Family Ties

Part 18

Early on Sunday morning, the doorbell rang while Raymond was in the middle of pouring over his books. Getting up with a sigh, he knew his neighbor was in the mood for a chat. She'd been dogging him for the past few weeks and now there was no way out, he groaned.

Opening the door with a cheerful smile, his face fell into a blank expression, seeing a smiling Jackson.

"What exactly are you doing here... Again?" he asked in exasperation as a frown settled on his brow. These visits were becoming too regular.

"I've come to see if you wanted to spend the day together since yesterday didn't start out that great." His jaunty grin was still in place.

"Come inside," Raymond mumbled, walking to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, while Jackson took a seat at the kitchen table, watching him.

"Hitting the books, huh?" He flipped some of the books over to look at the covers. "Eh, what exactly are you studying?" He asked in surprise looking at books in front of him, filled with diagrams and math calculations.

"Explosives Technology." He responded matter-of-factly, "Why?"

"Seems a bit unusual for an Executive Secretary of a billion-dollar company to study blowing things up, isn't it?" He frowned as he looked closer at the textbooks before Raymond started moving them out of the way.

"You never know when it might come in handy when trying to close a deal." He smirked. "No, I'm curious. And I get curious about all sorts of things, so I like to study or read up on them. Keeps the mind young and fresh." He grinned while tapping his head.

"I hope you got to enjoy a little of what we did yesterday, at least." Jackson changed the topic. Raymond had been quiet for most of the day, after they'd left the restaurant, caught up in his thoughts. If only he could get through to him, then things might ease up, Jackson thought. Maybe he needed to pull out all the stops to get Raymond to bite.

"Well, after the morning we had, anything after that was a welcome break."

"Why do they call you Odd Job Ray?" Hopefully, he'd be able to get some more information out of him other than his usual shrug and deflection. So far, it has been an uphill struggle to get the tiniest bit of information out of him, since he always played his cards so close to his chest.

"It's a funny story, actually." He gave a strained smile, picking up his cup.

"It didn't look like it was funny for you." He prodded quietly.

"I did a bunch of odd jobs when I was in high school, to get some extra cash." He shrugged his shoulders. "So they saw me around town a lot, doing a lot of odd jobs, while they were hanging out. It sort of  became their joke and they would place bets on where they'd see me next."

"Sounds like a bunch of assholes to me." His mouth turned down in distaste. "So why did you have so many jobs? Even when I looked at your CV, they were all part-time work."

"I won't bore you with my whole sad backstory." He grimaced. "Suffice it to say, it was a means to an end. And now, well I only take on short jobs because that way I get to spend more time with Skye." It was true in essence. He always took on the shorter jobs at Damon's to make sure that he had enough time for Skye, it was just that his main job was to have all these smaller jobs to find what they were asked to find.

"Come on, let's get out of here and you can bore me with your sad backstory. Who knows, maybe we can share some campfire stories." His grin was back in place. Getting up, he waited expectantly for Raymond to move.

"Where are we going?" He asked suspiciously.

"We'll take a trip around the harbor, get some fresh air, and more importantly, we can't run into anyone you know!"