Page 41 of The Fix
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rex saw the number on the screen and pulled his truck to the curb as he was answering the call. “Joaquin.”
“Well, this is a surprise. Aren’t you supposed to be selling a house somewhere?”
“Yeah, I am. But something more pressing came up.”
“Oh boy. I don’t like the sound of that.”
Joaquin Andazola had never been accused of being slow on the uptake. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Healing too damn slow and pissing me off.”
“Don’t rush it or you’ll be right back where you started.”
“Yeah, yeah, you sound like my wife,” he grumbled. “What do you need?”
He glanced out his window at the coffee shop next to where his truck was idling. “That app you were telling me about, how accurate is it without a horizon in sight?”
Joaquin only paused for a moment. “Depends. What other data points do you have?”
“I have a crystal-clear view of the stars with a time stamp, and I have the position of the sun time-stamped as well.”
“What time for the sun?”
“Morning.”
“Morning is good. It would make things a lot easier if you had an idea of geographical location.”
“California. Likely the northern part of the state.”
“Okay, okay. That narrows it. We’ve got something to work with. The system still has quite a few bugs in it, though. I’ve been working on it, but it’s far from perfect. And with the limited information you have, it makes it more of a challenge. I might be able to get you close, but no exact location, or guarantee.”
“Any information you can provide would be helpful.”
“No problem, buddy. It’ll give me something to do. Shoot over the pictures, and I’ll give it a go.”
“I owe you.”
“Hell yeah, you do. But I owe you, too, and I’ve pretty much lost track of who’s up, so let’s figure we’re even by now.”
Rex smiled. “Thanks, man. The photos will be in your inbox momentarily. Call me when you know anything.”
Rex brought up the photos Cami had texted him and then forwarded them to Joaquin. Then he set his phone aside and took a minute to think. He trusted Joaquin would get back to him with something. How specific that something was, he couldn’t guess because he hadn’t given his friend a lot to go on. But Rex knew if anyone could get them close to their target, it was Joaquin. He’d been doing exactly that for the US government for a decade, and he was among the best. He’d tracked drug traffickers to a hut in the middle of a jungle, and lots of other bad guys to holes in the ground—sometimes literally—all over the map.
Cami had done well to come to him, not because of Rex’s skills necessarily, though he did possess quite a few, but because of his array of contacts and friends. He felt honored by her trust, but he also wondered if he should be more wary. She’d decimated his life once before. He understood how their shared past had unfolded. And even when he’d made it clear they had no need to speak ever again when she’d blindsided him, he still hadn’t blamed her for what happened in the aftermath of the crime that took her mother and sister. She’d been a traumatized teenager, and she hadn’t accused him falsely. She just hadn’t stepped upto bat for him ... but why should she have? After what happened to her, she had to have been deeply confused and suspicious of everyone. Especially a classmate who’d been following her around like a puppy dog for years.
He winced with remembered embarrassment at how he’d worshipped her.
Yeah, I guess ... it could have been him. Rex Lowe.
The way those words echoed in his head. The way the memory still scalded. His love for Cami had been ridiculous and mostly based on fantasy. And even at the time, he’d known it. But he wasn’t obsessed or delusional like they’d suggested. He’d loved her—99 percent theideaof her, sure, but 1 percent the actuality. He’d noticed so much, anything and everything she’d offered, knowingly or not. Her laugh, so filled with sincerity. The way she held doors open for people, even when they were so far back, they had to run to show appreciation for the gesture. The way her lip quivered so very slightly when she’d read her poem aloud in English class. Her writing hadn’t been good, in fact, it’d been somewhat terrible, but he’d thought it beautiful because it gave him another glimpse inside of her. And that 1 percent,ah, he would have slayed dragons for that tiny slice of Cami.
Teenage boys were dumbass fools. And he’d definitely been one of them.
What concerned him was that he was a man now, and he still felt that ardent pull of longing when he looked at Camille Cortlandt. And more than that, he still ... believed in her. That was the best way he could describe it. He wasn’t even sure what that meant other than he had this feeling that she was a good person with good intentions, the same way he had when he was no more than a kid.
And though Rex had still been learning to trust himself when he was a teenager, he’d grown to rely on his instincts as a man.
