He squinted his eyes at me. “Are you that girl from the video?” He walked around me to look at the hair peeking out from the hat. “Bloody hell, it IS you!”
He opened the front door. “Redmond! Ace! You won’t believe who is on our porch.”
Shit. My heart hammered and my stomach turned over. Nausea flooded me. No, no, no, I could not throw up on their front stoop. I tried breathing slowly and carefully, wishing I had eaten some crackers.
Another guy came out, this one in workout clothes. “What are you talking about?” He stopped dead when he saw me. “Well, lookit that.”
The third one pushed between them to take a gander at me. “It’s dreadlock girl!” He was short and squat and watched me with suspicion. “Things not work out with your movie director?”
He had done his homework.
“Believe everything you read in a tabloid?” I shot at him. “Because I have an alien love child back home who wants somebody to probe.”
The first guy slapped his leg, laughing with a deep boom. “This one’s a corker. No wonder she flew all the way here chasing a ghost.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Chance ain’t been here in five months, and he hasn’t written a-one of us back the whole time,” the first guy said.
Short Boy said, “And he didn’t respond when we pointed out he’d made the news, either. He just doesn’t care.”
I held on tight to my purse. “Isn’t there anyone he’s willing to talk to back home? I really need to find him.”
The boys looked at one another.
“Well,” the first one said, “there’s Charlie. She works at the facility where his sister is staying, so he’ll talk to her. I don’t think he’s speaking to his mother, so Charlie would be your best bet.”
“A facility?” I asked. “Who is his sister?”
The boys all looked at the floor of the porch. “Her name’s Hannah,” the first one said. “Hannah McKenzie. She’s at the rehab place on Mercer Street. It’s sort of an old folks’ home, but they let Hannah go there.”
Holy hell, I had his last name. Just hearing it made my heart sing a little. One more piece of information. McKenzie. Chance McKenzie.
“Is she okay?” I asked.
The boys looked at one another again. “We don’t really know. We’re not allowed to see her. Chance’s mother is pretty tight-lipped and Charlie won’t talk to us.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I’m not talking about this,” the short one said. “I don’t want anything to do with this at all.” He went back inside.
“Don’t mind Ace,” the first guy said. “He was friends with Carl, and so much shit went down after the accident. He’s just sick of it.”
“Accident?”
“Our friend Carl hit Hannah’s car while he was mud running,” the guy who must be Redmond said. “It was a bad, bad night.”
“Lots of bad feelings came out of it, and of course, Hannah got hurt pretty bad,” the first guy said.
“That was five months ago?” I asked.
Redmond tugged on his workout shirt. “More like six. Chance stuck around for a bit, until it was clear Hannah wasn’t going to wake up. He and his mom had words over her care. She’s real religious, and she wouldn’t take her off life support. Chance didn’t want to see her suffering on that ventilator, wasting away.”
Wow. No wonder he was running.
“I’ve got his number,” Redmond said. “But two weeks ago, it started giving us an ‘out of service’ message.” He pulled out his phone. “I’m thinking he changed it after that little dustup with you on the beach.”
“Oh,” I said.
The first guy squinted at me. “So he didn’t want to talk to you either?”
“We didn’t exchange numbers at the time,” I said carefully. “It was just going to be a one-night thing.”
“So you changed your mind,” Redmond said.
“I did.”
“Good enough for me,” Redmond said. “We can go see Charlie. You want me to drive you?”
“I can do it,” the other one said.
“Back off, Pete,” Redmond said. “I’m about the only one here Chance doesn’t have a beef with.”
“He’s not exactly taking your calls,” Pete shot back.
I took a step back. “I can call a cab.”
“It’s fine,” Redmond said. “Let me get my keys.”
Pete leaned against the column. “You sure came a long way to find him,” he said. “Must be important.”
I bit my lip. I couldn’t let them figure out what was going on.
“True love,” I said. “And maybe he has something of mine.”
“Oh ho,” Pete said. “How was he, when you saw him?”
I breathed a little easier knowing I had diverted his questioning. “All right. Seemed happy. He was playing with a band who’d picked him up hitchhiking.”
“So you really don’t have this other guy?”
“No,” I said, knowing everything I said would be hashed over. “We were done. Chance was sort of a — rebound.”