by Susan Stoker
Coach sat down on his couch and put his head in his hands. “Her phone’s off. That’s why it’s going straight to voice mail. She drives that older piece of shit, so there’s no GPS tracking in it. And you all know as well as I do that if someone snatched her, she could be a couple of states away by now.”
“Maybe, maybe not. We have to try,” Ghost told his friend in a stern voice. “We aren’t giving up, you can’t either.”
The words were what Coach needed to hear, but he was frustrated. “I’m not fucking giving up, Ghost. I’m terrified out of my mind for her. Is she scared? Is she hurting? If someone took her, what do they want? Are they violating her? Is she even still alive? Too many people disappear without a trace in our world. I can’t lose her, man. I can’t!”
His words were all over the place, pain clear in every syllable.
“We won’t give up until we find her, Coach. You know we won’t,” Ghost told his friend, putting his hand on his shoulder in support.
“I know.” Coach said the words calmly, but everyone heard the terror in them.
* * *
Thirty-Two Hours Missing
Coach sat across from the detective in the Temple Police Department. He’d come down to the station with Davidson to officially file a missing person’s report. He only hoped that the officers would do something immediately, rather than playing the “she’s an adult and is allowed to not talk to anyone for a few days” card. Since Davidson was related to Harley, he was the one who was filling out the paperwork.
The detective had brought them into separate interrogation rooms to take their statements. That had been two hours ago, and Coach was still being grilled. He could appreciate that the boyfriend or husband was usually the first suspect in missing person’s cases, but his patience was being tested. The only reason he hadn’t lost his shit before now was because he knew his team was out there looking for Harley while he was stuck answering the same questions over and over.
“Tell me again what happened the night before Harley went missing,” the detective ordered, his pen hovering over a pad of paper.
Coach sighed. He’d already told the guy twice what had happened, and knew the man was looking for inconsistencies to his story, but it still pissed him off. He knew he hadn’t hurt Harley, but he needed to convince this asshole so he’d stop looking at him as the culprit and start the investigation.
“I was upset about something that happened that day and didn’t get back to her place until really early in the morning. We talked it out, we went to sleep, I got up around five-thirty because I had to get to PT at the base. I don’t have a key to her place, so I locked the doorknob, not the bolt, and left. That’s it.”
“And Harley was sleeping when you left?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to make you upset?”
Coach clenched his teeth and tried to control his anger. “Nothing that has anything to do with Harley disappearing.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe whatever it was had a direct effect. Did you get in a fight with someone yesterday? Maybe that person came back to take it out on Harley. Maybe you fought with her. Was that it? Did you hit her? Maybe she left to get away from you?”
“No, dammit!” Coach swore, standing up and leaning over the table. “We did not fight. I love Harley. We admitted we loved each other for the first time last night.”
“So what happened to make you upset then?”
Fuck. The man wasn’t going to let it go. Coach had no desire to relive the incident, from yesterday or his childhood, but if he didn’t, he’d never get out of this damn room. “We were having lunch and some high schoolers were making fun of some other girls. It bothered me. I told the teenagers off. That’s it. No fight. Just some civilized words of advice for our younger generation.”
“Hmmmm,” the officer said, scribbling something on his notepad. “Were there witnesses to these ‘words?’”
“Yes,” Coach bit out. “Harley was there. And my friends, Ghost, Blade, Hollywood, Emily, Rayne, and Mary. Not to mention the high schoolers themselves. And there was probably another random civilian or two who happened to exit the restaurant at the same time as well. Please. Harley is missing, and every minute you spend in here with me is another minute that you’re not investigating where the fuck she is.”
The detective leaned back in his chair, as if he had all the time in the world. “See, now, you say she’s missing, but maybe she’s not. She’s an adult, she can decide to leave of her own accord. It’s not breaking the law.”
“Fine. She left of her own accord, but you still have a responsibility to see if you can find out where she is. Track her credit cards, check her phone, look at her bank records. If she left on her own, you can figure it out and I won’t worry about her anymore.” Coach knew that was a lie, but he needed this guy to stop dicking around and do something.
The detective finally stood up and put his notepad in his pocket. “You’ll be around if we have any other questions? I’ll also need to contact your commanding officer and CID.”
Coach didn’t give a shit if this guy contacted the Criminal Investigation Division on base, as long as he was doing something. “No problem. I’ll write down my CO’s information.” Since Coach was still standing, he was now eye to eye with the detective. He needed to try to get through to the man.
“Please. I know I’m a suspect. I can live with that, but don’t only look at me. I’m innocent. I wouldn’t hurt a hair on Harley’s head. I love that woman so much, I’m putty in her hands. Do what you have to do, but for the love of God, keep looking for her while you’re investigating me.”
“We’ll be in touch.”
The detective didn’t look moved in the slightest by his impassioned plea. Coach closed his eyes for a moment. Fine. He’d done the right thing, the legal thing, and reported Harley missing through proper channels. He just hoped like fuck Beth, Penelope’s friend, had more information.
Penelope Turner was a soldier they’d been sent to Turkey to rescue from ISIS. She was tough as nails and the entire team had been impressed with her. She lived in San Antonio and was a full-time firefighter now. In a weird coincidence, she was friends with Rock, who now went by TJ, their former Delta sniper contact.
It was all very convoluted, but Coach didn’t care. Help was help and he could use all he could get right about now. Penelope’s brother was dating a woman named Beth, who was a computer hacker, much like Tex was. Coach would’ve been suspicious of how they happened to know the right people at the right time, but he’d been a Delta Force soldier long enough to not look a gift horse in the mouth. He’d take every coincidental connection he could get, and give out as many markers as needed, if they could only find Harley.
* * *
Fifty-Three Hours Missing
“You were right, there’s no active signal coming from her phone,” Beth told the group of men via speakerphone as they hung on her every word. “I checked and the last signal pinged from the tower nearest to her townhouse. But I can’t tell if that was while she was inside her place or when she was leaving. There’s been no activity on her credit cards and the piece-of-shit cameras in her complex haven’t been in operation for at least a year or more.”
“So you have nothing,” Coach grumbled in frustration.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Beth returned immediately. “I’ve been checking out traffic cameras around her place and I’m pretty sure I’ve identified her car on a couple. They’re complete crap images, so I can’t read the license plate, or see who was in the car, but it looks like a blue Ford Focus, with only one person visible in the driver’s seat. That doesn’t mean someone else wasn’t crouched down with a gun making her drive, or that it’s not her driving at all.”
“Where were the cameras?” Ghost asked.
“One is at the intersection of Main and Fourth, the other is farther down, at Main and Eighth.”
“Which direction?” Hollywood asked that time.
; “West.”
Fletch turned to the others sitting around the table at the base. They’d moved their operation there with their CO’s blessing, as they had access to more gadgets than at Coach’s apartment. “Okay, so she left her place—”
“We don’t know if she left voluntarily or if someone broke in and forced her to leave,” Truck interrupted. “Coach didn’t have a key to bolt the door, so it would’ve been easy to jimmy open.”
“The police admitted that there weren’t any signs of it being tampered with,” Fletch continued, not irritated at all that he’d been interrupted. “And the bolt was locked when they got there to check it out. Her landlord had to unlock it to let them in. Since Coach said he only locked the knob, we have to assume she left home as usual that morning and locked the bolt as she left.”
“We don’t know where she was going,” Blade observed.
“No, but she was driving west through town. Coach, can you talk to her brother and sister and see if they have any ideas about where she might have been headed?”
“Yes.” Coach hadn’t slept much, only twenty minutes or so here and there. Every time he fell asleep, he saw Harley’s face and heard her pleas for help. When he asked her where she was, she disappeared in a puff of smoke and he woke up shaking and sweating.
The dream he’d had right before this meeting was equally as awful. They’d been sitting on a wall near the ocean when a tsunami came out of nowhere and swept Harley away. He’d been holding her hand as the wave tried to suck her under. He hadn’t been able to hold on to her anymore, and as she was carried off by the water, she’d been screaming at him to help her.
“I’m still working on scanning the other cameras,” Beth told them through the speaker of the phone.
“What about her phone records?” Coach asked, trying to shrug off the memory of his nightmare. “Did she receive any calls that morning or text anyone?”
“No, and don’t ask how I know that. I’m breaking about forty-three FCC rules, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. And I hacked into her home computer as well. Nothing stands out there either. Harley logged in at eight forty-two and deleted some emails. She checked her social media, but didn’t comment or otherwise engage with anyone on there. She didn’t go to any websites either.”
The room was silent for a beat.
“How could she have disappeared without a trace?” Coach asked nobody in particular in an agonized voice. “She was here one minute, then gone the next.”
“She’s somewhere,” Beth said soothingly from the other end of the phone. “We’re gonna find her. I think her car is the key. It has to be. I’m going to spread my search area. I’ll hack into the cameras at the Austin and DFW airports and see if the car ended up at either one. I’ll also check the toll roads around the areas as well. No matter what, Coach, I’m not giving up.”
“Thanks, Beth. I owe you,” Coach said in a soft voice. As much as he hoped they’d find Harley’s car, he knew it wasn’t necessarily the key to finding her. If someone had taken her, they could’ve dumped her car and been hundreds of miles away by now. Thousands, if they flew her somewhere. But he had no idea who would want to kidnap her…or why. He had so many unanswered questions, his head was spinning. But he was grateful that he had such a great group of friends who would drop everything and work around the clock to do what they could to find Harley.
“No you don’t,” Beth returned a bit gruffly. “You don’t owe me a damn thing. You saved Pen’s life. She’s one of my closest friends. I couldn’t have made it down here in San Antonio without her. So this is making us even. Now, I g-gotta go. I’ll be in touch.”
The phone clicked off and no one commented on the break in Beth’s voice. She was as affected by this as they all were, even though she didn’t know Harley personally.
“We need to search the roads. Look for skid marks or broken guardrails. Maybe she was in an accident,” Ghost commented.
“I called the hospitals, there were no Jane Does admitted from any car wrecks,” Coach told Ghost.
“Okay, but still, if the cameras said her car was driving west on Main Street, we need to follow up on that.”
“Me and Beatle can go,” Blade said. “I’ll drive so he can concentrate on seeing if he can catch anything out of the ordinary.”
“Good,” Ghost told them. “Pay close attention to the gravel on the shoulders too. Once you get out of town, some of those roads are raised. There are irrigation ditches and streams along a lot of them.”
“Will do,” Beatle reassured both Ghost and Coach at the same time. “If there’s any sign of an accident, we’ll investigate it.”
“I’m going to see if I can get into her apartment,” Coach announced, standing up. “I want to get a look at it myself. Maybe I’ll see something that the cops didn’t. I was there that morning, I might notice if something is out of place.”
“I’ll go with you,” Truck said, his chair screeching on the floor as he stood.
“Coach, be sure you’re back here at noon. CID wants to interview you,” Ghost reminded him with a warning in his voice. “You can’t miss it. It’ll make you look guilty.”
“I’ll be there.” Coach knew he already looked guilty, but didn’t bring it up. It didn’t matter. Coach didn’t want to go through another interrogation, but he’d sit through as many as it took to get the cops off his back. He didn’t hurt Harley. The faster the authorities understood that the better, and maybe the more resources would be spent looking for her rather than following him around, watching his every move.
Harley’s apartment looked just like it did when Coach had left the other morning. There were new dishes in the sink though, so Harley had gotten up and eaten breakfast. Coach looked into the trash can, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, although it did need to be emptied. There was no way he was going to touch it though. It would be one more way the cops would try to pin her disappearance on him…accusing him of tampering with evidence if he brought the trash out to the Dumpster.
“I’m going to look around,” Coach told Truck. His friend nodded and continued to run his eyes over Harley’s things, as if memorizing the placement of every book and knickknack.
Coach wandered into her room and the sight of her bed nearly took his breath away. The covers were thrown back as if she’d just been there. He could picture her sliding her feet to the side and standing up after finally awakening. Had she thought about him? Was she concerned about what he’d told her? Was she sad for him? The bed held no answers.
He looked at the bedside table. Her glasses weren’t there, telling him that she had most likely put them on as usual when she’d gotten up. A part of Coach wanted them to be there. It would be some clue as to what had happened.
Wandering into the bathroom, Coach saw nothing out of the ordinary. Her towel was hanging over the bar next to the shower, her toothpaste and toothbrush were sitting next to the sink. Her hair dryer resting in its usual place. He opened the doors under the sink. Again, the trash can held nothing unusual. Some cotton swabs, a Q-tip, and a used tissue.
The sun was shining brightly into the room from the small window above the shower. It was as if she’d snapped her fingers and poof…disappeared. It was frustrating, and so damn depressing.
For just a moment, Coach allowed himself to feel despair. He was deathly afraid he’d never see Harley again. That he’d finally lucked out and found the woman meant to be his, only to have lost her in the next instant. It wasn’t fair. For a minute or two the dark cloud that had followed him around for years after the death of his sister threatened to engulf him once more. He’d spent many months going through life in a haze, unable to get over the feelings of guilt, despair, and grief.
Taking a deep breath, Coach got himself back under control. Being depressed wouldn’t help Harley, and it certainly wasn’t helping him.
He gritted his teeth in newfound determination. No one was gonna steal his girlfriend out from under his nose. No way in hell. He and his fr
iends were Delta Force. The most badass soldiers the military had. They’d find her or die trying. It was what they did, what they’d been trained for.
He walked out of her bedroom and back into the living area.
“Nothing,” Coach told Truck.
“Yeah, it looks like she left to go out for errands or something.”
Coach nodded, agreeing. “Her purse is missing, her glasses, keys and cell aren’t here, and while I’m not an expert on what she wears, I don’t see her usual sneakers.”
“I’m gonna have Beth look into Jacks. I know he’s in jail for what he did to Emily and Annie, but I don’t trust the man. He hates us to the marrow of his bones. He could’ve had a friend kidnap Harley just to piss us off,” Truck said evenly.
“Good idea,” Coach nodded. “I should’ve thought about it. If that fucker has touched even one hair on Harley’s head, I’m gonna kill him.”
Instead of reacting to Coach’s harsh statement, Truck looked at his watch. “You gotta get back to base. The MPs and CID are waiting.”
“Yeah.” Coach looked at his friend for a beat and finally said, “I didn’t do this, Truck.”
“What the fuck?” the other Delta spat. “Of course you didn’t. Why would you say something like that?”
“I know the cops are gonna think it was me and I just wanted to tell you, man to man, Delta to Delta, that I didn’t.”
Truck put his hand on Coach’s shoulder and said in a low, urgent voice, “Coach, I’ve spent more days than I can count in hell with you. We’ve fought next to each other; we’ve saved each other’s lives several times over. I know you, man. I know you. You would never hurt someone you cared about. Ever. I’ve got your back. So does Ghost, Blade, Hollywood, Beatle, and Fletch.”