Epilogue

Lia

This was fucking crazy.

What had I walked into?

The hallway was bright, clean, and expensively decorated.  It wasn’t quite posh but certainly counted as upscale.  The scene filling the corridor didn’t fit in the slightest.

Several SWAT team members lined the walls, some of them with guns drawn and pointed at the man their comrades brought out of the apartment at the far end.  They tensed as he emerged, and their fingers twitched against the triggers but not enough to fire.

My gaze was drawn to their target.

The face I looked at was the same one that had obsessed me for months, but the clear blue eyes were red and swollen, and the tight, military haircut outgrown and unkempt.  The desert-style fatigues I had never seen before, but at least the look fit what I was expecting.  The rest of the scene and the look on Evan Arden’s face were completely bizarre.

For months I had been searching for this man based on nothing more than a name and military affiliation, but all records of him seemed to completely disappear after he returned from the Middle East.  My search had led me to the terrifying video of him on his knees while the man next to him was executed and pictures of him being brought back to the United States after he was found in an undisclosed location during a raid on a suspected Al Qaida base.

Though faded, the bruises in the photos were still quite visible.  His arm had been in a sling due to a dislocated shoulder, but he had been reported to be otherwise unharmed.

But his eyes…

They had been haunted and haunting.  The somewhat hesitant but bright and alive glimmer I had witnessed in Arizona was nowhere to be found.  I hadn’t been able to reconcile the pictures of the man brought back from war with the cool and confident one who locked eyes with me in his tiny bed and told me to touch him.  Now that I had found him, I was watching him with the exact same look in his eyes, being taken away in handcuffs by a half dozen men.

He had been shooting at people.

Still, it wasn’t the look of a callous murderer, but more like a lost puppy – desperate, hungry, and terrified – biting at the ominous hand reaching underneath the couch to pull him out.  There were tears streaming down his face, though he seemed oblivious to their presence.

All of the fantasies that had cavorted around in my head while I searched for him fell apart.  There wasn’t going to be a passionate kiss as he held me against his chest – his hands were secured behind his back to protect those around him.  I wouldn’t be throwing myself into his arms and feeling that sense of security and want I had felt with him in Arizona.  I wasn’t sure if I would even be able to get his attention.

What happened to him?

Evan’s eyes moved to mine, and for a moment he closed them for a little longer than it takes to blink.  Once he opened them again, the vision of an already broken man seemed to collapse into an even darker hole.  Instinctively, I stepped forward.  I needed to reach him, touch him, and be sure all of this was real and not some sick nightmare my desperate mind had contrived.  I wasn’t afforded the opportunity; the police officer who had been arguing with me a moment ago blocked my path.  He spoke bluntly, but I wasn’t listening to his words.

“Evan?”

Evan’s reddened eyes looked away in defeat, and he allowed his escorts to maneuver him towards the open elevator door.  Just as he crossed over the line on the floor, his eyes widened, and he looked back to me and called my name.

“Take Odin – please.  Please take him with you – make sure he’s okay.  Please?  Will you?  Please?”

Odin, of course.  He was the shaved-nearly-bald, huge, white dog with a rolling tongue.  He kept licking my hand when I tried to fall asleep in the Arizona cabin where I met Evan.  I had been amazed at how well-behaved the canine was and how quickly he reacted to anything Evan commanded.

I agreed, naturally.  What else was I supposed to do?  My head felt like it was full of mush – I couldn’t even make any kind of sense of the scene – but of course I would take the dog.  As Evan’s panicked words to the police captain flowed in and out of my head, I tried to get past the officer near me but wasn’t able to push him away.

“Let me talk to him!” I snarled under my breath.

“I can’t do that, ma’am,” the police officer replied.  “You have to understand why I can’t do that.”

I did, too.

“I’ll take care of Odin,” I called out to him, and I could see his face relax.  “I’ll…I’ll figure it out.  You just need…you need…”

I didn’t know what he needed, and the half smile I got in return told me he didn’t know, either.  His eyes stayed on me as they pulled him backwards into the elevator, and I felt the same connection to him I had felt in Arizona when he handed me a bottle of water and our fingers touched as it passed from one hand to the other.

“Sorry,” he said softly, and the elevator closed.

Watching him disappear behind the doors, I knew I would have done anything just to be able to take him back to that moment.  I had recognized then how different he was inside despite the hardened outward appearance.  William had always looked soft and cuddly on the outside, but inside he was dark, cruel, and vindictive.  Evan had the look about him that screamed “stay away from me,” but as soon as our bodies intertwined, I had been his.

I didn’t know how he had arrived at this point, and I knew if I would have asked Mom, she would have told me to run away as fast as I could in the other direction.  I couldn’t do that, though.  I couldn’t just leave him to his fate.  If he had done the same to me, I wouldn’t have survived alone in the desert.

I wouldn’t allow it.  He was the only good thing that had ever happened to me in my whole life, and I wasn’t going to let him be dragged away from me like this.  I would figure out what needed to be done to help him and get him out of this mess he was in.  Evan needed someone to help him – to save him.

There was just no way I would turn my back on him now.