Page 69 of Holding Out

Griff tipped his head and CJ grabbed his wallet, locked the door to his room, and followed Griff out of the building.When they got within spitting distance of Griff’s truck, he pulled his keys out of his pocket and flipped them to CJ.The kid caught them—reflex kicking in—looked down and then at Griff, then tossed them back.

“Hey,” Griff said.“Give it a try?”

CJ shook his head.“I’ve tried.”

“But you’re fine when you’re a passenger.”

“It’s the being in control part that wrecks me,” CJ said.“I freak out.Shake.Sweat.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Easy for you to say.You aren’t the woman sitting in the passenger seat backing further and further into the corner, like,get away from the psycho.”

“Has that happened?”

“Not with anyone else in the car.But, yeah, I mean, I can’t even drive two minutes to the grocery store without it happening.”

“And if you do it more?Like, longer stretches, or more often, you know, get used to it?”

“Fuck that,” CJ said.“You try driving drenched in sweat, shaking, and cryi—fuck that.”

Griff didn’t argue any further.He just climbed up on the driver’s side, started the car, and drove them to Home Depot.

They stepped inside and were instantly hit with sensory overload.The visual clutter, the hollow, echoey sounds, and the smells—lumber, peat, chemicals, new carpet.Griff hesitated, trying to sort himself out, then grabbed one of the big orange plastic carts.

“You want to split the list?”CJ asked.

“Sure,” Griff said.He did it literally, tearing the list into two pieces and giving half to CJ.“It’ll go faster that way.”Griff quickly scanned the items he was responsible for.“Hose nozzle?”he demanded.“Jake’s just messing with me.”

CJ snickered and sped off towards lumber.

Griff headed to gardening, took one look at the selection of hose nozzles, and pulled out his phone, snapping a photo and then dialing Jake.

“What kind ofhose nozzle, your highness?”

“One of the fancy-ass ones with different settings for spray, mist, andpound the shit out of some vegetation.”

Griff laughed.“Will do.”He hung up.Huh.There was a voicemail from a call he hadn’t caught earlier.He paused to listen.

His heart did a funny skip-beat thing as soon as he heard her voice.

Marina.

Hey, Griff.Long time no talk.Um, so, I know we talked about this a while back, but it’s a little more urgent now.If you could get your stuff out of the basement, it would be super helpful.Maybe text me some times that would work for you?

He sighed and shook his head.He didn’t even give a shit about that stuff anymore.He should call her back, probably, tell her to just throw it out or something.

Later.He’d do it later.He had other, more important shit to contend with right now, like hose nozzles.

Ugh, who was he kidding?He just hated the idea of having an actual conversation with Marina.

He put his phone away and found the “fancy-ass” equipment that Jake had spec’d.The thing looked like a deadly weapon, not a gardening tool.

And of course, the next thing on the list was on the other side of the store.Maybe he and CJ should have made some effort to split the list by location.

He took a step away from the nozzle display and the world shattered into sound.

He was on his feet before the last reverberations, before he knew his name, his chest heaving, his mouth dry, reaching for his SIG Sauer.He woke up fully then to the mud hole of a combat outpost where they’d been sleeping, to the swearing of the men around him, everyone grabbing for Kevlar and NVGs, for weapons, for positions, tripping and stumbling over gear and each other and shouting—Fuck, Wake, where are you?The fuck was that?Jesus, Teo, get thefuckdown!Gregger, call that shit up, call it up, call it up!The fuck are you thinking?!He could hear mortars, no incoming Hollywood whistle to warn them, no big budget explosion they could see by, just the boom—Fucking fuckers!someone shouted.Where are they?AndOver there, over there, no, behind that big ledge.North!The other fucking north!And he kept thinking,I knew, I fucking knew, I fuckingknew.

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