The Match (Wilde, #2)(7)

“Where are you staying tonight?” his father asked.

“The Holiday Inn Express.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah.”

“I need to ask you a favor, Wilde.”

Wilde looked over at his father’s profile. There was no doubting the resemblance to his own. Carter was staring out the front windshield, his gnarled hands gripping the wheel at a perfect ten-and-two-o’clock.

“I’m listening,” Wilde said.

“I got a really nice family,” he said. “Loving wife, wonderful doting daughters, grandkids even.”

Wilde said nothing.

“We are pretty simple people. We work hard. We try to do the right thing. I’ve owned my own business for a long time now. I never cheat anyone. I provide a solid service to my customers. Twice a year, me and Sofia, we take a vacation in an Airstream to a different national park. The girls used to come with us, but now, well, they’ve got families of their own.”

Carter carefully put on his turn signal and steered hand over hand. Then he looked at Wilde.

“I don’t want to drop a grenade on their lives,” he said. “You can understand that, can’t you?”

Wilde nodded. “I can,” he said.

“When I got home from that summer, Sofia met me at the airbase. She asked me about what I’d done over there. I looked her straight in the eye, and I lied. It may seem like a long time ago—and it is, don’t get me wrong—but if Sofia hears now that our marriage was built on that lie…”

“I understand,” Wilde said.

“I just…can I have a little time? To think about it?”

“Think about what?”

“To think about telling them. If I should tell them. How I should tell them.”

Wilde thought about that. He wasn’t so sure that he wanted any of that either. Did he want three new sisters? No. Did he want or need a father? No. He was a loner. He chose to live by himself in the woods. He was best detached. The only person he felt any real responsibility toward was his godson, Matthew, a high school senior—and the only reason he did was because Matthew’s father, David, Wilde’s only friend, had died because of Wilde’s negligence. He owed the kid. He would always owe him.

There were other people in his life. No man, not even Wilde, was an island.

But did he need this in his life?

When they pulled onto Sundew Avenue, Wilde felt his father stiffen. Sofia and his daughter Alena were on the front stoop.

“How about this?” Daniel Carter began. “We meet for breakfast tomorrow morning. Eight a.m. at the Holiday Inn Express. We discuss it then and make a plan.”

Wilde nodded as Carter pulled into the driveway. Both men hopped out. Sofia hurried toward her husband. Her husband started peddling the PVC pipe supplier story again, but judging by the way she looked at him, Wilde was not convinced that Sofia was buying it. She never took her eyes off Wilde.

When it didn’t seem to be overly rude, Wilde made a production of checking his watch and said that he had to go. He quickly headed toward his rental. He didn’t look back, but he could feel their eyes on him. He slid into the driver’s seat and hit the accelerator. He never, not once, looked over his shoulder. When he got back to the Holiday Inn Express, Wilde packed his bag. There wasn’t much stuff. He checked out, drove to the airport, dropped the car off at the rental dealership.

Then he caught the last flight from Las Vegas back home to New Jersey.

He sat in a window seat and replayed the conversation. He didn’t want to drop grenades on them. He didn’t want to drop grenades on himself.

It’s over, he thought.

But he was wrong.





Chapter

Three



Chris Taylor, formerly known as The Stranger, said, “Next up—Giraffe.”

Giraffe cleared their throat. “I don’t want to sound melodramatic.”

“You always sound melodramatic.” That was Panther. Everyone chuckled.

“Fair enough. But this time…I mean, this guy deserves a world of hurt.”

“A Category 5 hurricane of hurt,” Alpaca agreed.

“A Black Death plague of hurt,” Kitten added.

“If anyone deserves our worst,” Panther said, “it’s this guy.”

Chris Taylor sat back and looked at the faces on his giant wall monitor. To the layman, this looked like a Zoom call on steroids, but this meeting was taking place on a secure video conferencing program Chris himself had designed. There were six of them on the screen, stacked three on top, three on the bottom. Their true images were hidden by full-body digital Animoji of, you guessed it, a giraffe, a panther, an alpaca, a kitten, a polar bear, and The Stranger’s own mask as the group leader, the lion. Chris, who now hid in plain sight in an upscale loft on Franklin Street overlooking the Tribeca Grill in Manhattan, had not wanted to be the lion. He felt the lion was too on-the-nose for the leader, separated him too much from, if you will, the pack.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Chris said. “Please present the case, Giraffe.”

“The application was filled out by a single mother—or should I say was a single mother—named Francine Courter,” Giraffe began. Their giraffe Animoji always reminded Chris of his childhood toy store—Geoffrey the Giraffe had been the mascot for the chain Toys “R” Us. Chris remembered his parents taking him there on only the most special of occasions and being awestruck as he entered, the sheer magic and wonderment of the place. It was a happy memory, and he often wondered if Giraffe, whoever they (the pronoun for every member of the group) might be, had chosen this Animoji for this very reason.