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The bus was quiet in comparison to the lingering sounds of breaking glass and sirens wailing outside the window. It fell completely silent when the rest of the team realized what Andrew had noticed minutes earlier: Neil was nowhere to be seen. Neither the bus nor the slowly thinning crowd contained the striker. Andrew stood tense next to the seat he’d yet to take.
Wymack looked at him and held up a pacifying hand. “This is what we get for having so many short players. I’m sure he just got swept up in the crowd, and that’s why we can’t see him.” He did not sound convinced.
This was not a satisfying statement, and Andrew stormed down the aisle and off the bus. A last minute side step was all that saved Wymack from being body checked down the stairs. The crowds had mostly been reigned in and forced away from the stadium, but it didn’t matter. Everyone knew Andrew Minyard’s reputation and with the dark look on his face, no one would dare approach him.
He didn’t call Neil’s name, instead he counted up from 93. Adding to the percentage in perfect time with his hammering heartbeat. He’d walked halfway around the stadium when he saw it. The black bag stood out against the white concrete, the fabric covered in an array of footprints from the horde that had trampled it. A few feet off lay a miraculously undamaged orange racquet.
Andrew shouldered the bag and gripped the racquet until his nails bit into his palm. When he made it back to the bus, he dropped the bag and the racquet onto the first seat. He said nothing and his gaze never left Neil’s possessions. Everyone knew what they meant. Andrew sat down next to them and began rummaging.
First he found the keys. The keys that he’d thrown off the roof when Neil was so thankful to be given a home. The keys that were only not on Neil’s person during games and practices.
Then he found the phone. The fucker had promised to call if the trouble he caused ever caught up to him. Instead his phone sat barely charged in Andrew’s iron grip. He flipped in open. An unknown phone call from when they were in the locker room, from right before Neil thanked him. You were amazing. His text messages were full of Nicky’s idle chatter, but a few down sat another unknown number with a single digit message 0.
He looked up when the bus stopped outside the hospital. He hadn’t realized they were moving. Renee, Alison, Dan, and Matt all filed off with Abby. Wymack gave her a tight smile before driving toward a motel. They hadn’t intended on staying the night, so the motel was the best they could do in a college town packed with excited fans. They bought three rooms, but everyone entered the first and stood around uncomfortably.
There was nothing to be said and no one tried.
The dead silence was interrupted when the bandaged upperclassmen staggered into the room, but once they exchanged a few quiet words about their injuries silence once again flooded the air.
Slowly people curled up around the room and drifted to sleep. No one thought of the beds in the other room, being alone seemed much worse than the floor. Andrew stared numbly out the window. Besides Kevin, who was feigning sleep, he was the only one still awake. The sky was slowly making its way from total blackness to inky purple when the ringing shattered the calm. At once everyone was bolt upright staring at Wymack.
“Hello,” his voice was strained. A pause. “I don’t know a Nathaniel Wesninski.” Kevin stood instantly his face ashen. Neil’s real name. The secret he’d traded at the airport. “I don’t know a Nathan Wesninski, either.” Neil’s father. A noise escaped Kevin like the air had been knocked from him. Andrew didn’t hear another word Wymack said until, “We’ll be there shortly,” too focused on Kevin.
Kevin’s whisper was quiet, but so was the room, “He found him.” Kevin who had faced Riko and grown up under the Moriyama’s watch had never sounded so desolate, so afraid.
“Riko?” Nicky gasped, but Kevin shook his head. He looked sick
“Who,” Andrew growled. Everyone’s gaze snapped to him as he stalked toward Kevin. “What do you know?” It was not a question; it was a demand.
Kevin shook his head, his eyes still focused on the floor. There was half a room between them, but Andrew’s arrival at Kevin’s side and the fingers around his throat were instantaneous. Kevin flailed trying to use his height to fling Andrew away, but the hands were a vice around his neck. Andrew became vaguely aware of the hands wrapping around his arms yanking him back.
“He can’t talk if he’s dead,” Matt snapped in Andrew’s ear, pulling at his wrist.
Andrew dropped back to the ground, but his eyes never left Kevin’s.
Kevin hunched over coughing. His voice was raw, so it took Andrew a moment to make out the words he was repeating like violent prayer. “The Butcher, The Butcher.”
“Butcher?” Andrew’s voice snapped Kevin out of his trance.
“Nathan Wesninski, the Butcher of Baltimore. He’s Neil’s father and the man that Neil has been running from for the past eight years.” Andrew felt like he’d been hit with ice water. Apparently he didn’t know as much about Neil as he thought.
Nicky made a sad sound, “A man named the Butcher has Neil?”
“Had.” Wymack finally intervened with his own knowledge waiting for Kevin and Andrew to finish. “The man’s house,” Andrew felt a flash of gratitude on Neil’s behalf that he didn’t use the word father. He grimaced and shoved the feeling down into the pit of his stomach. “was stormed by the FBI. They found Neil and he’s been taken to the hospital. We’ve been asked to come in for questioning. We’ll leave as soon as everyone’s ready.” Everyone filed toward the door. The bus hadn’t even been unloaded; they’d been ready long before the call came in.
“Wait.” Wymack gestured them back. “First, Kevin, tell us what exactly we’re walking into. Why was Neil running?”
Kevin looked uncomfortable, “It’s not my-“ He cut off as Andrew moved closer to him. He told the story without making eye contact, his voice weak but neutral as if he were reciting facts from his history courses. “Neil used to play Exy as a child. The Moriyamas were thinking about recruiting him. They were going to buy him the way that they instead bought Jean. That was only if he was good enough though, if he wasn’t his father would have killed him. His mother was unwilling to take that chance. She stole five million dollars and Neil, and they ran. Neil didn’t know any of this. He just knew what his father was. Riko explained to Neil at that first gala that he belonged to the Moriyamas.”
“Neil doesn’t belong to them,” Andrew snapped. He felt his heart in his throat as he listened to the numb way Kevin told Neil’s story. The story different from the one that he thought he knew.
He wanted to grab the fragments of truth that matched from his version and the truth. He wanted to cling to them and believe that Neil gave him as much truth as he could. He wanted to believe in Neil. He wanted to believe that Neil wasn’t another lie. He wanted Neil to be in front of him so that he could kill him for getting taken. He wanted to inform him of how stupid he was. He wanted Neil to be in front of him.
He wanted to stop wanting.
Instead he stood and left the room, slamming the door behind him and stalking toward the bus. His entire body felt like fire as he shifted his thoughts from Neil, Neil scared, Neil’s lies, Neil hurt, and instead to what he was going to do to the Butcher of Baltimore when he found him. He flexed his hands imagining the man throat as he dug his fingernails into it. He fingered the knives in his bands as he pictured taking one to the butcher. He almost laughed when he realized Neil hated knives, not because of Riko, but because of his father. Maybe he would have laughed if his stomach hadn’t been in too many knots to allow him to.
It only took another moment before everyone else swarmed the bus and silently got on. No one slept on the way to meet the FBI, but no one spoke either. Nicky who made a point of having each and every one of his emotions known cried silently in his seat. Kevin had shattered; his face was still as pale as when he’d first heard Coach’s phone call. Renee twisted her hands in her lap as if she were playing with an imaginary switchblade. Matt was curled into Dan’s lap and she sat with her spine rigid and her head high, but the hands she was running across Matt’s back were shaking. Alison’s hair was tangled and her makeup smeared, her face was completely blank as she stared at the ghost of her reflection in the window. Aaron was the only not outwardly affected, but he was texting and there was only one person who could be on that other line. The fact he would risk texting her showed that he too was shaken.
The bus stopped outside of a hotel and they raced inside. A man was waiting for them in the lobby and Andrew was at his side first. “Where is he?” He moved to take another step toward the man when Wymack stuck an arm out and swept him back a couple paces.
“Where is Neil?” Wymack repeated the question in a much calmer voice and the fed turned all his attention to him.
He turned on his heel and headed toward the stairs gesturing with a finger for them to follow. “I’m Agent Kurt. Nathaniel Wesninski is still in the hospital. He will be released soon and then he’ll be taken in for questioning. You are here to answer questions.”
“We are here for Neil.” Andrew reminded the man in a deadly voice. He’d fallen behind a few paces on the narrow stairwell, but he was still close enough that team inched forward preparing to intervene in case he tried assaulting a federal agent.
“There is no Neil. There is a fugitive named Nathaniel Wesninski. Your friend,” he said the word with venom that would have been impressive were the Foxes not acquainted with Andrew “is not real. We are giving him more courtesy than someone like him deserves.”
Wymack turned before Kurt even finished his sentence. He caught Andrew in midair when he launched himself forward. Dan and Nicky quickly scrambled to hold Andrew back. Andrew was vibrating with rage as he stared at the agent. There was fire in his eyes and a sneer on his face.
“I’m afraid we only know a Neil Josten, so unless your questions are about Neil Josten we cannot help you.” Alison interrupted before Andrew could make things worse for them all. “Perhaps if you allow us to see whoever you think it is you have, we can speak with him and decide whether or not we know anything. Until then I’m afraid we can be of no further assistance.” She had at some point during the bus ride fixed both her hair and makeup, and she stared at Kurt fiercely making sure he knew that she was a weapon.
The agent’s face warped as he stared at the Foxes. They made no effort to disguise their distaste for him, so he dropped his own pretenses. “Your friend is a criminal. We have more than enough to lock him up and have him never-“ His sentence was cut off as Andrew lunged toward him once more. Dan and Nicky had released him when Alison had brought the attention to herself, but the managed to grab his shirt and yank him back before he could land a blow. “Enough! You out now. You’ve lost your viewing privilege.”
“Fucking try.” Andrew snarled.
“Andrew, stop.” Wymack yelled before directing a false calm voice at Kurt. “You cannot stop him from seeing Neil. We are not helping you until we have seen Neil, and that means all of us. I will babysit Andrew.”
“You’re right you will.” He grabbed Andrew’s wrist yanking the boy toward him and slapped handcuffs onto his arm, he then motioned for Wymack and did the same to him. “You are now one and will be treated as such. You will both be held responsible for whatever stupid things he does. Now go and move that eyesore of a bus before anyone recognizes it. This is a covert operation. I will see about having Nathaniel brought over.”
The emphasis he put on the name had Andrew ready to attack again, but the cool metal on his wrist kept him in place.
“How do you want me to move a bus when my arm is attached to Andrew?”
“Do your best. Take an agent. Teleport. I don’t care. Just get out of my sight, and come back with a better attitude or I will arrest you for assaulting a federal agent.”
“Technically he hasn’t assaulted you, yet,” Nicky chimed in as helpful and badly timed as always.
Kurt pointed aggressively at a room to his right. “The rest of you wait in that room. The next one of you who speaks to me without me speaking to you first will be arrested. I don’t know what for, but I’ll make damn sure it sticks.”
Andrew was lead off fuming by Wymack and another agent. This agent was smarter and made no attempt to speak to either of them. Andrew was too busy seeing red to process any of his and Coach’s excursion. He just remember reaching the top of the stairs upon their return and freezing as he took in the hallway now crowded with twice the number of agents. The door into the room the Foxes had been exiled into was open and he heard his voice. “Where’s-“
Andrew raced down the hallway slamming into an agent and stumbling into the room as Wymack tried to race in synch with him. They made eye contact and for a second that was all that mattered.