Meet Me Here - Bryan Bliss Page 0,41

now?” I ask.

“I left him at the Wilco. He started talking with Clem. That guy who’s always down there. He once told me—” Wayne doesn’t like the circular way she’s telling the story because he shakes his head and cuts her off.

“Your brother went with Clem,” he says. “Do you know him?”

“Nope,” I say.

“He lives in a trailer out near Sherrills Ford,” Wayne says, taking a beat and another pull from the bottle. “I’m, uh, surprised Jake knows him. He hangs out with my brother and . . .”

Wayne looks like his beer has gone sour, a feeling I’m trying to fight myself. Wayne’s brother was a prick when we were younger, the kind of guy who’d hold you down and punch your arm until it went purple. Not much changed as he got older. The last time I saw him he was beating a guy unconscious in the parking lot of SuperMart. I’m pretty sure he got thirty days in the county jail for it, too.

“Okay. So that means you know where Clem’s trailer is?” I ask. “Right?”

“Yeah, but—”

I turn to Mallory. “I can take you home first. Or you can come with us. Whatever you want.”

Before she can answer, Wayne steps closer to me, a hand on my shoulder. “We’re not going to Clem’s. Forget that.”

“Why not?” Mallory asks. “If Jake’s there, we need to go get him.”

“Yeah, I hear that, but”—he takes another drink of beer—“this ain’t the kind of place where you just show up, you know? How about I call Jerry Lee and see if Jake’s there.”

Wayne pulls out his cell phone and dials a number. Whenever people pass by our circle, Mallory shoves her hands in her pockets and stares at the hardwood floors like it’s her calling in life. Wayne pulls his phone from his ear, and I say, “Well?”

“No answer. But I can keep trying.”

“You don’t have to come,” I say. “Just tell me where it’s at.”

Wayne looks at Sinclair, then Mallory before he levels his eyes on me. “I can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t look confident as he says it, but when I open my mouth, he shakes his head and turns around as if he’s going to disappear back into the party. As long as I’ve known Wayne, he’s never been coy about anything. He’s the hard charger, the guy most likely to get arrested for a public disturbance. The hesitation worries me even more because I really don’t have any idea why Jake is out with this guy, but I can’t focus on any of that. I shrug.

“Then I’ll go down to Wilco and start asking people,” I say. “Somebody’s got to know him over there. I’ll keep asking until I find out where he lives, man.”

I spin around on my good leg and head for the door, but Wayne jumps in front of me, talking low. “Let me call Jerry Lee one more time. You don’t know what you’re getting into with this.”

“You don’t understand,” I say, and my voice sounds too loud—as if everybody in the party can hear me. I lean closer to Wayne. “I have to find him, man. I can’t leave him out there alone.”

Wayne scratches the back of his neck and, in a moment of clear resignation, tosses his empty beer bottle at a recycling bin in the kitchen.

“Well, shit’s about to get interesting.” He points at me. “I’m the one who’s going inside, and that’s it, all right? We’re getting your brother, and then we’re leaving.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Wayne runs to get my truck while I wait with Mallory at the party. When he comes roaring up the street, I move as fast as I can to the passenger side, and Mallory climbs in the back with Sinclair. Whenever we stop at a light or slow down to make a turn, Wayne turns his head to the window like he’s going to be sick.

We pull onto a gravel road, and the outlines of about five or six trailers are visible in the distance. A few have porch lights, and a large flat-screen television plays through the window of another. Normally Wayne would get on Sinclair, ask him if this felt like home. But he’s dead quiet, nearly hanging his head out the window now.

“Clem’s is the one at the back,” he says, pulling the truck to the end of the long gravel road. I open my door at the same time as he does, and he looks over at me annoyed. “Hell, no.