"Holy fuck." Skunk stood inside the living room, staring at the wall. "What the fuck is all this shit? You've fucking lost it."
"I told you not to come here," I said through gritted teeth. The only reason I tolerated Skunk was because of our history. We'd been friends for a long time, and yeah, he'd been checking on me when things were shitty. I knew he thought all of this meant I'd finally gone over the edge.
What he didn't understand was that this was the most clarity I'd felt in a long time. I could see what I had to do. I had purpose - one that didn't involve beating the shit out of someone.
"Seriously, Hammer," Skunk said, walking along the wall, in the empty space where I'd moved the sofa to the other side of the room. His fingers traced the length of the huge map that covered the expanse of the wall. "If you tell me that all these pins and shit have to do with some kind of government conspiracy or something, I swear to God, I will fucking bring you to the looney bin right now."
"It's not," I said. "It's something private." I hadn't told the club anything, despite what I'd told Meia about the club backing me. Fuck, I didn't know if they would. I was only just out of retirement; sure, there was some kind of tie to them, because I was a brother, but not the kind of tie that would bring them into some of my personal shit. Especially when that personal shit involved a guy like Aston.
And my paranoia had started taking over. I guess I was jaded from all the shit that went down with Mad Dog, but I sure as shit didn't blindly trust the club. The club worked for Benicio, and Benicio was a smuggler, plain and simple. It wasn't exactly far-fetched to think he might be smuggling people, not just things. And if he was, he could have any kind of tie to Aston.
This was the kind of shit I thought about, the kind of shit that had been keeping me up at night all week, as I tried to work through what I could do to help Meia.
But I was grateful for it. It was a hell of a lot better than thinking about what a shit father I had been and how it was my fault my wife was dead.
"Hammer," Skunk said. "We've been friends a long time. I've seen you crazy before. What the fuck kind of private shit is this?"
"It's nothing," I said.
"Don't look like nothing," Skunk said. "Definitely looks like something."
"I'm looking for someone, okay? Christ, leave it the fuck alone."
Skunk peered closer at one of the pins on the wall. One of twenty-three. Each pin marked a possible location where Meia's son might be held, based on what I'd gathered on Aston. Possible, shit. There were an infinite number of possible locations. I didn't know why I'd thought hacking Aston would magically give me a location for Ben.
I'd promised something to Meia, and I was severely doubting my ability to deliver on that promise. And if I couldn't....I didn't want to think about what she was going through, knowing her son was in Aston's hands. What she had been going through for years, being forced to be with the monster who had taken him. If Ben was killed...well, fuck, I knew how it felt to have the one thing you loved taken from you, and to feel like it was your own damn fault.
It would fucking destroy her.
"Does this have to do with April?" Skunk asked.
I felt my fists clenched by my side. "Not a fucking thing," I said. "I'm trying to help someone."
Skunk looked at me, disbelief etched on his face. He thought I was close to putting tin foil on the windows and ranting about how I'd figured out who was the second gunman on the grassy knoll. I could see it in his eyes. "Fuck, man, I don't know," he said, shaking his head.
"Why the hell are you here, Skunk?"
"Want to see if you want to get in a fight next Saturday," Skunk said. "If you're feeling up to it." He nodded at me, referring to whether or not I'd healed from the last fight, but I saw him glance at the wall and knew he was really talking about whether I was a paranoid wing nut who needed a straightjacket.
"Yeah," I said. "What the hell? I'll do it." I agreed, but I wasn't sure I was feeling it. I was starting to feel like I'd lost the drive to fight, at least in that sense.
I looked past Skunk to the map on the wall. Especially since I was going to need a lot of fight in me to find Ben.