Vanished (The Saved Series, A Military Romance)

by Lorhainne Eckhart

  “So what, are you a shrink now?” he snapped.

  Someone knocked on the door right before it popped open. “Hello? Oh, hey there, Terri. Didn’t know you were here,” Mary-Margaret said. As she stepped inside, her gaze drifted from Eric and his disheveled appearance to Terri, standing so close they were touching. She frowned.

  Eric didn’t think he could take anymore, so he handed Mary-Margaret his son and said, “I need to get cleaned up.”

  “Any news?” she said to Eric, but it was Terri who replied, “No, nothing new.”

  Mary-Margaret frowned again, her eyes flashing. Eric really wasn’t too interested in trying to figure out what her problem was. He took in both women and noticed how the air had suddenly thickened.

  “Look, Terri has some ideas. We’re going to check out some shelters in South Norfolk.”

  Mary-Margaret patted his arm. “That’s good. You need to find your wife. Don’t give up hope, Eric. You’ll find her.”

  Eric didn’t answer. He couldn’t, so he just turned away and went into his bedroom, shutting the door.

  Chapter 13

  Eric was sitting in the passenger side of Terri’s burgundy four-door sedan. As usual, she drove and Eric searched the streets, seeking out all the people walking by. He had begun to notice the homeless more and more every day they’d been out searching for his wife. They pulled in beside an older red brick building. There was concrete everywhere, covered in graffiti, and a large dumpster at the edge of an alley was full of garbage.

  She parked in front of the building, taking the only empty spot. The homeless pushed carts, and some were huddled in the corner while others stepped up the concrete stairs from the basement. They wore lots of worn layers and mismatched clothes, all trudging around and looking defeated.

  “So, what stop is this?” he asked, opening the door as she lifted her keys from the ignition.

  “The nun I wanted to talk to,” Terri replied. “Sister Carmen is her name.”

  Eric stepped out into the snow on a sidewalk that hadn’t been shoveled. As he looked up and down the street, he could see how the city overlooked this part of town. He looked around at the unkempt, the rundown, the poverty that seemed to stare out at him from a neighborhood that showed its years of being let go.

  “Guess the city has no money in the budget for this part of town,” he said.

  Terri was wearing lace-up boots, and she stepped through the bank of snow. “It’s about taxpayers, voters. You know the city aldermen—this would be political suicide for them. These are the lost souls down here, this part of town.” She jammed her hands in her pockets and gestured to the steps. “Let’s go in.”

  Eric followed Terri down the concrete steps, which, at least, had been cleared, and into a basement. There were tables set up inside, and the room was filled with hundreds of people who seemed to gather to keep warm. There was a kitchen at the back and an urn of coffee. Some men and women were wiping the tables, while a large, dark man with a pockmarked face talked to an older woman. She wore a red wool cap, her gray, greasy hair poking from the ends, and a burlap coat that was covered with grime and dirt.

  “Excuse me, we’re looking for Sister Carmen,” Terri said.

  The man took in Eric, scanning the tan uniform he wore. He firmed his lips. “She’s in the back office, down the hall.” He gestured with his large hand. “You stationed here, sailor?”

  Eric watched him and recognized something in him. Military, navy… he wasn’t sure, and, for the first time, he found himself not correcting the man for his slight. Anyone knew the difference between enlisted and officer, and so did this fellow. Eric would bet everything he had on it.

  “Yeah, I’m looking for my wife.” He pulled out the picture he’d run his fingers over a thousand times, the one taken the first day home from the hospital with Charlie. She was holding him, and Rachel was beside her. He felt a lump jam his throat as he stared at the first woman he’d ever truly loved, a woman with such innocence. She’d stood beside him no matter what. She had needed him, and he felt guilty for having left. As he looked closer, trying to see the worn picture of Abby as everyone else would have seen her, he noticed it wasn’t just fatigue he saw in her expression—it was sadness. How could he have missed that? He extended the photo to the man, who glanced at the homeless woman beside him. She, too, looked at the picture.

  “Pretty. Can’t say I’ve seen her here. You got kids? She pack up and leave?” the man said.

  Eric shook his head. “No, they’re… my kids are at home. She disappeared.”

  The man frowned and then said, “You hit her? Is she running because you beat her?” He was watching Eric as if he would fight him.

  Eric swore under his breath and glanced at the door. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” When he turned back to the man watching him, he said, “Hell, no.”

  Terri interrupted and gestured to the photo the man held. “She’d just had a baby, and she walked out. She’d been depressed. We think something happened.”

  The man was looking from Eric to Terri and at the badge she had fastened to her jeans when she unzipped her coat. Something changed in his expression as he glanced at her.

  “Eric, give us a minute,” she said. She moved away with the large man. The entire time she was talking, he watched Eric with dark eyes: hard, unforgiving, as if he’d figured Eric for a son of a bitch who beat his wife and was deciding on his guilt.

  “So you’re in the Navy, an officer,” the old woman beside him said. She was hunched over in a bulky jacket, and the top of her head didn’t reach his shoulders.

  “Yes, a captain.” He crossed his arms and set his gaze to the discussion across the room, trying to figure out why the man was shaking his head at whatever Terri was saying.

  “You miss this woman, this wife of yours?” the woman asked, and Eric started to catch a whiff of her body odor. He guessed that living on the streets, she didn’t get much of a chance to bathe.

  “Yeah,” he said, his throat closing up again.

  “Don’t mind Frank. He’s just mighty protective when guys like you come sniffing around.”

  Well, that had Eric’s attention. “Guys like me?”

  He looked down at the woman. She had bloodshot eyes and deep lines in a face that might at one time have been lovely but now showed how unforgiving the streets could be. “What do you mean, guys like me?”

  “Military guys, officers, who beat their wives. Frank will never tell you if he’s seen her. It’s the only chance women like that have to get away. The streets are a place they can hide.”

  In that second, as he stood and watched the woman, several things went through his mind. Of the twenty-nine days his wife had been gone, what if she’d been here and no one had said anything? What if they’d jumped to the same conclusion, that she’d escaped him? That made no sense, though. Abby would never say that about him. He’d never hurt her. He loved her.

  “Have you seen my wife? Please, if you have…” Eric pleaded, hating the way he sounded.

  “Why’d she leave if you’re not hitting her? Did you not treat her okay?”

  By the way she asked, Eric wondered if she knew something. When he started to talk, he didn’t know how to explain Abby and her mental state, how she was behaving, to anyone. “I don’t understand why she’d leave, why she’d leave our children. She disappeared sometime in the night, leaving our newborn and two-year-old alone. I was on the other side of the world, in the middle of the ocean, and I could do nothing. I need to find her,” he said just as Terri and Frank approached.

  “Could I see that picture again?” the homeless woman asked. The entire time, her pale brown eyes watched Eric.

  She held out a chapped, dirty hand, and Eric held out his wife’s photo. She took it and glanced from it to Eric before saying, “Frank, isn’t this the woman you said you found in here who had no coat and only slippers on her feet?” she asked. The man studied Eric, and the homeless woman said, “Frank, he’s not on
e of those.”

  “You’d best to talk to Sister Carmen,” Frank said as he glanced at the photo the old woman held. “It could have been her, and she’d have been taken to the women’s shelter. No matter who you are, that shelter is to protect women. Doubt very much Sister Carmen will tell you where it is.”

  Eric wanted to reach out and shake the man. Maybe that was what showed as he stepped toward him, as Terri set her hand quickly on his chest and raised her eyebrows.

  “Eric, enough. We need to talk to Sister Carmen,” she said. When Eric didn’t move, she put herself between him and Frank and touched his arm, leading him down the hall. “Eric, look. Come on.”

  He walked with Terri, taken by the force and strength she had, considering she was such a tiny woman.

  “Look, don’t let him get to you. He’s trying to push your buttons,” she said.

  “He thinks I beat my wife,” Eric snapped. He was walking down a narrow, dingy hall.

  Terri hesitated outside the only door that was slightly ajar. “He was trying to get you to react. He sees enough women fleeing from a bad place, husbands who only know how to use their fists.”

  Eric was furious, as that wasn’t him. He’d never laid a hand on Abby.

  Terri tapped on the door.

  “Come in,” an older woman’s voice called out.

  Terri pushed open the door, greeted by the rear end of a large woman in tan slacks. She was bent over, rifling through papers or something in a box.

  “Excuse me,” Terri said as she stepped in. Eric set his hand on the door, opening it wide.

  The woman didn’t give them her attention but pulled out some papers from the pile and started around the desk. “If you need a hand with anything, Frank is out in the kitchen.” She gestured absently with a pen and then slid on an older pair of glasses, something Eric hadn’t seen in twenty years. They were large and rimmed in plastic.

  Terri held up her badge. “Sister Carmen, I’m Terri Marks. I’m with NCIS. This is Captain Eric Hamilton.”

  The woman glanced up. Her short hair was a mix of gray and light brown, and she had hazel eyes. Her round face was free of any makeup. She was older, as her skin was translucent, with wrinkles here and there. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for my wife.” Eric stepped forward and held up the photo. “Her name is Abby. We just had a baby, Charlie. That’s him in the picture.”

  Sister Carmen was watching him, and he realized she was sizing him up. Eric knew he needed her on his side, and he was going to make sure she understood the situation.

  “I found her two years ago in a war zone in a dinghy,” he began, going on to explain the circumstances of Abby’s rescue. “We have a little girl, Rachel,” he added. “That’s her in the picture, too.”

  The nun was still watching him and saying nothing.

  “I thought she was going to be okay,” Eric said. He explained Abby’s odd behavior after Charlie was born, as well as his shock at hearing that she had left. “I think something happened,” he said. “Please… please, if you’ve seen her…” His throat started to close up as he continued to hold Abby’s photo in front of Sister Carmen’s face.

  She stared at the photo and back at Eric before reaching for the picture. This time, she really looked. “You love this woman, your wife?” She held on to the photo and seemed to relax a bit, looking at Terri and back to Eric.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I saw her,” Sister Carmen began. “She was here, terrified, freezing. She had no coat, and she made no sense at first. She kept saying someone was after her, that he was going to hurt her. I asked her if it was her husband, if he’d hurt her. She was so upset and freaked out that it took a while to calm her down. She said the father of her daughter owned her and said he’d never let her go.”

  “What the hell, Terri?” Eric barked. “You told me you checked. Is Hossein in the country?” He touched his mouth, trying to contain the icy chill racing through him, the panic. He felt as if he had been blindsided.

  “He’s not. We know that for sure, so I don’t understand why she’d say that, unless it was someone else. Why wouldn’t she go to your friends next door? Why disappear? Your friends heard nothing. This makes no sense, Eric. Sister Carmen, where is she? We need to talk to her,” Terri added, standing her ground.

  “I took her to the women’s shelter. They patched her up, gave her a bed. She was safe there,” the nun said.

  “Patched her up—was she hurt?” Eric asked, trying not to panic. He stepped closer, feeling as if the floor were about to fall away under him.

  The nun pointed to her forehead. “A bruise and a small cut, but she was so upset that I couldn’t reason with her. We just thought you had done it. She needed rest. We didn’t know how long she’d been wandering in the cold. A month ago, being out as she was… the nights were chilly. She was cold and confused, panicked, just like a woman fleeing a bad scene. I’ve seen it a hundred times, maybe more.”

  “Why wouldn’t you call the police or take her to the ER? Why?” Eric was furious. For twenty-nine days he’d worried, and this woman had known all along where Abby was.

  “With a woman as traumatized as Abby, going to the police would be a mistake,” Sister Carmen replied. “She wouldn’t tell us more. We got her the help she needed. You have no idea the number of domestic abuse victims we see, and they need to hide, feel safe, get away, not to be reported so their abusers can find them. We had someone look at her at the shelter. She didn’t need the ER.” The nun stood her ground, and Eric was sure she would have barred any door and refused to budge an inch to protect what she believed in, helping those in need.

  Eric swiped across his face with his hand. “We should go there now. Where is this shelter? I still don’t understand why she wouldn’t have contacted me or, at the very least, Joe and Mary-Margaret.” There were a lot of holes in all of this, and he needed answers, a lot of answers.

  He watched both women exchange an odd look, and he didn’t understand why.

  “I see a lot of things here,” Sister Carmen said. “People in a bad way. Lots of military, messed-up soldiers. Their families quite often pay the price. I don’t know what happened to your wife, but I can honestly tell you this woman, your Abby, was terrified of a man, a man we thought was you.”

  “Could you tell us where this shelter is?” Terri asked.

  “I can tell you,” Sister Carmen said to Terri, “but not you,” she added as she pointed at Eric.

  Chapter 14

  “Look, Eric. Just hang tough. I could take you home first before I go,” Terri said as she lingered with Eric in the common area, which was becoming crowded with people wandering in from the streets. There were a few women with children. As he took in all the worn-out people, he recognized a look he’d seen many times before: a resignation, a loss of hope.

  “Terri, I’m coming. That’s my wife,” he growled. He’d be damned if he was going to let anyone else talk to Abby. She needed him. Of course she did.

  “I understand, Eric, but these shelters are here to protect women and children. They can’t make an exception. First things first, Sister Carmen is phoning over now, so just stop. You have to understand this shelter is about protecting women first.”

  Eric had hundreds of questions going through his mind. The fact was that he was so close, with his first real lead to finding Abby in way too long. He was angry over the wasted time, hours, minutes, and most of all he couldn’t shake his feeling of hurt that Abby hadn’t called him. No matter what happened, she had always come to him. She was his wife—he loved her. She was the mother of his son and Rachel, their dark-haired little girl. He felt everything turn to anger, unable to understand how she could just walk out.

  Eric turned when Sister Carmen strode down the hall with a piece of paper and a frown on her face. As she approached, she started shaking her head before she stopped in front of Eric. “She’s gone. She was set up with a counselor at a transitional house. Here’s the na
me.” She handed the paper to Eric, and as he stared at the name written there, Rick Blaney, he couldn’t help the flash of jealousy that shot through him.

  “I left a message for Rick. That’s his office address, and he’s there most days.”

  “It’s a start, Eric. Sister Carmen, thank you so much for all your help,” Terri said, but Eric couldn’t take his eyes off this nun who had seen his wife, talked to her, and was trying to tell him she was a different Abby than the one he knew. Abby was strong. She’d been through hell. She was a survivor. This didn’t make any sense.

  “I hope you find your wife, and I hope you get her some help. Whatever happened, I’ve seen enough victims and people at the end of their ropes, barely getting through each day, to recognize PTSD. It’s not just soldiers it happens to. She was fleeing from something bad, at least in her mind, anyway. Talk to Rick,” she said, starting to walk away.

  Eric was at a loss as he tried to absorb what this woman was saying about his wife. “Sister Carmen, what makes you so sure? Maybe she’d had enough of the kids and me and she just left,” he said. He couldn’t believe he had just blurted out the fear that was in the back of his mind, which hurt more than anything.

  “Eric, your wife is in trouble. I could see that. We all have this fight or flight instinct inside us, and our brains sometimes do the oddest things to protect us. She was reacting. I can’t say for sure, Eric, but I don’t think it’s as black and white as you may believe. You need to hold on to that. Just prepare yourself, because I’ve seen soldiers who are in pretty bad shape walk away from their families and never return.”

  “Come on, Eric,” Terri said. She touched his arm, and he glanced at the room full of people and started toward the door.