18. ABRAHAM
AbrAHAM
IORDERED ON AUTOPILOT, selecting a few things I knew Nineah would eat and doubling the portions for myself.
Right about now, she was probably already rerouting her signal and calling her best friend which, while admittedly not smart, was the least explosive alternative.
The most was whoever she called when she needed favors of the professional variety and until I had time to clear whoever she’d had contact with in the last year, she needed to assume she couldn’t trust anyone.
My phone buzzed.
With one glance at the caller ID, I hit decline. Matthias would need to be read in at some point, especially if I intended to stay employed, but he was the least of my priorities.
While Nineah was sedated, Silver had called this morning.
She hadn’t been able to locate anyone who shared the face of the woman on the other sets of IDs, but I’d already anticipated that.
What I hadn’t expected was for her to inform me that one of the aliases on the passports had been attached to a set of medical records predating our first meeting with the divorce lawyers by approximately seventeen months.
That piece of news on top of every-fucking-thing else had sunk any hope at pretending I was equipped for this shit.
I’d spent the last year and a half, combing through my choices and picking them apart like looking at the past through hindsight’s clearer lenses would change fuck all.
The facts were clear—Nineah had been suffering and hadn’t wanted an audience let alone an assistant, and I was only one man.
I hadn’t been able to save her. I hadn’t been able to save us.
And as depressing as that was to confront, it was somewhat comforting as well.
I couldn’t be the single pillar that held everything up—it took a foundation.
And as I was learning, ours had been built on a fuck-ton of her secrets.
The restaurant employee called my order number and I accepted the bag, handing him a tip.
A ten-minute walk later, I stepped through the front door and halted.
Nineah, who’d changed into an old Air Force PT shirt and pajama shorts, sat cross legged on the living room floor, scribbling something into the pink note pad she always carried around in the junk bag she called a purse.
She must’ve located it, along with her ancient digital camera, which was plugged into the television with an adaptor cord.
Displayed on TV, was a fifty inch version of my wife in a gown I’d have recognized anywhere, standing next to her best friend and Matron of Honor, Zajre. I knew the photo well because I’d been the one behind the camera, capturing her smile as she posed.
I set the food on the counter. “What’re you doing?”
She didn’t look up from her notepad. “Establishing a timeline. So far, I’ve been able to assign roughly one significant event per year of the blip.”
“Blip,” I repeated.
“That’s what I’m calling it. Chasm or void just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Too depressing.”
Un-fucking-real.
I braced my hands on the counter. “And what did you find?”
Using the sofa to hoist herself up, she limped slowly in the kitchen, notepad in hand. “So, it appears my last known memory was somewhere circa May, four-ish years back. So that would’ve been about—”
“Three months before we started dating,” I interrupted.
“Oh. Yeah. I guess you’re right.” She flipped a page of her notebook.
“According to the pictures, we got engaged six months later. Then, married nine months after that—can you believe I designed a wedding gown, by the way?” She shook her head.
“Okay, so I have the honeymoon in Paris. Then the pretty red dress picture I’ve named anniversary because it’s dated one year later, there’s an album from Italy around February so…
a birthday trip, maybe? And then the last one is just a picture of some boat, but that’s where it stops. Maybe there’s another camera?”
“There’s not,” I clipped.
“Okay, but maybe—”
“Nineah.”
She frowned. Closing her notebook, she set it on the counter. “Sorry. I’m being insensitive.”
She wasn’t insensitive. I was an asshole. I just didn’t know how to tell her that I’d rather peel my fingernails back with a pair of wire strippers than listen to her recount our life like she was reading from someone else’s auto-bio.
“It’s been a long week,” I said. “I need a shower and you need to eat.”
Nodding, she’d peered over the counter toward the bag. “What’d you get?”
“Fried potato dumplings and cabbage rolls. I think the meat is pork.”
“Works for me.”
I grabbed one of the Styrofoam takeout containers and placed it in front of her with a packet of plastic ware and a bottle of water. “Do you need anything else?”
“No, this is great. Thank you.”
I left the main living space, then headed for the master suite.
The single story rental was all I could find on such short notice, but at the very least my legs wouldn’t be hanging off the end of the bed.
I pulled my shirt over my head and stepped into the ensuite.
Turning on the shower, I adjusted the temp, then shook off the rest of my clothing and stepped under the water.
I hadn’t expected such a visceral reaction to seeing those photos on screen.
Maybe it was because she’d fought for them in the divorce like she couldn’t have just asked me.
Or maybe it was the weight of this week finally settling in.
Either way, as selfish as it was, I didn’t want to sit on the floor with her, helping her categorize my life events like this was some fucking school project.
I could shut up and hold the line as long as I needed, to make sure she was safe.
What I couldn’t do was sit there and pretend that shit was commonplace for us.
We hadn’t had a normal routine in over a year and in the off chance her memories returned, I wasn’t interested in a repeat performance of the worst day of my life.
No. The name of this game was cordiality. Get her back stateside. Make sure she was good. Return to what was left of my life—in that order.
I grabbed a cloth and the shower soap, and scrubbed away the last week.
When the water ran clear, I shut it off, toweled off, and pulled on a pair of boxers.
Aside from the flight on the C-17 and a few hours here and there at the hospital, I’d hardly slept since the night before Nineah went missing and I was really beginning to feel it.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I picked up, fully prepared to send to voicemail, but the Caller ID didn’t belong to my boss or Silver.
I picked up. “Lawton.”
“Hijo de puta, where the fuck are you? You were supposed to call me five days ago.”
Shit.
I rubbed a hand across my face. “Ottilie.”
“You’re fucking right, Ottilie. You told me I was picking up some college girl.”
“Former college girl,” I corrected.
“Yeah, well you forget to mention one tiny little detail,” he spat. “That you picked up the most famous fucking guitarist since Hendrix.”
I stiffened. “Come again?”
“The woman you dumped on me the other day? She gave you her government. Her stage name is Olivia Jeffs. She’s the lead guitarist for Slow Lane.”
“Who?”
He cussed. “The Metal band? Three-time Grammy winners. Any of this ringing a bell?”
I didn’t listen to metal, nor did I recognize the name, but I’d worked security at enough concerts back when I was saving for a home that I got the gist. “What’s the issue?”
“Apparently, she tossed her fucking phone before she left in the middle of a tour, but I logged into her social media and this manager dude has been blowing her shit up, threatening to call the cops and have her arrested if she’s not on a plane back to Melbourne tonight.”
“Her family?”
“Doesn’t have one. I ain’t even sure she’s got friends. Look, I don’t know where you found this chick, but I can’t keep her here.”
This was the last fucking thing I had time for. “You have to.”
There was a long enough pause I had to check to make sure the line was still connected. Then Acevedo sighed. “You fuckin’ owe me, Lawton.” He hung up before I could thank him or ask him about the girl. I just had to hope he was better at keeping his promises than I was.
The sound of glass shattering, followed by a shriek, came from the kitchen. Grabbing my piece off the nightstand, I drew and stormed out of the bedroom. Nineah’s eyes widening at my weapon, she raised her hands.
I lowered the pistol. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I was trying to get a plate down, I…” her eyes latched on my bare chest. “wanted to heat… up… heat… food.” On the floor, a shattered plate lay in pieces. She cleared her throat. “The cabinets were, um, tall.”
Setting down the gun, I pointed at her. “You…” then pointed to the living room. “Over there.”
Nineah hurried over to the sofa while I went to the laundry closet to grab a broom and swept up the broken plate.
When I was finished, I grabbed another from the cabinet, dumped her food on it, then shoved it into the microwave.
When it beeped, I pulled it out and brought it over to the woman perched on the sofa.
“If I sleep for a few hours, do you think you can manage to keep yourself and this house in one piece?”
Nineah accepted the plate, immediately averting her gaze to the food and nodded. “Yep.”
“Good.”
Retreating before the sight of her parted full lips could register, I went back to the room and closed the door behind me.
Jesus. Five fucking days and I was already dissolving.
I wasn’t a likable man, nor did I possess an accommodating personality.
My patience sat on a thin line and I had little tolerance for anything that wasn’t my work.
The first time I rucked eleven miles to an extraction point with blood spatter in my mouth and a fresh kill on my conscience, I learned two important lessons—if you couldn’t compartmentalize and regroup, you’d lose your goddamn mind, and if you didn’t anticipate every possible outcome, prepare for every scenario, you were dead.
All lessons I never expected to carry into my personal life because past my siblings and parents, I didn’t do personal.
I did routine. I did sacrifice. I did conviction.
I did not entertain shit I couldn’t have and I definitely didn’t take risks I couldn’t mitigate or outright control.
But then two years post forced retirement, depressed, and bored, I was headhunted by a yoked white boy I’d met only a handful of times and fully planned to turn down his job offer, until he flew me out to DC for a tour of the headquarters and I turned a corridor in the quietest office I’d ever been in and saw her.
Four inch designer heels she’d kicked off her stockinged feet. Tight as fuck pencil skirt. And a face that gave me no reason to believe I would ever touch her, let alone keep her.
One single moment in time, now a core memory was all it took to end twenty years of steadfast adherence and begin my descent into a new fucking version of myself.
One where I grew familiar with incalculable risk and not even the perception of control.
I accepted that someone could screw me without touching me, fuck me over worse than any enemy, or straight up tear out my heart.
And I did so happily, willfully, because a submissive computer nerd looked at me and instead of seeing another broken, bitter, isolated vet, she saw a man and I could respect a decisive woman.
But I had to remember that the one in the living room of this rented townhome watching me with wary eyes wasn’t the same one who’d begged me to touch her in a fucking break room.
She looked like her. Spoke like her. But she was no longer my incalculable risk, she was a fucking landmine and I needed to keep my distance.
Ignoring my hard dick and foul mood, I told myself the lie that I was only cracking because of self-neglect and the weight of the last two years, but I knew the truth.
It was her. And I needed to watch my fucking six.