Baywatch fic: The Importance of Backup (1/2)
Title: The Importance of Backup
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Rating: M
A/N: Unbeta’ed. Fills my strapped to a moving vehicle prompt for hc_bingo, though I would like to know how this specific of a prompt is even a thing which warrants a place on a prompts list. That said, for as ridiculous and over the top as this fic is, it was pretty fun to write. Brody’s absolute incredulity at the things he faces on Baywatch amuses me greatly.
Summary: Maybe this won’t turn out badly. Maybe these crazy, murderous people won’t pose a threat. Maybe this will be the one case that doesn’t turnout to be completely crazy.
-o-
It starts like this:
Brody sits at lunch, listening to Mitch’s latest plan for his latest case. For good measure, Brody chews thoughtfully for a few moments before he comes to the same conclusion he always seems to come to in these situations.
Really this is the way anyone would start this story.
Anyone sane, that is.
See, Brody starts with this: “That’s pretty intense, man. Maybe we should call the cops.”
This is what you start with when the case involves serious weapons trafficking with the equivalent of the Mexican mafia. These are the dudes who leaves bodies chopped up in bags in tourist resorts, and they sound pretty terrifying, if you must know.
Mitch’s response is without hesitation or qualification. “We’re not calling the cops.”
Sometimes Brody accepts that answer. Like, he’s learned, after the better part of a year at Baywatch, that some crazy shit is going to happen. He will chase sand grifters. He will break up drug deals between low level buyers. He once accidentally helped Mitch stop a gang of art thieves, though he’s still not sure how that actually happened.
But then Mitch gets cases like this.
Cases that don’t just make you roll your eyes and think, wow, what silly lifeguards we are! Cases that make you go, oh, shit, I’m really probably going to get killed.
True, Brody’s still alive but he does not credit Mitch for this necessarily. While it is true that Mitch has saved his life on most of these cases, he’s also the overeager weirdo who puts Brody in peril to start.
Mitch doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that he’s, like, supernaturally blessed. That somehow, Mitch is a force of nature, unable to be killed.
Brody is not anything like that. He’s a moron who responds recklessly under pressure and also the universe hates him.
This is why he has to have restraint at the start. He had no chance once they get going.
Honestly, he probably has no chance either way, but Brody is going to try. “But I really think we might want to call the cops.”
Mitch looks at him over his lunch like Brody’s crazy, like there’s no possible way that anything Brody is saying makes any sense. “We definitely don’t want to call the cops.”
The way Mitch speaks with such certainty, such finality. Brody’s always been a little jealous of that because he’s not a guy who knows how to believe in things that way. He’s always doubting, he’s always second guessing, he’s always assuming that he’s going to screw something up.
And yet, Brody can’t help it sometimes. He must secretly like ramming his head against brick walls, because he knows that’s what this conversation will be. Still, he says, “But we get along with them now, remember? Ellerbee likes us.”
This is not persuasive to Mitch. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Sure it does.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Mitch says, and he gives Brody a look that says he should stop arguing because it’s pointless.
Brody knows that but his voice is still speaking. Recklessness takes a lot of forms sometimes. Not always the ones people expect. “But Ellerbee would totally help us. He’d help the case.”
There’s a chance, even if slight, that using the case as leverage might convince Mitch. Mitch is convinced by convenience, safety or common sense. He’s more inclined to listen if he thinks something is in the best interest of the bay.
Mitch still shakes his head. “Ellerbee is tied down by protocol,” he says. “It’s no good to bring him in until we’re ready for an arrest or something.”
“You don’t know that,” Brody says. He doesn’t know it either. Brody doesn’t know shit most of the time. “We should call him, talk it through.”
“And then he knows what we’re doing and has to tell us to stop,” Mitch argues.
“Or he helps us,” Brody counters. “We really should call him.”
This is more of a fight than Brody usually mounts. It’s true, they have this conversation often but it typically lasts about half this time after Mitch’s second denial. But Brody’s standing his ground a little more this time, and Mitch is starting to notice.
It doesn’t appear that he likes it. His look is critical. “Why do you want to call Ellerbee so bad? We hardly ever call Ellerbee.”
This is not entirely true. It’s just that they call Ellerbee on Mitch’s weird terms. And Mitch does have the weirdest terms.
But Brody has terms, too. They’re not weird. They’re super simple.
His terms involve not dying.
“Because this case, these people you’re after, they’re crazy,” Brody says. “They leaves bodies wherever they go.”
“Which is why we have to stop them,” Mitch says.
“But they’re going to kill you,” Brody asserts. He says it kind of calmly, like it’s not that big of deal. For some reason, he doesn’t want Mitch to know that he’s scared.
And really, Brody’s speaking common sense. It’s a weird thing, Brody being a voice of reason. But it doesn’t make much sense to him that Mitch can’t see this. Mitch is ten times smarter than Brody and he’s got, like, these amazing instincts, and yet he never appropriately grasps that the very things that make him good at solving cases are the very things that make him a target.
Mitch is such a freak like that. Even after Leeds shot him and he jacked himself up on urchin venom, he still seems to think he’s invincible.
Come to think of it, the fact that he survived those things is probably why.
But Brody remembers nearly drowning at the bottom of the ocean. He remembers the gun against his head.
Shit, he remembers putting the gun against his head when he thought Mitch was dead.
Brody’s good under pressure in some ways.
In other ways, he’s a mess.
He can never tell which way it’s going to go.
“They’re really going to kill you,” Brody says again, pleading a little now.
Mitch shrugs somewhat, as if he’s considered this and deems it unlikely or unimportant. Incidental. “I’d like to see them try.”
Brody doesn’t gape because he’s not surprised. It’s such a stupid, such a bold thing to say. He says it without irony, without hesitation, without doubt. Because Mitch believes it so completely that none of the rest is even remotely necessary.
That’s why this conversation was pointless. Brody’s pretty sure this was the outcome he expected the moment he mounted the argument. No matter how Brody starts this shit, Mitch has already secured the ending he wants.
And really, maybe Mitch is right.
Maybe this won’t turn out badly. Maybe these crazy, murderous people won’t pose a threat. Maybe this will be the one case that doesn’t turnout to be completely crazy.
Mitch does have this annoying tendency to be right.
-o-
There’s a catch, though.
See, Mitch is right: they don’t try to kill Mitch.
Nope, they try to kill Brody instead.
-o-
If he’s honest with himself, this is another twist that Brody probably should have seen coming from the start. That’s how it is, you see. Mitch has amazing, awesome plans that are absolutely flawless.
Until Brody gets involved.
Brody’s, like, a walking disaster. Maybe it’s because the universe hates him; maybe it’s because Brody inherently makes the worst choices possible in any given situation.
Both, probably.
The odds are just not in his favor.
Still, it always catches him by surprise.
This time, however, he thinks even Mitch doesn’t see it coming. See, Brody’s doing his job and he’s not working the case. For the moment, he’s just being a lifeguard, doing lifeguard shit, actively patrolling the beach and making sure people don’t up and drown. It’s kind of a quiet night -- they’re in the off-season now, and so there aren’t as many tourists -- and he’s making his final rounds up and down his stretch of the beach because Brody’s thorough like that.
He’s really not a bad lifeguard.
He just kind of sucks at multitasking.
In other words, if he’s thinking about being a lifeguard, then he’s not thinking about murderous Mexican gang members who want to kill him.
That’s his mistake.
And he’s sure as hell going to pay for it.
Because he’s making his way back to tower two to close out for the night when there’s, like, this one dude who looks weird. There are lots of weird people on the beach -- that’s been a lesson for Brody, don’t judge the weird -- but this guy’s not weird weird. He’s like not-quite-right weird. That’s the kind you watch out for, the kind that sometimes pose a risk to themselves or people around them.
Because it’s late and he’s going off duty, Brody doesn’t feel like it’s good to leave this guy alone on the beach.
So he walks up, making sure his flotation device is visibly -- not that the dude is going to drown on the sand behind the tower, but Mitch believes that making the flotation device visible puts people at ease and whatever, Brody thinks the thing is fun to carry -- and he smiles.
Smiling is another thing Brody has learned from Mitch. That’s actually one of the harder parts about being a lifeguard for Brody. He has to smile a lot. And, like, be nice to people. He’s never made so much polite small talk in his life.
“Hey, man, everything okay back here?” he asks.
Most people who you talk to are actually really nice. Some are sort of quiet and to the point so you can tell they’re just not cool with small talk. But most people really like it when a lifeguard says hi to them, and there are some people who still recognize him as Matt Brody, Olympian, and not Matt Brody, Vomit Comet, so that’s cool.
This dude doesn’t fall into any of those categories.
He up and up doesn’t say shit to Brody.
This seems even weirder.
So Brody continues his approach. “You planning on hanging around tonight?” Brody asks, because whatever, this is a way to do a welfare check and not even Mitch has a problem with calling the cops if someone looks drunk or homeless and they’re chilling too close to the water. This is solely because they’re lifeguards; they believe the water can be dangerous and they hate the thought of people drowning even when they’re not around. Ellerbee knows by now just to move them along, get them to a shelter, that kind of thing.
Brody’s not sure that’s what this is. This dude doesn’t look homeless and he also doesn’t look drunk.
He’s all the way behind tower two now, following the guy as he ducks further out of Brody’s line of sight. “Dude,” he says, a little confused by this twilight game of hide and seek with a complete stranger. “Pretty soon there’s not going to be a lifeguard on duty, so I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
That’s the truth, and he’s being super nice about it, and he makes it around one of the pillars of the tower when the guy’s dark figure looms.
Brody startles a little. The weird dude is bigger than he thought.
That doesn’t make him any less weird.
In fact, Brody thinks, he looks even weirder.
Not weird.
Like, sinister?
“You okay, man?” Brody asks, still trying to get a good look at the dude’s face, but he’s literally standing in the shadows and he’s got a hoodie on and--
The guy moves, faster than Brody anticipates. All Brody has is a flotation device, and that does nothing to protect him as the guy lashes out with a solid right hook.
Brody reels, barely managing to keep his feet. Stars explode behind his eyes and his ears ring.
“What the hell?” he asks, tasting blood from a split on his lip. His nose is dripping, and Brody looks up in shock. “Dude--”
He doesn’t get to finish the statement.
He doesn’t get to do anything.
The weird guy punches him again -- this time a left cross, hard on the temple -- and Brody’s out before he hits the sand.
-o-
Brody has woken up in some strange situations. This happens to guys like Brody, who has had a habit of drinking hard and partying often. It’s a thing he started in high school because it’s like was he really going to study, and it had become exceptionally easier in college. Once he started competing internationally, it practically became a requirement. Sure, not all his teammates were into that kind of thing, but Brody worked harder than any of them, and when he was done training he always came to the horrible, stark conclusion that he had nothing else in his life outside of swimming.
Plus, people bought him a lot of alcohol when he won races.
The point is not that Brody drinks a lot and possibly has a problem. The point is that when you drink a lot, you wake up in some strange situations. Sometimes he wakes up in houses he doesn’t recognize with women he can’t remember. He has, on occasion, woke up without his clothes -- and, like, he seriously can’t find them anywhere. He’s woken up on the deck of a pool when he definitely wasn’t wearing swim trunks, and he’s woken up in cars that don’t belong to him without anyone else around.
After the Olympics, one might think that got better, seeing as he had no cash to get drunk with. Turns out, people will still buy beers when you break out the gold medals, and the situations just got stranger because he seriously has no other place to go. He tried to avoid park benches because that’s not a headline he needs, but piers? It’s easy to assume that CJ rescuing him that night wasn’t his first foray into star gazing under planks of wood.
The reason Brody thinks about all this with some detail is because this situation is stranger than all of that.
Like, it’s strange, okay?
Stranger than the time he woke up with like three cats on him and two girls covering him with catnip.
Because he’s moving.
He realizes that his eyes are open rather belatedly, though it’s not totally his fault. His heart hurts like a son of a bitch and also it’s, like, really dark.
He tries to remember if it’s supposed to be dark.
Brody can’t remember shit, though.
Then, suddenly, he’s not moving.
The transition is a jolt, and Brody actually rolls forward, colliding with something solid. Everything smells stale, a little like gasoline and rotten eggs. It’s disgusting, and he’s tempted to hurl.
Brody has a sensitive stomach.
He throws up at the drop of a hat.
He’s kind of gotten used to it. After yakking in the pool at the Olympics, all other vomiting situations have not seemed so bad. Something about this situation tells him he doesn’t want to, though.
As he’s contemplating that, there’s a thump and a creak. Then, for no apparent reason, it’s bright out. Not sunlight, but artificial, and it’s cheap, electric and blinding.
That does nothing for Brody’s queasiness. He’s pretty sure he’s going to lose it, when a few people come into view. One dude is generically dangerous looking, wearing a wife beater with tattoos up and down his arms. He’s got some stupid goatee and he scowls a lot. The other guy Brody doesn’t recognize quite either, but the dark hoodie looks familiar somehow.
Not familiar.
Weird.
Shit.
Brody is just starting to put the pieces together when they both reach down. Brody’s just conscious enough to know that he should move but not conscious enough to actually make it happen, and all he manages to do is mutter something unintelligible as they hoist him up.
They manhandle him with some difficulty, and it’s a dizzying process as Brody is lifted. His feet catch on something, someone curses in Spanish, and Brody is hauled until he’s dangling upright between the two men.
His head is being stupid right now and won’t hold itself up, and being upright has made him all kinds of wobbly. He doesn’t have any use of his feet yet, and the dudes have his arms around their shoulders as they turn around.
One of them reaches out and closes the trunk.
The trunk, Brody realizes.
He was in the trunk.
Shit.
Brody really realizes that now.
He was in the trunk.
You don’t put passengers in the trunk.
You put bodies in the trunk.
As if to reassure him, Brody’s heart skips a beat and he feels his face flush with panic. It’s only now that he remembers the familiar hoodie, the weird guy under the pier who punched him out on the beach.
That means Brody’s been kidnapped.
Why the hell has Brody been kidnapped?
“Are you sure this guy will do the job?” the nondescript guy asks, his accent heavy.
“Sure, the team is everything to Buchannon,” the hoodie guy says. His accent’s not heavy, but he sounds even creepier than he looks. “I’ve cased him out. This loser lives with him.”
Brody takes this personally for some reason, because not everyone can be a criminal and earn lots of money on the black market. And elite lifeguards don’t earn elite paychecks and seriously. “It’s temporary,” Brody tries to say in his defense.
It comes out in a series of grunts.
It’s not enough to defend himself.
It is enough for the goons to realize that Brody’s more conscious than they’d hoped. Suddenly, a third man comes into Brody’s limited field of vision and he wraps his fists into Brody’s hair, roughly wrenching his head back to look at him.
That’s about as fun as it sounds.
Brody’s stomach gurgles again. He kind of wants to puke on the dude, just out of principle.
Then he gets a better look at this dude.
This isn’t a goon.
No, this is the head of the gang they’ve been tracking. The guy who has ordered the execution of at least three dozen people. This is the guy who pulls triggers and chops up bodies. Shit, this guy scorches corpses in cars to make a point. He’s vindictive and ruthless. If he knows who you are, then it’s only because he wants to hurt you in the worst way possible.
And now he’s got Brody.
“Do you think Buchannon will come for you?” the guy asks. Brody can’t remember his name. Brody can’t remember anything important except that this guy is rumored to have once cut open a dude’s stomach while he was awake and left him out in the desert for the birds to eat before was even dead.
There’s no way to verify that kind of thing, but Brody’s not sure he wants to verify it right now.
Not when the guy is literally in a position to snap Brody’s neck in half.
“Hm?” the man asks, yanking on Brody’s hair a little bit. “Or should I just kill you now?”
Yeah, Brody’s in no rush to die. And honestly, the implication does make him a little angry.
He’s still an impulsive and reckless moron, you see. Brody sees a bad situation and always knows exactly the right way to make it worse.
Therefore, he does the only thing he can think of: he sneers.
Shit, he really sneers. His feet won’t hold him up and his neck is dangerously exposed, but Brody sneers for all he’s worth. “I think he’ll come,” he says thickly, and he’s glad that his tongue is working marginally better this time. “To kick your asses.”
It’s supposed to be threatening.
Brody doesn’t choose to think about how completely non-threatening he is right now, given his predicament.
Still, it’s disappointing when the guy smirks back at him. “Perfect,” he says. Then he pulls a gun from his pocket, using his free hand to place it gruffly beneath Brody’s chin while his other hand is still tangled in Brody’s hair. “Then you shall be our bait.”
Brody’s bravado crumbles, like, instantly. He feels tears burn his eyes, and bile is rising in his throat so fast that he can smell the acid in his nose.
The gun digs deeper into the soft flesh there, and he man gets close enough for Brody to smell his breath. “Live bait is good for catching fish,” he says, voice dangerously low. “I have found it unnecessary when catching humans, however.”
Brody’s mind races and comes up with nothing. Completely nothing. He sort of wishes that his life would flash before his eyes, but all he can think about is how he never clocked out at HQ so technically he’s still getting paid for this. That’s a stupid thing to think about. It’s not like he can collect a paycheck when he’s got a bullet through his skull.
Then, the man lets the gun fall. “You are lucky, however,” he says, and he smiles a horrible smile at Brody with perfect teeth that gleam like the sun. “I am not a man who likes to leave these things to chance.”
Brody blinks rapidly a few times, and he can feel the throb of the pulse on his throat as it’s still exposed to the man before him. It’s so terrifying that Brody doesn’t let himself hope.
“If I kill you, I squander my security,” the man says, and it’s pretty clear to Brody that this isn’t something he’s coming up with at the top of his head. Guys like this, who run gangs and weapons trafficking rings, they’ve got to be kind of smart, you know. There’s a reason Brody’s time as a criminal began and ended with one really poorly conceived attempt that immediately got him arrested. Because Brody’s a moron, and guys like this are smart. “I did not go through the inconvenience of kidnapping you off the beach for nothing. If the point was to kill you, I would have done it by now.”
This is not nearly as reassuring as the dude seems to think it is.
The man shakes his head, like he’s somehow disappointed in Brody. Like he’s a letdown of a hostage. Brody is not sure how he’s failed at this, but it doesn’t surprise him. “No, I need to keep you alive,” the man continues, and the smile he forces onto his lips is horrible to watch. It gets worse with every passing second. “I need to make sure that Buchannon brings me all his evidence, holding nothing back. And I need him to come himself, alone, no cops.”
That’s not going to be a problem.
Mitch hates calling the cops.
He wonders vaguely if having Brody’s life on the line will make a difference. He suspects not.
“Buchannon is not a stupid man,” the guy says, giving Brody a long condescending look that suggests that Brody is a stupid man. “He will want reassurances, and you having breath in your lungs will make sure he complies with every demand I make.”
This is a long, roundabout way of telling Brody that he’s not going to die. At least, he thinks that’s what this is.
As it is, Brody can only nod along at the insinuation. As if to say, yeah, that’s a pretty good point.
It’s not much of an effort, sadly. His head is still being wrenched back painfully. All he does is twitch a little bit, and he’s pretty sure it just looks pathetic. Though, given his current situation, Brody’s not sure there’s any other way to look. No doubt, if there was, Mitch would find it. Mitch would somehow manage to look seamlessly cool and like he was the one in control.
But then, there’s a reason Mitch isn’t the one in this situation.
And that Brody is.
All the same, it’s a relief when the guy puts his gun away. Brody is aware that this just mean he’s going to die later instead of now, but he still breathes. This is what you do when someone removes a gun from your vicinity. It’s reflex.
The fact that Brody visibly relaxes seems to amuse the guy. He seems pleased that Brody’s so clearly affected by his actions. No doubt it’s a power thing. Power that this dude has and Brody most definitely does not.
“And besides,” the man says, like he’s thought of the best idea ever. “Now I can see the look on Buchannon’s face when I kill you,” he says. “And getting rid of two bodies at once is all about time management.”
Brody’s not sure if he’s offended or just plain ready to shit his pants in terror. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter.
The man rears back, using his fist to smash in Brody’s nose. Blood spurts. Pain explodes. Someone laughs.
And that, as they say, is that.
-o-
Who the hell says that anyway? Mitch? Does Mitch say it?
Whatever, Brody decides. Mitch is full of shit.
And Brody’s life is never so neat and easy.
He even has to die the hard way.
-o-
He wakes to the feeling of movement again, and even though it feels like his head is being constructed in a vice, he vaguely remembers that this happened before. When he was thrown in a trunk and kidnapped.
He’s still kidnapped as best he can tell, but this doesn’t seem like a trunk for some reason. It’s a weird thing to have enough context to know that. Like, no one should have experience riding in trunks, thus making it possible to conclude that nope, this isn’t a trunk.
But yeah, this isn’t a trunk. It’s not enclosed, it’s not dark. There’s no musty smell, no gasoline burning his nostrils to make him want to heave.
He still wants to heave, of course. But that’s probably just the fact that he has a concussion.
So, why is he moving?
He’s not being carried, and he’s actually moving kind of fast. It feels somewhat unsafe, but nothing about this experience has felt safe. What’s weirder is that he can taste fresh air.
He’s outside.
And he’s wet.
At first, he considers the possibility that he’s pissed his pants. While he doesn’t rule that out, he’s not sure his own piss could hit him in the face. Like, not without some effort anyway. And he’s very wet, and Brody has a big bladder but that’s ridiculous.
Obviously, it’s not pee.
It’s water.
So maybe it’s raining.
To find out, he makes a conscious choice to open his eyes. It’s a choice, sure, but Brody is not sure it’s actually a good choice. The second his eyes open, the sunlight is blinding and glaring, so intense that his headache ratchets up, like, 13 notches and he thinks his head might actually explode.
It take him a minute to get used to it, to get the pain levels down to something that doesn’t feel head-exploding. When he manages that, he thinks things have to look better.
They don’t.
Because Brody’s not in a car. He’s not on a bike or a scooter or even a shitty skateboard or something. Because there’s no pavement in front of him. Not even grass or dirt.
It’s water.
He’s wet because he’s on the water.
This is a boat.
Now, Brody’s got nothing in particular against boats. He uses boats a lot, actually. He’s learned how to drive one without crashing it and everything. But he’s not just on a boat.
No, he’s tied to a boat.
His arms are stretched out to his sides and he’s lying down on the front with his legs dangling over the edge. This precarious position is made worse by the fact that they’re moving across the water at, like, a really good clip. Craning his neck, he tries to see how well he’s secured, and all he sees is wet rope and the dude in the black hoodie grinning at him from behind the windshield.
“Don’t worry!” he yells over the roar of the engine, the deafening hum of the water. “We’re just going for a little ride!”
That’s a shitty thing to say because this isn’t a little ride. Little rides don’t involve anyone being strapped to anything, much less the front of a moving boat. It’s all worse because when Brody does get his eyes to focus better, he sees that they’re not heading back to land or anything convenient.
No, in front of them is open water.
Shit, Brody blinks against the spray of the water. There are no other boats in the vicinity, which means they’re already far out and going farther. There are lots of reasons to go on long boat rides that are totally innocent.
There are basically no reasons to go on long boat rides with someone strapped to the front of the boat.
Okay, that’s not true, there are reasons.
It’s just that they’re all bad ones.
Sinister ones.
Ones that involve Brody not making the trip home.
Well, Brody thinks as he starts to panic in earnest, this day just keeps getting better.
-o-
It’s hard to say how much time passes. As far as Brody is concerned, any amount of time being strapped to a moving boat going out to sea is too much. At this point, his panic has reached some sort of strange plateau, wherein he’s not actually capable of panicking anymore because there’s just too much panic to process. Instead, he feels a little numb with the deadening realization that this is going to be over soon.
One way or another.
Just all the ways are, like, bad.
Brody can’t help himself. He thinks of as many ways for this to end as possible.
He thinks of someone purposefully flipping the boat, sending him at 30 miles per hour face first into the surf. It’d be like a belly flop, only the kind of belly flop that crushes your rib cage and shatters your face. His face already feels shattered, but he knows it can get worse.
That seems a little reckless, so Brody then considers going out to the middle of the ocean and then sinking the boat. Letting it go down, Brody still on top. That one seems a little familiar to Brody -- it’s like being dropped off the back of a boat in a cage, funny enough -- but he’s pretty sure that it’s a lot deeper out here and he wonders if he’d even hit the bottom before he died.
It seems possible, though unlikely, that they’ll lower him in the water and let his bleeding face attract sharks. This seems unnecessarily difficult, but then, these are the people who literally strapped him to a boat.
Who straps people to a boat?
Or any moving vehicle for that matter?
Sure, Brody’s thought about strapping himself to the back of a jetski when Mitch is at the controls because the dude is huge and slippery and drives like a maniac, but he’s never actually thought about it seriously much less done it. Even Leeds, who had tried to kill him loads of times, had never been quite this particular about it.
Then, he considers, maybe they’re just going to shoot him. Leave him tied there, dead and bleeding and gross, to be a super hideous hood ornament for whoever finds him next. To that end, maybe they’ll just leave him there to starve to death, staring up at the sky until the sun bleaches him and birds start to eat him.
Birds do shit like that, don’t they? Don’t they peck your eyes out?
Possibly, Brody considers, they’ll just keep driving forever, and Brody’s a slightly less hideous but no less weird hood ornament. Maybe, if he’s lucky, they’ll feed him before his arms rot out of his shoulder sockets.
These possibilities all seem equally likely and unlikely to Brody. This shit doesn’t happen in the real world, but Brody no longer exists in the real world. He exists in Mitch’s alternative lifeguard reality, wherein people in swimsuits saved the day all the time. He wonders, if only a little, whether or not eventualities about being strapped to a moving vehicle were actually mentioned in the fine print of the Baywatch contract.
At this point, it wouldn’t surprise Brody.
He thinks nothing will surprise him.
But as they come around, the boat starts to slow. Brody strains his neck to see that they’re approaching another boat.
A yellow one.
It’s a lifeguard boat.
And Mitch is standing on the deck looking pissed.
Well, go figure.
That’s not the ending Brody expects.
He’s not sure yet if it’s going to be one he likes.
-o-
The conversation starts like this:
“I’m here, just like you asked. Now let him go.”
Mitch says that like he means it, like he actually has some leverage here, like they’re not both completely and totally screwed. Brody has to wonder if Mitch can recognize that much, that this is so obviously a trap that it’s not even funny. Not that anything about gang members is funny. Neither is being tied to a boat, for that matter.
But hey, at least it’s not moving anymore.
Really, that just makes it worse. Now Brody has the time to think about how exposed and vulnerable he is and how utterly disastrous the outcome of this conversation will probably be.
The black hoodie dude is still just barely within Brody’s field of vision. There’s more movement, and Brody recognizes the super not-friendly voice of the guy in charge. Brody still can’t remember his name. “Not so fast,” he says smoothly, like he does this all the time. Like he always negotiates with people strapped to boats in front of them. No big deal. “There were conditions.”
Conditions like come and prepare to die. Those are the implied conditions, anyway.
Brody can crane his neck and see Mitch. The guy doesn’t even flinch. “I’m alone,” he says. “No place for anyone to hide out here.”
“Your radio?” the guy asks.
Mitch literally yanks it out and throws the receiver in the ocean. It’s kind of impressive, but Brody’s not really in a position to be impressed right now.
Brody can almost feel the guy smirking. “And the evidence?”
Mitch produced a file folder and holds it up. That’s clearly supposed to be significant, though Brody thinks the bad guys have the advantage in terms of presentation. Mitch has a file folder; they have Brody tied to a boat.
Mitch is losing in the theatrics department for once.
“All here,” Mitch says, and it’s clear that he thinks his word should be good enough.
The black hoodie guy steps over and reaches across the distance between the two boats. Brody sees just enough to see the folder exchange hands before it disappears from his view and black hoodie guy stands next to his head again.
“You have been thorough, my friend,” the guy says. He sounds friendly. If friends were the types to kill you in your sleep.
“Alvarez, I don’t give a shit,” he says.
That’s the name. Alvarez. Brody wonder why he couldn’t remember that earlier. Possibly the concussion. Possibly the trauma of having a gun shoved at your head.
“I did what you asked,” Mitch continues, like he still thinks that complying and making demands is going to help anything. “Now let him go.”
Mitch pointedly does not look at Brody, and Brody cannot decide if this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it’s kind of humiliating to be strapped to the front of a boat. It’s not the thing you think about when you first realize you’ve been strapped to a boat, but the longer they’re sitting there, the more ridiculous Brody feels. It feels like this is his fault, like he should have been able to avoid this, like he’s a moron for letting this happen.
On the other hand, Brody’s tied to a boat. He’s been kidnapped. A little reassurance from his best friend that things are under control might actually make him feel a little less like he’s going to die here.
Then again, maybe that’s the point.
Maybe Mitch is afraid Brody’s going to die here, too. Maybe that’s why he can’t make eye contact.
Shit, Brody is going to start crying here. In order to not cry, he mildly hyperventilates instead.
By the way, yes, mild hyperventilation is a thing.
If you want to see that thing for yourself, get strapped to a boat during a hostage exchange and see what you do.
“And how do I know you did not make copies?” Alvarez asks, and it’s a fair question. Well, fair in the sense that it’s logical. Obviously Alvarez would want to know, but since Alvarez is a murderous criminal, Brody is not about to afford him any benefit of the doubt. Ever. “Or that you have no contacted the police?”
“You don’t know,” Mitch snaps like he’s exasperated by the question.
Only Mitch would be exasperated with gang members.
Gang members who are trying -- and probably succeeding -- in killing them.
Brody isn’t sure that it’s much consolation when Alvarez agrees with him. “That is not a good game for you to play, Mr. Buchannon,” he warns. “Not when your friend’s life is in such a precarious position.”
This time, Mitch does look at Brody. Just for a second.
The frustration breaks a little on his face.
And Brody may have pissed his pants.
Mitch is making this shit up right now, and Brody’s so screwed.
“It’s not a game,” Mitch says, and he still sounds pissed but there’s something less defiant in his voice this time. “It’s only been 12 hours since you took Brody. I haven’t had time to set up anything or do something to back this up. I came here for Brody, and I’m prepared to give you everything you want to get him back.”
This is something.
First, 12 hours? Shit, how hard did they hit Brody?
Second, 12 hours? Shit, Mitch might actually be telling them the truth. 12 hours isn’t enough time to plan some super fancy rescue with all the bells and whistles. 12 hours is just enough time to throw some shit in a boat and go on a suicide mission. It’s the stupid, impulsive way Brody would do it.
So what the hell is Mitch doing?
Is he ramped up on urchin venom again?
“I am a bit surprised,” Alvarez says, and he actually does sound a little surprised. But in that way that you can tell that it’s a pleasant surprise. Like he asked for all this shit for Christmas and all of it magically appeared under the tree.
For the record, that’s never happened to Brody. Never. He’d learned to just stop making Christmas lists by the time he was 8 because what the hell was the point in setting himself up for a disappointment. All those years of getting underwear and school supplies from foster parents and group home donations made him think that Santa was a dick.
Alvarez doesn’t need Santa, though. Apparently when you’re a rich criminal with a penchant for killing people, you tend to get what you want anyway.
“The evidence is here, and so are you,” he says, and he’s practically crooning now. “All alone.”
Mitch looks like he’s ready to growl. It would be a more effective sort of look if he had any sort of power in this situation.
It’s only then that Brody realizes that the situation is about to shift. It starts with the bemusement in Alvarez’s voice, and it’s heightened by the fact that black hoodie guy has progressively moved out of Brody’s field of vision. In fact, by the time Brody notices this, he can’t see black hoodie guy at all. The engine is still idly for some reason, and Alvarez chuckles.
This is part of the plan, Brody realizes dumbly. Of course it is, but strapped to the front of the boat, he’s starting to realize that the plan involves more than strapping him to a boat. There is an endgame here, a very specific endgame, and Alvarez is ready to close it out.
It ends with Brody strapped to the front of a boat with an active engine and the bad guys disappearing.
It ends with Mitch willingly walking into a trap.
Mostly, Brody knows somehow, it ends now.
“Exactly as demanded,” Mitch says. His eyes are narrowed; his entire body is taut and ready. He knows something is coming, but Brody’s not sure Mitch has appreciated just how final this endgame is going to be. “Now let Brody go.”
Anyone else, they probably would have folded.
But Alvarez laughs, voice more distant that before. “He’s all yours,” he says, a little singsong in his intonation. “If you can catch him.”
Shit, Brody thinks. That sounds bad.
It sounds worse when the engine revs, kicking into high gear. There are two splashes in the water, and the boat lurches forward so violently that Brody thinks he’s going to be tipped over into the sea. It corrects itself, and Brody is facing out toward the open ocean once more.
It’s too fast, too out of control, too chaotic.
It’s too much.
Brody closes his eyes.
The start sucks.
And this time, he doesn’t want to see the end.
NEXT
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Rating: M
A/N: Unbeta’ed. Fills my strapped to a moving vehicle prompt for hc_bingo, though I would like to know how this specific of a prompt is even a thing which warrants a place on a prompts list. That said, for as ridiculous and over the top as this fic is, it was pretty fun to write. Brody’s absolute incredulity at the things he faces on Baywatch amuses me greatly.
Summary: Maybe this won’t turn out badly. Maybe these crazy, murderous people won’t pose a threat. Maybe this will be the one case that doesn’t turnout to be completely crazy.
-o-
It starts like this:
Brody sits at lunch, listening to Mitch’s latest plan for his latest case. For good measure, Brody chews thoughtfully for a few moments before he comes to the same conclusion he always seems to come to in these situations.
Really this is the way anyone would start this story.
Anyone sane, that is.
See, Brody starts with this: “That’s pretty intense, man. Maybe we should call the cops.”
This is what you start with when the case involves serious weapons trafficking with the equivalent of the Mexican mafia. These are the dudes who leaves bodies chopped up in bags in tourist resorts, and they sound pretty terrifying, if you must know.
Mitch’s response is without hesitation or qualification. “We’re not calling the cops.”
Sometimes Brody accepts that answer. Like, he’s learned, after the better part of a year at Baywatch, that some crazy shit is going to happen. He will chase sand grifters. He will break up drug deals between low level buyers. He once accidentally helped Mitch stop a gang of art thieves, though he’s still not sure how that actually happened.
But then Mitch gets cases like this.
Cases that don’t just make you roll your eyes and think, wow, what silly lifeguards we are! Cases that make you go, oh, shit, I’m really probably going to get killed.
True, Brody’s still alive but he does not credit Mitch for this necessarily. While it is true that Mitch has saved his life on most of these cases, he’s also the overeager weirdo who puts Brody in peril to start.
Mitch doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that he’s, like, supernaturally blessed. That somehow, Mitch is a force of nature, unable to be killed.
Brody is not anything like that. He’s a moron who responds recklessly under pressure and also the universe hates him.
This is why he has to have restraint at the start. He had no chance once they get going.
Honestly, he probably has no chance either way, but Brody is going to try. “But I really think we might want to call the cops.”
Mitch looks at him over his lunch like Brody’s crazy, like there’s no possible way that anything Brody is saying makes any sense. “We definitely don’t want to call the cops.”
The way Mitch speaks with such certainty, such finality. Brody’s always been a little jealous of that because he’s not a guy who knows how to believe in things that way. He’s always doubting, he’s always second guessing, he’s always assuming that he’s going to screw something up.
And yet, Brody can’t help it sometimes. He must secretly like ramming his head against brick walls, because he knows that’s what this conversation will be. Still, he says, “But we get along with them now, remember? Ellerbee likes us.”
This is not persuasive to Mitch. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Sure it does.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Mitch says, and he gives Brody a look that says he should stop arguing because it’s pointless.
Brody knows that but his voice is still speaking. Recklessness takes a lot of forms sometimes. Not always the ones people expect. “But Ellerbee would totally help us. He’d help the case.”
There’s a chance, even if slight, that using the case as leverage might convince Mitch. Mitch is convinced by convenience, safety or common sense. He’s more inclined to listen if he thinks something is in the best interest of the bay.
Mitch still shakes his head. “Ellerbee is tied down by protocol,” he says. “It’s no good to bring him in until we’re ready for an arrest or something.”
“You don’t know that,” Brody says. He doesn’t know it either. Brody doesn’t know shit most of the time. “We should call him, talk it through.”
“And then he knows what we’re doing and has to tell us to stop,” Mitch argues.
“Or he helps us,” Brody counters. “We really should call him.”
This is more of a fight than Brody usually mounts. It’s true, they have this conversation often but it typically lasts about half this time after Mitch’s second denial. But Brody’s standing his ground a little more this time, and Mitch is starting to notice.
It doesn’t appear that he likes it. His look is critical. “Why do you want to call Ellerbee so bad? We hardly ever call Ellerbee.”
This is not entirely true. It’s just that they call Ellerbee on Mitch’s weird terms. And Mitch does have the weirdest terms.
But Brody has terms, too. They’re not weird. They’re super simple.
His terms involve not dying.
“Because this case, these people you’re after, they’re crazy,” Brody says. “They leaves bodies wherever they go.”
“Which is why we have to stop them,” Mitch says.
“But they’re going to kill you,” Brody asserts. He says it kind of calmly, like it’s not that big of deal. For some reason, he doesn’t want Mitch to know that he’s scared.
And really, Brody’s speaking common sense. It’s a weird thing, Brody being a voice of reason. But it doesn’t make much sense to him that Mitch can’t see this. Mitch is ten times smarter than Brody and he’s got, like, these amazing instincts, and yet he never appropriately grasps that the very things that make him good at solving cases are the very things that make him a target.
Mitch is such a freak like that. Even after Leeds shot him and he jacked himself up on urchin venom, he still seems to think he’s invincible.
Come to think of it, the fact that he survived those things is probably why.
But Brody remembers nearly drowning at the bottom of the ocean. He remembers the gun against his head.
Shit, he remembers putting the gun against his head when he thought Mitch was dead.
Brody’s good under pressure in some ways.
In other ways, he’s a mess.
He can never tell which way it’s going to go.
“They’re really going to kill you,” Brody says again, pleading a little now.
Mitch shrugs somewhat, as if he’s considered this and deems it unlikely or unimportant. Incidental. “I’d like to see them try.”
Brody doesn’t gape because he’s not surprised. It’s such a stupid, such a bold thing to say. He says it without irony, without hesitation, without doubt. Because Mitch believes it so completely that none of the rest is even remotely necessary.
That’s why this conversation was pointless. Brody’s pretty sure this was the outcome he expected the moment he mounted the argument. No matter how Brody starts this shit, Mitch has already secured the ending he wants.
And really, maybe Mitch is right.
Maybe this won’t turn out badly. Maybe these crazy, murderous people won’t pose a threat. Maybe this will be the one case that doesn’t turnout to be completely crazy.
Mitch does have this annoying tendency to be right.
-o-
There’s a catch, though.
See, Mitch is right: they don’t try to kill Mitch.
Nope, they try to kill Brody instead.
-o-
If he’s honest with himself, this is another twist that Brody probably should have seen coming from the start. That’s how it is, you see. Mitch has amazing, awesome plans that are absolutely flawless.
Until Brody gets involved.
Brody’s, like, a walking disaster. Maybe it’s because the universe hates him; maybe it’s because Brody inherently makes the worst choices possible in any given situation.
Both, probably.
The odds are just not in his favor.
Still, it always catches him by surprise.
This time, however, he thinks even Mitch doesn’t see it coming. See, Brody’s doing his job and he’s not working the case. For the moment, he’s just being a lifeguard, doing lifeguard shit, actively patrolling the beach and making sure people don’t up and drown. It’s kind of a quiet night -- they’re in the off-season now, and so there aren’t as many tourists -- and he’s making his final rounds up and down his stretch of the beach because Brody’s thorough like that.
He’s really not a bad lifeguard.
He just kind of sucks at multitasking.
In other words, if he’s thinking about being a lifeguard, then he’s not thinking about murderous Mexican gang members who want to kill him.
That’s his mistake.
And he’s sure as hell going to pay for it.
Because he’s making his way back to tower two to close out for the night when there’s, like, this one dude who looks weird. There are lots of weird people on the beach -- that’s been a lesson for Brody, don’t judge the weird -- but this guy’s not weird weird. He’s like not-quite-right weird. That’s the kind you watch out for, the kind that sometimes pose a risk to themselves or people around them.
Because it’s late and he’s going off duty, Brody doesn’t feel like it’s good to leave this guy alone on the beach.
So he walks up, making sure his flotation device is visibly -- not that the dude is going to drown on the sand behind the tower, but Mitch believes that making the flotation device visible puts people at ease and whatever, Brody thinks the thing is fun to carry -- and he smiles.
Smiling is another thing Brody has learned from Mitch. That’s actually one of the harder parts about being a lifeguard for Brody. He has to smile a lot. And, like, be nice to people. He’s never made so much polite small talk in his life.
“Hey, man, everything okay back here?” he asks.
Most people who you talk to are actually really nice. Some are sort of quiet and to the point so you can tell they’re just not cool with small talk. But most people really like it when a lifeguard says hi to them, and there are some people who still recognize him as Matt Brody, Olympian, and not Matt Brody, Vomit Comet, so that’s cool.
This dude doesn’t fall into any of those categories.
He up and up doesn’t say shit to Brody.
This seems even weirder.
So Brody continues his approach. “You planning on hanging around tonight?” Brody asks, because whatever, this is a way to do a welfare check and not even Mitch has a problem with calling the cops if someone looks drunk or homeless and they’re chilling too close to the water. This is solely because they’re lifeguards; they believe the water can be dangerous and they hate the thought of people drowning even when they’re not around. Ellerbee knows by now just to move them along, get them to a shelter, that kind of thing.
Brody’s not sure that’s what this is. This dude doesn’t look homeless and he also doesn’t look drunk.
He’s all the way behind tower two now, following the guy as he ducks further out of Brody’s line of sight. “Dude,” he says, a little confused by this twilight game of hide and seek with a complete stranger. “Pretty soon there’s not going to be a lifeguard on duty, so I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
That’s the truth, and he’s being super nice about it, and he makes it around one of the pillars of the tower when the guy’s dark figure looms.
Brody startles a little. The weird dude is bigger than he thought.
That doesn’t make him any less weird.
In fact, Brody thinks, he looks even weirder.
Not weird.
Like, sinister?
“You okay, man?” Brody asks, still trying to get a good look at the dude’s face, but he’s literally standing in the shadows and he’s got a hoodie on and--
The guy moves, faster than Brody anticipates. All Brody has is a flotation device, and that does nothing to protect him as the guy lashes out with a solid right hook.
Brody reels, barely managing to keep his feet. Stars explode behind his eyes and his ears ring.
“What the hell?” he asks, tasting blood from a split on his lip. His nose is dripping, and Brody looks up in shock. “Dude--”
He doesn’t get to finish the statement.
He doesn’t get to do anything.
The weird guy punches him again -- this time a left cross, hard on the temple -- and Brody’s out before he hits the sand.
-o-
Brody has woken up in some strange situations. This happens to guys like Brody, who has had a habit of drinking hard and partying often. It’s a thing he started in high school because it’s like was he really going to study, and it had become exceptionally easier in college. Once he started competing internationally, it practically became a requirement. Sure, not all his teammates were into that kind of thing, but Brody worked harder than any of them, and when he was done training he always came to the horrible, stark conclusion that he had nothing else in his life outside of swimming.
Plus, people bought him a lot of alcohol when he won races.
The point is not that Brody drinks a lot and possibly has a problem. The point is that when you drink a lot, you wake up in some strange situations. Sometimes he wakes up in houses he doesn’t recognize with women he can’t remember. He has, on occasion, woke up without his clothes -- and, like, he seriously can’t find them anywhere. He’s woken up on the deck of a pool when he definitely wasn’t wearing swim trunks, and he’s woken up in cars that don’t belong to him without anyone else around.
After the Olympics, one might think that got better, seeing as he had no cash to get drunk with. Turns out, people will still buy beers when you break out the gold medals, and the situations just got stranger because he seriously has no other place to go. He tried to avoid park benches because that’s not a headline he needs, but piers? It’s easy to assume that CJ rescuing him that night wasn’t his first foray into star gazing under planks of wood.
The reason Brody thinks about all this with some detail is because this situation is stranger than all of that.
Like, it’s strange, okay?
Stranger than the time he woke up with like three cats on him and two girls covering him with catnip.
Because he’s moving.
He realizes that his eyes are open rather belatedly, though it’s not totally his fault. His heart hurts like a son of a bitch and also it’s, like, really dark.
He tries to remember if it’s supposed to be dark.
Brody can’t remember shit, though.
Then, suddenly, he’s not moving.
The transition is a jolt, and Brody actually rolls forward, colliding with something solid. Everything smells stale, a little like gasoline and rotten eggs. It’s disgusting, and he’s tempted to hurl.
Brody has a sensitive stomach.
He throws up at the drop of a hat.
He’s kind of gotten used to it. After yakking in the pool at the Olympics, all other vomiting situations have not seemed so bad. Something about this situation tells him he doesn’t want to, though.
As he’s contemplating that, there’s a thump and a creak. Then, for no apparent reason, it’s bright out. Not sunlight, but artificial, and it’s cheap, electric and blinding.
That does nothing for Brody’s queasiness. He’s pretty sure he’s going to lose it, when a few people come into view. One dude is generically dangerous looking, wearing a wife beater with tattoos up and down his arms. He’s got some stupid goatee and he scowls a lot. The other guy Brody doesn’t recognize quite either, but the dark hoodie looks familiar somehow.
Not familiar.
Weird.
Shit.
Brody is just starting to put the pieces together when they both reach down. Brody’s just conscious enough to know that he should move but not conscious enough to actually make it happen, and all he manages to do is mutter something unintelligible as they hoist him up.
They manhandle him with some difficulty, and it’s a dizzying process as Brody is lifted. His feet catch on something, someone curses in Spanish, and Brody is hauled until he’s dangling upright between the two men.
His head is being stupid right now and won’t hold itself up, and being upright has made him all kinds of wobbly. He doesn’t have any use of his feet yet, and the dudes have his arms around their shoulders as they turn around.
One of them reaches out and closes the trunk.
The trunk, Brody realizes.
He was in the trunk.
Shit.
Brody really realizes that now.
He was in the trunk.
You don’t put passengers in the trunk.
You put bodies in the trunk.
As if to reassure him, Brody’s heart skips a beat and he feels his face flush with panic. It’s only now that he remembers the familiar hoodie, the weird guy under the pier who punched him out on the beach.
That means Brody’s been kidnapped.
Why the hell has Brody been kidnapped?
“Are you sure this guy will do the job?” the nondescript guy asks, his accent heavy.
“Sure, the team is everything to Buchannon,” the hoodie guy says. His accent’s not heavy, but he sounds even creepier than he looks. “I’ve cased him out. This loser lives with him.”
Brody takes this personally for some reason, because not everyone can be a criminal and earn lots of money on the black market. And elite lifeguards don’t earn elite paychecks and seriously. “It’s temporary,” Brody tries to say in his defense.
It comes out in a series of grunts.
It’s not enough to defend himself.
It is enough for the goons to realize that Brody’s more conscious than they’d hoped. Suddenly, a third man comes into Brody’s limited field of vision and he wraps his fists into Brody’s hair, roughly wrenching his head back to look at him.
That’s about as fun as it sounds.
Brody’s stomach gurgles again. He kind of wants to puke on the dude, just out of principle.
Then he gets a better look at this dude.
This isn’t a goon.
No, this is the head of the gang they’ve been tracking. The guy who has ordered the execution of at least three dozen people. This is the guy who pulls triggers and chops up bodies. Shit, this guy scorches corpses in cars to make a point. He’s vindictive and ruthless. If he knows who you are, then it’s only because he wants to hurt you in the worst way possible.
And now he’s got Brody.
“Do you think Buchannon will come for you?” the guy asks. Brody can’t remember his name. Brody can’t remember anything important except that this guy is rumored to have once cut open a dude’s stomach while he was awake and left him out in the desert for the birds to eat before was even dead.
There’s no way to verify that kind of thing, but Brody’s not sure he wants to verify it right now.
Not when the guy is literally in a position to snap Brody’s neck in half.
“Hm?” the man asks, yanking on Brody’s hair a little bit. “Or should I just kill you now?”
Yeah, Brody’s in no rush to die. And honestly, the implication does make him a little angry.
He’s still an impulsive and reckless moron, you see. Brody sees a bad situation and always knows exactly the right way to make it worse.
Therefore, he does the only thing he can think of: he sneers.
Shit, he really sneers. His feet won’t hold him up and his neck is dangerously exposed, but Brody sneers for all he’s worth. “I think he’ll come,” he says thickly, and he’s glad that his tongue is working marginally better this time. “To kick your asses.”
It’s supposed to be threatening.
Brody doesn’t choose to think about how completely non-threatening he is right now, given his predicament.
Still, it’s disappointing when the guy smirks back at him. “Perfect,” he says. Then he pulls a gun from his pocket, using his free hand to place it gruffly beneath Brody’s chin while his other hand is still tangled in Brody’s hair. “Then you shall be our bait.”
Brody’s bravado crumbles, like, instantly. He feels tears burn his eyes, and bile is rising in his throat so fast that he can smell the acid in his nose.
The gun digs deeper into the soft flesh there, and he man gets close enough for Brody to smell his breath. “Live bait is good for catching fish,” he says, voice dangerously low. “I have found it unnecessary when catching humans, however.”
Brody’s mind races and comes up with nothing. Completely nothing. He sort of wishes that his life would flash before his eyes, but all he can think about is how he never clocked out at HQ so technically he’s still getting paid for this. That’s a stupid thing to think about. It’s not like he can collect a paycheck when he’s got a bullet through his skull.
Then, the man lets the gun fall. “You are lucky, however,” he says, and he smiles a horrible smile at Brody with perfect teeth that gleam like the sun. “I am not a man who likes to leave these things to chance.”
Brody blinks rapidly a few times, and he can feel the throb of the pulse on his throat as it’s still exposed to the man before him. It’s so terrifying that Brody doesn’t let himself hope.
“If I kill you, I squander my security,” the man says, and it’s pretty clear to Brody that this isn’t something he’s coming up with at the top of his head. Guys like this, who run gangs and weapons trafficking rings, they’ve got to be kind of smart, you know. There’s a reason Brody’s time as a criminal began and ended with one really poorly conceived attempt that immediately got him arrested. Because Brody’s a moron, and guys like this are smart. “I did not go through the inconvenience of kidnapping you off the beach for nothing. If the point was to kill you, I would have done it by now.”
This is not nearly as reassuring as the dude seems to think it is.
The man shakes his head, like he’s somehow disappointed in Brody. Like he’s a letdown of a hostage. Brody is not sure how he’s failed at this, but it doesn’t surprise him. “No, I need to keep you alive,” the man continues, and the smile he forces onto his lips is horrible to watch. It gets worse with every passing second. “I need to make sure that Buchannon brings me all his evidence, holding nothing back. And I need him to come himself, alone, no cops.”
That’s not going to be a problem.
Mitch hates calling the cops.
He wonders vaguely if having Brody’s life on the line will make a difference. He suspects not.
“Buchannon is not a stupid man,” the guy says, giving Brody a long condescending look that suggests that Brody is a stupid man. “He will want reassurances, and you having breath in your lungs will make sure he complies with every demand I make.”
This is a long, roundabout way of telling Brody that he’s not going to die. At least, he thinks that’s what this is.
As it is, Brody can only nod along at the insinuation. As if to say, yeah, that’s a pretty good point.
It’s not much of an effort, sadly. His head is still being wrenched back painfully. All he does is twitch a little bit, and he’s pretty sure it just looks pathetic. Though, given his current situation, Brody’s not sure there’s any other way to look. No doubt, if there was, Mitch would find it. Mitch would somehow manage to look seamlessly cool and like he was the one in control.
But then, there’s a reason Mitch isn’t the one in this situation.
And that Brody is.
All the same, it’s a relief when the guy puts his gun away. Brody is aware that this just mean he’s going to die later instead of now, but he still breathes. This is what you do when someone removes a gun from your vicinity. It’s reflex.
The fact that Brody visibly relaxes seems to amuse the guy. He seems pleased that Brody’s so clearly affected by his actions. No doubt it’s a power thing. Power that this dude has and Brody most definitely does not.
“And besides,” the man says, like he’s thought of the best idea ever. “Now I can see the look on Buchannon’s face when I kill you,” he says. “And getting rid of two bodies at once is all about time management.”
Brody’s not sure if he’s offended or just plain ready to shit his pants in terror. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter.
The man rears back, using his fist to smash in Brody’s nose. Blood spurts. Pain explodes. Someone laughs.
And that, as they say, is that.
-o-
Who the hell says that anyway? Mitch? Does Mitch say it?
Whatever, Brody decides. Mitch is full of shit.
And Brody’s life is never so neat and easy.
He even has to die the hard way.
-o-
He wakes to the feeling of movement again, and even though it feels like his head is being constructed in a vice, he vaguely remembers that this happened before. When he was thrown in a trunk and kidnapped.
He’s still kidnapped as best he can tell, but this doesn’t seem like a trunk for some reason. It’s a weird thing to have enough context to know that. Like, no one should have experience riding in trunks, thus making it possible to conclude that nope, this isn’t a trunk.
But yeah, this isn’t a trunk. It’s not enclosed, it’s not dark. There’s no musty smell, no gasoline burning his nostrils to make him want to heave.
He still wants to heave, of course. But that’s probably just the fact that he has a concussion.
So, why is he moving?
He’s not being carried, and he’s actually moving kind of fast. It feels somewhat unsafe, but nothing about this experience has felt safe. What’s weirder is that he can taste fresh air.
He’s outside.
And he’s wet.
At first, he considers the possibility that he’s pissed his pants. While he doesn’t rule that out, he’s not sure his own piss could hit him in the face. Like, not without some effort anyway. And he’s very wet, and Brody has a big bladder but that’s ridiculous.
Obviously, it’s not pee.
It’s water.
So maybe it’s raining.
To find out, he makes a conscious choice to open his eyes. It’s a choice, sure, but Brody is not sure it’s actually a good choice. The second his eyes open, the sunlight is blinding and glaring, so intense that his headache ratchets up, like, 13 notches and he thinks his head might actually explode.
It take him a minute to get used to it, to get the pain levels down to something that doesn’t feel head-exploding. When he manages that, he thinks things have to look better.
They don’t.
Because Brody’s not in a car. He’s not on a bike or a scooter or even a shitty skateboard or something. Because there’s no pavement in front of him. Not even grass or dirt.
It’s water.
He’s wet because he’s on the water.
This is a boat.
Now, Brody’s got nothing in particular against boats. He uses boats a lot, actually. He’s learned how to drive one without crashing it and everything. But he’s not just on a boat.
No, he’s tied to a boat.
His arms are stretched out to his sides and he’s lying down on the front with his legs dangling over the edge. This precarious position is made worse by the fact that they’re moving across the water at, like, a really good clip. Craning his neck, he tries to see how well he’s secured, and all he sees is wet rope and the dude in the black hoodie grinning at him from behind the windshield.
“Don’t worry!” he yells over the roar of the engine, the deafening hum of the water. “We’re just going for a little ride!”
That’s a shitty thing to say because this isn’t a little ride. Little rides don’t involve anyone being strapped to anything, much less the front of a moving boat. It’s all worse because when Brody does get his eyes to focus better, he sees that they’re not heading back to land or anything convenient.
No, in front of them is open water.
Shit, Brody blinks against the spray of the water. There are no other boats in the vicinity, which means they’re already far out and going farther. There are lots of reasons to go on long boat rides that are totally innocent.
There are basically no reasons to go on long boat rides with someone strapped to the front of the boat.
Okay, that’s not true, there are reasons.
It’s just that they’re all bad ones.
Sinister ones.
Ones that involve Brody not making the trip home.
Well, Brody thinks as he starts to panic in earnest, this day just keeps getting better.
-o-
It’s hard to say how much time passes. As far as Brody is concerned, any amount of time being strapped to a moving boat going out to sea is too much. At this point, his panic has reached some sort of strange plateau, wherein he’s not actually capable of panicking anymore because there’s just too much panic to process. Instead, he feels a little numb with the deadening realization that this is going to be over soon.
One way or another.
Just all the ways are, like, bad.
Brody can’t help himself. He thinks of as many ways for this to end as possible.
He thinks of someone purposefully flipping the boat, sending him at 30 miles per hour face first into the surf. It’d be like a belly flop, only the kind of belly flop that crushes your rib cage and shatters your face. His face already feels shattered, but he knows it can get worse.
That seems a little reckless, so Brody then considers going out to the middle of the ocean and then sinking the boat. Letting it go down, Brody still on top. That one seems a little familiar to Brody -- it’s like being dropped off the back of a boat in a cage, funny enough -- but he’s pretty sure that it’s a lot deeper out here and he wonders if he’d even hit the bottom before he died.
It seems possible, though unlikely, that they’ll lower him in the water and let his bleeding face attract sharks. This seems unnecessarily difficult, but then, these are the people who literally strapped him to a boat.
Who straps people to a boat?
Or any moving vehicle for that matter?
Sure, Brody’s thought about strapping himself to the back of a jetski when Mitch is at the controls because the dude is huge and slippery and drives like a maniac, but he’s never actually thought about it seriously much less done it. Even Leeds, who had tried to kill him loads of times, had never been quite this particular about it.
Then, he considers, maybe they’re just going to shoot him. Leave him tied there, dead and bleeding and gross, to be a super hideous hood ornament for whoever finds him next. To that end, maybe they’ll just leave him there to starve to death, staring up at the sky until the sun bleaches him and birds start to eat him.
Birds do shit like that, don’t they? Don’t they peck your eyes out?
Possibly, Brody considers, they’ll just keep driving forever, and Brody’s a slightly less hideous but no less weird hood ornament. Maybe, if he’s lucky, they’ll feed him before his arms rot out of his shoulder sockets.
These possibilities all seem equally likely and unlikely to Brody. This shit doesn’t happen in the real world, but Brody no longer exists in the real world. He exists in Mitch’s alternative lifeguard reality, wherein people in swimsuits saved the day all the time. He wonders, if only a little, whether or not eventualities about being strapped to a moving vehicle were actually mentioned in the fine print of the Baywatch contract.
At this point, it wouldn’t surprise Brody.
He thinks nothing will surprise him.
But as they come around, the boat starts to slow. Brody strains his neck to see that they’re approaching another boat.
A yellow one.
It’s a lifeguard boat.
And Mitch is standing on the deck looking pissed.
Well, go figure.
That’s not the ending Brody expects.
He’s not sure yet if it’s going to be one he likes.
-o-
The conversation starts like this:
“I’m here, just like you asked. Now let him go.”
Mitch says that like he means it, like he actually has some leverage here, like they’re not both completely and totally screwed. Brody has to wonder if Mitch can recognize that much, that this is so obviously a trap that it’s not even funny. Not that anything about gang members is funny. Neither is being tied to a boat, for that matter.
But hey, at least it’s not moving anymore.
Really, that just makes it worse. Now Brody has the time to think about how exposed and vulnerable he is and how utterly disastrous the outcome of this conversation will probably be.
The black hoodie dude is still just barely within Brody’s field of vision. There’s more movement, and Brody recognizes the super not-friendly voice of the guy in charge. Brody still can’t remember his name. “Not so fast,” he says smoothly, like he does this all the time. Like he always negotiates with people strapped to boats in front of them. No big deal. “There were conditions.”
Conditions like come and prepare to die. Those are the implied conditions, anyway.
Brody can crane his neck and see Mitch. The guy doesn’t even flinch. “I’m alone,” he says. “No place for anyone to hide out here.”
“Your radio?” the guy asks.
Mitch literally yanks it out and throws the receiver in the ocean. It’s kind of impressive, but Brody’s not really in a position to be impressed right now.
Brody can almost feel the guy smirking. “And the evidence?”
Mitch produced a file folder and holds it up. That’s clearly supposed to be significant, though Brody thinks the bad guys have the advantage in terms of presentation. Mitch has a file folder; they have Brody tied to a boat.
Mitch is losing in the theatrics department for once.
“All here,” Mitch says, and it’s clear that he thinks his word should be good enough.
The black hoodie guy steps over and reaches across the distance between the two boats. Brody sees just enough to see the folder exchange hands before it disappears from his view and black hoodie guy stands next to his head again.
“You have been thorough, my friend,” the guy says. He sounds friendly. If friends were the types to kill you in your sleep.
“Alvarez, I don’t give a shit,” he says.
That’s the name. Alvarez. Brody wonder why he couldn’t remember that earlier. Possibly the concussion. Possibly the trauma of having a gun shoved at your head.
“I did what you asked,” Mitch continues, like he still thinks that complying and making demands is going to help anything. “Now let him go.”
Mitch pointedly does not look at Brody, and Brody cannot decide if this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it’s kind of humiliating to be strapped to the front of a boat. It’s not the thing you think about when you first realize you’ve been strapped to a boat, but the longer they’re sitting there, the more ridiculous Brody feels. It feels like this is his fault, like he should have been able to avoid this, like he’s a moron for letting this happen.
On the other hand, Brody’s tied to a boat. He’s been kidnapped. A little reassurance from his best friend that things are under control might actually make him feel a little less like he’s going to die here.
Then again, maybe that’s the point.
Maybe Mitch is afraid Brody’s going to die here, too. Maybe that’s why he can’t make eye contact.
Shit, Brody is going to start crying here. In order to not cry, he mildly hyperventilates instead.
By the way, yes, mild hyperventilation is a thing.
If you want to see that thing for yourself, get strapped to a boat during a hostage exchange and see what you do.
“And how do I know you did not make copies?” Alvarez asks, and it’s a fair question. Well, fair in the sense that it’s logical. Obviously Alvarez would want to know, but since Alvarez is a murderous criminal, Brody is not about to afford him any benefit of the doubt. Ever. “Or that you have no contacted the police?”
“You don’t know,” Mitch snaps like he’s exasperated by the question.
Only Mitch would be exasperated with gang members.
Gang members who are trying -- and probably succeeding -- in killing them.
Brody isn’t sure that it’s much consolation when Alvarez agrees with him. “That is not a good game for you to play, Mr. Buchannon,” he warns. “Not when your friend’s life is in such a precarious position.”
This time, Mitch does look at Brody. Just for a second.
The frustration breaks a little on his face.
And Brody may have pissed his pants.
Mitch is making this shit up right now, and Brody’s so screwed.
“It’s not a game,” Mitch says, and he still sounds pissed but there’s something less defiant in his voice this time. “It’s only been 12 hours since you took Brody. I haven’t had time to set up anything or do something to back this up. I came here for Brody, and I’m prepared to give you everything you want to get him back.”
This is something.
First, 12 hours? Shit, how hard did they hit Brody?
Second, 12 hours? Shit, Mitch might actually be telling them the truth. 12 hours isn’t enough time to plan some super fancy rescue with all the bells and whistles. 12 hours is just enough time to throw some shit in a boat and go on a suicide mission. It’s the stupid, impulsive way Brody would do it.
So what the hell is Mitch doing?
Is he ramped up on urchin venom again?
“I am a bit surprised,” Alvarez says, and he actually does sound a little surprised. But in that way that you can tell that it’s a pleasant surprise. Like he asked for all this shit for Christmas and all of it magically appeared under the tree.
For the record, that’s never happened to Brody. Never. He’d learned to just stop making Christmas lists by the time he was 8 because what the hell was the point in setting himself up for a disappointment. All those years of getting underwear and school supplies from foster parents and group home donations made him think that Santa was a dick.
Alvarez doesn’t need Santa, though. Apparently when you’re a rich criminal with a penchant for killing people, you tend to get what you want anyway.
“The evidence is here, and so are you,” he says, and he’s practically crooning now. “All alone.”
Mitch looks like he’s ready to growl. It would be a more effective sort of look if he had any sort of power in this situation.
It’s only then that Brody realizes that the situation is about to shift. It starts with the bemusement in Alvarez’s voice, and it’s heightened by the fact that black hoodie guy has progressively moved out of Brody’s field of vision. In fact, by the time Brody notices this, he can’t see black hoodie guy at all. The engine is still idly for some reason, and Alvarez chuckles.
This is part of the plan, Brody realizes dumbly. Of course it is, but strapped to the front of the boat, he’s starting to realize that the plan involves more than strapping him to a boat. There is an endgame here, a very specific endgame, and Alvarez is ready to close it out.
It ends with Brody strapped to the front of a boat with an active engine and the bad guys disappearing.
It ends with Mitch willingly walking into a trap.
Mostly, Brody knows somehow, it ends now.
“Exactly as demanded,” Mitch says. His eyes are narrowed; his entire body is taut and ready. He knows something is coming, but Brody’s not sure Mitch has appreciated just how final this endgame is going to be. “Now let Brody go.”
Anyone else, they probably would have folded.
But Alvarez laughs, voice more distant that before. “He’s all yours,” he says, a little singsong in his intonation. “If you can catch him.”
Shit, Brody thinks. That sounds bad.
It sounds worse when the engine revs, kicking into high gear. There are two splashes in the water, and the boat lurches forward so violently that Brody thinks he’s going to be tipped over into the sea. It corrects itself, and Brody is facing out toward the open ocean once more.
It’s too fast, too out of control, too chaotic.
It’s too much.
Brody closes his eyes.
The start sucks.
And this time, he doesn’t want to see the end.
NEXT