Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
XAVIER
Lucy says she’s doing okay, but I’m not so sure.
Physically, she’s getting better. In the two days she’s been at B and A, she’s regained more of the weight she lost, and there’s color in her cheeks again. The shadows under her eyes have lightened from a deep purple to a more muted blue. And when she walks, she’s steadier, although she still moves more slowly than her usual pace.
Her physical recovery isn’t what I’m worried about. Not with our two medics, Rhiannon and Dante, both checking on her, reassuring me that Lucy’s recovery is right on track. “Just keep doing the same thing you’re doing,” Dante told us this morning with a smile. “Healthy snacks throughout the day, plenty of liquids, lots of rest, and we’ll keep an eye on those cuts, but I think they’re already healing up nicely.”
So that’s a relief, especially when I think about how she looked when I found her in that awful cabin, shaking and pale and so light when I picked her up… To me, Lucy’s small—she’s half a foot shorter than my six-foot-one and close to a hundred pounds lighter than me—but when I picked her up that day, she felt frail. Fragile.
But I’m worried about how she’s doing mentally. Not that I’m expecting her to magically be okay, like she didn’t just undergo the most traumatic experience of her life less than a week ago. I knew she would struggle. After my years in the Army, I know plenty of people who’ve dealt with PTSD.
It’s just… It’s Lucy. My wonderful, generous, sweet Lucy who wants to see the best in everyone. Lucy who loves romance novels with happy endings and has this special ability to make everyone smile no matter what kind of mood they’re in.
She’s like the sun, warming everyone around her. And somehow, after all the dark shit I’ve done in the name of duty, the crap childhood I had, my stubborn resistance to relationships, the most incredible woman I’ve ever met decided to take a chance on me.
Since I met Lucy, I’ve wanted to protect her. To keep her from experiencing just how evil the world could be.
But I failed miserably. And now poor Lucy has to deal with the consequences. Waking up screaming from nightmares that she’s still locked up in that cabin. Or whispered pleas in her sleep, as she begs her captor to please let her go.
There are the panic attacks, like when the light I’ve been leaving on in the bedroom during the night burned out and she woke up in darkness, shivering and gasping in fear until I was finally able to calm her.
She can’t stand the dark now, even looking outside at night. It reminds her too much of those long nights alone, hoping to hear a person approaching, but also afraid to.
I’ve been by her side through all of it, save for brief meetings with my teammates in the hallway, or a quick shower while she’s distracted by something else. But I worry I’m not enough. Lucy needs to talk to a professional about this stuff, but she’s put it off whenever I mention it, saying she’s just not ready to talk to a stranger yet.
Given that she was abducted by a stranger, a person whose face she never saw, I get it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep bringing it up. Gently, of course. The last thing I want to do is upset her.
Even her parents don’t know the details. When Matt tracked them down at a camp in Antarctica, he just told them Lucy had been abducted and we wouldn’t stop until we found her. Later, once she was rescued, I talked to her dad and explained that it would be safer if they didn’t come back to Texas since we didn’t know the identity of her abductor. There’s always the chance of her parents being targeted, either as leverage to get Lucy back, or revenge for her escaping. As a team, we figured Antarctica was probably the safest place for them to be.
But now that Lucy’s talked to them, she’s been vague about what happened. She just said she was held hostage, that she was left alone, and no one hurt her. When I asked her why she didn’t tell them the truth, Lucy explained, “They can’t come back to see me. So why make them worry more than they already are?”
So I understand that, too, even if I don’t agree. But then again, I had terrible parents who didn’t give a shit about me, so maybe I’m not the best one to judge.
Still. I feel like I should be doing something more. I’m just not sure what.
When I get a chance, I should ask Erik about it. Out of the six of us, he’s the one who’s struggled the most with PTSD. After an explosion gave him a traumatic brain injury and damaged his peripheral vision, forcing him off his team, he had some pretty tough months of it. He’s doing much better now, but he must have some strategies. Or maybe he can come over to teach Lucy meditation and yoga, like he did after everything Jade went through.
Lost in my thoughts, I nearly forget about the eggs I’m cooking until they start to give off a slightly scorched scent.
Shit!
Snatching the pan off the burner, I make a face at the eggs, which are now several minutes past over-easy. Could I scramble them? Or is it too late?
No. I’m not giving Lucy crap for breakfast. “Starting over, it is,” I grumble as I dump the eggs in the trash. Then I head back to the fridge, only to discover I’m down to two eggs, which isn’t going to be enough.
“Shit.” I stare into the fridge, as if I can somehow make another carton of eggs appear by force of will. “Damn eggs.”
“What’s wrong with the eggs?” Lucy walks into the kitchen, her long hair still damp and cheeks flushed from the heat of the shower. A tiny smile quirks her lips. “Did you overcook them again?”
For a second, I can’t respond. All I can do is stare at my gorgeous girlfriend, wondering for the thousandth time how I got lucky enough to find her.
The sun streaming through the kitchen window catches her hair, turning it to a shimmering curtain of bronze and chestnut and copper. I love Lucy’s hair, falling nearly to her waist, which she attributes to her love of Rapunzel when she was little. Her jeans hug the curve of her hips and she’s wearing a pink T-shirt in a color that matches the rosy shade of her lips, the V neck dipping just low enough to give a tiny hint of cleavage.
As she walks towards me, her big blue eyes hold a brightness that was missing in the hospital, and her cute nose—she says it’s too small but I think it’s perfect—shows off a few freckles from our brief trip out to the yard yesterday. Before I can answer her question, she wraps her arms around my waist and snuggles against my chest before saying, “You look really handsome today.”
Oh.
My heart swells with unexpected joy.
I’m so damn lucky.
Not just finding her the first time, but the second.
An almost rabid need to protect her sweeps through me. Like I would do literally anything to keep her safe.
Lucy pulls away slightly and reaches up to brush her fingers across my beard. Her smile gets bigger. “Did you use that special beard stuff I got you?”
“Maybe. Does it feel softer?”
“It does.” She stretches up to kiss my cheek. “Definitely.”
After the first time I left a slight rash on her face after kissing, I was horrified. It wasn’t something I thought about before, because most of my encounters with women were of the one night kind. But seeing Lucy the next day with her face all pink… I felt terrible.
So I actually offered to shave my beard off, but she refused, saying she thought it looked sexy. Instead, she found some sort of beard conditioner, and I’ve tried to use it regularly ever since.
Man. If I told my Army buddies that I was using some fancy oil on my beard so it stays soft for my girlfriend, they wouldn’t believe me. Not perpetually single Xavier who didn’t want a relationship.
Well. Niall would. Now that he has Jade. And all the guys at the Sleepy Hollow branch, since they’re all happily married. But they’d still make fun of me. And honestly, I wouldn’t care.
“So, what happened with the eggs?” Lucy asks, eyeing the empty pan. “Do you want some help making them?”
“I overcooked them again,” I admit. “I got distracted for one second…”
“It’s okay.” Lucy steps out of my embrace and walks over to the fridge. “Sarah made a couple of breakfast casseroles. We can have one of those.”
Well. Putting one of Sarah’s casseroles in the oven sounds significantly easier and more delicious than my sad attempts at cooking. Plus, it gives me some time to talk to Lucy about the team meeting I really should go to after putting it off for the last couple of days.
Once I put the dish in the oven, I take Lucy’s hand and guide her over to the couch. As she sits down next to me, her brows pull together in a little worried V. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. It’s fine. But… Dante wants to have a team meeting this morning. Partly to discuss some upcoming jobs, but also…” I trail off, not really wanting to refer to Lucy as a case.
“To talk about my case,” she finishes. After a deep breath, she says, “Well, you should go. It’s your job. And of course, I want this… game stopped.”
“Yes, but are you going to be okay alone?” Taking her hands in mine, I turn towards her. “Sarah’s working, but Jade is off today. She could come keep you company.”
Fine lines etch into her forehead as she stares at me. After a long pause, Lucy asks, “But your meeting… don’t you need to talk to me? Ask questions about people I know who might… be involved? All the stuff you usually ask your clients?”
Yes. We really should. But I’ve been putting it off, not wanting to upset Lucy. Which I know is unprofessional, but damn it, she’s my girlfriend. I’m already watching her suffer. Is it that terrible to want to give her a little more time?
“We can wait until you’re ready,” I finally say. “You’re safe, and that’s the important thing.”
I’m certain she’s going to agree, but after another pause, she lifts her chin. Her jaw sets. “But there are other people out there. People like me. And if I wait… They might not be as lucky as I was.”
Shit. Of course, she’d think of other people instead of herself. Which is something I love about her, but I still hate the thought of putting her through a line of questioning that’s sure to be upsetting.
“It might be… difficult,” I warn.
“Probably. But not worse than being locked in that cabin.”
There’s no argument for that. And I know damn well if it were anyone else, I’d be insisting they do this right away. But my team hasn’t pushed because they know what Lucy means to me, or at least they have some idea of it.
With a sigh, I pull her into my arms and press my lips to the top of her head. “Okay. You’ll come to the meeting. But if it gets to be too much, just tell me, and we’ll stop. We don’t have to get it done all in one day.”
But as we sit at the conference table an hour later, after a breakfast Lucy barely touched, I’m having serious second thoughts about her being at this meeting.
Her chair is pushed right next to mine, and I’m holding her trembling hand under the table, but it doesn’t seem like enough. Not when she’s gnawing her lower lip and all the color in her cheeks is gone. Not when I can feel the rapid flutter of her pulse in her wrist, much faster than it should be.
As Erik and Niall take the remaining seats, I murmur, “It’s not too late to change your mind. No one would mind.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “I’m here, Xavier. It’s not going to get easier if I wait. I can do this.”
From the head of the table, Dante casts a gentle smile at her. “Since you’re here, Lucy, we’ll talk about your case first. Then we’ll move on to other team business.” He taps his tablet a few times with a stylus. “We’ll start out with what we have so far, so you’re fully updated. Then we’ll move on to questions. Okay?”
She swallows and gives him a tiny nod. “Okay.”
“Alright.” Dante glances at me before turning his gaze to Matt. “So, Matt. What have you found so far?”
Matt’s at the opposite end of the long conference table, his laptop open like usual in front of him. He glances at it for a second before answering. “Okay. So I got a copy of the report from the FBI. They didn’t find any usable evidence at the cabin. The only fingerprints were Lucy’s, and the same with the blood residue.”
Dante frowns. “I’m sure I know the answer, but what about satellite images in the vicinity of the cabin? Tire tracks? Any evidence outside?”
“Nothing.” Matt shakes his head. “Given that so many days had passed from when Lucy was dropped off there, all they found were some unidentifiable tracks. Nothing they can use.”
“Dammit,” I grit out. “So they have nothing.”
“I think we’re going to have better luck searching online,” Matt replies. “That’s where the FBI is concentrating their efforts, and so am I. Well,” he amends. “Me and Leo. And I pulled in Beth, as well. With her experience with the dark web, she could really help.”
“Who’s Beth?” Lucy asks.
“Beth is married to Sledge, who’s a firefighter with the San Antonio fire department,” Dante tells her. “We know Sledge through our local connections. He’s close with Cruz, who you met, and a number of our friends in the area.”
“Beth is a genius when it comes to finding information online,” Matt adds. “And she was abducted herself, years ago. So when I told her about you, she immediately offered to help.”
“Oh.” Lucy looks nonplussed for a second. “Well. Anyone who’s willing to help… Please, tell her thank you from me.”
“I’m sure you’ll get to talk to her one of these days,” Matt says with a smile. “But I will.”
“So the investigation into this game.” Dante looks at Matt. “What are your plans?”
“Try to catch as many people involved as possible. The majority of them are using VPNs to access the dark web, which makes it more complicated. Some of them are even chaining VPNs, which means they’re going through a series of anonymous networks. But it’s just a matter of tracking them down and doing a little… ethical hacking.”
“And you think you can find the people behind this?” Lucy’s hand squeezes mine.
“Eventually, yes.” Matt holds her gaze. “But also, the people bidding. That’s a crime, too. So we’re going to work to catch all of them.”
She stares at him for a second. Then her voice hardens as she says, “Good.”
After the updates, we move on to the part of the questioning I’ve been dreading.
We already have her account of the abduction and subsequent captivity from when she gave her account to the FBI, but we have to talk about those minutes in the garage, to possibly find some tiny clue that could have been missed. A slight accent, or a distinctive smell from the man who took her, or maybe some comment she might have forgotten to mention before.
One thing I learned in the Army, and now with Blade and Arrow, is sometimes the smallest detail can mean the difference between success and failure. So as much as I hate it, I have to ask Lucy to go over her harrowing experience again.
And she holds up surprisingly well, even though her voice trembles as she recalls the man grabbing her in the garage, describing the scent of the fabric over her mouth and nose, the low growl of the man holding her, and even how tall she thought he was.
“I could feel his breath on my hair,” she says, as her fingernails dig into my hand. “So I guess… he wasn’t that tall. But he was really strong.”
Fuck.
Now I’m envisioning some fucking piece of shit putting his hands on my girlfriend, threatening her, drugging her, and how scared she must have been…
Not now. I’ll let out my rage later, when I go to the gym. I’ll pound on the punching bags until my fury subsides, at least for a little while.
After Lucy finishes talking about the garage, she’s visibly shaken but insists on continuing. Even when Dante offers her an out, saying kindly, “This next part can be difficult. For all our clients. We’ll have to talk about people you know who could potentially be involved. It’s hard. If you’d rather come back to it tomorrow…”
“No.” Her chin juts out defiantly. “I just want to get through this.”
So she does. And it’s just as difficult as I anticipated. It’s always hard for clients to consider people they know, people they care about, might be behind this terrible thing that happened to them. Case in point, Niall’s wife, Jade. She was devastated when she found out who was behind her abduction, and it was one of the last people she would have expected.
For Lucy, who is one of the kindest and most trusting people I know, to think that someone she knows is behind this horrible game? It’s awful.
Rhiannon ends up taking over the questioning, mainly because she’s closest to Lucy aside from me, and she tries her best to be gentle about it. “Can you think of a coworker?” she asks Lucy. “Present or past? Maybe someone you had an argument with? Or got passed over for a promotion you got?”
“No.” Lucy shakes her head slowly. “I get along with everyone. Or… I thought I did. But I never pushed for promotions because I wanted to concentrate on writing. The job was secondary.”
“What about a competing author? Could someone be angry that you’re more successful?”
Lucy chews on her lip. “I don’t think so… There are so many authors that are more successful, that sell way more books… And I try to stay out of the drama in the writing communities online…”
From there, the questions move to fans of her books, and then to ex-boyfriends, which I really don’t love hearing about. But we have to consider it. She’s a beautiful woman, wealthy by association to her parents, successful—a jilted boyfriend could have decided to get his revenge for her dumping him.
But it’s when we move to Lucy’s close friends and family that she starts to waver. Her voice wobbles as she says, “My friend Amanda… she wouldn’t. She was assaulted in college. It’s why she learned martial arts. She just… she wouldn’t. And Kali, I’ve known her since high school. We had sleepovers. She came on vacations with my family. There’s no way…”
“I hate to ask this,” Rhiannon says apologetically, “but we have to consider everyone. Is there any way your parents?—”
And that’s when Lucy bursts into tears.
“They wouldn’t,” she says between sobs. “Never. Never . I just can’t think… can someone hate me that much? Someone I work with… the authors in my critique group… would they do that? I try to be nice… to everyone…”
A quick glance around the table shows five matching sympathetic expressions.
Lucy buries her face in her hands as she continues crying, having reached her limit.
As I draw her onto my lap, she curls into me, her tears hot against my neck.
My heart hurts seeing her in pain like this.
“I think we’re done,” Dante says. “You did awesome, Lucy. I know this sucks. But we’re done.”
Niall pulls out his phone and taps out a quick text. “I’m going to have Jade meet Lucy at the apartment. So she can stay with her until we’re done with the meeting.” He looks at me. “Is that alright?”
While I want to be the one comforting her, I know I need to do my job. So I grit my teeth and lift my chin at him. “Yeah. Thanks.” To Dante, I add, “I’ll just walk Lucy to my apartment and I’ll be right back.”
Dante gives me a quick chin lift in return. “Of course.”
With Lucy still in my arms, I rise from the chair. Then I set her on her feet and tuck her into my side. “Come on, Luce. You did so great. But let’s go home, okay?”
Tears still spilling down her cheeks, she lifts her head from my shoulder and meets my gaze. “Okay.”