Runaway Model (12 page)

"The Norwegians aren't offering to buy my company because they think it's about to lose value."

"The Norwegians think America has the King in their pocket. As always they're wrong about that. Selling out is a gamble, yes. But this way we all walk away with something. Bryce Yourself Petroleum is highly leveraged. If the price of oil dips beneath forty dollars a barrel, we're bankrupt. We walk away with nothing except the lawsuits."

He couldn't have confessed to Catherine. Hell, he couldn't have confessed it to a priest. But Bryce had a sudden vision of Kyle skimming the news headlines on Twitter. Clicking on a story about the hundred richest men in America. Seeing the name of his Vegas one-night-stand high on the list.

Bryce couldn't slow down now. He just couldn't.

There were lots of petro-billionaires from Texas and Louisiana. More from Russia and Asia. There wasn't one damn reason he shouldn't join them.

So. He was putting his chips on the table. He was letting the dice roll. But he really didn't see how he could lose this bet.

Forget Vegas. Forget the fucking dice table. Bryce Auburn was playing in a bigger game.

"I'm not selling out and losing my business—not to mention potentially billions of future dollars—just because you want to protect a five-million dollar 401(K). I'm sorry, Catherine. My decision is final."

***

B
ryce had been kidding himself when he deleted Kyle's number.

He knew what addiction was. He'd seen his mother run to all the little hiding places all around their house to pull out all the bottles and empty them down the sink. She'd been kidding herself too.

This was addiction. A noisy voice always, always at the back of your head chattering on about how easy it would be and how it wouldn't hurt anything.

It was 2014. Addiction was the fault of bad science. Medical technology should have solved this problem decades ago. How did something get its hooks in your brain like that? There were lots of theories but apparently nobody really knew.

How did
someone
get those hooks in your brain? Because Bryce's problem wasn't too many bourbons or the drugs he'd left behind without a glance in his freshman year of high school.

His problem was a pair of melting-chocolate eyes and a crooked little smile.

It was because our time together was too short. Another day or two, and I'd have seen the other side of him, and he'd be easy to forget. He was just a runaway hustler, after all.

If we could have only had another day or two.

Another night or two...

Anyway it couldn't hurt to learn a little more about Kyle. The noisy little voice couldn't always be wrong.

A pop-up informed Bryce that Peak Oil Refuted now had a secure connection to the internet. He opened Google Chrome. Did a search for "Stoney Rockland Santa Monica."

Six hundred twenty-four results. Several of them, including the first, were a YouTube capture from a free concert in a Santa Monica bar. The date of the concert was the date Kyle had flown to Los Angeles chasing a rumor of just such an event.

Somebody styling himself StoneysSecret had posted that one. Subtle much?

In addition to a YouTube Channel, StoneysSecret turned out to have a blog—also called StoneysSecret.

Bryce, whose favorite music was contemporary country with the sound turned off, fast-forwarded through the video. It was cell phone footage captured from the barrier of the tiny venue. There were no indications that Stoney took any particular notice of the person behind the camera.

At one point, the singer bent to lift a kid of maybe seventeen onto the stage but it was a giggling girl with a flower crown on her blonde head. She presented him with a lacy white bra which he hung with a drunk's exaggerated care from the microphone stand.

Bryce wasn't being catty. He was just noting a fact. Stoney was drunk on that stage in that video. No two ways about it.

He had a lifetime's experience at recognizing the careful movements of a certain kind of alcoholic. The kind who thought nobody else would ever notice. Not that it took any Sherlock Holmes to figure out a musician might be drunk on duty.

There weren't any shots of the person at the barrier who made the video. No selfies. Like a million other fans, StoneysSecret's YouTube avatar was a photo of his hero. Bryce hit Google Image Search and found out the photo in question came from one of Stoney's many appearances on the cover of
NME
, a magazine that championed British musicians.

Bryce clicked the link to the StoneysSecret blog's first page.

He didn't know what your typical fan site looked like but it might be a lot like this. There was a tab for gigs, a tab about music and video releases, and a discussion forum where people could post gossip, news items, and photos.

He found his way to the "About" page. He didn't know what he expected until he saw it—a night Instagram of Kyle and Stoney with their arms wrapped around each other's waists. Stoney's smile was fixed and a little dazed, but Kyle was grinning from ear to ear.

The snapshot couldn't be recent. Kyle's hair looked like it had been hacked off with a machete. It was growing out from a skinhead shave—the one he'd had in the real passport photo. That put him at age sixteen. Two years ago.

He couldn't have brought much with him to America. His outfit owed more to Goodwill cast-offs than to a Caesar's Forum personal shopper. Indeed, there were a couple of visible holes in the neck of his faded Rolling Thunder Revue T-shirt.

In short, Kyle looked every bit as vulnerable as you'd expect of a teen runaway newly arrived in Vegas from a foreign country. Knowing how sensitive the boy was about his appearance, Bryce was impressed Kyle hadn't cropped himself out of his own photo.

But it was the bit of text underneath that shot an arrow into Bryce's heart.

S
toney saved my life.

The man dating my mother only wanted to marry her to get to me. I tried to tell her about the times he touched me—the way he touched me—but she couldn't believe it. He was so charming. And she'd been alone for so long.

I knew that if I disappeared, then he'd go too. Leaving home was my only option.

I couldn't wait until I finished school. I had to do it before the wedding.

Before she was tricked into becoming the wife of a predator.

So I ran.

I ran a long way so that they could never, ever find me.

I was a street kid in Las Vegas at the time Stoney stopped for me and posed for this photo. He could have said no. He'd performed a late concert and then attended an afterparty in a multi-million dollar club in a central strip casino. I followed a rumor, spotted a limo, and waited at the place where I'd heard they sneak out the VIPs in the cold light of dawn.

He must have been exhausted. He smelled of tequila and cigarettes. His eyes were heavy and slightly swollen.

And of course he had security with him. Two big men. When they saw me there with my cell phone, they started to chase me away.

But Stoney said it was OK.

Stoney said I was OK.

He could have said he was tired and drunk and the sun was coming up and he'd already signed a million autographs in the club where you had to be twenty-one to get through the doors.

But he didn't.

He took the time to smoke a cigarette with me. To talk to me. To pose with me for a fan photo.

He asked me what I thought about his new intro for the live version of "The War Between the Llamas" and he made me feel as if my opinion—the opinion of a homeless boy who owned nothing but the clothes on his back and a vinyl record with no record player to play it on—was just as valid as the opinion of anybody else.

Stoney deserves my heart. Not just because he's a brilliant musician but because he's a brilliant person.

A lot of kids like me get lost to the street. To drugs. To suicide. To prison.

Stoney inspired me to value myself just a little higher.

If not for Stoney, I wouldn't be alive today.

The words were so highly polished that Bryce couldn't hear Kyle's northern accent. "Stoney deserves me heart," is what Kyle would have said. Bryce supposed he'd paid another kid on Fiverr to edit the story until it was perfectly told in simple standard English.

And yet. And yet. A kind of honesty still shone through. It couldn't be just a story made up out of a whole cloth to sell a YouTube channel and a blog. Nobody left their home and their country at age sixteen without a damn good reason.

Bryce realized two things—that he really, truly didn't know much about Kyle at all and that he believed every word of what he'd just read. The evil wanna-be stepfather. The hero worship of a hard-partying rock star who might or might not deserve it. Kyle's determination to be more than just another drop-out hustling blowjobs in Vegas.

Stoney didn't save your life
, Bryce thought.
You
saved your life
.

Blog visitors were invited to follow StoneysSecret on Twitter and Instagram.

It was too damn easy. Besides, Bryce knew perfectly well where he'd gone wrong.

It's up to me to apologize. I'm the one who offered him a "job" in exchange for his company. No wonder he was hurt. Any man would be.

@StoneysSecret Twitter was open to direct messages from anyone. Bryce couldn't resist.

I was wrong. I'm sorry. I'd like to see you again if you can forgive me.

***

W
hen Bryce was first on the road building his company, he'd been on Twitter for a few months, before he'd switched over to the hookup apps. It had been so long since he'd been active there that he'd forgotten the sound he'd set for his notifications. The bell's brief chime startled him.

Kyle's direct message was short and to the point:
I was wrong 2. I'm sorry 2. Call me.

Bryce was ashamed to say he'd deleted Kyle's number.
I want to see you. Skype?

Cool. OK.

But it was awkward to talk to a boy on a screen. "I'm blogging Stoney's North American tour," Kyle said. "It's me big chance."

Even Bryce had seen
Almost Famous
. Not that he remembered much about it, but he was pretty sure it was set in the seventies. Didn't seem like there was any future writing about music in the twenty-first century. But he knew better than to offer Kyle another job. The boy was proud. He needed to prove himself.

"I'd like to see you again," Bryce said. "How do we make that happen?"

"There's tour dates in Milwaukee, um, in Detroit, um..." Kyle stopped. "I don't know what's close to North Dakota, mate."

Bryce laughed. "I have a jet, baby. Detroit's fine."

"It's two weeks away, mate." Kyle began to open his raw silk shirt. "Not sure I can wait that long."

"You don't have to wait."

Kyle shrugged off the silk. Unzipped his skinnies. Hooked his thumbs in the expensive denim hipband. "It might take me two weeks to peel off me jeans all by me self." Jerked them down inch by painful inch.

Bryce groaned. Why was the tease so exciting?

***

H
e had a young company, and he had a mostly young staff. But sometimes Bryce regretted his policy of hearing out even the most junior geologist. There was nothing wrong with this one's science, and the lease was probably worth the proposed investment, but why did the kid need a two-hour PowerPoint to say he'd struck oil? It might have been less annoying if the meet hadn't been scheduled for so late in the evening.

A cheap phone somewhere rang like a bell. Bryce jerked awake, wondering who had failed to silence their device during the meeting. Then he realized the annoying tone was coming from his own messenger bag.

The throwaway. He'd forgotten he still had it.

Gesturing at the geologist to keep talking, he backed out of the conference room and dug deep into his briefcase. The bell was still tolling.

Whoever was calling had gone to voicemail, hung up, dialed again.

"Bryce Auburn."

"Hey, Bryce." Why was the sugary accent so small and ashamed? "It's me."

"Kyle. Are you OK? Where are you?"

"I'm in trouble. I need help." The words were hardly more than a whisper.

"Where are you? What's going on?" With his left hand, Bryce was already flicking through the calendar on his real phone. The one with the helicopter schedule on it.

A clatter from the other end. "Kyle!"

His answer was that silence you get sometimes on a cell phone when nobody's speaking. A dead kind of silence that makes you stare at the screen to see if the other party hung up on you.

"What's going on? Kyle, answer me."

"I'm sorry, sir, but Kyle is busy. He can't come back to the phone right now." An older voice. English, but not as heavily accented as Kyle's. Calm.

"Who are you? Let me speak to Kyle."

Silence.

Call ended.

The number, an unfamiliar one, was listed in his calls received. But when he tried to call back, the phone rang four times before it clicked over to a robot.

"The number you have dialed is not in service at this time. Please leave a message."

Bryce had decisions to make. Putting away the phone, he walked back into the conference room.

"I've heard enough," he said. "I'm sold. I want you to move forward with developing a bid for the lease. Congratulations."

The geologist was only twenty-four. He still blushed when he was happy. "Thank you, Bryce."

Kyle was in trouble.

Maybe
Kyle was in trouble. Maybe he'd just got himself involved in a petty little argument over borrowing the wrong man's wallet.

But it bothered Bryce that the man who picked up Kyle's phone was English. It seemed like a hell of a coincidence.

Kyle was English. Maybe he targeted other Englishmen.

Or maybe the man was Kyle's stalker.

You can't save people from themselves.
That's what his high school adviser said that time the ambulance took his mother to the hospital. The adviser was a career counselor, not a psychologist. She wanted him to see a real therapist but of course Bryce couldn't do that without his parents' permission.