Nyle Hamilton was the sole offspring of a nuclear family that took refuge in the social and polite confines of middle Tennessee. An upper middle-class neighborhood where fathers worked long hours and mothers stayed close to home, and they quietly argued at night over sexual transgressions. Children wasted hours in classrooms and afterward battled the emotional solitude of their everyday existence with whatever drug they could get their hands on. Boring is safe was the mantra preached to them almost daily. Nyle watched his self-proclaimed anarchist girlfriend pull on her black leather gloves. She then turned and roughly grabbed the back of his head, kissing him full on the mouth. He could taste the wine they drank hours earlier as she rolled her tongue around the inside of his mouth. Her breaths were ragged with lust and anticipation not necessarily sexual; she pushed her body closer to him.
"You guys can fuck afterward." Evan said pulling on his own gloves.
"Screw you." Nyle playfully insulted. "You just better not pussy out."
There were four of them huddled together in the alley behind the only Turkish restaurant in town. Dressed all in dark colors black and navy blue brandishing cold steel weapons in their young gloved fists, they resembled phantom harbingers to an ancient philosophical evil. Evan and his twin brother Charlie first met Nyle at Tennessee Tech University. The three quickly bonded over late night study sessions and Titan's football games. Rachel was discovered during a pub crawl in Nashville one night. She locked onto Nyle's confidence pegging him as the alpha male of the trio and noticed that those attributes followed him in most social interactions. His boyish good looks and traditionally masculine attitude played off her own feminine wiles, and soon the two became one nihilistic entity.
Charlie swayed on his feet a little due to the oxycontin he washed down with his earlier wine at dinner. Being the most skeptical of the group he needed the opiate fog to quiet the doubts he had about what Nyle and Rachel had proposed to them. His brother Evan dabbed at the sweat on his forehead and grabbed his shoulders to steady him.
"Charles you dummy you took too many pills." Rachel giggled. "You may not even appreciate this fully like the rest of us."
"He'll be fine. You have to admit this shit is pretty crazy." Evan responded for him.
Nyle Hamilton quietly gazed around the corner of the restaurant down the abandoned alley through a pair of infrared night vision binoculars he bought off the internet. It was well after midnight and a cold white moon was arrested behind a dense wall of clouds, as if even the course of nature nodded it's approval of the madness they came to bring.
The streets were empty the four ghouls discovered as they marched single file out from behind their hiding spot. Their targeted house was only a few blocks away, so it was decided to park their car and venture in on foot. Rachel grew restless with each step she took getting closer to the hot red moment before them. She was inebriated just enough to dampen impulses, but not rob her of the full ecstasy of the experience. After all it took her months to even gather the courage to bring the idea to her lover. They stumbled out of some dive bar in Cookeville one night after three hours of heavy drinking and snorting a few rails of coke in the bathroom. She had looked up at the stars that night and saw something she knew no one else would ever see and was swept away by the sadness of it. Word vomit was the only way to describe it as she drunkenly blurted her heart and secret desires to him. He being equally intoxicated didn't really understand her but was touched by her passion and moved by her tears. Despite the chemicals in their blood they fucked for hours that night. In the morning she repeated herself and waited to be rebuffed, but the honey blonde locks and dimpled chin on his smooth baby face masked and sheltered a force of equal darkness, and he just smiled back at her as he ate his morning bagel.
"Tell me how much again?' Evan asked Nyle as he walked behind his brother to steady him.
"Relax it's not just about the money bro." Nyle turned to answer him. "Take it all in from this moment on my friend."
"Yeah, don't ruin this with your capitalist ideologies." Rachel added.
Charlie just nervously belched and stopped to dry heave as the bile came up to scorch his esophagus. Rachel rolled her eyes as they stopped so the younger twin could regain his composure. She flipped the five inch kitchen knife from hand to hand learning it's balance getting used to the cheap walnut grips. A black hunger was birthed in her gut and radiated to her limbs, heightening her senses. The goober twins only saw green, she wanted to wash it all away with waves of dark red, hoping that her lover would follow and be able to bring her back to the shores of sanity.
"You good Chuck?" Nyle asked without a hint of judgment or displeasure. "We can go it alone if we have too. We're just trying to share something with you two, out of love."
Charlie straightened up and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "I'm good bro, just fucked up off those pills."
"Then let's get to it." Nyle Hamilton said marching them deeper into darkness.
***
"Nyle Hamilton. Got pulled over for a DUI but happened to have some pills in his pocket." Kenneth Waters declared slapping a manila file folder on his desk. "Failed to show up at his court date, out on a ten-thousand-dollar bond."
Gilbert Swatz sat across from him picking his teeth with a mint flavored toothpick. "This the kid from Cookeville?" He asked flipping through the file.
"Yeah but he got busted in Nashville." Kenneth answered taking a bite of his pungent tuna salad sandwich. "Mom put her brand new Nissan Pathfinder up as collateral."
"No shit? She must be beside herself." Gilbert chuckled. "What's daddy think about his little problem child?"
"All but given up on the little shithead. Spoke to him earlier today, mega pissed about possibly losing that SUV." The slim bail bondsman offered around bites of his lunch. "Said his boy changed after going off to college, more recently got worse after hooking up with some girl out of Nashville. She's over at Vanderbilt University, good place to start but don't have an exact address."
"She staying in the dorms or an apartment off campus?"
"Not sure. He said he only met her a few times at their home."
Gilbert, a senior bail enforcement agent and half of a two man team sat back in his chair and looked around the small office they were in, letting the possibilities play out in his head. Water Under The Bridge Bonding was a square brick building that squatted in the shadow of the Electric Company building in downtown Nashville. Kenneth cleverly pieced his company's name together with the help of his third wife, who happened to talk him into financing her enterprise after binge watching some actor perpetrate the role on a reality television show. She gutted it out the first four years before slowly becoming increasingly absent until finally dumping the entire charade into her husband's hands, trotting off in search of the next fad. She was also the culprit behind the sandwich Kenneth fought down.
"Let me know something because I got some new guy sniffing around looking for a chance. Say's he'll go as low as three percent on the bond." He warned the experienced bail enforcement agent.
"Yeah this kid sounds like a fuck up, still enrolled in school too, shouldn't take too long to track him down." Gilbert answered him. "Justin is running down a lead on this other thing. I'm supposed to catch up with him later this evening."
Wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin. "Get him up to speed and keep me posted."
***
Not being full law enforcement officials caused a lot of issues mainly the lack of any real authority they could wield, Gilbert Swatz lamented. He had sent his partner Justin Hernandez over to the Vanderbilt campus to try and get a location on Nyle Hamilton's girlfriend Rachel but was legally unable to gain any ground. After three days of hanging around Justin left a few business cards wrapped in twenty dollar bills with a few key people promising to call if they spotted the raven-haired beauty. Gilbert had done pretty much the same thing for Nyle at Tennessee Tech University after learning that he had not attended classes in well over a week. He finished his cheeseburger that his wife had made him at home as Justin slowly pulled into a parking garage in the metro area of Nashville, Tennessee. Gilbert unbuckled his seat belt and just looked over at Justin behind the steering wheel and gave him that bloated helpless look he often did after being forced to eat on the go.
"What?" Justin asked lighting a cigarette. "Your wife sent you out of your house with two fucking burgers."
