Chapter Text
Doug had to keep a level head in all of this, he kept telling himself.
Maddie had left.
That much was pretty clear, by the way she hadn’t come home from her night shift that morning. And he tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, Maddie was scheduled to work in the ER that night, he knew those shifts could run over from time to time. So he got up that morning and went to the hospital, stopping at her favorite coffee shop along the way. He was going to give her a little treat as he offered to drive her home after her extended shift.
Only when he walked into the ER and made eye contact with the charge nurse, he knew that Maddie wasn’t there.
“Where’s Maddie?” he asked her, walking up to the nurses’ station and setting the coffee on the counter.
The nurse shrugged her shoulders, turning away from him. “She clocked out about half an hour ago, must have just missed her.”
“Then why does her phone show her still being here?” Doug asked, leaning over the counter slightly.
She turned to him, leveling him with a glare. “How am I supposed to know?” she asked. “Maybe if you actually liked each other, she would text you.”
Doug chuckled as he leant away from the counter, taking a step back and turning around, walking out of the building. He went back home, Maddoe’s car not on the driveway or in the garage and waited.
This wouldn’t be the first time she thought about running away. This wouldn’t be the first time she actually tried to do it. But she always came back in less than twenty four hours.
Though the next morning, Maddie still hadn’t come home.
So… she had finally left him. And well, he couldn’t allow that.
It wasn’t hard to figure out where Maddie had gone.
Doug knew that she had left. Left more than just him and their house, but left the city and state altogether.
She wouldn’t have gone to one of her coworkers’ houses, it would be all too easy for him to find her that way. She also wouldn’t have gone to her parents’ house. Despite her parents’ dislike for him, they did get along marginally well with his parents.
So unless she had gone to some friend from college who moved out of state, and Doug highly doubted she did that, that left one person.
Her brother, Evan Buckley.
Unsurprisingly, Evan didn’t do much to hide his online presence.
All Doug had to do was type a couple variations of his name into the instagram search, sort through the fifteen other Evan Buckley’s instagram brought up, to find the account named Evan ‘Buck’ Buckley.
It wasn’t even made private.
Once he found the account, it didn’t take Doug long to figure out where Buck was living now. A few of the most recent posts were him at his job as a firefighter. Scrolling down, there were a handful of pictures of him with a red headed woman, probably a girlfriend of some sort even though she looked a decade or two older than him. And then, scrolling down a little more, he found a post from what had to be Buck’s first day as a firefighter, him standing big and proud in front of a fire truck with the number 118 and letters LAFD on it.
So a firefighter in Los Angeles, huh?
A bit far away, Doug had to admit, but he had heard that the kid left home and went on one of the ‘self-discovery’ journeys over five years ago now, so it’s not that surprising he wound up on the other side of the country.
And Doug had to admit that it was the perfect place for Maddie to go to. She probably thought he wouldn’t follow her all the way out there. If Doug was anyone else, he probably wouldn’t.
She had to be proven wrong, however.
Finding the address of the 118 took all of two google searches, the flight across the country cheaper than he had expected, considering he wasn’t traveling at peak vacation season.
Once in Los Angeles, he got a rental car, not the classier ones he would usually go for, but a simple gray Nissan Ultima, a blink and you won’t have seen it while driving down the street type of car. Nothing that would catch someone’s attention if he was following them or parked on the side of the road a little too long.
He then drove straight from the airport to the fire station, parking directly across the street. Luckily enough, this firehouse was located in one of the more built up parts of the city, nearly every street was filled with cars parked on the side. SO it shouldn’t look too out of place for him to park here, and he just so happened to be lucky and get a spot in direct view of the firehouse. Then, all he had to do was wait.
He hoped that Evan was scheduled to work today, he didn’t want to wait forever to see him come into work. About half an hour into his wait, Doug spotted him. Evan was more filled out than the last time Doug had seen him, over a decade ago now, but still unmistakable. He walked out of the station with two other men, a hispanic and an asian as they walked up to one of the fire trucks parked right outside the large firehouse doors and began giving it a spraydown.
So Evan was working today, that made all of this infinitely easier.
He waited, sitting in the car, for Evan’s shift to end so he could follow the man and see where he lived, see if Maddie was living with him.
The shift didn’t end until the next morning. The entire time Doug had been sitting there, they had left on two calls. It was all alright though. Doug had done some googling about firefighter shifts while he was waiting. He knew that most departments worked twenty four hour shifts, getting off in the morning. And while he waited, he did some light sleep, enough to get some rest, but not enough for anything unexpected to happen.
Ten minutes after 9 a.m. the next morning, he spotted Evan walking outside of the station and getting into the Jeep parked on the side of the building. Doud had to huff a laugh when he saw that.
Fitting that somehow both him and Maddie were into Jeep Wranglers. Despite everything, it had taken years for him to convince Maddie to get rid of that ancient Jeep she had when they met.
When he saw Evan talking to Maddie at the cafe, it took everything in him to hold back from walking in there and making his presence known, making her aware that no matter where she went, he would find her. But he couldn’t do that, he told himself. He had to get her to want to come back to him, he only had to figure out a way to do that.
It was alright, he kept telling himself. Evan was Maddie’s brother. There was nothing wrong with his wife getting brunch with her brother.
He just had to keep telling himself that.
Sure, she had to have been here for a couple weeks at this point. Longer than he would have liked. But he just had to wait, watch her for another week or so and she would be going back home.
When they were apparently finished with their meal, Doug watched as Maddie and Evan walked out of the cafe to the Jeep, both of them climbing inside. He followed them, thankful that the one thing he never really liked about Jeeps, their very distinct outer design, was helping him keep track of it on the road. A couple of blocks down the road Buck turned into the parking garage underneath a large building that Doug could only guess were condos.
It seemed slightly upscale for what he thought Evan could afford, but what did he know about Evan’s finances?
Doug pulled onto the side of the road directly opposite the entrance to the garage, and cursed when he saw the sign indicating ‘15 minute parking only.’ So much for getting lucky with a second parking space.
So he waited half an hour, before he drove around the block and parked in the same spot pushing his luck yet again as he waited thirty minutes before making another loop. And then, in that third period, he got lucky and saw the Jeep pull out of the parking garage. He waited a moment for the Jeep to get to the light at the end of the block before pulling out onto the road and following after them.
He followed for a couple of miles, always leaving at least one car in between the rental and the Jeep before they turned down a much more residential looking road. He saw them pull over, the side of the road mostly empty with only a few parked cars dotted alongside it. He continued driving slowly past them as they got out of the car, knowing it would tip them off if they saw him pull over and not get out. He kept an eye on them in the rearview mirror until he got to the end of the block just out of sight of them and did a u-turn.
He parked the car across the street, about one hundred feet down, and watched them, sinking slightly into the car’s seat. Evan and Maddie were standing outside a gate that looked to lead to a small courtyard of apartments for a couple minutes until another car drove up and parked behind Evan’s Jeep. Doug watched as a woman got out, haphazardly holding a clipboard and a couple folders in her arms. She walked up to Maddie and Evan and greeted them. From the way they turned to talk to the woman, it looked as if they vaguely knew who she was, but were not completely familiar with her. The woman then took out a keychain from her pocket with a number of keys on it. So she was some sort of real estate agent, Doug thought.
Was Evan looking at moving from the one condo building? Or was Maddie looking for a place of her own? If it was the former, well, Evan could do whatever he wanted, Doug didn’t care. If it was Maddie, that would mean that she was working on setting up to live here.
Doug couldn’t allow that.
But it was too soon for him to show himself yet. He needed to watch them for a bit longer before he showed himself.
From the first day, it wasn’t hard to keep an eye on them, exceedingly easy, actually.
It turned out that the place Evan and Maddie had checked out on his first day following them, they were moving into. Doug watched them as they moved in, Evan had rounded up a number of his coworkers to help move furniture in.
That meant that Maddie was making moves to settle down here, not good.
Doug kept his eyes on them throughout the afternoon as the group carried furniture into the place. All of them looked pretty fit, which wasn’t surprising given that they were probably all first responders of some sort.
Buck studied the group walking in and out of the apartment that day.
Maddie and Evan, he easily recognized.
Then there were the asian and hispanic man he had seen on the days he watched Evan at the firehouse.
Doug knew that he could only gain so much information from watching Maddie and Evan from afar. And if he was going to be successful here, he was going to need to get more information, especially information on anything they had planned.
Doug didn’t know what prompted him to talk and strike up a friendship with the asian man he kept spotting around Maddie and Evan. Maybe it was that the guy just looked a little too trusting. Maybe it was that he seemed like the best way to get information on both of them. Maybe it was both reasons.
The man, Chimney, was all too trusting it turned out, even giving Doug his number the second time they had ‘run into’ each other.
And once Doug had that, it made this whole plan infinitely easier.
Doug had managed to convince Chimney to go out with him for lunch a couple of times. And with each encounter, Doug had seamlessly brought up the topic of the Buckley siblings in their conversation. Chimney had been all too willing to talk about both of them, so much so that he probably didn’t even question it despite that, to Chimney’s knowledge, he was under the impression that Doug, or ‘Jason’, had never even met them.
But by bringing them up, Doug was able to learn a number of things about how Chimney was involved with the Buckleys, and most importantly, the state of the two siblings' relationship.
And that was just what Doug thought it would be when he realized Maddie had run off to LA. Evan was fiercely over protective of his sister. And while according to Chimney, Maddie had been grateful for the overprotectiveness at first, she had been starting to grow comfortable here and was trying to get Evan to lighten up now.
And well, it was way too soon for Maddie to be growing comfortable now.
Chimney almost never hung out with both Buckleys together, apparently Evan had gotten tired of being the third wheel between them after one night of karaoke, even though Chimney had told Doug he and Maddie ‘weren’t even dating.’
And Doug believed Chimney when he said that he wasn’t dating Maddie right now. But he also knew that that would only be for a matter of time. The last time they had seen each other in person, Chimney had asked him for advice on asking a woman out, and judging by how much he had seen him and Maddie together, there was only one possible woman that could be.
As much as, if the circumstances were different, he might actually like to make friends with Chimney, the man was interested in his wife, and Doug couldn’t allow that.
He had to make his move soon. And what better way than to make Maddie want to come back to him than to go after her younger brother.
Fifteen minutes past eleven, Doug watched as a truck pulled up on the street outside of Maddie and Evan’s place. He didn’t know the name of the man who drove it, but he knew whose it was, that one hispanic man who worked with Evan and Chimney.
From Chimney’s text, Doug knew that the two had been out most of that afternoon and evening together. And watching as Evan got out of the truck cab and stumbled slightly as he walked the two steps to the curb, it was clear he was drunk.
This was perfect.
And then Evan’s ride didn’t even stay long enough to make sure that Evan actually made it into the apartment, pulling the truck off once Buck had gotten to the front door.
This was even better than Doug expected.
Doug got out of the car, pulling his hood over his head and a scarf around his face. He had noticed the security cameras placed around the area the first day he drove up to sit outside along the side of the road. He knew that those had to be one of the main reasons Maddie chose to live here.
She probably hadn’t realized that those were only something that would help after an event had already happened though.
Doug then took out the baseball bat that had been on the floor by the passenger's seat. He quietly walked up to the apartment door, keeping his footsteps near silent as he snuck up behind Evan who, in his inebriated state, was having some difficulty unlocking the door.
It was just as Evan managed to unlock the door and open it that Doug swung.
To his credit, Evan didn’t fall at first contact of the bat at his head. He stumbled, catching himself on the door and spun around to face Doug. Because of the face coverings, he didn’t recognize him. Doug didn’t wait for him to make a move at him anyway, immediately lifting a foot and kicking Evan right in his thigh.
Evan stumbled to the side, and Doug didn’t stop. Setting up the bat again to swing at Buck. Finally, that time, Buck went down to the floor, his eyes were closed. Doug nudged him with a toe, making sure Buck was unconscious before he reached down to make sure Buck was still breathing and had a pulse.
He did.
Honestly, Doug had expected Evan to put up more of a fight.
Was it unfair? Sneaking up on an obvious drunk man and swinging right at the back of his head? Most people would probably say it was, but Doug wasn’t going to fair now.