Vanished (The Saved Series, A Military Romance)

by Lorhainne Eckhart

  Eric walked into their bedroom. The room was neat and tidy, the bed still made. He walked over to the queen-size bed, the pillows set neatly on the blue comforter. The nightstand, with its lamp and bedside clock, had not a speck of dust anywhere. Her brush and small jewelry box sat on the dresser, and Eric lifted the box and gazed at the gold earrings and watch he’d bought her, the ones she never wore. He opened the closet, all neat and orderly, his clothes on one side and hers on the other. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he knew she hadn’t gone to bed.

  “Eric,” Joe called out.

  Eric set the box down and swallowed the hard lump in his throat. “You’re telling me no one broke in?”

  “No.”

  “You think my wife did this?” He gestured to the destruction in the living room. Abby could never have done anything like that.

  Joe just shook his head and said, “I don’t know, but I was right next door, and I didn’t hear anything.”

  “So my wife is gone, vanished, and no one has any fucking idea where she is.”

  “Abby is not on base. Whatever happened here, she just disappeared from a very busy base, and no one saw anything,” the officer said.

  Joe glanced at him and then back at Eric. “Yes,” he agreed.

  “Why? Someone explain to me why my wife would just walk out the door in the middle of the night, leaving her baby, our children, as if they were nothing.”

  He heard a baby fussing and turned to see Mary-Margaret holding his son in the doorway. A slim, dark-haired woman was with her. His gaze instantly went to his son, and he reached out and took him from Mary-Margaret. He’d grown in such a short time, and his blue eyes were open. He had Abby’s mouth, her lips, her button nose, but his eyes. His heart tightened as he held his son. He couldn’t help the resentment and anger he felt toward Abby, and, at the same time, he feared something awful had happened to her. Had she been taken, or had she left? She was secretive with him; he knew it. He should have made her open up, talk to him. He should have been there. He couldn’t get his head around the fact that she had left, abandoning his helpless son and Rachel just as he’d been abandoned by his own mother as a young boy in East LA, in one of the worst neighborhoods, as if he were a sack of garbage. Abby had left them alone. He held his son tighter and turned away, fighting the burning in his eyes. How could she?

  “Eric,” Mary-Margaret called to him.

  “What the hell, Mary-Margaret? Did someone take her, or is it that she didn’t want to be here? Why didn’t she tell me?” he said. He didn’t miss the look of shock on her face.

  “I doubt very much that’s what happened here,” the dark-haired woman in black jeans and a dark coat said as she stepped closer and held out her slender hand. “My name is Terri Marks, NCIS.”

  Eric didn’t take her hand right away, but he finally accepted her slender hand in a firm handshake. Unusual for a woman, he thought. “What are you talking about? Are you saying someone didn’t take her and she didn’t just walk out on my children?”

  “We’re not ruling anything out, but as far as someone breaking in, we know that didn’t happen,” Terri said, gesturing to the other officer.

  “Eric, she could have opened the door to someone and let them in. A fight happened, and he took her,” Joe said, but Eric realized he didn’t believe one word of what he was saying.

  “Cut the crap, Joe. Someone got on base and specifically came after my wife, and you didn’t hear the commotion from next door? I know you don’t believe that.” He stopped and shook his head. Joe gave him an odd look, and Mary-Margaret swept her gaze between them.

  “What gives, guys?” she finally said.

  “What about that guy who had her, Eric?” Joe said. “You wouldn’t think…” He stopped. Mary-Margaret was staring at him as if she hadn’t realized there could be another possibility.

  “Hossein,” Eric spat, as if the name itself was disgusting and vile.

  “He wouldn’t come here,” Mary-Margaret said. “How would he get on base? Seriously, after all these years, he wouldn’t come after her, not here. Would he?”

  “Sir, what’s going on?” Terri asked. She was watching each one of them, studying them, appearing out of the loop, along with the prying ears of the military police lingering in the background. He tried not to share what Abby had been through, what she’d survived. He didn’t like people in his business or in Abby’s.

  A man stepped inside the house, dressed casually in a tan sweater and dress pants. He wore dark shoes. He slid off his dark glasses to reveal a square face, square jaw. As the man looked around, he showed not an ounce of compassion. He spotted Eric, walked toward him, tapped Terri, and said, “Jason Baker, NCIS.”

  Eric didn’t bother shaking the man’s hand. He appeared older than Terri, with brown eyes. His hair was longer, curling at the ears—sloppy, definitely not up to Navy standards.

  “So you two are looking for my wife,” Eric said just as Charlie started to fuss in his arms. “Shh, it’s okay, Charlie.” He glanced over at Mary-Margaret, and she reached for him.

  “He’s probably hungry. I picked up some formula for him. He doesn’t like it much, but he doesn’t have a choice.” She sounded irritated.

  Mary-Margaret left with Charlie, and Eric said to the two NCIS officers, “So how much do you know about my wife?” He glanced up at Joe, and his friend shook his head.

  “I never said anything, Eric. It’s quite a reach, really. You’d think he’d come here?”

  “Who’d come here?” Jason asked, looking at Eric and Joe and then at Terri beside him, who shrugged.

  “Two years ago, I rescued Abby. Found her floating in a dinghy in the middle of a war zone in the Persian Gulf. She was pregnant, beaten up. She’d escaped from a man named Seyed Hossein. He had bought her. She had been his prisoner for almost a year, taken in Paris. She had been sold to him, but she survived it, and I knew she was terrified he’d come looking for her. As he said, he owned her. He told her he’d never let her go.”

  The two officers exchanged a look. “Do we have a description of this Hossein?” Terri said.

  “He’s been on the terrorist watch list,” Joe said. Eric let him talk and explain how the CIA had wanted to use Abby as bait since Hossein was in their database. The police would be able to get a clear description of him and find out if he was, in fact, on US soil. Eric looked around his living room, feeling a burning rage at the thought that the man could have walked into his house, touched his things, his wife, his children.… He froze. He thought about Rachel, his little girl, and realized it didn’t make sense.

  “Eric, what is it?” Joe asked as Eric ran his hand over his chin roughly, thinking.

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense, Joe. Why would he come here and not take Rachel?” He took in the wondering looks of the officers. “He fathered Rachel,” he explained. “Abby had her after I rescued her.”

  Eric turned in a circle, taking in the room and the disarray. He stopped and looked again at the blanket on the floor, how everything seemed to have been moved and the easy chair was set at an odd angle in the corner. “Joe, did you move the furniture?”

  “No, why?”

  “Why is that chair pushed into the corner?” Eric said. Everyone’s eyes went to the easy chair and the way it was facing the door.

  Terri stepped over to the chair and sat in it, frowning as she looked around. “Well, this is odd. It’s comfortable—safe, rather. Your back is to the wall. You can see everything from here, as if she was waiting or watching for someone.”

  Eric tried to understand what Terri was saying, and he wondered what could have happened that had Abby watching the door.

  Chapter 12

  Almost a month had passed since Abby vanished, and no one had seen anything. Eric had barely slept for weeks, spending his days searching the city and the surrounding area for any sign of Abby. His emotions were all over the place, between anger, sadness, hurt, and betrayal. He hadn’t hear
d one word from Abby. No one had seen her. The NCIS officers had taken all the information and the dirty, sordid history of Abby’s year as a trafficked young woman, and they’d used it to find Hossein’s profile, but they’d soon learned that was a crapshoot. He hadn’t been spotted in the country. In fact, they’d confirmed that he was in Bahrain.

  There was a knock at the front door. Eric was barefoot, holding his son in the crook of his arm, dressed in yesterday’s blue jeans and an old T-shirt he’d yanked from the drawer. He strode to the door and opened it to Terri. She was staring up at him, offering him a quick smile. The icy air drifted in, and Eric realized it had snowed the night before.

  “Good morning, Captain,” she said, wearing a purple wool hat, her dark coat zipped up.

  Eric left the door open and walked away, leaving her standing there. He strode back to the kitchen and the cluttered countertop, covered with cups, bottles, and last night’s dinner. Rachel was in her booster seat at the table, cramming cold cereal into her mouth with her fingers. “Finish your breakfast, honey,” he said, rubbing the tangled dark hair that touched her shoulders. The floor squeaked behind him, and he glanced at Terri, who was taking in the mess, his children, him.

  “So, anything new to tell me, or is this going to be your routine every morning, showing up on my doorstep and taking pity on me?” Eric said. He pulled a carton of orange juice from the fridge and opened the cupboard to grab a glass, but there wasn’t a clean one there. “Shit.”

  He searched the cupboard and sighed. Dirty dishes filled the sink. An empty pizza carton was on the counter. He grabbed a dirty plastic cup from the sink and ran the tap to rinse it out but then discovered he was out of dish soap. He heard a rustle and glanced over at Terri as she slid off her coat and set it over the back of the chair, resting her hand on the table beside Rachel.

  “Hey, sweetheart, is that good cereal?” she asked. Rachel just stared at her and kept munching away. “Here, let me.” She stepped toward the sink, taking the dirty cup from Eric.

  “Won’t do you much good. I haven’t had time to go to the store, so there’s no dish soap. Life goes on, doesn’t it?” he said, cursing to himself at the injustice. Even though he would kill for his children, being a full time father and a Navy captain at the same time was a job he totally sucked at. There wasn’t a moment during the day or night that his thoughts didn’t drift to Abby. He didn’t know what to believe, and it made him furious to think she could have just walked away, leaving him and his children. In the next breath, he would feel guilty for thinking she’d abandoned him. He kept seesawing back and forth, not really knowing for sure if someone had taken her or she had simply walked away.

  “How about laundry detergent?” she asked.

  “You plan on doing my laundry?” He pointed to the back door, where the laundry room was.

  “No.” She wandered around the corner and returned with the box of laundry detergent. “I grew up in a small house, with a big family and not enough money. Times were tough growing up, and too many times we were running out of something. I’ve used detergent in a pinch to wash dishes.”

  She ran hot water in the sink and sprinkled some powder in. She pushed up the sleeves of her purple turtleneck, and Eric stepped back and studied this slim, attractive woman. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail today. She had blue eyes, but where Abby’s were heavenly blue, Terri’s were closer to granite, a hard, different blue that made him wonder what she’d seen in her life. She was confident, quiet, and never wore a stitch of makeup. As he stared at the dark, silky strands of her hair, he wondered what she’d look like if she allowed it to fall loose, just a few feminine touches here and there.

  She set a cup on the counter and picked up at towel beside the sink. She took the orange juice and poured some. “For your daughter?” she asked, holding up the cup.

  Eric nodded. “Yeah.”

  He watched as Terri helped Rachel drink, and Rachel babbled to her, “Goo, tanks,” and smacked her lips.

  “You didn’t answer me,” Eric said. “Any news, any ideas on where to look, what rock to uncover next?” His arm was damp, and Charlie scrunched his face and made an awful racket as he filled his diaper. What next, this morning? He still needed to shower, clean this mess up, and get to the base, as he’d been ordered to appear today.

  “You have your hands full, Captain,” she said, gesturing to the baby and the kitchen. “Do you have anyone coming in to help?”

  “I asked you to stop calling me Captain if you’re going to keep showing up here every day. Driving all over Norfolk with me, talking to everyone and anyone about my wife, you should call me Eric.”

  “Okay, Eric. What about some help with the kids?”

  “Mary-Margaret is still taking them. I suppose it’s time I found someone, as I have to be on base today.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize.” She glanced away, setting her hand on her hip. His eyes went right to her hands, both without rings, with short, clipped nails. He’d wondered before about her dedication to the job.

  “Terri, don’t you have a husband at home? I know you’ve put everything into finding my wife,” Eric said, feeling a painful lump jam his throat.

  “No, no one. Just never worked out, you know?”

  Charlie started fussing, and the ripe smell of his diaper was beginning to take over the stale kitchen.

  “Here, let me.” She held out her arms to take the baby.

  “If you’re sure,” he said, passing his son over to the woman who’d stepped into his house a month ago and had been there every day since.

  She carried Charlie into the bedroom and set him on his changing table, cooing and fussing over him. Eric noticed how comfortable she was and how easily she moved around his house. He lifted Rachel from her booster seat, all sticky with bits of cereal stuck to her nightgown. He wiped her down in the bathroom and set her to the floor, and she took off running into the bedroom she shared with her baby brother. Terri was just fastening a new diaper on the baby and was already fitting him with a clean, dry sleeper. Eric leaned in the doorway and just watched her.

  “You still didn’t tell me if you heard anything. Do you have any new leads? How about your boss?”

  Terri glanced over her shoulder, her face glowing, and something flashed in her eyes. She frowned and picked up the baby. “Jason, no. He’s working on another case, but I have some ideas. There’s a shelter, actually, in South Norfolk, a women’s shelter, and another run by a nun. I’d like to go there, show Abby’s picture around, and talk to that nun.”

  “Haven’t we been there? I thought we went to every shelter in Norfolk, talking to everyone on base and on the streets. Abby just vanished into thin air, and no one’s seen her.”

  “Well, the thing about the streets, Eric, is that those living there go unseen. Every day there can be different people. We haven’t talked to this nun yet. I just heard about her.”

  She was still holding his baby, swaying back and forth. He’d pictured Abby with his child, holding him, loving him, raising him, but she’d been gone for almost Charlie’s entire life. Would he even recognize her now if she came back, if Eric found her? He felt bitter and angry for a moment that it was Terri holding his son and not the mother of his child. It was Eric who stumbled out of bed at night to soothe him, to hold Rachel when she’d wake up crying for her mommy. As he watched his children and how Rachel was standing closer to Terri, he knew they needed a mother.

  “What do you think happened to my wife?” Eric asked, feeling foolish for the sting of tears he couldn’t believe had sprung to his eyes.

  “I think something happened to her.” She glanced down at his baby. “From what I’ve been able to figure, as I’ve gone through everything of Abby’s and learned what she went through, I don’t think she left you. I think something happened.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ve already made it clear that no one broke in here,” Eric said, watching her with his baby as Rachel pulled open a drawer and
dragged out a pink shirt. He hurried behind Rachel and helped her. “You want this shirt? What pants do you want today?” He pulled open the bottom drawer, which was empty. “I guess Daddy needs to do laundry, too.”

  He set the long-sleeved shirt over her head as she wandered to the dirty clothes and pulled out yesterday’s pants, which had soup spilled on them. “No, let’s find something a little cleaner,” Eric said. He sifted through and found the cleanest pair after helping her step into a dry pair of Pull-Ups. Eric just couldn’t make potty training happen right now, and Rachel needed to have a settled home and environment to be successful.

  “When we spoke to Abby’s doctor, he said Abby had left Rachel in the bath and didn’t know it. He said then that he thought she was overtired, but he didn’t have details of her abduction two years earlier or what she’d been through. If he had, with what you’d said after her delivery, how odd she was acting, he said he would have taken it more seriously.”

  Eric glanced up and over at Terri as he helped Rachel dress. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at. With that worthless excuse… he was just covering his ass because he couldn’t be bothered to talk to Abby and take more time.”

  Terri looked away, uncomfortable. He didn’t know what she thought. When she glanced back his way, she said, “One of the shelters I want to talk to sees a lot of vets with PTSD.”

  Eric stood up as Rachel raced to her toy box in the living room. He stepped into the hallway so he could see his daughter and faced Terri, trying to figure out where she was going with this. “Are you telling me my wife has PTSD?”

  “I think so, and I also think that’s what happened here. I mean, when you brought Abby home with you, did she get help after what she’d been through?”

  Eric didn’t know why he was feeling defensive, but he reached for his son, cooing in Terri’s arms, staring up at her. “No,” he said, and he left the bedroom.

  “Eric, I’m not pointing fingers,” she said. He turned so fast she bumped into him, and her soft breast brushed his arm. She stepped back. “I’m just saying that to go through what she did and not have trauma is unlikely. Some can hide it. Sometimes you bury things, hide them so no one around you knows, and for years you get by. Then bam, something will happen to trigger it.”