Page 2 of Aftermath #1

2

A fter his shower, Cam paced in his living room, still only wearing the towel around his narrow hips. He hadn't shaved yet, which he'd told himself to do today, but he had more important things on his mind. Austin was late, and it made Cam annoyed as fuck .

Sitting down on the edge of his bed, his knee started to bounce, and he tapped the pad of his thumb along the fingertips on his right hand. Then he did the left twice. His silvery gray eyes slid to the clock above the flat screen, and he scowled.

I'm gonna punch him in the fucking face .

Cam grew impatient quickly, although he'd probably passed impatient the minute it was noon. Reaching over to the low coffee table, he snatched up his pack of smokes and a lighter, then lit one up and took a deep, calming drag. Meanwhile, he looked down and touched his thumb to the remaining four fingers on his right hand. Just the tips. Over and over. While he breathed deeply through his nose.

It helped him to handle stress—something to focus on.

As had become common now, every window in the entire house—not that it was big; just a two-bedroom, one-story home—was open, and the lamps were timed to switch on at sunset. Landon, his older brother, had bought him a bunch of those timers.

Another thing that had changed was that he now slept in the living room. His bed had replaced the couch. It was more open and spacious than his bedroom down the hall.

He was lucky his family had pitched in to pay the bills—mortgage and utilities—while Cam was…elsewhere. They said renting it out would be like not believing Cam was still alive.

Tomorrow was his thirty-fourth birthday, and he dreaded having the house filled with family and coworkers. He wouldn’t call them friends, 'cause he shied away from those. But there were four other guys working in his brother's garage, Cam not included, and they'd be here, too.

He'd thought about inviting Austin, but then he'd changed his mind. Austin would probably bring his wife and kid, and that meant more people crowding him. Plus, he'd already met Jade once and that was enough.

So not going down that path .

He was adamant about seeing Austin today, though, 'cause it had been too long. Austin had shut down around the same time they started giving their statements to the police, and now Cam was gonna intervene.

Checking the time again, he pushed back his dark hair that was in serious need of a cut, and he nodded to himself. Fifteen minutes . Austin was fifteen minutes late. That mother fucker .

Thankfully, as Cam stubbed out his smoke in an ashtray, the doorbell rang, and he was off the bed in a flash. He secured the towel around his hips and went to the door, nearly ripping it open.

"Don’t you own a fucking watch?" he asked irritably.

Austin raised a brow over his glasses. Those were new, by the way. Cam hadn't seen them before, and he…he liked them. They kinda made Austin look all authoritative—

"Want me to leave again?" There was a dare in Austin's dry tone.

Cam glared and left the small hallway, counting on Austin to follow. Crossing the living room, he walked out the door that led to the small backyard. There was no grass; Cam hated mowing the lawn. When he'd bought this house a few years ago, he and his brother had taken a couple weekends to pave the area around the kidney-shaped pool with flat stones and build a wooden patio. The pool took up most of the space, and it brought back memories of some of the things he and Austin had talked about missing when…

Cam shook his head, not wanting to think about it. Instead he sat down in a chair and waited for Austin to join him. There was a cooler with beers between two chairs, and depending on how long Austin stayed, there were two steaks in the fridge, soaking in marinade.

There was also an umbrella to shield them from the worst of the sun.

The steaks and the beer made it worth popping an endless amount of Pepto. Yeah, his fucking nutritionist had told him to stick to "stomach-friendly" foods for now, but if he wanted a fucking steak, he'd eat one.

Austin eventually walked out and sat down, too, and he was dressed appropriately for this weather—cargo shorts and a T-shirt. It was fucking insane how much clothes had come to matter to Cam and possibly the others who had been taken, as well. 'Cause you took a lot of shit for granted. Like wearing what you wanted.

During… that time …Cam had been stuck in the coveralls he wore at the garage. Which he'd never wear again. Landon had already assured him he could work in other clothes—when he eventually returned to work, of course.

"Riley didn’t want to leave earlier," Austin sighed, explaining why he was late. "Took a while to convince her."

Cam nodded with a dip of his chin, having heard countless stories of Austin's little girl. He'd even met Riley himself, but it had been a short moment with too many family members in a small space. Cam didn’t like small spaces. Never had.

He liked them even less now.

"She doesn’t look like you," he stated for no reason at all. He was still trying to simmer down from before, and maybe insignificant bullshit would help. "Just the hair." He remembered light brown hair that matched Austin's, but that was about it. Or maybe her eyes, too? Fuck it. He wasn’t sure.

Austin didn’t reply to that. "Are you taking your meds?"

Cam rolled his eyes and grabbed a beer. "Who are you—my fucking father? Yeah, I'm taking my meds. Christ." He was lying. He hated his meds.

Austin sighed again.

Still feeling agitated and antsy, Cam chugged down his first beer quickly and then leaned back in his chair, reminding himself that Austin was here now. Nothing had gone wrong. It was just Riley who'd been reluctant to leave her dad.

It sucked that they lived in completely different parts of the city. On opposite sides, even.

"So…big birthday tomorrow." Austin went for conversation again.

"Not really." Cam closed his eyes and breathed calmly. "Thirty or forty would've been big. Or even thirty-five. Not thirty-four."

If anyone had a big birthday coming up, it was Austin. In December, he'd turn forty. Cam remembered that from one of the times he'd had an anxiety attack in that metal cage. Austin had calmed his ass down with useless trivia about accounting, childhood stories, and some other personal crap that had made Cam focus on something other than his hyperventilating.

After a moment, he opened his eyes and lolled his head to the side, facing Austin, who was silently watching him. With Austin around, Cam was both relaxed and distressed. There was something about Austin's presence that Cam had grown to want more of, yet there was something else that left him dissatisfied. Almost as if he'd been teased mercilessly and then been left hanging.

It irritated Cam. A lot. And he refused to delve deeper into it, 'cause he knew where it would lead.

"You have weird fucking eyes," he muttered with a frown. Depending on how the light hit Austin, they could be brown, green, and even bluish. Weird. Now they were a mix between green and gold, but then again, the umbrella was yellow. Sighing, Cam closed his eyes again and tapped the pad of his thumb to his fingertips. Index finger, middle finger, ring finger, fuckin' pinky. Repeat.

"Are you all right?" Austin asked quietly.

"Yeah. And I should be asking you that." Cam's reply was mumbled as he finally reached a higher state of calm. His breathing slowed and his eyelids felt heavier. "Have you been sleepin' any?"

"Not much," Austin admitted, and Cam could hear the exhaustion in his tone.

"The shrink gave you sleeping pills, didn’t she?"

"Yep. But I don’t like them."

Cam could relate. He didn’t like them, either. They made him loopy, which in turn made him feel less in control of himself. Control was fucking important. Vital. It was something he'd struggled with since he was born, but he'd never been so robbed of it than during those five months in a humid, basement hell.

Austin wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he figured he'd been at Cam's house for quite a while when he noticed that Cam had fallen asleep in the deck chair.

Much like himself, Cam suffered from nightmares and flashbacks, so Austin thought about waking him. He studied the younger man, who had lost weight, too. They were still both fairly muscular, though Cam was a bit slighter with his narrow hips, but it was clear several pounds of fat and muscle had been lost.

Cam's pale body was decorated both intentionally and not. Along his ribcage, inked vines tangled in barbed wire and song lyrics snaked up to his shoulder. From there, countless tattoos covered his right arm. An angel from behind with black wings, a skeleton he recognized as a famous rock band's mascot, more lyrics, a vintage car, a few darkly colored puzzle pieces, names, dates, an old-fashioned microphone, a pair of drumsticks forming an "X," a snowflake, and two words that had stuck with Austin from the moment he'd spotted them. Along the old-fashioned microphone's cord that lingered down between several other tattoos, the words "wired differently" had been inked on a loop. Over and over, those two words followed the mic's cord.

The good memories from their months in that cell could probably be counted on one hand. The time Cam told Austin the stories behind his tattoos was one of them. Now, his mind voluntarily drifted there.

In the meantime, Cam had no choice. Trapped by sleep, a nightmare pulled him back to the very same cell; only, he wasn’t discussing ink.

The fucker, whomever he was, who had kidnapped Cam as he was getting off work three days ago, usually left the faint florescent lights on, but there were times he left his victims in the dark, too. Right now was one of those times. Without windows, there was no sense of time and direction, but the man who'd been thrown into his cage yesterday was sleeping fitfully, so maybe it was night.

Austin, the man had said his name was, was only wearing a pair of sweatpants with a local construction company's logo on them and a T-shirt. So, Cam idly guessed Austin worked in construction, which a couple other guys here did, too. There was also a plumber, a bus driver, a bartender, two without jobs, and one mailman. All males. All between thirty-two and forty-four years of age.

Since Cam had been locked up in here, he had spent his time fighting off anxiety attacks, shouting for help, regulating his motherfucking breathing, and learning the names of the other eight fuckers in here. He'd found out that they were all stuck in small cells two by two—Victor and Chase, Lance and James, Tim and Sean, Pete and Chris. And now Cam and Austin.

They were names he'd remember involuntarily, 'cause it was nothing he gave a flying fuck about at this point. All he cared about was the fact that ten seemingly able-bodied men had gotten themselves kidnapped. And as far as they all knew, only one man was responsible. In other words, shit didn’t look good.

He'd read the papers, of course, so he knew that the first dude had been taken about a week before Cam was kidnapped, too. It was big news in the entire state, and now the number was up to ten kidnappings in less than two weeks.

Cam wished he could say he'd fought for his life when he'd been taken, but that would be a lie. After work, he'd stopped to pick up some food on his way home, and the motherfucker had blindsided him. Maybe it was chloroform; it didn’t matter. Cam had dropped in a few seconds, and before that, the shock had worked against him. He'd already been immobile, making it embarrassingly easy for that son of a bitch.

He hoped his precious Camaro was okay. If anything, Landon would immediately know something was wrong, 'cause Cam would never just leave that baby behind.

The sounds of muffled mumbling and muttering from a few others were cut off abruptly when a heavy door slammed open—a noise that was now so familiar that they all knew who it was.

Each time that door opened, Cam vowed to struggle if he got the opportunity. He promised himself to fight, which wasn’t easy wearing cuffs, but fuck if he was gonna surrender that easily. He had failed when Austin had been thrown in here, because the kidnapper, who hid behind a black mask, had drawn a goddamn gun on him.

"Good morning!" Psycho sounded like he'd been drinking too much whiskey during his days. "Now that I've filled every work position, I suppose it's only fair you know who your employer is."

Stunned silence blanketed the entire basement. Based on the lack of windows and how the men sometimes heard footsteps above them, they'd guessed they were being held in a basement. That was all, though.

The crazy motherfucker continued. "You will refer to me as Sir or Mr. Stone. I am your boss, and I will hand out your schedules shortly."

Across the small cage, Cam heard Austin suck in a breath.

"How about letting us outta hea', you sick son of a bitch?!" a man farther away shouted. He had a thick New York accent, and Cam hadn't heard him speak before.

"Silence!" Psycho boomed out.