The Ruthless Caleb Wilde

“Caleb,” Jake said, “listen man, what I said before, about not doing anything—”

“—precipitously,” Travis said. “You need to think. Come home. We can talk—”

“Talking never solved a problem,” Caleb said. “A man needs to take action. You flew ‘copters, Jake. Travis, you flew jets. I … hell, never mind what I did. The point is, things start going bad, a man needs to take action, not talk. And this—this is a thing starting to go bad.”

“Go bad, how?” Jake said softly.

Caleb didn’t answer.

“Caleb,” Travis said, “tell us what’s going on.”

“I did,” Caleb said, very calmly.

He did? his brothers mouthed to each other.

“And you guys helped. You helped enormously.”

“Caleb,” Travis said, “is this about that woman in New York? Dammit, is this about you?”

“Me?” Caleb said with all the indignation he could muster. “You have to be kidding. Would I ever get myself into a mess like this? It’s about a friend. I told you. A good friend.”

“Who?” Jake demanded.

But Caleb had hung up.

Jake depressed the speaker phone button. For an endless moment, neither he or Travis said anything. Then Jake shook his head.

“Oh, man,” he said softly.

Travis nodded. “I couldn’t h

ave put it better myself.”

“Should we go looking for him?”

“Yes. No. Crap. He sounded okay at the end, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. Calm. Very calm.”

“So, what do you think?”

“I think his friend is named Caleb.”

“Yeah. Dammit. So do I.” Jake paused. “What’s he’s going to do?”

Travis considered. Then he sighed.

“Look, the bad news is, this is Caleb. The good news is, this is Caleb. We know how he works.”

“He keeps his emotions close. He never asks for advice.”

“He just did.”

“No,” Jake said, “he didn’t. He wanted to lay out the situation so he could find a solution.”

Silence. Then Travis said, “So, what now? Do we figure out where he is and go after him?”

“If you guys had done that to me after I left Adoré—I mean, Addison—I’d have beaten the hell out of you. And I sure wouldn’t have taken any advice you had to offer.”