Vendetta

by Lisa Harris

  Nikki couldn’t help but smile as he squeezed her shoulder. “She’s a sweetie.”

  “Yes, she is. And you’re as tight as a board.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry I just walked out, but I needed to clear my head.”

  “We all needed a break. Why don’t you wait a minute before you put on the jacket?”

  He nudged her down to the next step, slid in behind her, and started working out the knots in her neck and shoulders. He moved slowly across the muscles and pressure points until she finally felt herself relaxing.

  “Why haven’t you ever offered to do this before?” she teased, letting out a soft groan. “My knots have knots, my head feels like it has a bomb about to explode inside it. But after this, I just might be able to function again.”

  “Good.” Tyler laughed. “Katie used to beg me for back rubs, especially when she was pregnant.”

  Nikki lowered her head and felt her muscles continue to loosen as he concentrated on her neck, then moved to her shoulders and down her spine. She breathed in slowly, trying not to worry about what their next step should be, but instead focusing on the comfortable silence between them and the calm reassurance of his touch.

  “Better?” he said after a few minutes.

  “Oh, yeah. More than you can imagine.” She slipped into the jacket and shifted around in order to rest her forearms on his knees, and looked up at him. “But except for the long shot that they can find footage of this guy at Bridget’s school, I feel like tonight has been a waste of time. I’m wondering now if we should have been out there looking for her.”

  He pulled the jacket tighter across her shoulders, then brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Where would you look?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the problem.” She caught his gaze again, but this time, the intimacy of the moment shot through her.

  “I don’t remember you always second-guessing yourself like this.”

  She swallowed hard, then turned away, not ready to examine what had just passed between them. Or why her heart was thudding at his nearness.

  “This time the stakes have risen,” she said. “This is not only about finding Bridget but about finding the person who took Sarah.”

  The rain was starting to get heavier and splashed against her feet. She scooted up the steps until she was completely under the covering.

  “And on top of that,” she continued, “every lead ends up being a dead end. Every time I turn around, I feel as if I’m back at square one.”

  “You’re going to figure this out.”

  “And if I don’t?” she whispered.

  He wrapped his arm around her and she allowed herself to nuzzle her head against the warmth of his shoulder. “Somehow, I just know you are.”

  “I hope so.”

  Moments of silence passed between them. Comfortable, and yet holding an edge of newness she didn’t understand. She sat back up, wanting to ignore the new layer of confused emotions triggered, she knew, by his nearness.

  “Did you ever get through to Liam?” she asked finally.

  “Just before Mom put him to bed. He had a great day with her and is doing fine. Which reminds me of the other thing Irene said.”

  “What’s that?” Nikki asked.

  “She’s insisting you crash on their couch for a couple of hours until you need to relieve Jack and Gwen. And I think she’s right.”

  “There are still more files to go through.” Nikki rubbed her temples, staving off the headache that was threatening to return. “We’re no closer to finding anything since we got here, but I can’t help but think we’re just missing something.”

  “Maybe so, but you need to rest. No one expects you to work all night, and you’ll feel better if you sleep.”

  She rested her chin on her knees. “I don’t think I can sleep. I just keep thinking of Bridget out there. I know what this guy did to the other girls, and it’s cold tonight with the temperatures dropping. What if he dumped her somewhere, what if—?”

  “We don’t know any of that.”

  “Which is the worst part. The not knowing.” Nikki shook her head. “You should have gone home, Tyler—”

  “When I agreed to stay and help, I wasn’t expecting this to be a simple nine-to-five job. And besides that, I wanted to be with you. But you won’t be able to help Bridget if you don’t take care of yourself.”

  “You sound like my mother,” she said, nudging him with her shoulder. “She’s always worrying that I’m not eating enough or not getting enough rest.” The memories were there at the forefront again—this time of all the nights she’d come home to a takeaway bag of barbeque on her kitchen counter and a handwritten note from her mother. “I remember the weeks after Sarah went missing. I was teaching full-time. I’d come home at night, grade papers and tests, then spend the next few hours corresponding with media contacts and poring through the case information I had. I didn’t hang out with friends. I was convinced I couldn’t stop looking, because if I did, I might miss something that would lead us to her.”

  “Like you’re doing tonight?” he asked.

  “Daddy would bring me food from the restaurant, convinced I wasn’t eating enough.”

  “You probably weren’t.”

  “No, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to find her and bring her home. I never gave up hope, but now . . . after all these years . . . I don’t know. I thought if I took this job I’d be able to find girls like Bridget, but I’m afraid that part of me isn’t able to handle this emotionally.”

  He took her hand, pulled it against his chest, waiting for her to continue.

  “Before I joined the task force, I kept the bigger goal in the back of my mind and was able to keep my personal stuff separate. But lately, when I’m assigned to a new case, it dredges up all the old emotions. I’m supposed to be the professional. The one who can put her feelings aside and just do my job. But it’s hard. And this time . . . knowing that it could be him . . . the man who abducted Sarah . . . out there.” She looked up at him, her eyes wide with questions, and shook her head. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this.”

  “I can’t answer that for you, but what I do know is that you’re making a difference.”

  “And where is God in all this? It just seems so . . . wrong.”

  “You’re questioning your faith?” he asked.

  “Don’t you? I want to scream at God. Ask him why we never found Sarah. Beg him for answers, but the answers are never there. And that’s changed me. It’s changed my entire family and how I see God. And I think that scares me the most.”

  She and Tyler had talked about their losses over the last year. About how those losses had changed them, but she’d always felt as if she were skirting around the reality that sometimes her faith threatened to crumble beneath her.

  “Did you ever just want to throw in the towel?” he asked.

  “On God?” She caught his expression in the porch light and realized this wasn’t about her anymore. It was about him and losing Katie. She couldn’t forget she wasn’t the only person who’d loved and lost. Today had magnified that fact over and over.

  “I have. More often than I want to admit,” he said.

  The rain had slowed to a gentle patter. She realized their questions might never be answered. Questions of how and why. The longing for justice in a world where sometimes there simply wasn’t any.

  Tyler rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand. “I can’t help but wonder what Katie would think if she could see how I’m handling things. Or rather how I’m not handling things.”

  “In what way?”

  He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly as if contemplating his answer. “I used to think my faith was unshakable. But in the time I spent on the ground in Iraq, I saw things that horrified me. That changed me. Things I never spoke of, even to Katie. And yet somehow, through it all, I never lost my faith. It was as if I knew I was on the winning side, and God had sent me to stamp out evil. Which meant
as hard as it was, I was the good guy. The hero who came home with the Purple Heart.”

  These were things they never talked about. Even his Purple Heart was stuck in a drawer and never mentioned.

  “And after Katie died?” Nikki asked, not wanting to push him to a place he didn’t want to go but wanting desperately to understand him better.

  “Everything changed. And now . . . I don’t know, Nikki, I can’t find my way back. I’m like one of the missing girls you’re searching for. Lost, with no idea how to find my way back home.”

  She waited silently for him to continue, hearing the vulnerability in his voice. A car drove by, its light picking up the splatter of rain in the narrow beam of headlights. The same way he was giving her insight into how he felt.

  “There are things about my relationship with Katie that you don’t know about. I know you think we had the perfect marriage, and it was good, but there were problems between us when she died.” He hesitated for a few moments. “When I came home from the Middle East that last time, it really messed Katie up. I’d been shot, and she was scared. She threatened to leave me if I signed up for another tour.”

  “To leave you?” Nikki tried to digest the information. “I can’t see Katie ever leaving you. She told me she was worried. Afraid even that if you went back again you’d come home in a body bag. But she never hinted she didn’t support you.”

  “I didn’t think at the time she would have actually followed through. I think she just wanted to scare me. And it did. I left the military and changed my career because of her.”

  Nikki looked up at him, catching the trace of resentment in his voice. “I thought going back to school was your idea.”

  “It was the obvious next step, and I knew I couldn’t blame her. Shoot, I’d been almost killed. She was pregnant and facing being a single mom. And she was tired of waiting for me to come home after each tour. And when I did, not knowing if I’d be coming home injured or in a body bag.” He drew in a deep breath. “We both knew plenty of guys who came home missing limbs or dealing with PTSD, and on one level she accepted that could happen to me, because when she married me, she signed up for more than just a husband. But after I was shot . . . she told me she couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “So you left the military.”

  He nodded. “For her.”

  “Did you resent her?” In all the time they’d spent together, especially over the past year, he’d never mentioned that it hadn’t been his idea to leave his military career. Never said a bad word against Katie.

  “For a while, yes. I resented it. Resented her for pressuring me to leave, because I loved my job and my country. Not being there to defend it has been a tough transition. I was used to being out on the field, not sitting in a classroom hour after hour.”

  “What about now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Today reminded me that I still want to be out there saving lives and making a difference. I thought I was doing the right thing for my family when I went back to school, but now with Katie gone . . . I don’t know. I have to think of Liam and what he needs.” He shook his head. “What really bothers me is that I know all the right answers—about God, about life and death, but it doesn’t help. I know Katie is in a better place. I know she’s in the presence of God. But none of that makes me miss her any less.”

  She’d watched him over the past few months, knowing he was struggling. She figured when he was ready he’d come to her and talk. Not that she had the answers. She still couldn’t understand why God allowed someone to take Sarah. Or why God would allow a young mother to be ripped from this world in an instant.

  But he had allowed it.

  She’d thought the same questions as well. Most of the time she simply accepted she wasn’t going to come up with another answer. God made the world. Sin entered the world and God had given man a choice. Free will. It was as simple as that.

  Except it wasn’t simple at all.

  Because even with those explanations, she still wrestled with layers of deep-seated emotions and the constant trying to figure out how to let go.

  Tyler leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I go to church, listen to the pastor, and end up wanting to run out of that building by the end of the sermon because I can’t justify what God did. And then I feel like a hypocrite for being mad at God and blaming it all on him. Instead, I smile and keep going to church for Liam. And because I know Katie would want me to be there, and her parents expect me to be there, but that’s it. I don’t feel the way I used to, and to be honest, I’m not sure I want to at this point. I don’t have anything left to give.”

  Nikki stared out at the terraced yard, now soaked with rain, and contemplated her answer. “Maybe that’s okay.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure God is happy I show up at church with the attitude of wanting to be anywhere else but there. I’m sure he’s okay with the fact that I blame him for what happened to Katie.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “If he knows what you’ve been through, then he knows that you have to work through your grief. Isn’t blaming him a stage of the healing process?”

  “I know plenty of people who have suffered loss and react completely opposite to the way I have. They tell stories of how tragedies have strengthened their faith, but I’m not like that, Nikki.”

  How many times had she felt the same way? Instead of tragedy strengthening her faith, she felt instead that she was holding on for dear life like she had been yesterday morning on the side of the mountain. Like she was hanging on a tattered rope—one false move and it would all be over.

  But surely God understood their pain as well as their reactions.

  “I want to blame God,” Tyler continued, “because I know he could have stopped my losing Katie and Liam losing a mother. I get the fact that bad things happen to good people, and we will all experience pain, but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “I know, because not only have I felt the same thing myself, I’ve watched my mother struggle to move forward. She’s never completely healed from losing Sarah, and I’m not sure she ever will.”

  “But she didn’t lose her faith,” Tyler said.

  “No, but her faith—or maybe just the way she looks at life and God—has changed.”

  “I don’t know. I accept the fact that Katie’s gone, because I have no choice, but that doesn’t stop me from questioning. Or feeling guilty in the process.” Tyler clasped his hands together, not even trying to mask the defeat in his voice. “It’s ironic. I’m supposed to be going to school to learn how to counsel people to deal with loss, but when it comes to myself . . . I’m completely lost, Nikki.”

  She looked up at him, not knowing how to respond. Wishing desperately she could take his pain away.

  “But I’m also ready to find a way out,” he said. “So I can start living again. I need to for Liam, and I know Katie would want me to. I just don’t know how.”

  He was close enough that she could read the pain in his eyes. Anything she’d thought had passed between them earlier had been clearly imagined on her part. He was still in love with Katie.

  “Thanks for listening to me,” he said.

  “Always.”

  He glanced at his watch. “You need to sleep.”

  She might feel like arguing, but as usual, he was right. The case had drained her both physically and emotionally.

  He pulled her up from the porch step and they walked into the house. Sam and Irene were sitting at the kitchen table drinking mugs of tea, still going through Sam’s files.

  “So did he finally convince you to get some sleep?” Irene asked.

  Nikki forced a smile. “Just for a couple hours. I’d like to head back to the command post by three and get a jump on things. But thank you. Both of you.”

  “Anything to bring that girl home,” Sam said. “Just lock the door on your way out when you leave. I’ll come by in the morning to see you.”

  A minute later she was settled on the couch.
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  “What about you?” she asked Tyler.

  “This recliner’s probably more comfortable than the bed I sleep on at home.” He pulled a light blue afghan from the back of the couch, pulled it over her, then bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “Good night, Nikki.”

  “Good night, Tyler.”

  “As soon as we find her, I’ll buy you that breakfast,” he promised.

  “I’m counting on it.”

  She watched him walk away, then closed her eyes, her thoughts still on Katie, Sarah, Bridget . . . and Tyler . . . and willed herself to sleep.

  “Nikki?”

  Nikki sat up at the sound of Tyler’s voice and tried to reach through the fog that had settled on her brain. She glanced at her phone—2:45. “My alarm didn’t go off.”

  “I turned it off. You were sleeping so peacefully. I thought I’d give you another ten minutes.”

  A dimmed light still glowed over the large dining room table where they’d been working. Boxes and files lay among an empty bag of Oreos and the bag of microwave popcorn Irene had fixed for them.

  Nikki rubbed her eyes as the frustration of the past twenty-four hours rushed over her. If they didn’t stop him now, Bridget wasn’t going to be his last victim.

  She glanced up at Tyler. “What about you? You’ve got to be exhausted as well.”

  “I closed my eyes for a few minutes on the recliner. I’m used to not sleeping more than four or five hours a night.”

  Another result of Katie’s death. “That doesn’t mean it’s good for you.”

  “I’m fine. Can I get you some coffee? Irene left a pot in the kitchen we can heat up.”

  Nikki sat up, forcing herself to wake up. “That would be great. Thanks.” Her phone vibrated on the coffee table beside her. “That’s got to be either Jack or my mom this late.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Nikki stood up, stretching her back as she picked up the phone, her brain still seared by a heavy fog of fatigue. “Hello?”

  “Nikki?”

  “Yeah . . .” She tried to place the voice, but came up blank. “I’m sorry. Who is this?”