Duty Bound

by Samantha Chase

  “I don’t think it’s going to be easy, Levi. Especially if it’s someone in her inner circle. Someone who’s close to her that wants to hurt her? She’ll never see it coming.”

  Great. And I’d left her alone in a city full of people Harper thought she could trust.

  ***

  One of the perks of working for family—particularly family who walked around you on eggshells—was that when I said I needed some time off, no one questioned it. Which was exactly what happened Tuesday afternoon when I told my father that I wouldn’t be back after lunch.

  I had stayed away from Harper for almost four days, with no contact at all, and I was going slightly crazy. Rather than going to her, I thought the better route was to go to her parents. Harper may not have told them everything about the threats against her, but maybe they had noticed something out of the ordinary where she was concerned.

  I was desperate, and right now they were my only hope.

  The afternoon seemed like the perfect time to head over because I knew Harper would be at work.

  When I pulled up to her parents’ house, I was struck by that familiar wave of sadness that I’d had since Gavin’s funeral. Only this time, it was tinged with an additional sense of unease. It felt wrong to be snooping behind Harper’s back, but she’d left me no choice.

  “Levi!” Darlene Murphy said with a smile as she pulled the door open. “This is a surprise! Come on in!” She wrapped me in a fierce hug, and it made me smile. Darlene had always been like a second mom to me, and I realized how much I’d missed her. “What brings you over today?”

  I had been about to answer when Charles walked in and gave me the same exuberant welcome his wife had. Once all of the general greetings were over, I followed them into the kitchen where I was offered some coffee and a piece of pie.

  Déjà vu.

  "How’ve you been, Levi? How is work going with your dad?”

  I thanked Darlene as she placed a steaming mug of coffee down in front of me before turning my attention back to Charles. “It’s been going well, thanks. I’m amazed at the amount of work that he constantly has.”

  Charles nodded. “He’s very fortunate—but then again, he’s also a gifted contractor. He’s done work on most of the houses here in the community.”

  I nodded in agreement. Construction might not have been my thing, but I was smart enough to know that it was certainly my dad’s and that he was good at it. I only hoped that someday I’d find something that I loved like he did and be able to make a career out of it.

  “I was wondering how you were both doing,” I began hesitantly. “And Harper. Has everything been okay?”

  They exchanged a look before turning back to me. “We’d be lying if we said that it’s been easy,” Charles said. “We simply take life one day at a time.”

  “We’re so thankful that Harper is here,” Darlene added. “She’s always busy, of course, but it’s nice to have her so close by.” She smiled warmly. “Plus, we still spend some time with Gina and that makes us feel closer to Gavin.”

  Gina? Who the hell was Gina? I cleared my throat and asked, “I’m sorry. Who’s Gina?”

  “Gina was Gavin’s girlfriend,” Darlene explained. “Surely Gavin must have mentioned her to you? We were so certain that they were going to get married when he came home.”

  Gavin had a girlfriend? I wracked my brain and tried to remember if Gavin had ever mentioned her, but I came up blank. She must have been someone local. Someone who… “Wait a minute. Do you mean Gina DeMarco?”

  Darlene nodded. “They went out on and off before Gavin enlisted, but she wrote to him the entire time he was in basic training and deployed. She used to come over for Sunday dinners,” Darlene sighed. “She’s like family.”

  Family? How could Gina practically be family when Gavin never mentioned her? Were his parents aware that this was a one-way relationship? I now remembered Gina from back in high school, and she’d always had a crush on Gavin but he’d never taken it seriously. Gavin and I were as close as brothers. He would have told me if he had been planning on marrying someone when we got out.

  “Levi?” I turned at the sound of Harper’s voice. I kept my expression blank, but just the sight of her made my chest ache. She was in yoga pants and an oversized t-shirt—mine—and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her face was pale, and her expression was bleak. I had to fight the urge to walk over and haul her into my arms. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see your folks,” I said and forced myself to turn my back on her. “I hadn’t seen them in a while.”

  Why wasn’t she at work? Why was she home? Wasn’t she feeling well? Was she sick? A million questions raced through my mind. Had something happened in DC? Was she hurt? I shook my head and returned my attention to her parents. We made small talk until I heard Harper leave the room.

  “Do Harper and Gina hang out together?” I asked as a thought occurred to me.

  Darlene shook her head. “Heavens, no. Gina is a very quiet girl. I think Harper overwhelms her. I think that if…if Gavin had come home, I’m sure they would have gotten along just fine. But since the funeral, they seem to be giving one another a wide berth.”

  I let that statement settle a bit before I stood. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got some business to attend to.”

  “With a job site?” Charles asked as he stood.

  Shaking my head, I reached out and shook his hand and then walked around the table to hug Darlene. “No,” I said, making sure that I didn’t sound overly anxious. “It’s a personal matter, but I need to get some calls made before close of business today.” I thanked them for the coffee and promised to come back and visit again soon.

  I walked out to my truck and even managed to pull out of the driveway and go down the block before I pulled out my phone. I scrolled through the contacts and hit Seb’s name.

  “I swear,” he said when he answered, “at this rate I’m going to assign a private direct line solely for you.”

  “Yeah, yeah…I’m a pain in the ass.” I finally let the urgency I was feeling process.

  “Admitting that you have a problem is always the first step.

  “Can we skip the funny banter and be serious?”

  Sebastian was silent for a moment. “Okay, sure. What’s going on?”

  “I think we have a lead.”

  Eleven

  Harper

  I’d been living in a self-manufactured cocoon for the last four days, but Levi’s appearance downstairs had broken it wide open.

  I returned to my room when I left the kitchen and tried to hide myself away again, get swallowed up in the familiar walls, the sound of the television, the blocking of everything that hurt, but it wasn’t any use.

  I’d watched Levi drive away earlier, and I stayed by the window looking outside for a long time. Waiting for…something.

  What came was a knock on my bedroom door.

  “Come in,” I called, smiling tiredly when I saw my mom at the door.

  She didn’t say anything. Just walked in and sat at my desk chair.

  I sighed and turned around. “Do you remember when Beaker got trapped in that basement?”

  Mom made a face and raised a hand to her chest. “Oh, God, don’t remind me. I still have nightmares about that. That stupid dog. And those stupid boys, going after him.”

  When I was eight, Gavin, Levi, and our dog had been exploring and came across an abandoned house. While they were nosing around, the stairs to the basement collapsed, sending the dog falling down with no way of getting out.

  I’d been following them around, as I often did, and I’d caught up just as the boys were starting down into the basement to rescue the dog. I still remember my panic as I saw them trying to find a way down. Even as a child, I knew how dangerous it was.

  “I begged Gavin not to go down,” I said, leaning my head against the cool window. “I was practically screaming at him not to do it.”

  “It was a
losing battle,” my mom said. “Getting him to see the reason in being cautious always was.”

  “He laughed. He laughed and said there was nothing to be afraid of, but if I tried to follow him he’d make me pay.” The memory ached in my throat, more now than it had ever done before.

  My bossy older brother. Who would never boss me again.

  My mom didn’t answer, but I could see a similar ache in her expression.

  “He always did rush into things without worrying about the consequences,” I murmured, closing my eyes when they started to burn.

  After a minute, Mom asked very softly, “Are you going to tell me why you haven’t left the house in four days?”

  A surge of emotion rose up without warning, and I had to contort my face to keep from sobbing.

  “Please tell me what’s going on,” my mom whispered.

  “It just feels like,” I began, forcing my voice to work through the tension of grief in my throat, “…like he died again.” My whole body shook as the sobs wracked me, too strong to possibly control. “Like I lost him all over again.”

  There were tears on my mom’s face too when she came over to give me a hug. I shook against her for a minute before she asked, “Will you please tell me what happened in DC?”

  I hadn’t told her yet. I hadn’t told anyone.

  I straightened up and wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “I talked to someone.”

  “Who?”

  I gave a half-shrug. “It’s an anonymous source, so I better not say. But it’s someone who works at the Pentagon.”

  My mom looked wary all at once. “What did the source say?”

  “That it wasn’t just a random accident that killed Gavin. That someone really messed up. That it’s somebody’s fault that he died.”

  “What do you mean? Whose fault? Who messed up?”

  “I don’t know. The source either didn’t know or didn’t tell me. But I keep thinking…” I trailed off, unable to even begin speaking the words.

  “What?”

  The words stuck in my throat again, but I forced them out. “It could have been Gavin who messed up.”

  I felt her stiffen beside me. “We don’t know that.”

  “I know. We don’t know anything. But what if it was? Is that really a story worth bringing to light? Is that really the answer I’ve been looking for? I don’t even know what I’ve been looking for, but now I wonder if there’s really any reason for my search…other than trying to keep Gavin alive, any way I can.”

  Mom let out a long breath and put an arm around me. “It’s your choice. You need to do what you need to do. But, if it were up to me, I’d let it go. Nothing you uncover is going to make Gavin less dead, and sometimes things are silenced for good reason.”

  Her words rang true, were the final conclusion of the internal journey I’d been on since I returned from DC. But they still hurt. Horribly.

  “What if the silencing means that justice isn’t done?” I asked at last.

  “Sometimes justice isn’t ours to carry out.”

  I thought about that for a minute. Then nodded, understanding what she meant. “I really do think that the truth is something to fight for,” I said then, in a strange, stretched voice. “That the truth is something that shouldn’t be hidden.”

  “Yeah.” She squeezed me with her arm. “I agree. But maybe the truth is bigger than we think it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe exposing the facts about the accident won’t really add to the truth. The truth is that Gavin is dead. He was a good man, a good brother, a good son, a good friend, and he’s gone just the same. The truth is that life is sometimes senseless like that—if there’s a purpose, it’s impossible for us to see. Is exposing whatever facts are hidden about the situation going to change any of that?”

  “No.” She was right. I knew she was right. And I suddenly felt better about the decision I’d already made.

  I hadn’t realized before I’d already made it.

  “The truth is bigger than the facts,” she went on. “Think about it this way. The facts are that that boy who was downstairs earlier has been moving heaven and earth to keep you safe. And he’s been getting on your last nerve in the process.”

  “Mom,” I began, feeling suddenly bombarded by the sudden shift in topic.

  “Just listen. Those are the facts. Anyone can see them. But the truth is that he’s doing it now because he cares about you so much that he’s torn up over the thought of you being in danger.”

  “Mom,” I said again, gulping over a different kind of tension in my throat. “I know you like to see the romantic silver lining everywhere, but a man can be pushy and arrogant and obnoxious without it meaning he has feelings.”

  “I know that. I’m sure Levi has been pushy and obnoxious without feelings plenty of times. But that’s not the truth right now.” She gave me an observant look. “I know you think your old parents are too blind and stupid to know what’s going on, but it’s pretty obvious that something’s been going on between the two of you.”

  “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “I know it doesn’t mean feelings. But that boy downstairs has feelings, and he has them for you. Maybe he doesn’t know what to do with them, but you learn to see things more clearly as you get older. And I can see what’s going on just fine.”

  I felt flustered and confused and oddly excited. “I don’t think so. And, even if he did, there’s no way I can be in a relationship with someone who needs to control me all the time.”

  She looked reflective for a moment. Then said in a different voice, “Remember that day when they were going after Beaker in the basement?”

  “Yeah.” I had no idea where she was going with this.

  “When you ran home to get me and we got back to that house, Gavin was almost high with excitement. For him it was all about the challenge, overcoming all obstacles, throwing himself into a new battle. For Levi, it was all about Beaker.”

  “What?” I felt emotional again and had no idea why.

  “He saw exactly what needed to be done, and he made Gavin do it his way. When we got there, he was ordering Gavin around like someone twice his age. He was just as headstrong as Gavin, but he didn’t do it for the challenge. He did it for the dog, because the dog mattered to him. He wasn’t going to let the dog die.”

  I frowned. “So I’m Gavin in this comparison, getting bossed around by Levi? Or am I the dog?”

  She smiled at me, in a kind of poignant amusement. “Just think about it.”

  She left me to my room then and, with nothing else to do, I did think about it.

  ***

  I finally left the house that evening. Just to go to the store, but since it was the first outing I’d made in days, it seemed momentous.

  I felt a little better, now that I’d made the decision to keep what I knew about the accident silenced. Like I could finally move on. So, on my way back from the store, I got the sudden urge to do something productive. I drove over to the newspaper offices to pick up some notes for a story I’d left on my desk, after having scrawled them on a notepad there.

  I could go two ways to get to the office from the store. Both were about the same distance.

  One way passed Levi’s apartment building.

  I ended up taking that route, without even consciously thinking it through. I certainly wasn’t going to stop and say “hello,” and I could hardly expect him to be outside the building at exactly the time I passed by, but something still compelled me to look over when I drove by his building.

  He wasn’t in the parking lot. Obviously. Nor was he hanging out his window with a banner that said, “Harper, I’m here! Thanks for driving by.”

  He was probably sitting in front of his television or hanging out with friends.

  Or maybe on a date.

  He was young, hot, virile, and eligible. Nothing was holding him back.

  Whatever we’d been to each other had never been
serious. And whatever it had been was now over.

  It was just over.

  I’d just been crying a little while ago, so it didn’t take much to push me into it again. For some reason, the idea of Levi being out of my life for good now burned in my eyes, tightened in my throat, shook in my shoulders.

  Stopped at a traffic light a few blocks from his apartment building, I cried for a few seconds. I kept telling myself there was no reason for it, but the mental pep-talk doesn’t really work when you’re emotionally battered.

  Maybe it had been short-lived. Maybe it had just been sex. Maybe I was a fool for ever thinking it could be anything more.

  But it had felt real, and now it was gone.

  It felt like too much was gone.

  After a minute, I turned my head when a car drove up next to me to wait at the light too.

  I froze when I saw Levi in his dark pickup truck. It was like my reflections had magically conjured his presence.

  He’d seen me too. He must have recognized my car, even as he was pulling up beside me. He still needed to shave—just as he had when I’d seen him without warning in my parents’ kitchen. In the street lights and the light from his dashboard, his eyes were eerily dark.

  He looked tired. Battered. Exactly as I felt.

  We stared at each other for a long stretch of time, and I couldn’t look away. Something shuddered in the space between us where our gazes met. It was loss and understanding and resignation and regret and resentment. All of them at once.

  Then I literally jumped when a car honked from behind me, and I turned forward to see that the light was green.

  I started off immediately, flushing from my emotional response to seeing Levi.

  There were things that happened that you wish hadn’t occurred. There were people you lost that you wish you’d been able to keep. That was life. Everything that was wrong in the world couldn’t always be fixed.

  No use to get hung up on it. I had a job I loved, and that was something I could pour myself into. I needed to focus on that right now.