Rather than answering him, I toss the phone onto the passenger seat and pull back onto the highway. I don’t know how long I drive, but when the car comes to a stop I’m both stunned and angered at where I end up. Of all fucking places, of course, I would go here. If you didn’t know the horrors that occurred here, you’d have no idea just by looking at the open field. That’s all that’s left of this place that was my living nightmare for more than eighteen months. Shortly after he was sentenced, the state demolished the house that we were kept in for so long, the house that still brings me nightmares even all these years later.
When we ran away that morning, I had no idea where we were. I had no idea we were still in Texas, only a few hours from where he found me living on the street. I had no idea that we were in farm country, with miles and miles of nothing but openness surrounding us. He kept us so secluded, even when he took me to fights, that I had no clue about my surroundings. When I was coming up with a plan to get us out, I pictured houses surrounding his, where all his “friends” lived that we would have to hide from.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
My gaze immediately falls to the woods at the end of the property; those woods were the first place we ran to. They were the first safe place we had since the nightmare began. The woods hid us, protected us, and kept people from seeing us until we were ready to be found. We stayed in them for two days, cutting our feet to the point of bleeding, but neither of us complained—not once.
How could the girl that ran away with me that night, be the same girl I’ve been working next to for nearly two weeks now? How could I have not known it was her? How did nothing appear on her background report about it? I knew her fucking dad’s name for Christ sakes! If his name was on it, I would have figured it out.
And yet, she knew exactly who I was the entire fucking time.
Did she purposely seek out Alec and a position with Dark Water Security when she learned I was one of the owners? Did she manipulate her way into our company the same way she’d been manipulating me since she walked into the conference room for the interview?
The sad part is, I thought the kiss on the beach the other night was real. She fucking intrigued me like no one ever has; I found myself wanting to spend more time with her. Especially after the trip Alec fucking sent us on, I wanted to know more about her. For all the time I spend wondering about her little quirks, about what had happened to her to make her the way she is, it ended up being a complete fucking waste of time. Because I knew all along…the entire time I fucking knew why she was always on edge, always waiting for something to happen, and her need to search every corner of every room the moment she entered it. Because she was waiting and preparing…in case the lights were turned off and she was trapped again.
“Fuck!” I slam my hands on the steering wheel.
I don’t know what the fuck to think. On one hand, it all makes sense, but on the other… none of it fucking makes sense. Why would she do this? Why not just reach out and contact me? Why the fucking games? Why the secrecy and manipulation? Why not just come out and say who she really is?
I’m so fucking sick of people I think I trust playing games and manipulating me. My entire life has been one fucking game to someone. My fucking deadbeat parents, the social workers who were supposed to find me a safe place to live, the foster parents who weren’t supposed to see me as a paycheck, and the fucking state of as a whole. When it came to light just how many people fucking failed me, even the judge was in disbelief.
And now the girl I thought was my saving grace, ends up to be the same way. Maybe this is just payback… maybe this is what I deserve considering the pain I brought her in the first place. After all, if it weren’t for me, she never would have known the horrors of that house. Maybe karma’s just a fucking bitch.
I turn the car around and drive away from the one place I swore I would never see again. Back on the highway, I’m heading toward the airport again, but I have no intention of getting on a flight tonight. Not if there’s any chance of running into her there. So, instead, I check into a hotel for the night, one that has a bar which I’m in as soon as I drop my overnight bag in my room.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asks.
“A whiskey, straight up.”
“Sure thing.”
The bar is busy with no tables available, which is no surprise since it’s the closest hotel to the airport. I open a tab and quickly down the cheap liquor before requesting another. Just the taste of the whiskey takes me back to a time where that was the only way I knew to deal with the shit that had happened. For the last year I was in foster care, I bounced from house to house, too angry to give anyone a chance, before I ended up at a group home where I discovered alcohol. Those months are a blur; I barely went to school, and instead opted to skip and get drunk with the other kids from the home. I was buying my time until I turned eighteen and everyone there knew it. The staff and social workers were too afraid to do much to me, not after my lawyer sued the state for their many fuck ups on my case.
The day I aged out of the system, I joined the Army but my drinking didn’t stop there. At least not at first, I learned the hard way that you can’t function enough to be there when you’re drunk off your ass or hungover ninety percent of the time.
From there I turned to fucking. It seemed like a great idea at the time, especially since there were so many single girls looking to hook up with someone in the service. I cut back on my drinking, and spent far too many nights in the back of someone’s car or against the side of a building trying to fuck the memories out of my head. Unfortunately, no matter who I fucked, no one came close to feeling the way Em had.
Fuck.
Another whiskey is in front of me before I have a chance to request it; I nod my thanks to the bartender. It was my first tour in the sandbox that put my head on straight, that forced me to find another way to deal with the shit going on in my head. Sure, the state had sent me to therapist after therapist, but nothing worked. Nothing stopped the guilt from eating me alive, the nightmares from keeping me up at night, or the memories of how it felt to hold her against me while we both slept. Even now, all these years later, I haven’t found a damn thing that works – nothing feels like she did.
I spend the next two days at the hotel, doing the same thing: I sleep, shower, eat a little and fucking drink. I know the bartenders by name and they have my drink waiting for me before my ass hits the seat. I manage to get a few hours of work in each day, but I know it’s nowhere near enough. It’s the guilt of putting the extra work on Alec that finally has me flying back to Virginia.
Alec calls as soon as I land. “Nice of you to come back to us.”
“You had her track my phone?” It’s the only way he could have timed his call so well.
“Had to. You weren’t returning my calls.”
“I’m back now. Just need to grab a change of clothes and I’ll be at the office.”
“Don’t bother, no one’s there.”
“Why not? Where the hell is everyone?”
“Considering it’s after eight at night, I’d hope at home.”
“Shit, I didn’t realize how late it is. Look, I’m sorry for disappearing like that—”
“Want to tell me what the hell is going on with you and our new computer security expert? And what you think she knew all along? And what the hell you were doing kissing her?”
“You heard all that?” I cringe, forgetting the com had been on the entire time.
“Yeah, I heard. We all did.”
“What do you know?” I sigh, preparing myself for what I know she told him.
“Nothing, she’s as clammed up as you are. According to Margaret, she’s been working nearly round the clock, only stopping to eat when Margaret orders food for her.”
“Shit.” As pissed off as I am at her right now, I hate that she’s doing exactly what I’ve been doing the last few days. We had both resorted back to our old habits to deal with…this mess.
“Tell me, am I going to lose the best IT person we’ve ever had? As much as I don’t want to, if you need me to fire her because you two can’t work together, say the word and I’ll do it.”
“You can’t—”
“Look, I can find someone else if need be. They won’t be as good as she is, but I can find someone. Just tell me, can you work with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Understood. Want to tell me what the hell happened after our friends showed up at the rest stop?”
“Not really.” I sigh. “Let’s just say, I realized that I actually knew…Emily…before she came to interview with me.”
“You knew her? How? And what do you mean you realized it at the rest stop? You didn’t recognize her before then?”
“We hadn’t seen each other in more than ten years; she looks a lot different now than she did then.”
“You went to school together? I thought you were from Texas? She’s from…Oklahoma, I think, before she moved to California for college.”
“I…” Shit. “When I was fifteen, I was kidnapped and held prisoner for more than eighteen months.”
Chapter 22
Emily
I’m barely out of my car when the front door swings open and Luke steps out onto the large front porch. I knew coming here was a risk, but I needed to do something. Although he’s been back from…back for two days, he didn’t come into the office at all. Alec and Margaret both said he was working from home, but I knew the truth was he wanted to avoid me. I don’t blame him, not after what I did. But I can’t keep going like this. I can’t work day in and day out with someone who ignores me.
So here I am…in front of a large farm style house that is the exact opposite of what I would expect from Luke. The large porch wraps around the front of the two-story home, complete with a swing that on any other day I’d love to sit in and stare off in the distance for hours. It wasn’t easy finding this place, it was obvious that he didn’t want anyone knowing where he lived.
We’re literally in the middle of nowhere right now—I think the last house I saw was a few miles away. If anyone other than Luke was standing on the front porch staring me down I’d be worried, but even with as angry as he is at me, I’m not. I may have lied and deceived him, but I know he won’t hurt me…at least not physically.
“What are you doing here?” he calls out.
“You…you’ve been avoiding me.”
“And?”
“We need to talk.” I can only hope that I sound confident and that he doesn’t see me shaking from behind the car.
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, we do.”
“How the fuck did you find me? My name isn’t associated with this place.”
“I dug,” I answer vaguely, slowly walking towards him. “I told you in the interview, I’m good at what I do. I find the things people want to hide, including you.”
“Just how long have you been checking up on me for?”
“Years.” On the way here I promised myself I would answer any questions he had, even if it meant admitting what I never told anyone else. “Almost from the first day.”
“Why?”
“Because…I needed to know what happened to you. I needed to know you were okay. I needed to…”
“When did you start again?”
“Start?”
“After you initially found me, when did you start looking again?”
“I never stopped. I followed your career in the Army, when you came back to the states, when you started Dark Water Security…”
“All these years you’ve been keeping tabs on me? Why the fuck not contact me? Why the fuck didn’t you just pick up a damn phone and call me? Why—”
“Because you didn’t want anything to do with me!”
“What you are talking about?” he takes a step back as if I had slapped him. “Where would you get the idea that I didn’t want anything to do with you? After… fuck, after everything?”
“My dad… he told me,” I glance around realizing that although there’s no one around, I don’t want to have this conversation on the porch. “Look, can I come in?”
He slowly opens the door and steps to the side, gesturing me to come in. As I walk into the large foyer, I vaguely hear him close and lock the door before setting the alarm. Perhaps he wasn’t as unaffected by everything as I originally thought he was. Silently he gestures for me to sit on the couch in the living room before he disappears for a few minutes. When he returns, he hands me a glass of wine before placing his beer on the coffee table that separates us.
“What did your dad tell you exactly?”
“He wouldn’t let me contact you, wouldn’t even tell me your last name.” I’ll never forget the sad look in my dad’s eyes when I would ask him about Luke. “That’s when I first started trying to find you. Apparently my therapist had told him that seeing you again could trigger…it could bring everything back for me. She thought it was best that we… deal with our issues separate.”
“Mine said the same thing,” he surprises me by saying.
“What she didn’t understand was that no one else knew what it was like. You were the only person who could understand, the only person who knew everything we had gone through. She would never understand, my dad… he would never get it, no matter how much time and space he tried to give me. Anytime I brought up your name, or what had happened, he… he had a hard time dealing with what happened. He blamed himself—”
“For what? It wasn’t his fault.”
“He thought it was,” I take a drink of wine, barely registering its taste. “He blamed himself for having to work late that night. In his mind, if he had left work on time, he would have picked me up from my friend’s house instead…”
“It wasn’t his fault,” he argues.
“I know that and you know that, but he didn’t. It got to the point where it was better if I just never talked about it. I let him think that everything was fine, that I never thought about…what had happened, that I never thought about you.”
“Until he found out you were looking for me,” he connects the dots.
“I hadn’t quite gotten the hang of hiding my search history then, so yeah, he found out I was trying to find you. I broke down, I begged him to try to find out what had happened to you because I couldn’t find shit online. They kept our names out of everything, so I had no idea how to locate you. He promised he would reach out to the detective assigned to our case, who then put him in contact with your social worker. He said he was able to talk to you—”
“What? I never spoke to your father! The last time I did was when we were in the hospital, when you came to say goodbye.”
“I don’t know. I hate to think that he lied to me, but I also know how he beat himself up over what had happened, so maybe it was him trying to protect me. But he told me that you were doing okay, that you were in a good foster home and you were doing well in school. But he said that you told him that you didn’t think it was a good idea that we talked. That just talking to him was bringing it all back to you, that you had finally started moving on…”
“He couldn’t have been more wrong,” he growls. “I fucking bounced from foster home to foster before landing in a group home. I nearly failed out of high school; the only reason I didn’t was because the school took pity on me and gave me a diploma anyway. And trust me, I never fucking moved on.”
“What he said…at the time, it made sense. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you, so I figured if you could find a way to move on, to move past everything that had happened, so could I. So, I threw myself into my school work, and finally, I found something that would keep the nightmares away. Turns out if you work until the point of pure exhaustion, and then go a little past there, you pretty much just collapse at the end of the day. You’re so tired that even the nightmares don’t wake you up at night.”
“Em,” my heart breaks hearing the nickname he had for me so long ago. But
I don’t let it stop me, I came here to be honest with him.
“So yeah, after that I watched you from a distance. I…I still needed to know that you were okay, that you were…well, out there, I guess. It took digging, but eventually, I found out your last name; after that, it was pretty easy to monitor you. I didn’t…God, this sounds awful, but I didn’t go crazy looking for you. I didn’t pry into your phone calls, bank accounts, or anything like that. I just…I just needed to know that you were okay, especially when you were in the Army and then when they sent you—”
“You knew where I was stationed?”
“Turns out hacking into the DOJ system isn’t as complicated as it really should be.” I shrug off his surprise. “If something had happened to you over there, no one would have told me. I wouldn’t have known. That idea drove me crazy, prevented me from doing anything, so I hacked into their system and set up an alert whenever your name came up.”
“You could have called me at anytime,” he points out. “A phone call, an email, something. It’s been ten fucking years.”
“I know, and you’re right, I could have. But if it would have brought you back there, I couldn’t do it. I believed what my dad said, especially knowing that my therapist had been telling me the same thing for years.”
“What changed? Why did you decide to come out to Virginia? Did you go looking for Alec because of me?”
“No,” I answer quickly. “I didn’t…lie about how we met. It wasn’t until he started talking to me about what he did for a living that I looked into him and realized he was talking about the same company you owned.”
“That’s when you decided to come to Virginia.”
“Not right away, but yeah, it was what ultimately pushed me to come.” I look out the large window for a moment. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but my dad… he had just passed away and for the first time, I was alone. Truly and utterly alone. And then Alec was there, offering me a chance at something new. Something where every time I turned around I wasn’t reminded that my dad was gone. The icing on the cake… was you. It was a chance to see you, to be close to you again.”
Luke (Dark Water Security Series Book 1) Page 14
