57. Garrett
GARRETT
Seventy-two hours. That’s how long it’s been since Simone last saw Peony and Zara.
And we still have no idea where they could be—other than they could be possibly headed to or are already in New Orleans.
I pace for the thousandth time in what little available space there is in my living room. The room and adjoining kitchen are crowded with everyone waiting for news. My parents. My brothers. Zara’s parents and brothers. Kim and Jess.
Simone is at home with the girls, anxious like the rest of us.
I haven’t told anyone—other than my brothers—about what Athena told me. The last thing Zara’s parents and brothers need to hear is that Zara is possibly in the hands of sex traffickers.
The police and FBI have swept my house for evidence. Now all we can do is wait.
And it’s killing me.
I write heroes who take charge and save the day. I’m a fucking Marine, and I can’t do a fucking thing to save my daughter and the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
If I had been home…if I hadn’t run off like an idiot to confront Austin…if I had been here like I should have, working on my book, Emily woul d be alive, fine-tuning the last-minute details for next weekend’s wedding she was coordinating.
And Peony and Zara would be safe.
There has to be something I’m missing. A clue to tell the FBI where Peony and Zara might be found.
Athena is sitting in an armchair, her face, her body, her posture that of an anguished stone statue.
She hasn’t spoken since combing through hundreds of Warrior photos taken during the past few months.
She didn’t recognize in any of them the man who Peony freaked out over.
I’m pretty sure it was Joffrey Winters, but he was one of the men who didn’t want to end up on social media, so we never took photos of him.
We have no idea if the man is linked to Emily’s murder and Peony’s and Zara’s disappearance. We have no idea if we’re chasing our own tail.
No one has made a ransom demand, so we still don’t know if that’s the motive for taking them. And there’s been nothing to suggest the kidnappers want Athena in their custody too.
The occasional murmur of voices or the sniff of a broken heart crack through the heavy silence in the room. The silence thunders in my ears, matches the echoing boom-boom-boom of my pulse.
I need to get out of here.
I just need a moment. A moment where I’m not reminded of how many lives will be forever changed if they don’t come home. I’m having a hard enough time keeping things together for myself. I can’t be strong for everyone else.
Outside, I walk across the patio to the grass and inhale the fresh mountain air. It doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t fix my anger or my pain or my fear. It doesn’t bring my daughter and Zara home to me.
I pick up a small stone from the flower bed and hurl it against a maple tree. Anger rips through my throat in a yell. The stone bounces off the trunk and lands a few feet in front of a fairy door.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I pick up another stone and another, each one hurled with the same force as the first. The stones litter the ground around the fake fairy home, and my lungs burn from all the yelling. But none of it makes me feel better. None of it brings Peony and Zara back to me .
The door clicks open. I turn to tell whomever it is to leave me the fuck alone. Unless they have news about Peony and Zara.
It’s Troy—and the curse dies on my lips.
Only he can understand what I’m going through, after what happened to Jess last year. Not exactly a great comfort. Jess was tortured. Christ, please tell me the same thing isn’t happening to Zara and Peony.
“How’re you doing?” His tone tells me he knows the answer.
I grunt, not having enough words to give a reasonable reply, and begin pacing on the grass.
“It’s never easy for men like us to sit on the sidelines and rely on someone else to save someone we love.
” He turns a patio chair to face me and sits, elbows on his knees.
His expression is the same tortured one I recognize from when Jess went missing.
He knows things Jess never told the rest of us about her ordeal.
“You have to trust the cops and FBI to find that person. You have to trust someone who doesn’t have the same thing at stake as you do—your heart. And that’s damn near impossible.”
“I just want to be out there looking for them.” My eyes lock with Troy’s.
“I love Zara. I love her as more than just a friend.” A dull ache sits in my chest at everything I want to tell Zara.
Of how much I love her. Of how I plan to make up for the time I wasted denying my feelings for her. I want a forever with her.
“I know. Glad you finally figured that out for yourself.” He flashes me a tired smile, which then flattens into a twisted line.
“As for looking for them…unlike in your novels, this is real life. And killing the bad guys isn’t an option for a civilian.
Not when it could result in us doing time instead of the ones who should be locked away.
We have to rely on the justice system to do its job. ”
I snort a laugh, the sound void of humor.
“What about justice for Kenda? What about Athena and the girls who were lured into sex trafficking? Are they going to experience justice?” I drop onto the grass, as if the only thing that kept me standing was the bravery I no longer feel.
“Fuck, why does this have to be so hard? Why can’t they figure out who took them and where they went? ”
The back door opens, and Noah walks to where we’re sitting. He’s in his uniform, so this isn’t a friendly visit. His expression warns me he doesn’t have good news.
A winter freeze turns my body cold, the August breeze unable to defrost it.
I would stand, but my legs refuse to work.
I can only stare at him. Stare and hope that’s all it takes to kill the bad news on his lips. To make whatever he has to tell me not be true.
“The state troopers found Zara’s car. Her purse and phone were inside it.”
His words flick on the small amount of hope in me, and I push to my feet. “Where?”
“Down an embankment. In Cascadia State Park.”
“They got out?” Hope in my chest expands into something bigger, brighter. “I’ll let the Search and Rescue know. Zara and Peony might’ve taken shelter in the forest.”
Noah lifts his hand, a stop gesture. “Other than the purse and phone, there was no evidence that Zara and Peony were in the car when it went down the embankment.”
Hope deflates into a wrinkled balloon, and I frown. “What are you saying? You think someone staged the accident?”
“That’s what it looks like. Possibly to distract us into pooling our resources to look for Zara and Peony near the site of the accident. But in case we’re wrong, Search and Rescue has been called to the area. However, the FBI is still focused on the possibility they’re in New Orleans.”
I start walking toward the house, calling over my shoulder, “Okay, I’ll head to the accident site now.” I need something to do other than sit here like a helpless idiot.
Noah grabs my arm, stopping me. “You’re not going to help them. You’re family.” He releases my arm. “The rules are clear when it comes to family members.”
Fuck the rules. “I can’t just sit here waiting.”
“You don’t have to sit here waiting. But you do have to let us do our job and keep out of the way.
I mean it, Garrett. Go for a run with Lucas or Kellan or Troy.
Do whatever you need to, as long as it has nothing to do with Peony’s and Zara’s disappearance.
Or finding the man who murdered Emily.” Noah’s nostrils flare at the last part, a slight crack in his cop mask.
No one knows where Kellan is, so I go for a run on my own. My head is no clearer by the time I return home than it was when I left.
Athena is curled up in the armchair, staring into space, like she was when I left. From the sounds of it, everyone else has moved into the backyard.
“Hey,” I say, still digesting the news she told me two nights ago about her and Kenda. How if things had gone according to plan, Athena would be Peony’s mother and not her nanny.
“Hi,” she replies, her voice lifeless.
“You said you prefer the name Athena, not Krista.”
“That’s right.”
“But Peony calls you Nina. Why not just stick with that name?” I’ve been wondering that since finding out her real name isn’t Athena.
“Nina was the name The Bear gave me.” She shudders, the movement violent enough to notice.
“So no way did I want to keep using it after we escaped. Athena had been Kenda’s idea.
” Athena continues fiddling with her pendant.
“The goddess of wisdom, war, and the crafts had been thought of as courageous. Kenda said anyone who had survived what I had was definitely courageous.”
Kenda was right about that. “The name’s fitting for you.” I sit in the middle of the couch. “Did Kenda give that to you? The pendant?” I point at it.
Athena blinks, her eyes red from crying. “It’s a locket. She gave it to me the morning she was killed but didn’t have a chance to put any photos in it. We were going to do that when we got to California.” She lifts her feet onto the chair and hugs her legs, her shoulders slumped forward.
“Why don’t we fix that?” I head for my office and return with two small, newly printed pictures of Peony and Kenda. I grab scissors from the kitchen drawer.
Athena hands me the pendant, her curiosity-widened eyes watching me.
I sit on the couch, open the locket, and remove one of the stock photos. I put it on Peony’s photo, a template for cutting her picture.
Tiny handwritten numbers stare at me from the back of the generic photo.
Without my reading glasses on, they look blurry.
“What are the numbers for?” I show them to Athena.
She shakes her head, her pale eyebrows disappearing under her bangs. “I have no idea.”
I grab my reading glasses from the office and return to the couch.
This time, when the numbers aren’t so blurry, they make more sense.
“They look like longitude and latitude directions. And possibly a lock combination.” And now that I have my glasses on, there’s no denying they’re written in Kenda’s handwriting.
The part of me that loves solving mysteries in the books I read, who as a kid would talk through plots with Zara for the books we read together…that part of me sits up and takes notice. Gets excited at what the numbers could mean.
I log them into my phone to see where they take me. They are exactly what I was thinking. The first two sets are longitude and latitude directions.
Hope plunges straight to my heart and spreads through my body. And for the first time in three days, a tiny amount of ice inside me thaws.
I dial Noah’s cell phone. “I think I might have something.”