And the fact was, he didn’t want to see Dr. Boyle. Not on a day when he was supposed to be surveilling Bridget. He would feel too guilty after the work that they had put into overcoming his compulsion to follow her. He was supposed to tell Dr. Boyle any time he broke his commitment not to stalk her location, which included just driving by her house and looking for her car or hoping to catch some glimpse of her in the yard. He couldn’t very well tell Dr. B. that he had taken a retainer to surveil Bridget.
“I might have to reschedule this week,” Zachary told Kenzie, pulling out his phone to look at his appointments. “I can’t really pull out of the surveillance halfway through the day to see my therapist. I’ll give her a call and see if we can swing a time when I don’t need to be on this job.”
Kenzie’s forehead creased. She didn’t like him waffling on an appointment. He’d skipped in the past when things were getting bad, and she probably saw it as a red flag.
“I’m okay,” he assured her. “It isn’t because I’m having problems. It’s just a logistics thing.”
“Well… I get that. But you need to make sure… don’t let it go too long without seeing her. You don’t want to lose the progress you have been making.”
“No. Of course not. It’s just one appointment. Everybody has to dip out now and then.”
“Okay.” She touched his arm briefly. “But don’t lie to me. It’s okay to tell me if you’re having problems.”
Zachary nodded, feeling even more guilty. He and Kenzie had been doing couples therapy to try to work through his issues with intimacy. They had talked a lot about open communication and role-playing, telling each other about their feelings or how to handle various challenging communication scenarios. And now he was intentionally not telling her something that he knew she would think was important.
But it was because of client confidentiality.
Not because he didn’t want to tell Kenzie about Bridget.
7
Zachary knew that Bridget had been dealing with some pretty severe morning sickness during her pregnancy. Enough that it had landed her in the hospital at least once. She had not looked well when he had run into her at the gas station one day.
So he wasn’t surprised not to see her leave the house until almost noon. She was a social person, and normally a morning person. She liked to get out early and be involved with her charities and other ventures. But that had probably ceased with her morning sickness.
He saw her exit the house from the back door. She took a few minutes to walk around the grounds, looking at the gardens with their colorful spring flowers. She looked pregnant now. She hadn’t the last time he had seen her. She walked with an adorable little side-to-side movement, hand resting on her baby bump when she stopped to consider something, as if she were communing with the babies on what their thoughts were.
He felt a rush of endorphins when he saw her. He had been head over heels in love with Bridget Downy. Smitten with her. And the first little while had been great. She had been encouraging and attentive and had brushed aside his apologies and explanations about the difficulties that he had.
Those things that she had originally thought of as quirks or failings that he could fix had ended up consuming her. She couldn’t believe that he couldn’t just choose to stop being anxious or depressed, couldn’t socialize with her friends without embarrassing her, would forget within five minutes which fork he was supposed to use for the salad course.
Despite her increasing impatience and vitriol, he still held on, loving her as much as ever, until she discovered she had cancer and concluded that Zachary had to go.
Maybe it was because it was cancer that had split him up that he still held out hope that her feelings would change. Cancer had split them up, and now that she was in remission, everything should go back to the way it was.
Even after everything, just seeing her still made his heart skip a beat and made him long for the life they’d had together, especially those early days in the first flush of love.
He watched her waddling slightly around the garden, fantasizing that they were together and the babies were his. He’d been mourning their anticipated children ever since the positive pregnancy test had turned out to be proof of cancer rather than of a child growing inside her. Seeing her obviously pregnant was almost enough to convince him that the past two years had just been a nightmare and their life together was unbroken.
But he knew that it wasn’t the case, and pain sliced through his chest at the disappointment and grief.
It would have to be enough just to watch her. He couldn’t have her back again, but at least he could see her again. For the time that he had her under surveillance, he could watch her to his heart’s content.
He was late getting home for supper, but Kenzie didn’t say anything about it. She was looking tired and irritable and hadn’t had a chance to start supper yet, so he suspected she had worked late too and just barely beaten him home.
“Kenz. You look beat. Can I take you out to dinner or order in? I’d offer to make you something, but… you probably don’t want microwaved dinners.”
Her expression softened. “You know what, ordering in would be so great. I don’t even know where to start with making dinner tonight.”
“What do you want? Pizza? Chinese?”
“Chinese.”
Zachary went to the drawer in the kitchen that held takeout menus, and pulled out the one for the Chinese restaurant a few blocks away. They put their heads together and picked out the dishes they wanted to share. He wouldn’t eat a lot of the Chinese food, but he enjoyed it.
“So you must have worked late too,” Zachary said when the food had arrived and they sat down to eat. “Lots going on at the morgue today?”
She shrugged. “It’s not like it’s our busy time, but some cases just take longer than others, or are more… emotionally taxing.”
Zachary nodded. “Accidents? Murder?”
She wouldn’t give him any identifying details, but they had a mutual interest in homicide, something that wasn’t usually accepted in polite society. Not the bloody details, anyway.
“Had a tough case today,” Kenzie said, staring off into the distance. “A teenager with kidney failure. Those ones are always hard for me.”
“Teenagers?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”
Zachary had a feeling he had missed something. He thought back over the conversation and couldn’t see anything else that he should have picked up on. But he sometimes let his thoughts wander and might have missed something she had said. Or he might have done something else, like taking the last dumpling when she wanted it. He scanned his plates and the remains of their dinner, but he hadn’t taken the last of anything. In fact, he’d barely touched the food on his plate. And maybe that was bothering her. She thought he wasn’t enjoying himself or wasn’t putting the emotional energy into their time together.
“This was nice,” he said, touching her hand for a moment, and then taking a couple more bites of the rice and the noodles.
“Yeah, I’m glad we did something. If you’d left me to make supper, it might just have been toast.”
“I could have made you toast.”
Kenzie smiled. “Yes, you are a pro toast-maker.”
“Usually. As long as I remember to take it out and butter it.” There had been more than one slice of toast tossed in the garbage after he’d left it to dry out in the toaster.
Kenzie gave a tolerant smile. “I think… I’m going to work on a few things in my office and have a bath. Head to bed early, so I’ll be fresh for tomorrow.”
Zachary searched her face to see whether she were telling him that she wanted him to go to bed with her, or that she wanted him to clear out so she could have a quiet evening on her own. He frowned, trying to unwind her words and decide what she wanted him to do.
“Should I head out…?” he asked tentatively.
“Head out? Where are you going?” Kenzie shook
her head. “I thought this surveillance wasn’t going to be night-time.”
“No, not the surveillance. I just thought… you might want some space. I can head back to my apartment if you don’t want someone else knocking around here tonight…”
“No. Stay.” Kenzie put her warm hand on Zachary’s thigh, which sent a sudden flush and goosebumps over him. “I didn’t mean I’m kicking you out. I’d rather have someone around tonight.”
Zachary nodded. His face was burning, wondering if she’d noticed his reaction to her touch. “Okay. You let me know if you need anything. And when you want to go to bed, I can come in for a while even if I’m not going to sleep right away.”
“Yeah. That would be nice.”
She bent to give him a brief kiss as she got up. “Can you clear up? Put things in the fridge and the plates in the dishwasher? And start the dishwasher?”
Zachary nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”
She went down the hall to her home office. He didn’t know what kind of work she was doing, whether she had something she needed to log in and finish for work, or she was balancing her bank account, or doing something else that he hadn’t thought of. Not that it mattered, of course.
As he carried the takeout containers to the kitchen to put them away, he thought about his physical reaction to Kenzie’s touch. It was a positive development.
He’d had such bad flashbacks after he was assaulted a few months back, flashbacks both to the assault and to abuse he’d experienced while in foster care, that he hadn’t been able to react naturally to Kenzie. Everything was conscious and forced and, if he wasn’t able to push through the flashbacks, he would dissociate, removing himself far from the situation until it was over. Not a great way to improve his relationship with his girlfriend.
So reacting to her touch was good. It was a positive sign. But he couldn’t help worrying about the change. What if he was only feeling something because he had spent the day watching Bridget? What if it had been a reaction to being close to Bridget and Kenzie triggering it had just been a coincidence? What if the only person he could have a natural relationship with was Bridget? She was with someone else and would, he knew logically, never get back together with him again, however much he wanted it.
They’d had a good physical relationship, one that had not suffered with the same shortcomings as he had demonstrated in his relationship with Kenzie.
It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair that he should have so many emotional problems when he was doing everything he was supposed to, going to all of his therapy appointments and doing couples sessions with Kenzie. Things should have been so much better with Kenzie. She was kinder and more understanding with him. She was willing to go at his speed. She was a much better match for him than Bridget had ever been.
So why did he continue to obsess over Bridget? Why was his relationship with Kenzie the one that suffered?
He retired to the living room and opened his laptop on the mobile desk. He took out the clipboard he had used to record Bridget’s movements and started to transcribe them into a spreadsheet while they were still fresh in his mind. If he left the logs to pile up over several days, the information would all run together and if he had to decode his messy handwriting, it would be much harder.
Even just the process of transferring Bridget’s movements from one medium to the other soothed him and made him feel better.
8
Zachary’s phone vibrated. He slid it out of his pocket and put it on the desk beside him, but didn’t look at it to see who had messaged him. He needed to stay focused on the job he was doing, or it would take him ages to get back into it. Once he was finished, he would reward himself with the distraction of a message from a friend or family member who was thinking of him.
Or maybe something from Gordon.
Zachary tried to remain focused on the task at hand, his attention starting to drift to Gordon. Was he calling already? Checking to see whether Zachary had been able to find anything out on the very first day of surveillance? It would take longer than that.
It was a struggle to keep himself from being sidetracked by these thoughts, but he got to the end of the log and saved the spreadsheet in a new computer folder set up under Gordon Drake’s name. He wondered briefly if he should call it by a code name so that if Kenzie happened to glance at it, she wouldn’t be suspicious of his activities. He needed to keep his client information private, especially when it was someone she knew.
He closed the file with relief and picked up his phone.
It was not a message from Gordon.
It was from Rhys, a young man whom Zachary had first encountered when he had investigated the death of his aunt, a woman Bridget had known when she was in treatment for her cancer. Even though Rhys’s mother had gone to prison for her part in her sister’s death, Rhys had stayed friends with Zachary.
He was selectively mute, saying only a word or two in the course of a day, and did not communicate with conventional language when he messaged Zachary or visited with him face-to-face. The trauma that he had suffered when his grandfather was killed when he was still a little boy had affected him deeply, stealing from him the ability to communicate easily.
Rhys often began a conversation with a GIF, meme, or other picture. His message to Zachary on this occasion was a sad-looking basset hound. It actually reminded Zachary strongly of Rhys’s own face. His sad eyes would cheer briefly when he and Zachary were visiting, but would quickly fall back into the same sad, downward gaze as the dog’s.
He tapped a message back to Rhys. Hi. How’s it going?
It was a few minutes before Rhys wrote back again. He sent an emoji with a straight mouth, which Zachary assumed meant he was neither happy nor sad, or was still frustrated by his lack of progress in therapy and dealing with the memories that had recently resurfaced.
Before Zachary had any chance to react to the emoticon, Rhys had sent another picture. One that was becoming very familiar to Zachary.
Luke, the boy he and Rhys had helped to break away from the human trafficking syndicate that he had worked with since he was a teen younger than Rhys.
Zachary had only recently figured out—with Kenzie’s help, admittedly—that Rhys was attracted to the older boy. There were plenty of reasons the two of them should not get involved with each other, from Rhys’s age to the prejudices against biracial relationships that were still strong in Vermont, to the fact that Luke needed to do a lot more work to overcome his addictions and find his place in the world, unqualified for anything but the prostitution and recruiting that had been his only means of subsistence for the past five years.
But despite his many reservations about Rhys pursuing a relationship with Luke, he couldn’t shut Rhys down and refuse to give him any information. Luke was living halfway across the state; it wouldn’t be easy for Rhys to see him even if he knew where Luke was. And Luke’s location was strictly confidential. The cartel thought that he was dead, and he needed to stay out of sight if he were going to have any chance of starting a new life.
Zachary sighed, blowing the air out between pursed lips. He couldn’t tell Rhys much more than he had repeated the last few times they had exchanged messages.
Luke is okay. Still working on his recovery. He thought about what else to say. He wished he could give Rhys more. Information that would make Rhys see that Luke was going to be okay without him and that Rhys should be more concerned about his relationships with the kids his own age in his own school and neighborhood. It was so much safer.
But since when had either of them been able to make the safer, more reasoned decision? Rhys was a teenager. At an age when boys were not well-known for making choices that were good for them.
No news is good news, Zachary typed.
As long as Luke was working on his recovery, there was hope. Hope that maybe in a year or two when Rhys was older, Luke would be a safer option.
A thumbs-up graphic from Rhys. A safe reply. Like he was happy to hear what Zachary
had told him and not that he would try to pry more information out of Zachary or try to make contact with Luke somehow. Zachary couldn’t imagine how Rhys and Luke would connect without Zachary’s facilitating it. Unless, of course, Luke decided to look for Rhys. Or gave up on recovery and went back to trafficking. Or both, maybe seeing if he could lure Rhys into the life as well. Zachary’s stomach knotted at the thought.
Zachary’s oldest sister, Jocelyn, was the one who was providing a home for Luke and trying to help him through the difficult transition period. She had personal experience in what Luke was going through and Zachary couldn’t have found anyone better to help Luke. But she had warned Zachary. She had told him that staying away from the life would be difficult or impossible for Luke. It was just too tempting. It was the only life he had known since his grandma had died and, when people were struggling, they went back to what was familiar. Chances were, Luke would not succeed in separating himself from human trafficking. Even if he stayed away from his old organization, he would take up with someone else local and be entrenched again within a few days.
How’s Grandma? Zachary typed to Rhys. Vera had been looking after her grandson since his mother had gone to prison. She had been the one constant in his life from the time that he’d been born.
“Zachary!”
Zachary was startled from his conversation with Rhys. He looked up to see Kenzie standing a few feet away from him. There were frown lines between her brows and, by her volume and the tone of irritation in her voice, it wasn’t the first time she had tried to get his attention.
She Was at Risk Page 4
