He waved it off. “My mom — as tough as she was — she never really forgave me. It was really Dad, though, I think she was mad at, for letting it happen. But she couldn’t express that, you know? And she tried to forget about it, I think. She changed her name back to her maiden name, Torres. We sort of walked on eggshells for a while afterwards, until I gave up. I got some odd jobs, finished school, and just… left.”
“I had no idea,” Julie said. She was tearing up again.
“Why would you? I don’t talk about it for a reason, Julie. It ain’t something I’m proud of, and I don’t particularly like thinking about it.”
“So why Yellowstone?”
“Makes sense, for a guy like me. No education, loves being outside, and hates people. Seemed like the logical thing, really. It’s a great organization, too, so I actually enjoy the people there.”
Enjoyed, he thought. He looked up and saw that Julie was shaking her head.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s — it’s just that I still don’t get you. I am sorry, I truly am, but you don’t really hate people. You just said it, you know? You like those guys you work with, and you know it. You care for them, but you won’t let them in. Right?”
Ben felt again, for the third time in many years, his face redden. “Yeah, I get it. Listen, Julie, here’s what people like you — people who have that weird hope in humanity — don’t get. You know what causes pain? True, real pain? People do. You get rid of people, you get rid of pain.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Stop thinking that the world works some other way, Julie. Stop trying to make it work the way you want it to.”
The waitress came around and refilled their coffee, while Julie and Ben sat silently at the small table. Julie held back tears as she gazed out the window. Ben simply faced straight ahead, not making eye contact with the waitress.
When he finally looked up, he found the woman staring down at him knowingly, eyeing him strangely. “Let me know if you two need anything,” she whispered. Ben nodded.
“Come on, Julie, what’s wrong?”
Julie turned her head. “You need to grow up, Ben.”
He frowned.
“People care about you. People love you, and you push them away because you got hurt once. I get it, but you’ve got to let it go.”
He stood up to leave, but she reached out and grabbed his arm. “Stop. Don’t walk away again, Ben. You need to hear this, talk through it.”
He wanted badly to continue, to walk out of the room. Then keep walking.
But he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why, but he agreed with her. He needed her to call him out. Or was it more than that?
Before he could consider an answer, Julie’s phone rang. She held it up and read off the name: Randall Brown.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Dad! Breakfast is ready!”
Randall Brown heard his son yell from the dining room. His wife had clearly told their son to get him for breakfast, and this was his interpretation. Seconds later he heard his wife, Amanda, yell back to Drew.
“Come on, Drew, get him. I could have done that myself.”
Randy smiled, knowing the exchange between his family members all too well. He knew what was next: “Then why didn’t you?” Drew asked.
He shook his head, knowing that Amanda would now really be upset at the disrespectful comment. She would probably revoke his rifle-shooting privileges, or worse.
When do they grow out of it? he wondered. Drew was a good kid, but Randy was regularly surprised by the fleeting attitudes and phases of teenage boys. Drew kept them on their toes, and Randy was positive that Drew was the cause of the majority of the gray hairs on his head.
“I’ll be right there!” he called back. Surprisingly, he didn’t hear his wife reprimand their son. She must have decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Still smiling, he turned back to his cellphone and dialed Julie’s number.
It rang three times before she picked up. “Hello?”
“Hey, Julie, it’s me — Randy.”
“Hey, Randy, good to hear from you. We’re just finishing up breakfast. Anything good?”
“Might be helpful, but I don’t know if it’s good.”
“We’ll take anything you’ve got, Randy.”
“By the way, who’s we? You working with Stephens on this one?”
“Uh, no, a guy I met at Yellowstone actually. Stephens is back home. What did you find?”
Randy considered this for a moment. Some guy? Julie wasn’t careless, and she certainly wasn’t promiscuous, but he didn’t question her. “Oh, uh, I found her — Diana’s — assistant. Charlie Furmann, lives in Mud Lake, Idaho with his parents and has an apartment in Twin Falls.”
Julie paused a moment, and he assumed she was taking notes. “Mud Lake? Is that a real place?”
“It is. Town of about four hundred people from what I gather. Shouldn’t have much trouble finding him there.”
“Ok, great. Anything else on him?”
“Not much. He was a PhD candidate in something called ‘molecular modeling’ and worked with Diana as a sort of work-study.”
Again, a pause.
“Listen, Julie. I really need to go.” He thought about his son in the dining room, waiting with Amanda to start breakfast. Amanda. She was already upset that he was gone for a few hours yesterday, and she wouldn’t be happy with him for this, either. At the very least he could tell her what had happened at Yellowstone and hope that it explained why he had been absent.
“Right, yeah, sorry. Randy, thanks for this. Seriously.”
“No problem.” He began to hang up, but heard Julie’s voice again from the small speaker.
“Oh, hey. Have you heard anything from Stephens?”
Randy frowned, but placed the phone back up to his ear. “Stephens? No, why?”
It wasn’t abnormal for Randy to not be in contact with Benjamin Stephens. Randy was the office IT specialist, not a regular team member. Most of the time he was in charge of setting up and maintaining the company’s intranet server, SecuNet, and setting up email addresses and providing other IT support. In some cases, he had played a more active role by providing on-the-fly information updates and logistics, but his was mainly a hands-off job.
“I just haven’t heard anything from him either, and he’s usually inundating me with emails and keeping me in the loop with things. I figured that with a case like this, my inbox would have four hundred emails in it from him.”
“Weird. No, I haven’t heard anything.”
“Okay. Is the server up? Any major downtime?”
Randy was almost insulted. “Of course not. Why would there be? You know I’ve got 24/7 alerts that would get to me even if I was in an Afghani cave.”
“Woah, chill. I figured, just couldn’t hurt to ask,” Julie said. “Sorry — I know you’re on top of it. It’s just weird that Stephens hasn’t tried to email me.”
“Yeah, it is. Give me a minute. I’ll remote in and see if there’s anything wonky going on. I’ll text you in five.”
“Thanks, Randy. I owe you one.”
“Buy me a beer sometime, and we’re even.” He clicked off the phone and walked out to the dining room. “Amanda, Drew. Yesterday a bomb went off at Yellowstone. Something was released into the air there at the same time, and no one knows what it is, but it’s killing people.”
His wife’s eyes grew wide, and Drew’s mouth hung open.
“We’re fine here, but that’s what I’ve been working on. The CDC’s got people in the field, but I need to keep checking in every now and then. That okay with you?”