. “You need to come out of the locker room with a second half, son. Don’t make it about your parents or anybody else. Make it about you, what you want.”
“Hell, what if this is all I’ve got, Joe? Livin’ day-to-day off the bankroll of my glory days. Maybe I’m fresh out of comebacks and you’re the one who needs to adjust his thinking.” Payton poured himself a cup of coffee, took a sip and muttered, “Get used to it. I have.”
Bitterness tainted his mouth, and it had nothing to do with lousy coffee. For a long moment Joe stared in silence. But when the man opened his mouth to speak, Payton’s phone rang, saving him from round two.
He gladly picked it up and ignored the red blinking light of his answering machine, the signal that he had messages waiting.
“Yo. Speak to me.”
“Thank God…Payton.”
A sob swallowed her voice. At first, in his alcohol-addled brain, he didn’t recognize the caller, even in the stillness of his cabin. Eventually it came to him—his sister Susannah. Most people didn’t give thanks when they crossed his path these days. Susannah was at the top of a short list of folks who tolerated him. But something in her voice made him grimace, triggering a throbbing headache.
“Hey, sis. What’s—”
She interrupted. “Nikki’s gone, Payton. She took her clothes…a duffel bag. And the state troopers are treating this like a missing person case, not an AMBER Alert.” She choked on her last words. “I can’t go through this again.”
More tears. A crying woman always ripped him apart, but his sister’s pain provoked a rush of dark memories. He shut his eyes, wanting all of it to go away. Grief had torn a hole in his heart, one he never filled. Together they endured the loss of their parents at far too young an age. Emotionally, it cut the legs out from both of them. He wasn’t sure he could do it again.
Especially if something happened to Nikki, his only niece.
All those years ago, Payton had been the one to buckle down and take charge after their parents died, to make the difficult decisions and get their lives back on track despite Susannah being a few years older. He had no choice, really. It had been that way ever since. His sister relied on him for everything. She and Nikki were the only family he had left.
“Have you called her friends?” he asked. “Maybe Nikki’s staying overnight somewhere, like the last time.”
Joe Tanu stepped closer, urgent concern on his face. Payton shrugged and shook his head. Susannah’s only child was seventeen, a strong-willed girl with a mind of her own. Nikki had run away before, but something in his sister’s voice triggered a bad feeling.
This time would be different.
“Nikki packed a lot of clothes,” she cried. “She left a note, but it didn’t say much. I’m scared, Payton. This time she’s meeting someone, a stranger off the Internet. And I have no idea how to find her.”
Payton ended the call and rushed to his truck, with Joe riding shotgun. With his mind elsewhere, he forgot about the red blinking light on his answering machine.
