by Christa Wick
“Positive.” Sage leaned down and kissed the top of Leah’s head. “Love you, Honey Bee.”
The toddler looked up.
“Love you, Sage.”
“I’ll just get my purse from the office and leave through the side exit.”
Lindy stopped Sage before she could clear the room. Wrapping her hands around Sage’s shoulders, Lindy gave a soft squeeze.
“You come ready to talk tomorrow, yeah? I’ll keep our little bee busy.”
Sage smiled, the brief lift of her head a noncommittal gesture masquerading as a nod.
Escaping to the office, she grabbed her stuff and slipped outside. She drove the company car to Jake’s house, put everything she couldn’t leave behind in her weekender bag then walked a mile of unlit streets and roads to reach the gas station on the edge of town where a Greyhound bus stopped every night to refuel and pick up an occasional stray passenger on its return run to Billings.
From Billings, she took the first plane out of the state, arriving in Baltimore a day later after two connecting flights.
Another day would pass before she answered her phone, Jake on the other end asking the same question she kept asking herself.
Why did you leave?
19
Cleaning up after lunch, Sage dropped her sponge in the sink at the sound of a video chat request coming in over Skype. Placed nearby, her computer sat on the tiled counter that divided her studio apartment between the barely existent kitchen and the living room with its foldout couch that served as her bed. Turning the computer to face her, she accepted the call, a mask settling over her face until she knew whether Adler was in the background.
She expected Lindy with Leah in her lap or Jake borrowing both Lindy’s Skype account and desk—also with Leah in view. This time, it was only the toddler, no sign of an adult in the room with her.
“Hello, Honey Bee,” she smiled, her mask falling away.
Leah didn’t smile back. Her entire face looked ready to collapse on itself.
“Oh, baby girl, what is wrong?” Sage asked, swiping her phone off the counter and immediately pulling up her contact list. “Is there a grownup with you? Is this an emergency?”
The wriggly line of Leah’s mouth parted as her head vigorously bobbed up and down.
“Sutton missing,” Leah cried.
The little girl’s statement made no sense. Sage had talked to Jake and Leah the prior morning. Jake didn’t mention the soldier visiting Willow Gap on leave. As far as Sage knew, he was still deployed to Afghanistan.
Was that what she meant?
But why was Leah alone? She could only use the computer with an adult sitting with her. In the two weeks since Sage had left Willow Gap, that adult was always Lindy or Jake. There had been a few sightings of Adler passing through the room. But the minute he realized Leah was Skyping with Sage, he would literally stop on a dime, pivot, and walk out of camera range.
Siobhan rushed into view.
“No, baby. No computer.”
Seeing Sage, she picked Leah up and settled into the chair with the toddler on her lap.
“Sorry. It’s been a rough twenty-four hours. I closed my eyes for five minutes and little fingers decided to get busy. Good thing she wasn’t hungry instead. The fire alarm would be screaming about now.”
If Siobhan was trying to put on a brave face and casual voice for the little girl, she was failing miserably. With dark circles rimming bloodshot eyes, she looked as if far more than a day had elapsed since she last slept. Her voice was just as raw as her looks, the tone wavering.
“Leah said Sutton is missing. Is that right?”
“We don’t know,” Siobhan sighed. She stroked at Leah’s hair, holding the child close. “We received a frantic call from the wife of someone on his team. We don’t even know how she got our number. And she was looking for information, not handing it out.”
Frowning, Siobhan gave a head tilt to indicate she didn’t want to say more around Leah. Looking at the toddler’s distraught face, she had already heard far too much since the stranger’s call.
Siobhan rubbed the little girl’s cheek, then kissed next to her ear.
“We don’t know anything is wrong, baby girl. Someone’s missus is just having a freakout. I get calls at work like that all the time. I promise.”
Sage wasn’t buying it, neither was Leah. The toddler wriggled free of Siobhan’s embrace to lean toward the camera, her face completely filling Sage’s screen. The little mouth trembled and the eyes threatened to water.
“Sutton…maybe no come back?”
Tears suddenly dotted Leah’s cheeks as her child’s mind followed the trail from missing to dead. That was what “no come back” meant to the two year old. She didn’t have another word for it, could only understand that those who were dead were someplace closed off, their return impossible, no contact permitted. Skype didn’t have a line to Heaven.
“Honey Bee, we have to wait for more information.”
Leah’s face cracked open, the tears she struggled to hold back suddenly undammed and flooding down her cheeks. Mouth twisting with grief, she took hold of the camera with both hands.
“You come back,” she implored.
Sage held her breath against the sudden pain of having her niece beg her to return to Willow Gap, of how, faced with the potential loss of her uncle, Leah needed her aunt there with her. An axe to the chest would have been less agonizing than having to deny the tear-stained plea, but deny it was all Sage could do.
“Honey Bee, I have to stay here and do what I can to help Sutton come back. Okay?”
Sage’s cheeks heated with the falsehood and the threat she would begin bawling as heavily as the toddler. She was a spreadsheet jockey. There was nothing she could do for Sutton in Baltimore, and little she could do for her niece over video chat.
Words were all she was good for and words clearly meant nothing at that moment. Leah shook her head furiously then buried her face against Siobhan’s neck, the little body wracked with deep sobs.
“Sutton no come back!” the toddler wailed.
“Honey Bee—”
Vomit erupted across Siobhan’s blouse.
“I’m sorry,” Siobhan said, suddenly green-faced as she reached around Leah for the computer mouse. “She’ll calm down. I called Jake and Adler back to the house, they should be here soon. I need to change her clothes and mine. I’ll let you know when we hear anything.”
Sage nodded as the call window closed.
Phone still in her hand, she stared at it like a foreign object. Leah needed her, but she couldn’t just hop on a plane. There were other adults there to comfort her, adults who loved the little girl every bit as much as Sage did. They would console Leah.
Thumb sliding toward the home button on her phone, she paused over one of the listed contacts.
Simply Steve.
The number didn’t belong to Sage’s father. It belonged to the secretary who manned his office in D.C. No one had given Sage the number. She had instead scoured the internet for it then bounced around multiple phones at the Congressional staff offices before hitting the right number.
She thumbed the contact then the call icon and brought the phone to her ear. On the fourth ring, someone picked up.
“Congressman Templeton’s office, this is Gloria Perkins, how may I—”
“You know who this is. I need to speak to him now.”
Sage had no doubt her name and number were showing on the secretary’s phone display. The woman had joined Steve’s staff even before his election to the House. She knew the Ballard name, had known it when Sage called to say her mother was dying. The message she left with Gloria that day was never returned.
“He’s in a meet—”
“Now,” Sage interrupted before the excuse gave way to a request to leave a message. She wasn’t playing that game anymore. She would blow up his phone all day long.
“Now,” she repeated when Gloria remained silent.
&nb
sp; The “or else” was implied in Sage’s tone. Serving two-year terms, House members were always in re-election mode, especially the twice-shamed Steve Templeton. If Sage told the press about her childhood, about the secrecy enforced by threats and Steve’s cold and distant nature to his children, she could seriously hurt his re-election bid. If she embellished with a fib or two, she could bury him—make associating with him so toxic he wouldn’t even be fit to join a lobbying firm.
“Let me see,” Gloria said, putting the call on hold.
Sage waited as classical music began to play. The clock on her laptop clicked from 1:01 to :02 and on to :03 before the music stopped and a familiar rumble of irritation ended the sudden silence a few seconds later.
“What do you want?”
She rolled her eyes at the question even though she hadn’t anticipated an exchange of pleasantries. Steve placed his bastard children in one of two categories—political liabilities or assets. Based on his treatment of her and Jake, they had always been in the liability column and there they would remain. So she might as well cut straight to the point of her call.
“I need to know the status of an Army Staff Sergeant in Afghanistan. His name is Sutton Lee Turk and he—”
“This sergeant is related to Jake’s wife, then,” Steve interrupted.
A cold shiver ran down Sage’s spine. Over all the years that Jake had kept himself hidden, she knew in her heart that all she had to do was pick up the phone and ask Steve where to find her brother. But she had respected the barriers Jake had built until the night he picked up the phone and made that desperate, heartsick call.
“Yes,” Sage snapped. “One of her younger brothers. Jake’s wife is dead, by the way.”
“Well, that is news. And the child? A girl is it?”
Sage imagined a line being struck through Dawn’s name on some ledger in Steve’s office, his pen poised to repeat the motion for Leah.
“Leah wasn’t in the accident that killed her mother,” she growled. “Physically, she is fine. The entire family will be a whole lot better once they know they haven’t lost another loved one.”
Pausing, she sucked in a deep breath and expelled it with her demand. “I want this information no later than end of day.”
“Are you threatening me, daughter?”
Clamping down on her back teeth, Sage crafted an ambiguous reply.
“I would never threaten a member of the government,” she said, a smile sounding in her voice even though her mouth remained a grim line. “Not even the local rat catcher. But fail me on this, father, and you’re casting a very large rock at a pile of mounting disappointments.”
There, let him chew on that.
“I’ll consider your request,” he said, the line going dead as soon as the last word left his lying mouth.
Two hours later, a text from a blocked number directed Sage to be at the entrance off First Street to the Capitol South Metro Station at five p.m.
Like this isn’t at all ominous, Sage thought, slipping into running shoes and throwing on a hoodie despite the summer heat. Either Steve really wasn’t supposed to release the information or he had an assassin with a polonium tipped umbrella waiting to jab her in the leg. As far-fetched as the latter sounded, she wouldn’t bet against it. This was Simply Steve, after all.
Reaching the end of her building, she banged on the door of the last apartment.
“Thorne! Open up. I need to borrow your car.”
A bleary-eyed medical resident still wearing the prior shift’s scrubs opened the door and blinked at her like an owl just freed from its hood. He ran his hand through the full red beard he somehow managed to conceal behind a surgical mask at work, then up through the shaggy red rat’s nest he called hair.
“Say ‘yes,’” Sage ordered, her smile desperate as she reached into the apartment and patted around the small hooks attached next to the door. Feeling the key ring, she pulled it to her and separated the car fob as he began to walk away.
“You need to wear heels if you’re going to boss me around,” Thorne mumbled, his sleepy voice obscuring the vestiges of a Norwegian accent. He made it halfway across his living room before he rushed to the door and shouted after her.
“Have it back by nine!”
Sage lifted her hand, waving her agreement to his terms as she sprinted across the street to where he had parked the Corolla. The car had been new when he was in middle school, but he was as good at fixing engines as he was at healing people.
Jumping in, she jammed the key in the ignition, her gaze locked on the fuel gauge. Half full, there was enough gas for her to get to the rendezvous point. She would fill the tank on her return trip and bring Thorne a triple tall latte for his troubles.
Leaving the parking spot, Sage headed for the closest highway entrance. On a good day, the drive through Baltimore and DC traffic would take her an hour and twenty minutes. Finding someplace to park the Corolla was a separate consideration that could extend well past the deadline set.
She would drive the vehicle down the station’s escalators if it came to that.
It didn’t come to that. She ran up to the entrance huffing and puffing with three minutes to spare. Taking up a spot a few feet from the escalators, she watched the passengers ascending from the dark depths, her own face hidden within the shadows of her hoodie.
A minute past five, one of the passengers locked her gaze on Sage. It was a slim redhead somewhere in her forties and dressed in a navy blue skirt suit with a white blouse. Seeing that the woman wasn’t holding an umbrella or a gun, Sage relaxed when the passenger stepped off the escalator and approached.
“Miss Ballard.”
The voice belonged to Gloria.
Sage nodded. “Miss Perkins.”
She didn’t hold her hand out to the woman. It wasn’t that sort of meeting, never would be.
Speaking in a whisper, the secretary leaned close.
“I can unofficially confirm the individual in question has survived injuries sustained during a military operation in an unspecified country. After being stabilized, he is now on a medical transport back to the United States.”
Gloria turned on her heels, the conversation seemingly over as abruptly as it had begun.
“Where in the United States?” Sage demanded as she chased after her. “And what injuries? Just how bad is it?”
“I assume it’s not as bad as being dead,” the woman quipped over her shoulder as she stepped onto the descending elevator. “Expect him to arrive at Walter Reed within the next twelve hours.”
The sprawling medical complex was in nearby Bethesda. If Sutton was being sent there, Sage would go in person. It was the only way to help ease the family’s fears.
“Thank you, Miss Perkins. I’ll check with the hospital first thing in the morning.”
Gloria turned around, her mouth popping open in a small, perturbed O shape.
“You’ll do no such thing. Staff won’t allow him visitors until he’s been officially debriefed on his mission. That’s highly unlikely while he’s on painkillers.”
“Then I need to know what room he’s in when he gets there.”
The red eyebrows started a slow climb up her forehead. When she spoke, her voice was a cold whisper.
“Why would the Congressman risk giving you that information?”
“Because he knows I can keep my mouth shut,” Sage shot back, her nose detecting the scent of her father’s cologne and favorite cigars. She could understand picking up the smoky odor from being in the same room, maybe sitting across the desk from him. But the cologne was equally present, the two smells together overriding any fragrance the woman’s morning rituals might produce.
Gloria shrugged. “I’ll see what I can find out. Regardless, I wouldn’t sniff around your father anytime soon looking for more favors.”
“No worries,” Sage smiled. Leaning forward, she tapped her nose twice with an exaggerated slowness. “And I won’t come sniffing around you, either.”
20
Arriving back in Baltimore, Sage handed over the hot coffee before returning Thorne’s car fob. He took a long, satisfied drink, his free hand absently stroking the bear head on his Berserker t-shirt. Smacking his lips, he wiggled his eyebrows at her.
Seeing what looked like dancing red caterpillars on his forehead, Sage laughed.
“Now,” he rumbled past his smile. “About getting you to slip on a pair of heels for me.”
She patted his chest. When it came to flirting, Thorne was about as dangerous as a teddy bear. She knew for a fact he showered the same attentions on the octogenarian two doors down, even took the woman flowers once.
The man had zero intentions of getting serious until he settled down in a medical practice somewhere far away from Baltimore.
“I have a two year old to calm down,” she told him.
Sage’s own emotions had made it hard enough to drive. Calling from the car during rush hour would have been even more dangerous, maybe even deadly if anyone on the other side of the call was freaking out.
“Little Leah?” Thorne stroked his beard. The man was an absolute sucker for kids. It was one of the many things she liked about him. “Anything more I can do to help?”
Sage looked over the fresh pair of scrubs he had put on in anticipation of his next shift. “Got a pair of those hanging around—you know, my size?”
The thick but nimble fingers stopped stroking his beard and began to comb through it. “Not here, but I can think of a certain nurse I can talk out of a pair sometime around midnight.”
The man did like his women on the voluptuous side. That had always been a plus even though she didn’t take his flirting seriously.
“Not on my account, Romeo,” Sage laughed. “If it comes down to it, I’ll figure that part out on my own.”
With a goodbye wave, she sprinted back to her apartment. Once inside, she took a quick pee and pulled her messy hair into a ponytail. Grabbing a juice, she sat down at the counter and opened up Skype, pinging Lindy’s computer with a video chat request.
Less than a minute later, Lindy appeared onscreen. Stress deepened the lines in her face. Her eyes looked hollowed out. Seeing the smile the woman had to force, Sage felt bad for calling, even though she had good news.