The Rescue

23

Watching Strickland walk away on the Ring screen, Bettina feels the dangerous, powerful thrill of flirting with disaster. The spark that makes the flame that becomes the fire.

Door number three was tempting. Separate rooms in a beachy hotel sounded good. Her and Felix and a self-defense guru who carries a gun. Finding out what makes him tick. There’s a story in him.

From her patio now, she watches Strickland get into a green Italian-looking luxury sedan so subtly unusual she doesn’t even know what it is. She can see Billy’s truck on the other end of the parking lot, and Billy’s shape just visible through the dark window glass.

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.”

Bettina squeezes their knees. “No, Mom. It’s nothing that serious.”

Yet, she thinks with a quick shiver, wondering if El Gordo is really able to control his soldiers — the alleged horse breeder and the hotelier.

What if his offer is just to make her believe that Felix is going to be okay? To make Felix an easier mark for a dognapping, or worse....

Is El Gordo really going to pay good money for something his actors can just steal?

After dinner and a long talk in front of the fire, Bettina and Felix board the Wrangler and head back for the coast.

She smiles to herself when she makes Strickland’s car, falling in behind her on Highway 79.

She’s got a room reserved at the La Quinta Inn and Suites in Irvine, off I-5 and not far from Laguna. It’s a converted commercial granary, with the old silos for guest rooms. She stayed here two nights nearly a year ago, while waiting to move into her Canyon View apartment.

Searching her rearview for Strickland, she almost misses the exit, has to gun it across two lanes of interstate. But the traffic is light and she accelerates up the ramp toward the hotel.

She walks Felix and a small rolling suitcase across the parking lot. It’s pushing midnight.

Felix growls, bristles, and stops short as a couple emerges from the restaurant. Midforties, Bettina guesses, the woman has bouncy red hair, the guy has nice clothes and a cool-looking straw fedora.

“Good evening,” says the woman. An accent.

“Hello,” says Bettina, then to Felix, firmly: “Quiet.”

“He is well behaved,” the woman says into the sudden silence.

Bettina notes that Strickland hasn’t yet cruised into the parking lot. Wonders if that last-second exit surprised him. Gives the leash a curt tug. “Heel.”

She begins a wide detour around the couple, Felix silent but riveted on the pair.

“You are Bettina Blazak, and he’s Felix,” says the man, his voice smooth and his Spanish accent strong. His trim dark suit is cut European-style and his tieless spread-collar white shirt looks Cuban on him.

“This is us, all right,” says Bettina.

They stop between her and the lobby, which brings her to a stop too.

“I loved the Felix video,” says the woman. Bettina sees that she’s pretty and wearing an expensive-looking black dress, black leggings, and silver-studded black ankle boots.

The woman takes a white paper bag from her purse, kneels, and offers Felix a piece of meat. Food-motivated to a fault, he wags his tail but stays put. She tosses it to him and rises, putting the napkin back in her purse.

“For our dog at home,” says the woman. “But I want the famous Felix to have it.”

If these people are who I think they are, thinks Bettina, and if Strickland comes flying in now, my cover is blown and my dog and I are in deep trouble.

But how did they find me here?

Arnie: Horses and hotels.

No. Impossible. They’re just well-dressed latinoamericanos who liked her Felix video.

Arnie again: If you start feeling paranoid you probably are.

Still, what she wants most right now is to be on her way with Felix before Strickland circles back on her after the sudden high-speed exit.

“Good night,” she says, then cinches Felix up tight to her calf and walks past them.

Catches the woman’s perfume and the man’s thin smile as he takes the redhead’s arm.

Bettina can hear them, heading down the walkway behind her, not talking.

When she looks back again, they’re getting into a shiny black Blazer.

At the front desk, she taps her credit card and watches the late-model SUV heading away.

No Strickland.

Her feet and hands are cold again. Felix stares through the glass doors toward the parking lot.

She takes a second story silo room with a view of the parking lot. Felix hops onto the bed and watches her. She has just gotten the curtains open for a look outside when Strickland’s green Maserati pulls into a space.

She feels a ribbon of relief unwind inside, which surprises her. Especially after trying to play brave to Billy.

Texts Strickland: