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20
MONTY
“You need a what?” Santiago raised his eyebrows at me in amazement as though he couldn’t quite believe what I said.
“I need some bullets for a Glock G43,” I repeated, distractedly rocking the sleeping Hunter in my arms. “Maybe an AR and some hand grenades. Also, a few cameras and alarms to set up a security system.”
He blinked. “You’re not kidding.”
“No, why would I be?” I didn’t know what was so shocking about my request. I thought I had been quite conservative on my part. I could have asked for a whole lot more than that but felt it might draw too much attention if whoever had been watching us for the last few days knew we were armed.
“Because this might be Louisiana, but you start looking into moving military-grade weapons around, and we’re gonna have a problem.” Santiago let out a long sigh. “Okay, do you at least want to explain exactly why you need all that?”
“Someone has been spying on Kayla and me.”
The admission had Saint leaning back in his seat, his expression becoming grave. “How do you know?”
“The tire tracks.”
“The what now?”
I explained the whole thing to him, telling him about how I had found tire tracks on our path, ones that did not match my truck or any of our neighboring cars. By the time I was done, Santiago was looking at me like I had sprouted two heads.
“Just hear me out, Saint,” I continued, trying to get him to understand. “The tracks had led right up to our home.”
“Did they take anything?”
“No. And nothing was out of place. Which is why I think they’ve only been scouting us so far, but they might be making their move soon.”
Santiago sighed and rubbed his hand over his face like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of the information I had just given him.
“Okay, I’m going to lay it out to you because you’re my friend, and I care about you,” he said. “But all that sounds kinda crazy.”
“Just because it sounds crazy doesn’t make it less true. You of all people should know that,” I said. Santiago had always been one of the most skeptical, least trusting people I know, even all through our time in service. But if anything being on a battlefield had taught me, it was to expect the unexpected and follow our instincts. My instinct right now was telling me that someone was watching us, and I had to do something to protect my family before they finally decided to make their move. I should have probably tried this story on Vinny first, but I knew Saint was the one with the black market contacts, and he could get access to ammo like you wouldn’t believe. Nevertheless, he was a mayor now, so he might be reluctant to get his hands dirty again.
Saint gave me that look of his like he was trying to peer through my brain, take it out, and analyze all its nooks and crannies before putting it back in.
“You want to tell me what’sreallygoing on with you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when you first came to town, I thought you were doing better,” he continued gesturing at Hunter, who was sleeping in my arms. “You were perfectly happy and bouncing that kid on your hip, making googly eyes at your woman. I thought all this paranoia was behind you, and you had finally gotten over everything we had been through.”
“This has nothing to do with that,” I insisted.Why the hell did everyone seem so bent on discussing my PTSD all of a sudden?
“Of course it does,” Santiago said. “You think I don’t remember how you used to be when you first got out? You used to be suspicious of everything, seeing ghosts where there were none, seeing enemies in every bush. I thought you had gone to therapy, buddy.”
“That shit doesn’t fucking work,” I scoffed. “You of all people should know it.” Saint had also had mandatory therapy after his psych evaluation while still being in the military. I remembered he would go to the sessions in the afternoon and then bitch about them the whole night.
“Yeah, I didn’t like the sessions at first,” he admitted. “It’s not fun letting someone poke around your head for a mandated number of hours a week, but hey, guess what? After it was all said and done, it actually ended up helping me with a lot of things, like the way I processed a lot of shit that I repressed. Some of it is bullshit, of course, but once you find the right therapist, it could set you on the right course to recovery.”
“Yeah yeah,” I said dismissively, not wanting to continue on this beaten dead horse. “Are you going to get me in touch with the guy or not?”
Rather than be satisfied, he shook his head. “That’s not the answer to this. We both know it.”
“So that’s a no?”
He sighed and finally said, “I’ll reach out to my guy.”
