Chapter Text
When Sam looks up from his laptop, eight hours had gone by.
He realizes when he hears the alarm being disabled and the office door unlocking, he has worked right through the night again.
The sun's beaming pale yellow through the ratty blinds already, and the coffee's gone bitter and burnt in the pot when Steve walks into the mess of stacked books and newspapers that is Sam's office.
"Nooo," he says disbelievingly, stopping in the doorway. He's got that annoying, exasperated, 'not again' look on his face that makes Sam feel bad for not taking better care of himself. Because he's still in yesterday's clothes, tie all loose and sloppy around his neck, shirt untucked.
He puts his hands up as shelter, watching Steve crack open the blinds, and then closes his eyes against the harsh light, "Look, don't lecture me," he says. He takes his glasses off and rubs the pounding spot at his temple, then gets up to stretch his arms way above his head until something makes a disgusting crack in his neck. "At least give me coffee first. Then lecture me."
Mrs. Darleen Wilson would have plenty to say about this, he knows. She'd tell him sitting hunched over a desk all night is no good for posture, that drinking nine cups of coffee is gonna give him a heart attack. She'd definitely have something to say about him getting maybe five hours of sleep in the last two days.
And Steve knows that too, "Your ma's gonna kill me, man." He hands the steaming, brown take-out cup over. Sam's glasses steam up with the delicious waft of hazelnuts and caramel, and he hears his mom say that ain't no good either.
"Yeah, yeah." He takes the first sip and sighs, and now that he closes his eyes, he feels how tired he really is. Almost lets the deep, sinking feeling drag him under.
Steve shrugs his coat off, sits down at his desk, "Not 'yeah yeah.' I said I'd look out for you last time we were down there." He's talking absently, opening his laptop, uncapping the coffee, and ignoring Sam's eye roll completely.
Then seeing, probably, that Sam won't budge on this, at least not for now, he sighs, "Alright, what've we got? Anything new on Jennifer Watson?"
Sam leans back in his chair so that his head has a place to rest. Jennifer Watson. The latest victim, the latest inexplicable vanishing around the city. Yet another piece Sam doesn't have to this ever-growing and seemingly unsolvable puzzle he's unearthed.
He huffs like the last bit of energy is dwindling fast and gets up, coffee in hand, heading to his whiteboard. It's already so full, crammed with photographs and newspaper clippings and sticky notes and red string connecting nothing at all. Much of an investigator he is.
He puts up Jennifer's photo, "Female, 38, graphic designer, no kids, no husband. Worlds apart from Jordan."
Steve groans, frustrated, through a mouthful of coffee. The last victim was a 19-year-old boy, before that, a 58-year-old post office worker. There's no consistency with these disappearances. There's no motive, and no cell signal to track. And that's about all they have in common- the lack of anything in common.
Plus the fact that their worried families have all contacted Sam to find them due to his stellar investigative reputation. Sometimes it feels great that he's one who solved the big Willow Manor's case of missing gold bars and then started his own independent little firm. He loves his work, loves investigations, loves the thrill and chase.
But other times, a case like this lands on his desk and just totally stumps him. He started this investigation service because he has the gift of perspective. He's able to see things differently; his ma said as a kid he'd find lost keys and wallets within minutes, even figured out who didn't replace the toilet roll. Much to the annoyance of his two siblings. (It was always Sarah)
His perspective is letting him down, this time, though.
"Okay," Steve says, "Alright. I'll tell you what, you take a nap on the couch 'cause I probably won't get you to go home—" he pauses to look at Sam, stupidly hopeful but knowing him all too well, "No? Okay. Take a nap then. Maybe this just needs a fresh eye, huh?"
The way Steve's picking at the messy and twisted red string stuck to the whiteboard, the grimace on his face, makes Sam laugh. "Yeah, fine," he says, gingerly ambling over to the sunken two-seater.
The couch was here when they set up shop, and it's used up and smells a bit molten and dusty but has the most comfortable, invitingly soft cushions as if it knew who'd be sitting on it: tired, worn out private investigators, that's who.
"I'm fine, though," he mumbles, bringing his coffee to his lips in a half-wristed attempt.
Steve pulls up one eyebrow, "Sure."
"Just... finishing... this," Sam slurs, but he falls asleep clutching the cup.
The sun looks different, brighter, unmistakably glowing like midday when Sam opens his eyes. He blinks awake slowly, a little displaced at first, before remembering he's at the office.
He drags himself up, looks around. Steve's sitting by the window desk, hunched forward so all the bones in his skinny back poke through his shirt. There's fresh take out on the table by the door, noodles, and beef, and Sam goes toward it with wobbly zombie-like steps.
"Looks who's up!" Steve says without turning around. His nose is buried in papers, four stacks in front of him. "Food's by the—Oh."
Sam comes to stand beside him, slurping up a noodle. Steve grins and reaches for his own box.
"Got anything? Someone I can talk to?" Sam asks.
"Thought I did," he shows Sam a page, "They all headed East, see." He shows Sam street cam footage of them leaving their locations, all moving in the same direction. "That's gotta be something, right?"
Sam sits down and rolls his chair closer, gets noodle sauce on his slacks, "That's something!"
"That's what I thought, but the footage cuts out before Fifth street to switch over, and by then they're gone," Steve shovels stir fry into his mouth.
"What's out that way? Past Fifth. They're all headed there; there's gotta be a common interest?"
"Common interest? A 50-year-old, a teenager, and a graphic designer?"
"Come on, let's see the map again."
Steve opens the browser then opens the lower city map. There's not much down there but a playground, the fire station, and a bar. The area is part of the old neighborhood, with lots of abandoned blocks and warehouses and rumored underground tunnels that the younger guys go-to for parties and races and all kinds of shit that's probably not legal, but none of Sam's business anyway.
"Feeling better?" Steve eyes him a little from the side.
Sam shrugs, makes an airy sound, and with his cheek full, says, "I wasn't feeling bad." rolling his eyes.
"You looked like hot shit."
Sam leans back and pokes Steve's ribs with his chopsticks, "You said I'm hot."
"Aw Jesus. Stop, will you?"
"Said it, can't take it back."
"You're awful, Wilson," Steve says, bright pink and bothered as he gets up to leave, "I'm headin' out. You're on your own."
Sam's laughing, scooting over to take Steve's place by the desk, "Never gets old."
"Don't stay here again! Go home!"
And then he's out the door and gone, and Sam's left in his office with piles of papers and a screen full of questions. Ready to get back to work. Except maybe he won't need to work that hard today after all.
He lines up the pages showing Jennifer and the two others' departure then zooms in on the map. There's nothing a 38-year-old single woman with no kids would want at a playground. Neither would a teenager or a middle-aged man. Same goes for the fire station.
Which leaves the old dive bar down by the river.
Plenty they could have in common with a joint like that, he thinks.
He hacks the street cam just outside the bar, a couple of meters up, and doesn't see anything weird about it. That's until the same Hyundai drives past for the third time, the same woman crosses the road again and again.
Then he realizes: the footage is looped.
Sam Googles the place. Established in 1980, burnt down in 1991, rebuilt and refurbished, and bought by someone called Gideon Malick in 1994. Malick is an old skeezy looking white dude, according to Google. Aside from the bar, he has directorship on a few big pharma company boards alongside Alexander Pierce. Another skeezy-looking white dude.
The bar itself is nothing special, just a shabby, neon-sign, cash-only-sticker-on-the-door kind of place. He can smell the stale beer and salted peanuts, and sticky floor just from looking at the pictures. Riders, it's called. Nothing spectacular, ain't much suspicious about it either save for the broken footage.
But he can picture Jennifer heading over there for a cheap drink after a long week behind her laptop. He can see newly legal Jordan going out to meet his friends there for a game of pool (because there'll for sure be a pool table, he's betting it's purple). 58 year old married Hank perhaps having a midlife crisis and drinking his blues away? He can definitely see it.
And, yeah. This feels like a hunch. Sam will have to check it out.
So he does go home like Steve ordered, even if it's just to shower and change before he heads back to work. Even though work is a scaly dive bar all the way out by the river, it still counts, so Steve probably won't be so impressed.
He slips on some jeans to look casual, a black golf shirt, and a coat. Thinks he looks pretty nice and chill, just like someone checking out a new place, not a P.I coming to dig for clues.
The bar looks way different than the Google photos, still a little grimy but… nice. It's got Riders written out in a cursive neon font that glows above the entrance, and the inside is swimming in low, broody red lights and definitely smells like stale beer and peanuts. He was spot on about the pool table too.
It's pretty empty, though. A few people sparsely scattered along the counter, a couple watching football highlights in a booth seat and one busy-looking guy in a corner on a laptop, and... oh…
Oh damn. The barman.
Instinctively, Sam tugs at his coat and smooths a hand over his hair before walking over to the bar. Because this guy's kind of cute, he wasn't really expecting any of that, didn't come here for cute, and he's still not here for cute.
But a man has eyes, and looking ain't a sin.
He's tall and built like a tank, like that grey Henley is holding on by each fiber the way it's stretched across his chest and rolled up over his forearms. He's a little scruffy, too, with his hair tied in a low ponytail, and maybe that's a three-day stubble on his face, darker than a shadow but not so dark you can't see his jaw. Sam wonders if he doubles up as the bouncer being so big and all.
And he's still taking in his fill from a distance, sizing him up from afar, when the guy waves at him.
"Hey, man. Drink?" the barman says, grinning all wide and stupid, and oh shit, he's nice.
Sam says, "Uh…" and tries real hard to remind himself that he is not here for cute. He's not.