“He gave me a side job.”
“Doing what?”
“Missing person. Apparently, Tara Emsworth disappeared shortly after Thanksgiving.”
“Name sounds familiar.”
“She’s one of Razor’s wife’s best friends.”
“That’s right. Mercer’s wife’s too.” Both men were guys we worked for at K19 Security Solutions.
“So your job is to find her?”
Halo nodded. “Wanna help? And by that, I mean come up with a plan.”
“Sure, I can do that.” No way in hell I’d take a mission, though. Maybe never again.
When I drove up to Halo’s parents’ house a couple of hours later, he invited me in. Instead, I told him I’d come by that night. It was obvious it bugged him. No other time that I could remember had I refused to at least say hello. However, my reason for not wanting to now, was something I couldn’t admit or explain.
6
Sloane
I saw the car pull up and hoped Tackle would park and come in. I equally hoped Knox would get out and Tackle would drive away. My second wish came true.
Tomorrow was Christmas, and if my parents didn’t invite his over, they would the following day. I thought about telling them I had a work emergency requiring I travel out of town, but why would I lie to my parents, ruin Christmas for them, just to avoid my brother’s best friend, a man who now had a different and more significant descriptor—the one who took my virginity?
When I was growing up, we had plenty of ruined holidays when my father’s work with the State Department took him away from our family. He’d been gone more than he was home, at least until we moved to Newton, outside of Boston. I hadn’t asked and never would, but I assumed my mother had given him an ultimatum of some kind, and that was the only reason he’d agreed to the move. Even though his travel was cut to twenty-five percent of what it had been, it was still hard on her when he left for weeks at a time. Sometimes, at night, I’d hear her crying after we’d both gone to bed.
The day my brother announced he was going to work for the CIA, my parents had a terrible argument. It got so bad, I left the house. But not before I heard her demand my father forbid Knox from taking the job.
She didn’t get her way, and for the six months after their fight, she’d let my father know loud and clear how unhappy my brother’s decision made her. It was the only time in my life I thought they might get a divorce. In the end, they’d made up, in part because my brother seemed happy.
Then when Knox was kidnapped in Somalia, my mother went into a downward spiral. Fortunately, my brother was rescued within days, but that didn’t change the fact that my father had paid dearly by way of burnt meals, the silent treatment, and who knew what behind closed doors.
Next was the plane crash. Her emotional state was so fragile during those endless hours when we waited to hear who the survivors were that she’d leaned on my dad. When we found out Knox was injured but alive, I think she was so thankful, she forgot to be angry with either of them.
That Knox had promised he wouldn’t take on any missions until after the new year, and maybe not even then, had elevated her mood, made obvious by the extent to which our house had turned into a Christmas wonderland.
Perhaps this time around, she punished my father through his wallet, given the amount of holiday decorations seemed to quadruple.
“Sloane?” I heard my mother call from downstairs. “Your brother is home!”
“I’ll be right there,” I hollered back. Before going downstairs, I powered on my phone, thought about unblocking Tackle’s number, but shut it down again without doing so.
I knew I was behaving childishly by avoiding him, but after rushing from the apartment that fateful day, I’d set something in motion I had no idea how to stop. I asked myself why I’d felt compelled to throw on my clothes and race away, but I never came up with a good answer.
Mainly, I guess it was because I couldn’t face him after he’d witnessed my tears. I’d escaped to the bathroom without answering when he asked why I was crying. I didn’t expect that he’d drop it, and there was no way I could explain it to him.
Because after all these years, I finally had sex with the one man I’d waited for. And it was as amazing and wonderful as I’d hoped it would be. I’d had my first orgasm under a hand that wasn’t my own, and it was so mind-blowingly spectacular that I’d cried.
“Hey, peanut, whatcha doin’ up here?” asked Knox, coming into my room.
I walked over and hugged him. “Avoiding the elf-fest downstairs as much as possible.”
He laughed and messed my hair like he’d do when we were kids. “Everything okay with you?”
“Of course. Why?” Jesus. Had Tackle said something to him?
“You look like you haven’t been sleeping.”
I turned, studied my face in the mirror, and pinched the bags under my eyes. “You know how it gets right before Christmas, with the extreme right-wing evangelicals fighting with the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism.”
He sat down on the bed. “Really?”
I shook my head. “No, but with the increase in large groups of people gathering in one place…You get it.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
I sat beside him. “How’s Onyx?”
“No change.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“To be honest, I’m more worried about Tackle.”
Oh, no. “Why?”
“He’s not himself.”
“In what way?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from sounding frantic.
“I don’t know, exactly. He’s been distant.”
“You both went through something unimaginable.”
“True. It seems like more. I probably shouldn’t say anything, but on the plane ride from Columbia home, he mentioned there was someone in his life. A woman he wasn’t sure felt the same way about him as he felt for her.”
“Oh. Wow,” I said, even though inside I was screaming.
