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  Safe in Your Fire

  The Village

  Book One

  Darien Cox

  Safe in Your Fire

  Copyright © 2016 by Darien Cox

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Cover Art © 2016 by Skyla Dawn Cameron

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  First Edition April 2016

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Chapter One

  Retract. Retract. Retract, motherfucker!

  Hammering random keys now, Rudy realized he’d probably break something if he didn’t stop. He took a deep breath, removed his hands from the keyboard, and pushed away from the desk. The doorbell rang and he leapt from the chair so fast he nearly tripped over his feet. That would be his friend, Ben LeClair, come to save his ass. He hoped. Please, please, please.

  “You came,” Rudy sighed when he opened the door to Ben, who looked effortlessly handsome even in a sweaty gray tee shirt, with a ball cap tugged down over his sandy blond hair. He smelled like the outdoors, a lingering aroma of fresh air and wet grass.

  Ben held his phone up. “I was out running but got the five voicemails and six zillion text messages. What’s the emergency?”

  “Come in.”

  Rudy hurried back to his desk, which was jammed into the corner of his small living room.

  Ben closed the door and ambled into the room, eyes darting around. Rudy had been to Ben’s house plenty of times, but rarely invited him over here. They’d gone to college together, little more than friendly acquaintances then. But then Ben married Rudy’s mentor and favorite teacher before moving down to the city. Rudy was the only person Ben and Peter knew when they got to Boston, so he’d played local boy and rolled out his version of a red carpet, showing them around and introducing them to people. In the process, he and Ben bonded—once Rudy got over the weirdness of his friend being married to his professor. He and Ben had similar backgrounds, both grown up poor, both patting themselves on the back for not turning out fucked up despite their upbringings.

  Though at this point Ben was living a rather cushier life than Rudy.

  Ben and Peter had a spacious house just outside the city, where most twenty-somethings couldn’t afford to live. But of course Ben had a high-paying tech job, and Peter—whose twenties were far in his rearview—worked at the university. Rudy wasn’t an envious person, but his journalist salary didn’t afford much in the city, and his postage-stamp sized apartment made him a little self-conscious now that Ben was standing in it.

  “What the hell is wrong with your cat?” Ben asked.

  Rudy glanced over at the sofa, where Smoky’s furry gray head was barely visible as she peered out from beneath it, eyes black and crazed-looking.

  “I yelled at her. I’ve apologized but she’s still not over it.”

  Ben knelt down and tried unsuccessfully to lure Smoky out with cooing noises and promises that everything would be all right. “Why’d you yell at her?”

  “Because she sent an email that’s gonna get me fired.”

  Ben approached and leaned against the desk. “Your cat sent an email?”

  “The how isn’t important. The email got sent and I have to get it back. Can you help me?”

  He didn’t like Ben’s skeptical scowl.

  “Come on, you’re supposed to be a computer genius, there must be something you can do.”

  Sighing, Ben waved Rudy out of the chair. “Let me have a look.”

  Ben took the chair and Rudy leaned over his shoulder, chewing his thumbnail. “That’s the one.” He pointed at the screen.

  “Yep,” Ben said. “It’s in your sent folder all right.”

  “I know that!” Rudy snapped. When Ben gave him the eyebrow, he took a breath and ordered himself to speak calmly. “Sorry. I know it’s in the sent folder. But I’ve been looking online and there’s supposed to be a way to retract it.”

  Ben shook his head and tapped the keys, searching the settings. “You’d have to have that feature enabled, and you didn’t. And it depends on a lot of factors and it doesn’t always work even if you had all those factors going for you. Plus it’s been how long since you sent it?”

  “Almost an hour.”

  “Eeesh.” Ben winced. “I’m sorry, man, it’s gone. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Fuck!”

  Ben’s eyes followed Rudy as he got up and paced the floor. “You all right?”

  “No.” He let out a mad-sounding cackle. “I am most definitely not all right.”

  “Who’d you send the email to?”

  “My boss.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “Yeah. It hasn’t been read yet, probably because it’s the weekend. But she always checks her work emails before Monday morning, so she’s gonna get it soon and I’m fucked. I’m totally, hopelessly fucked.” He continued to pace, gripping handfuls of his brown hair as he roughly massaged his scalp, wishing he could pop his skull open and squeeze out the parts of his brain that made him do stupid shit.

  Ben approached Rudy and stopped him by grabbing his shoulders. “Calm down. And let go of your hair, you’re gonna rip it out. Have you eaten today? It’s nearly five.”

  “I had a sandwich. Why?”

  “Because I’m about to feed you alcohol. Do you have any?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “Okay, have a seat. I’ll get us a drink, then we’ll talk this out. Things are rarely as grim as they seem, Rudy. Just take a breath, okay?”

  Rudy nodded. Ben’s gentle touch and optimistic assurances shouldn’t have calmed him, as they weren’t true—things were as grim as they seemed. But Ben’s composed presence had the power to make Rudy feel like maybe things would be okay.

  He shuffled back to his desk as Ben disappeared into the kitchen. His mind gave fleeting consideration to the overflowing recycle bin and dirty dishes in the sink, but he pushed the thought aside. Rudy was a young writer trying to stay employed so sometimes everything else fell away—plus he doubted he was the only guy in his twenties with a messy little apartment.

  Hell, he was doing better than most of his friends. Bay Colony Beat wasn’t the biggest magazine, but it had a rapidly growing circulation. His boss, Suzette, owned the magazine and ran it like a military commander, so Rudy felt confident she’d continue to make it thrive, giving him job security. He was definitely low man on the totem pole, and had been busting his ass to try and prove himself. But at least he was working in his chosen field. A lot of his former college buddies were waiting tables or working at call centers despite their degrees.

  After gra
duating, Rudy had had as much trouble finding a job as anyone, despite his cocky surety that he’d be special and land something right away. He’d had visions of potential bosses being so blown away by his writing samples that they’d weep with gratitude that he’d chosen them for employment. Instead, he learned that he’d done nothing at all to stand out in a sea of thousands.

  The rejection was sobering. But even with his parents’ constant reminders that ‘all the real journalists work in New York City’, Rudy was proud of his job. He was doing it. He was writing for a professional magazine. It might be just a stepping stone for him, but it was legit. He was legit.

  And now he’d probably just fucked it all up with that stupid email.

  “Here you go.” Ben handed Rudy a short glass of rum with a wedge of lime in it.

  “Thanks.” He took a sip, glaring at his computer like it had betrayed him.

  Smoky appeared suddenly, intently sniffing Ben’s shoe, then gazing up at him like he was her savior. She still wouldn’t look at Rudy, but rubbed herself against Ben’s leg, purring. “There you are, sweetie!” Rudy reached out to pet her and she darted off into the darkened bedroom at lightning speed. “Damn. She doesn’t love me anymore. And she’s the only one who ever did.”

  “How maudlin you are today. She’s a cat, she’ll get over it.” Dragging a chair in from the kitchen, Ben sat beside Rudy at the desk, setting down his own drink. “So what was it? You send your boss a dick pic meant for someone else?”

  “No. I wish.”

  “Shit, how bad is it?”

  Taking an enormous gulp of his drink, Rudy winced, then set it down on the desk. “Okay. You know who Chris Evans is?”

  Ben shrugged. “The movie star?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Captain America.”

  Rudy pointed at him. “Captain-fucking-America. I found out he was in town doing some charity thing. I made contact. I lined up an interview. I pitched it to Suzette, my boss. He’s a New England boy originally, so it was perfect for the magazine. And I was set to do the piece. Me. Rudy Sansone.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “I know. I had all these plans. Pissing off my parents with it. You know they worship at the altar of celebrity, so I thought I finally had something they couldn’t use to belittle me. I was even gonna go to the bar this weekend and use it to pick up a guy. Like ‘Hey, I’m interviewing Captain America on Monday. Want to come home with me?’”

  A smirk curved Ben’s lips. “You? Picking up a guy?”

  Rudy scowled. “I’ve picked up a guy before!”

  “Not since I moved here, which was…a year ago?”

  “I’ve been focusing on my career. I’ve had no time. That’s why I wanted to go out this weekend. I’ve been storing that shit up like a sexual camel. At this point I’d probably just walk into the bar, blow my load all over the room like a fire hose, and walk out.”

  “That’s very efficient. A big time saver. But you realize you’re never going to meet someone special with this camel, firehose method.”

  “Says you.”

  “I just hope you’re not scared to get close to someone because of your parents. You’re not unlovable, Rudy, they’re just psychotic assholes.”

  “Please, I evicted my wounded childhood from my give-a-fuck long ago, I don’t need therapy. I just need sexual healing. And not everyone’s lucky enough to get a proposal after screwing his hot college professor, Ben.”

  “Touché. So, tell me what happened with your movie star interview.”

  “Oh, yeah. This happened.” Rudy slapped down the file Suzette had left for him Friday night. “This fucking bullshit is what happened. My boss gave the interview to this guy at work, Henry, who’s a shitty writer but supposedly has more experience. And she left me this crap assignment instead.”

  Ben opened the file and picked up the glossy photo on top—a blond, wide-eyed toddler holding a Rubik’s Cube. “Who is this? He looks so familiar.”

  Snatching his drink, Rudy downed it. “That is James Thomas Waterman. Son of media mogul Calvin Waterman. Grandson of—”

  “Tucker Waterman!” Ben straightened, a grin spreading over his face. “From that old kid’s show, Sheriff Tuck, right?”

  “Yeah.” Rudy scowled. “You know it?”

  “Well, yeah, I used to watch reruns sometimes.” He held up the photo of the blond toddler. “This is Baby James Waterman, right?”

  “Yes. That much I know. It’s in the file.”

  “Oh, man, you don’t know who he is?”

  Rudy almost told Ben that during his childhood the family TV had been broken more than half the time and they’d been too poor to afford a new one, so he’d gone without for most of his life. Until he reached high school and his dad, on a whim, spent their monthly grocery money on a big screen. But he decided he was feeling shitty enough about his life at the moment so kept that to himself. “I don’t remember him, but I’ve kind of blocked out the period of my life between when I was born and when I got to leave for college.”

  “Well, at the end of each show, and during these big Christmas specials, Sheriff Tuck would bring out his grandson, Baby James. Kid was like two or three years old, but he could do all these math problems and say Merry Christmas in like thirteen languages and shit. I thought it was cool.”

  Rudy smirked. “You thought a baby was cool.”

  “I was a child, I was aspiring to be brilliant one day.” Ben frowned at the photograph. “Even though I could never do that…fucking Rubik’s Cube. But the kid was super famous. He was on games and cereal boxes and shit, and there were these Baby James brain teaser playing cards and—”

  “Okay, I get the picture. Anyway, I’ve been complaining to Suzette for ages that I want to be taken off boring stuff like housing and local politics and do more human interest stories. She said she’d consider it. When she accepted my pitch last week I thought it was a done deal. But instead, that hack Henry gets to sit down with Captain America, and I get stuck with the has-been baby-man here.”

  “Did you tell off your boss in that email or something?”

  “No, I wouldn’t do that! I’m a professional. I intended to have an adult conversation with Suzette about passing me over for the interview even though it was my idea. I was going to calmly and succinctly explain to her once again that I’d like to find my own human interest stories, that if she’d give me a fucking chance, she might find I’m actually good at it.”

  “Okay, what happened with the email?”

  Groaning, Rudy pulled it up on the screen. In the subject line, he’d used the working title Suzette had assigned the piece, ‘Whatever Happened to Baby James?’

  In the body of the email, Rudy had typed, ‘Nobody Fucking Cares. The End.’

  “Ooh.” Ben grimaced at the screen. “You actually sent this?”

  “I didn’t mean to. I was still crafting my oh-so-professional email in my head and having a hard time. I typed this to amuse myself as I was thinking, never intending to actually send it. Then Smoky jumped up on the desk, walked over the keyboard, and when I looked back…”

  “The email had been sent.”

  “I’m fucked. Suzette’s gonna fire me for insubordination. Or being an unprofessional asshole. Or something.”

  “Maybe not,” Ben said. “You could tell her it was a joke. Does she have a sense of humor?”

  “If she does, it’s well-hidden. And she’s like the only person in the world that intimidates me.”

  Just then, Rudy’s computer pinged, signaling an incoming email. Both he and Ben went still, staring at his inbox. It was from Suzette.

  “Oh. Shit.”

  “Just read it,” Ben said. “Rip the Band-Aid off.”

  Taking a deep breath, Rudy opened the email, then leaned back before reading it as though it might explode in his face like a bomb.

  ‘Rudy, are you currently available? I’d like to speak with you in my office. I’m heading there now.’

  “S
hit.” Rudy bit the end of his thumbnail off. “What do I do?”

  “Do you have a choice? Tell her you’ll go down. This is your chance to explain. Just tell her the truth. She’ll probably understand.”

  Rudy hit reply and began to type.

  ‘Hi Suzette, sure, I can be there. I don’t want to intrude on your Saturday plans, though.’

  Ben smirked at him. “Sucking up?”

  Rudy hit send, his stomach churning. “Yeah, well, being polite is the least I can do at this point.”

  Suzette wrote back immediately.

  ‘This won’t take long.’

  “Oh, man, that’s bad,” Rudy said. “Right? That’s really bad. It won’t take long?”

  “Calm down, Rudy.”

  “Calm down? She’s gonna shit-can me. I won’t even be able to get a reference after this. I’ll never get another job. I’ll never achieve my goal of becoming a famous columnist. I’m going to end up living on the street and then die of alcoholism, alone and penniless and people will say ‘What a shame, he had so much potential’. Then my parents will say ‘We always knew he’d amount to nothing’ and bury me in the backyard because they can’t afford the funeral.”

  “Stop!” Ben gave his shoulder a squeeze. “I think you’re overreacting just a little. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it won’t take long because she’s gonna give you a different assignment or something.”

  “Right,” Rudy said. “Or maybe it means what we both know it means. That I am so fucking fired.”

  ****

  Rudy took the bus down to the magazine’s offices, all the while rehearsing what he planned to say to Suzette. In his lap was the file folder on James Waterman, his sweaty hands twisting it until it became warped and curled into a tube shape.

  He wondered if he should have cleaned up more and put on a nicer shirt. But that would be out of character and only serve to make him look as desperate as he was. Aside from the kiss-ass interns who wore suits to work every day—and his boss, Suzette—no one at the magazine really bothered with a dress code, and Rudy was in his usual work attire: jeans and a raggy sweater over a tee shirt. He was regretting wearing the sweater. Boston was having a warm March, and he felt clammy sitting there on the hard bus seat, wiping his forehead and tapping his foot loudly until another passenger gave him the stink-eye.