Chapter 10 Gabriel
Gabriel
My wife’s eyes narrow to slits. Tangled hair, wet from the shower, drapes in messy ropes over her shoulders. A red T-shirt and white drawstring pants hang loose on her once-curvy frame, and a wide-tooth comb lies on the bamboo floor next to her bare feet.
“I assume Sydney heard our conversation and is now in distress.” Henry raises his voice.
“I didn’t mean I would kill you, specifically, Sydney.
I meant if my purpose was to torment someone’s husband, I would kill that person’s wife,” Henry calls.
“Hypothetically. But we don’t actually do that. Kill innocent people, I mean.”
“You’re not helping, Henry.” I click End Call and toss the phone onto the desk blotter, then rise to face her.
For long moments, I watch and wait for her to bolt for the front door. Don’t make me chase you again, wife. If I have to follow her, it will undo every bit of progress we’ve made, but it’s not safe for her to leave the property alone.
“You killed the person who took me?” Her voice is scratchy, still damaged and largely unused, but eerily calm.
The echo of another, older, conversation with her rings in my mind. The one that changed everything. “Yes.”
“How?”
“I shot him the night we found you. I killed him to get you out of there.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
“I’m sure. He’s already in the ground,” I say.
Sydney’s eyes, the color of polished mahogany, glint in the sunlight. “Thank you.”
For a moment, I don’t say or do anything at all, too stunned by the realization that I’ve been handling this all wrong. I hadn’t wanted to remind her of what she’d been through. So I told her she was safe and hid every hint I could of our security measures for fear they’d feel like a cage.
Her captivity has never left her. Addressing it must feel like validation. I should have been telling her I’d wear the blood of anyone who ever tries to hurt her again.
“Try not to panic. I want to introduce you to someone. He won’t hurt you,” I say.
She frowns.
I raise my voice and call out, “Dave, can you come into the library?” We’ve been feeding into her fear by him avoiding interacting with her, instead of facing it head on. Maybe what she needs is to understand his role.
Sydney flinches, then shrinks to the side when the dark-haired guard enters the room.
He dips his head toward her, an encouraging smile on his rough-hewn face. “Hey, Syd. It’s good to see you getting around.”
She watches the big man with wary eyes, her gaze flicking from his shoulder holster to his face, then to mine.
“Dave is one of your guards,” I say.
Her mouth tightens.
“Yours. Not mine. You tell him what to do, and he listens. He’s here to protect you from anyone or anything.
Even me, if you decide it’s necessary. He’ll take you anywhere you want to go, on this estate or off it.
This property is armed to the teeth to keep danger out, but you are Queen here.
Dave, Annabel, and Troy are your personal employees.
If necessary, they’ll use deadly force to protect you. So will I.”
She watches me with an unreadable expression. Then she lays her hand out palm up and speaks to Dave. “Give me your gun.”
Bad idea. Bad. Bad. “Let’s wait until you feel more settled—”
But Dave’s primary loyalty is to her, not me. The Glock is in her hand before I even finish my sentence.
Her limbs tremble as she allows it to rest flat on both her palms and examines it for an eternity. Then she swallows hard. “Okay. Take it . . . back.”
He collects and re-holsters the weapon. I remember to breathe.
“Do you have any questions for him?” I ask.
“Later. Maybe. Have to—” She taps fingers against her forehead in a gesture so familiar to me. Once. Twice. Three times. Have to think, she means.
“If you ever need him, he or someone else will be here. All you have to do is call.”
“Consider us your personal minions,” Dave says. It’s an old joke between them. I keep doing the same thing—dropping pieces of our past into her hands and hoping they’ll shake loose a memory.
Though her expression doesn’t lighten or show recognition, she nods. “Thanks.”
Her bodyguard squeezes her shoulder, then heads through the door. Sydney watches him go, then her gaze drifts around the room, catching on something on one of the bookshelves. I follow her line of sight.
Stepping closer, she runs a single finger over the pink and tan flared edge of a conch shell. “I always . . . thought I’d l-love . . . the ocean . . . if I saw it,” she rasps.
It’s nearly a direct quote from another time, except she’d said, “I always knew I’d love the ocean.”
“This house was my wedding gift to you. Can you hear the Pacific?” I ask.
She closes her eyes. “Maybe.”
“Would you like to go outside and see it?”
Her full lips press together, but her expression is one of calculating odds, rather than fear.
When I push open the sliding glass doors and walk onto the deck, I glance back to find her frozen in place.
Coaxing her would only make her more suspicious of me. So I turn right to face the coastline and go around the corner until the vista comes fully into view. In the near distance, deep blue water with patches of turquoise foams white where it kisses the black lava rock beach.
Whether she follows or not is up to her.
A salty breeze whips my hair into a frenzy and ripples my untucked button-down against my body like a flag.
Several moments later, a ghost of the woman I married joins me, her knuckles pale where she clutches the teak railing. She watches the ocean, utterly silent, as her hair flies in a tangled banner behind her. Her usually mobile face remains statue-still.
I stand beside her, waiting, for nearly an hour. I want to shake her and shout, “Don’t go. Stay here with me.” But who knows better than I do how it feels to want to disappear? Or how pointless it is to beg someone to face reality when they aren’t ready to be saved?
When her cheeks and nose gain a glow from the sun, I slide a shade umbrella over and angle it above her.
Eventually, she sways lightly on her feet. Reaching into my pocket, I retrieve the necklace I’ve carried since the day she was taken. Annabel found it, clasp broken, in Sydney’s lab.
I had the gold chain replaced, then I clung to the thing like a talisman.
I was waiting until she was herself again to give it back to her.
But maybe this Sydney could use it for all new reasons of her own.
Maybe, instead of reminding her of the past, it can remind her of now .
. . of sun sparkling off the waves and a breeze in her hair and safety.
The little gold conch shell gleams in the sunshine, the new, heavier, box-link chain coiling around it on my palm. I lift her hand and place the necklace onto it, using my own hand to support hers so she doesn’t drop it.
She blinks rapidly, as though waking from a dream, then stares at the jewelry. Her continued lack of expression makes my throat tighten.
Finally, she speaks. “What is this?”
“It’s your necklace. You used to wear it nearly every day.
You loved it because it reminded you of our honeymoon.
” I tap the gold charm. “It also has a location tracker in it. If you’re wearing it, I can find you faster if you need me.
You decide if you want it or not. If it makes you feel safer, it’s yours. ”
She bites her chapped lower lip, then closes her hand around the jewelry before pressing it against her chest. Slowly, she turns her head toward me. “Are you hungry?”
“Yeah.” Emotion chokes my words. “Yes. I could eat.”
She slides the necklace into her pocket. “I eat if you eat.”