CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON
Although Noah Mason had claimed to Benjamin Nolan that there were only one person who cared about his life, five people arrived in a cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts, to meet with Stormy and Charlie Corbin.
Soldier, Ray, and Miles Mason.
Sergeant Patrick Kinney and, of course, his daughter Meghan.
Together, they converged at the local police station, demanding answers to the questions that weren't being answered about the disappearance of their son, friend, brother, and fiancé.
Where was he? Where was his car, his phone, any of his belongings that seemed to have simply vanished without a single trace?
And that was what they did for an entire twenty-four hours, just three days after Noah had disappeared. And on the fourth night, Meghan decided on her own that she'd had enough of relying on the police.
Soldier, who'd often taken matters into his own hands, was riding that same wavelength with her.
Sitting at the kitchen table in Stormy and Charlie's cottage in the middle of the cemetery, Meg wrapped her hands around a hot cup of tea, her bones frozen despite the heat.
She couldn't will herself to drink its contents.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd consumed anything at all, not willingly anyway. Not without the pressure of someone else’s insistence.
But as aware as she was of the ache in her heart, there was a little life inside of her that relied on that sustenance, and if she couldn't force something substantial inside her stomach soon, that little soul would leave her too.
An owl made its presence known from nearby the cottage. Meg turned to gaze out the window into the nightly gloom, her eyes settling on the moon hanging in the starlit sky.
“Noah.”
She allowed his name to escape her lips, as if he himself were the man sitting atop that great, giant orb. And for all she knew, maybe he was. Gone from this world to look down on her, just out of orbit and so far from her reach.
She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled her hand from the mug to cradle her forehead.
He's not dead, she thought, but Meghan wasn't an idiot. The likelihood that he was still alive, days after his disappearance, was slim.
But she had to hope.
“You need to sleep.”
No matter how familiar that deep voice was, it still startled her now with a gasp as she dropped her hand to the table and opened her eyes to see Soldier standing in the doorway of Charlie and Stormy's kitchen.
“How are you so quiet?” she asked as his large frame moved to take up residence in the chair across from hers.
He offered a weak smile that wilted quickly away, and her shoulders slumped.
“I can't sleep,” she admitted to the man who was meant to be her father-in-law in just a handful of months. Now, she wasn't so sure if there would be a wedding, but whether by law or not, that was how she'd always see him. “I haven't slept in days.”
He offered a solemn nod. “Yeah, me neither.”
Absent-mindedly, he grabbed a saltshaker from the middle of the table and rolled it between his hands as he said, “Back when I was first arrested, I was terrified. I mean, I didn't know who to trust, what to do if someone fucked with me, or whatever …”
One side of Meghan's mouth reluctantly tugged into a smile; she was grateful for the distraction of a topic that wasn't Noah and his whereabouts. “I would've thought your size would scare people away.”
Soldier huffed a chuckle, still rolling that shaker between his palms. “Yeah, you'd think that, right?
But the thing is, they see a big guy roll in, and their first thought is to get the upper hand.
Show him who's boss. And you gotta remember, I was a dumb, young kid back then.
Scrawny. I didn't have much time to work out or anything, so I was this …
fuckin' string bean with a nasty scar. That's about all I had going for me, so I started telling these stories about how I had gotten it, and it helped a little bit.
I started working out, got a little bulky, got a little more comfortable, started making some buddies …
but I always watched my back. And for those first few months, I'm honestly not sure I ever slept.
I mean, I must've at some point. But I don't remember actually putting my head down and making the conscious decision to fall asleep.
I couldn't, not with every worst-case scenario living rent-free in my head.
Like, if I fell asleep, that's when those guys would strike, when I wasn't on guard, and that's exactly how I feel right now.”
Roll, roll, roll.
Meghan swallowed against her dry throat. “I feel the same way. I'm so scared that if I go to sleep, that's when we'll get a call that they … found him or …” She closed her eyes to the thought, then opened them immediately the moment her brain conjured an image of a lifeless Noah.
Roll, roll, roll. The shaker knocked against his wedding ring, the metal clanking against the glass.
For something else to talk about, she blurted, “I'm pregnant.”
Soldier lifted his head, the saltshaker now motionless between his palms, and he asked in an eerily calm tone, “Does Noah know?”
She blinked back the tears as she offered a quick nod.
“The last time we talked, I told him, and he was going to drive home that night, but I convinced him to try and sleep instead because it was so late at night, and …” Something dawned on her then, and she gasped with a sob before whispering, “God, Soldier …
I should've let him come home. I-I-I shouldn't have stopped him.”
“You can't think like that, honey,” he replied, his tone gruff, and she knew—she just knew—that despite what he’d said …
he was thinking it too. “But I'll tell you something.
Whatever happened … whatever's happening …
you and that baby are the reason he's alive.
You're why he's fighting to stay that way.”
Soldier wasn't a psychic, and Meghan knew as much. Yet, still, at the sound of his certain words, she sensed the faintest glimmer of hope beginning to burn again in her chest.
“You think he's still alive?”
Soldier nodded. “I know he is.”
“How?”
He shrugged so nonchalantly that she nearly laughed. “Because I'd know if he wasn't.”
She did laugh then. “You can't know that.”
His brow furrowed, and his lips pursed, as if he was considering what he'd say next, his eyes landing on the shaker between his hands.
Then he replied, “I don't know a lot of shit, Meg.
I'm not the smartest guy on the planet—never pretended to be.
But I'll tell you something. That kid might not have my blood in his veins, but we're cut from the same tough-as-fuck cloth.
I taught him how to fight, how to survive.
His mom and I gave him every fucking tool he has to live and get through the worst shit life can throw at you, and I promise you, he's using them.”
He still wasn't answering her question, and with desperation to believe what he was saying, she asked, “But how do you know?”
“Because I know him, Meghan,” Soldier replied, his gaze hardening with severe sincerity as he shoved the saltshaker back into its spot in the center of the table. “And he's going to live until I find him.”
She swallowed, then corrected, “You mean we.”
He raised a brow. “We?”
“Yeah. We're going to find him,” she replied.
Soldier offered another weak smile, then said, “You take care of yourself and my grandkid. Let me worry about the rest.”