“Do you a solid? How is my coming to your party doing you a favor?”
“Oh, you know what I mean. You were always more popular than me in high school all the chicks dig you…”
I cut him off before he went any further because nothing he was saying made sense. First of all I stopped going to high school here more than three years ago so my popularity back then should have no bearing and second, I’m not going to any party where there will be underage drinking. And I’m for damn sure not about to take Caitlin anywhere near that shit.
“Sorry buddy I can’t help you.” The whole thing sounded like a fucked up nightmare waiting to happen if you ask me. Though it may seem like no big deal for a college student to host a party for other teenagers who were now leaving high school, the fact that he was planning to serve these kids booze on one of the most dangerous nights of their teenage lives reeked of irresponsibility.
He did a little bit more moaning and groaning but I held firm. It helped that I had no interest whatsoever in going to his party so that was an easy no. I finally had to hang up in the middle of one of his begging spiels and only realized after hanging up how weird the whole thing sounded.
I put it to the back of my mind though after stepping into the office and getting down to business. Mancini had been working nonstop on trying to clean up the image even more to see what else we could get that would lead us to finding the truck and driver and hopefully the person in the back.
The others were trying to do background checks on everyone in the area around where we’d decided the image had been taken from. It was a long shot and tedious as hell but it needed to be done. My job was sifting through whatever they found to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.
It was painstaking work especially since every second felt like we were working against the clock. The two jobs I’d worked on, on the East Coast had been more cut and dry. Then we knew where the girls were being held and just needed to go in and get them. Now we have no clue and not much to go on.
“I’ll have Jake check inmate relocations unless you wanna do that Mancini.” I heard Law’s voice which was the first sound I’d heard in the room in over an hour when I came up for air.
“I’m on it, but still bring your guy in.” I wanted to ask who Jake was but figured they’d tell me if they wanted me to know.
“What’re we talking about?” It has been a few days since they started treating me like one of them, ever since ‘the talk’ in fact, so I didn’t feel out of place asking them that at least. “You sleeping over there boy?”
“Nah, I just wanted to concentrate on what I was doing so I shut out all the noise.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes, he can.” Mancini answered Connor before I could say anything. They all looked at him including Colton with looks that said they knew some shit that I didn’t.
“He has selective auditory attention.”
“I have what?”
“It’s what’s commonly called selective hearing though most people don’t really know what it’s about so they use it in the wrong analogy. Simply put, it means your brain can ignore all auditory sound and focus on any one given thing, or you can shut it down completely like you just did. That last part is rare.”
“How do you know all this Mancini?”
“I did my homework.”
“He’s a fucking spook.” Colton grouched and went back to what he was doing while the SEALs started asking me all kinds of questions. The way they spoke it was as if I’d accomplished some great feat when as far as I know it’s just something I’ve always been able to do.
I was glad when we got back to work though, I’m still not use to being the center of attention in this bunch. Davey wasn’t turning out to be so bad after all, and did as much work as everyone else. Not quite the tagalong I suspected him of being, far from it. He pulled his own weight.
It was kind of weird in fact, the way he could switch from a mere annoyance to someone who could put in the work so easily; I guess he was growing on me. Or it could be the fact that he seemed genuinely pleased for Caitlin and I.
Some time had gone by when I next lifted my head and realized my father in law was talking to me. “I’m sorry what did you say?” The whole room cracked up like I’d missed something.