Bettina feels that spark, still burning, still calling her.
The spark has to do with Strickland and it has to do with J. They are parts of the same larger thing inside her, separated only by time.
The spark has to do with Felix, too, and the calm and courage she needs to get him through this “deal” with El Gordo.
So, even if this is an odd time to deal with J and what happened that night, she knows she has to. She has to give J a name, unbury him from the tight folds of her memory, let him stand and become whole, so she can knock him out. Or cut him down. Or whatever she’ll do. She knows he’s settled in their hometown and started a family. Sells real estate in Anza. She’s seen his Facebook crapola and she knows where his office is.
Joe whimpers when Dan leaves.
A few minutes later, as he watches Bettina slide her gun under a beach towel in the back seat of her Jeep, he knows that something big and serious might happen soon.
Which makes him think of the loud noises in the building when he was working with Dan, his hurt leg, and the stone crate where he lived with the Good Man and Woman and the big cone over his head.
Joe remembers the pain and the fear.
An hour and a half later, Bettina is entering Anza Valley, a world away from Laguna, Felix in the passenger seat and the Model 12 — loaded, a misdemeanor — hidden in the back. She’s just a bit outside the DEA-recommended one-hour-away-from-home curfew, and she’s given Billy the slip by using the frontage road exit from Canyon View instead of Stan Oaks. She half wants to see the sleek green beauty of Strickland’s car in her rearview, but hasn’t yet.
She looks out at the darkening, unspoiled, high desert valley, plains of grass, green meadows of flowers getting ready for spring, rock outcroppings and a warm orange blush around the setting sun. She hasn’t been back here since last Christmas and she feels that singular contentment of being home again. Laguna Beach is great, but Bettina’s roots are still in this sturdy, rural, unspoiled place, populated mostly by sturdy, rural, unspoiled people. Such as her mom and dad. Her brothers and friends from school.
She cruises past Inland Frontier Realty just off Highway 371 in Anza, population three thousand souls, many of whom Bettina has known for years. Anza is that rare California town that has actively resisted development, so it looks pretty much as it did when she was a child.
Through the windshield she sees the Inland Frontier Realty OPEN sign, but her smartphone says it won’t be open for long.
It’s a newer building but made to look like an 1800s saloon. There’s even a hitching rail out front. Pictures of homes for sale in the windows. There are six parking spaces, one of them sporting a late-model Escalade, possibly J’s vehicle for lugging clients to Inland Frontier properties.
She parks on the street, far enough away that J won’t recognize her.
But plenty close enough for her to recognize unmistakable J as he stands in the open doorway, reverses the OPEN sign, then comes through the door and locks it. Tall and heavier, with the same jock carriage he had in high school — the Hamilton Bobcats QB, of course. He was toothy, blue eyed, and happy-go-lucky. He’s her age but his hair is thinning and he strides chest out with his belly sucked in. His feet look small even in the cowboy boots.
Jason fucking Graves, thinks Bettina as he points a fob and the Escalade lights come on.
Good: you have a name again.
She tells Felix to stay. Lowers the windows, locks the doors, and trots across the parking lot to the Escalade, into which Jason Graves has climbed with the help of a custom chrome grab bar. She notes the Inland Frontier Realty signage on the driver’s door, a rearing horse and a wrangler mid-throw, his rope forming letters in the sky.
He smiles heartily at Bettina and rolls down his window as she approaches.
“Evening!”
“I’m Bettina Blazak.”
His smile freezes in place. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Don’t try to bullshit me, Jason. You know who I am and what you did.”
He blushes deeply. “I’m sorry but... we’ve met?”
“Eight years ago, at Hamilton. Then UCI. Balboa Island party on Bayfront. You tried to rape me and I got you off me and a lacrosse player named John Torres watched me kick you in the face. You cried and blubbered.”
“No, I’d sure remember that if it happened! I went to Hamilton for sure, but I don’t remember you. Your name again?”
“You know my damned name. I came here for an apology, not to play some pathetic head game. You can’t Kavanaugh me.”
“Oh jeez, lady. You’ve got to be kidding. I am not about to apologize for something I didn’t do!”
“You did it. You yanked the zipper of my jeans down. Hard. You had it out and you were limp as a noodle. I know you did it. John Torres knows you did it.”
Graves starts up the SUV, which bellows to life with what sounds like a thousand powerful horses. The entire vehicle rocks.
“If you come out here again to harass me about some weird fantasy of yours, I’ll call the police.”
“I know you, Jason Graves.”
“You don’t know shit, lady.”
Felix is all ears as Bettina pushes the keypad on the gate box, then starts up the long driveway of her family home. She’s still trembling. “Here I am,” she tells the dog quietly. “This is me.”
Dad and Mom greet her on the veranda; Gene has lost the weight that Barbara has gained and they both look healthy and right. Her dad had gotten the virus pre-vaccine and ridden it out at home with Barbara’s help. Bettina has shelved her memories of the brief minutes she spent in his cool room while he breathed fast and light, slept, shook and sweat profusely. She was terrified for him and for herself — sure she’d get the plague through her suffocating double masks and the faceplate, but committed to see him through this hell. And him trying to make light and cheer her up. Two generations of Blazak fight. After a week in bed, he was up and around, wobbly, but better. The balance came back over the next two months, and he was fully himself by his fiftieth birthday, which the family celebrated by riding a bit of the 1,200-mile Juan Bautista de Anza Trail, blazed in 1774 by a Spanish explorer, which ran, more or less, through their backyard.
It’s a wonderful feeling for Bettina to sink into the old couch, between her mother and father. After minor turf disputes with the bird dogs Minnie and Marge, Felix backs into a corner where he can watch her. Bettina feels her nerves settling, the warmth returning to her feet and hands.
When the conversation pauses, her father asks the obvious.
“What’s up?”
Bettina gives them an edited version, leaving out El Gordo and his soldiers awaiting orders in Laguna. She just tells her folks that her Coastal Eddy video about Felix has brought some real creeps out of the ether, people who think the dog is theirs, even a dumbass threat to dognap him, so she’s moving around some.
“I wanted to tell you both that I love you very much,” she says, setting her hands on their knees.
She looks across the room to the hearth and the family pictures framed and propped on the mantel. Knows those photos by heart, of course: Mom and Dad, brothers and dogs. Keith and her as ten-year-olds, dressed up like Superman and Wonder Woman for Halloween.
“You can stay here with us, Betts,” says Barbara. “Or leave Felix. Any dognappers dumb enough to come out here will be greeted by Ma and Pa Kettle with shotguns. We’ve been shooting trap again lately. We both hit twenty-five straight last weekend.”