10. ABRAHAM
AbrAHAM
She slammed the door, rounding the vehicle with a hot temper and a hand in the air. “It’s about damn time! You just want me to get a ticket, don’t you?”
I stepped aside, lending Ottilie my arm to help her down from the curb and my younger sister stopped short. “Uh…”
“Lila, this is Ottilie. She’s a student and she needs a place to stay for a few nights while I help her figure out her housing situation.”
Ottilie, who’d been mostly despondent the last several minutes, looked up at me. “You’re not taking me to the police?”
“The police won’t help you.” I didn’t tell her that until I knew who’d put their hands on her, contacting law enforcement could do more harm than good. “My sister will.”
Lila, nodding slowly, finally turned to Ottilie. “Uh… yeah. Okay. Come on.”
I walked the young woman to the passenger’s seat of the small SUV and opened her door, but she didn’t move to get in.
“It’s alright,” I assured her. “You can trust her.”
“That’s not it,” she whispered. “I…”
I frowned, scanning the entry of the club out of instinct, but saw no one who appeared to be looking for a young woman in a gold dress.
Ottilie swallowed. “I lied to you. I’m not a student. I-I mean, I was. For a while. But then I dropped out and… If I had known this is what you planned, I never would’ve…”
The woman wasn’t afraid. She was fucking terrified.
“Ottilie, listen to me. My name is Abraham Lawton. I work for FX Resources Group out of DC. I understand your apprehension, but right now my primary goal is to get you somewhere safe. And then I can help you with whatever next steps you’d like to take.”
She shook her head so furiously, the pearls dangling in her ears hit the side of her cheek. “You don’t understand. There’s nowhere I can go that he won’t know where I am.”
“I believe you.” Her dress was tailored, the handbag she was carrying wasn’t a fake, and those pearls weren’t costume jewelry.
Whoever had dressed her believed they owned her, and it didn’t matter that he’d dangled homelessness over her head.
When he decided she’d suffered enough, he’d come for her, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.
Against my better judgment, I made her a promise. “Twenty four hours. Humor me.”
She wanted to trust me. I could tell.
“What happens after twenty four hours?” she asked.
“You make the informed choice,” I told her. “Over the scared one.”
Clutching my jacket to her chest, a glittery tear rolled down her heavily made up cheek and she nodded. Then finally, Ottilie got into the vehicle.
Watching my sister pull off, I retrieved my cell from my jacket pocket and dialed someone I could hardly call a friend, but he was both a DMV resident and he owed me a favor. On the third ring, the former Marine and retired PMC answered. “Hable.”
“Qué le pasó a tu voz?”
There was a brief pause. Then he cussed. “Fuck.”
“How are you?” I asked him. “Last I heard, you fucked up your shoulder.”
“Last I heard you finally found someone to drag down the aisle,” he responded. “Look. Whatever brings you to my phone at twenty three hundred after ten years, I don’t give a fuck. I’m retired.”
“I’m cashing in my favor.”
Agosto Marroquín Acevedo, medically retired Sergeant Major and the only person I considered an ally that was still alive, went silent.
“Ottilie Wilcott,” I continued, reading the name from the old college ID in my hand.
Unsurprisingly, it was the only thing inside the handbag I’d taken from the girl while she’d been distracted.
No driver’s license, passport, cash, or credit cards.
No lip gloss, hair ties, or other miscellaneous shit, either.
“She was a sophomore at LSU four years ago and is a long way from home. Find out if she has family and return her to them.” I rattled off my sister’s address and texted him a photo of the ID.
“?Es todo? You called me to give a woman a ride?” he asked, skeptical as fuck.
I told him the truth. “I want to see who follows her.”
Agosto’s attitude did a one eighty. “DV?”
“At least.”
He paused. Then cussing in Spanish once more, he relented. “I’m not in Maryland, but I can be there in about six hours.”
“Copy. Text me when you’re en route.”
I hung up the call and returned to the valet to hand him my ticket.
A few minutes later, my Escalade rolled to a stop in front of me.
I tipped the valet, got inside my shit, then connected my cell to the Bluetooth.
A notification I hadn’t noticed before, came on the LED screen and I tensed at the name.
What the fuck?
“Play voicemail,” I commanded the AI assistant on my phone. Immediately, Nineah’s nervous soprano filled the speakers.
“Hello husband, this is your bride speaking. I am at the grocers and I see a huge ribeye calling your name. And when I say your name, I obviously mean my name. And you’re going to grill this for me. Tonight. You may seek repayment as you see fit. Okayy byeeee.”
When the voicemail finished, I hit the replay button on the screen. Then again. I listened to it three times.
“Call wife,” I commanded.
“Calling wife,” the robotic voice affirmed.
The phone rang all the way through until her voicemail picked up.
I called two more times with the same outcome before pulling up the application I occasionally used to track her phone on the off chance I needed her location. The app had her pinned at the house in Virginia.
“What the fuck are you on, right now?” I muttered.
Starting up my SUV, I pulled out of the nightclub and headed home, calling her three more times on the way to no avail. I pulled up our security feed as I drove, rewinding it back the last hour.
Nineah’s Black Mercedes SUV pulled into our driveway and my heart kicked in my chest. Wearing the same vacant expression she had at the attorney’s office, she entered the home and from there, I watched her move past the foyer cameras into the open living room.
Setting her purse and keys down on the kitchen island, she scanned the home before starting down the halls, heading toward the back staircase.
Since we didn’t have cameras on the upper floor, I followed the countdown until the clock passed the time she’d left her voicemail.
Tossing the phone in the center console, I stepped on the gas and raced toward Loudon County, cutting an hour drive into forty seven minutes.
As I pulled up our long driveway, Nineah’s Mercedes came into view.
I barely had the Escalade parked before I hopped out, drawing my weapon.
Moving around to the back of the house, I cleared the yard before entering the entry code.
Neither the silent nor home alarms were tripped and the house appeared undisturbed. Nineah’s bag and keys were where she left them.
I cleared the downstairs bathrooms, laundry room, the basement, and the pantry before heading upstairs. The air still, the only sound that of my heartbeat, I checked our bedroom, both guest rooms, her office, and then my study, but she wasn’t in any of them.
“Nineah!” I called out, pausing to listen.
Nothing.
Holstering my weapon, I moved to the end of my bookcase, and pushed the edge in until it disengaged, unhinging from the frame.
Books fell from the top as I yanked it out just enough to fit through the small space.
The inside of the wall was tight which was why I didn’t often visit the panic room I’d built during the initial renovations that doubled as her command center, but I got through and the found the reinforced steel door.
I entered the code into the pad, and pulled it open.
The southern wall that had once housed a panel of monitors was empty now, the holes tacked, and the walls repainted. Her desk and chair remained undisturbed, all of the drawers emptied and pulled out, as well as her safe.
Months’ worth of dust layered the furniture and the air was stale, confirming that sometime between the moment she’d ascended the staircase and when she’d called me, she hadn’t been able to make it to this room. I rested my hands on the oak of her L-shaped workstation.
The breath-stopping fear pulsing under my skin, I knew.
My wife was gone.