It’s just like me to leave without a phone charger.

I’m the mistress of contingency planning and forward thinking, but it’s always the little things, the human things, that trip me up. Ask me to think like a soldier or planner, and I’ll leave no stone unturned.

Ask me to think like a human and I’ll show you a million ways to escape a locked room, but forget to pack a phone charger and a change of clean underwear for a long trip.

To be fair, I was upset when packing.

Screaming at Gabe, to be precise. I just shoved stuff in a bag and stormed off without looking. It’s not until I go to make a phone call after a useless, exhausting day and night muscling people for leads – and trying not to think on that nagging, crazy idea about Jim – when I realize my phone is dead.

And when I roll my eyes at myself and head back to my hotel room to rummage out the charger it hits me that I don’t have that, or a toothbrush, or a single pair of clean panties to change into after a shower.

Yeah. The stress is really wearing on me.

One trip to Wal-Mart later and my phone’s on the charger while I shower off, rinsing away a long, tiring day. I feel like I wash away the last of my resolve with the sweat and the grit.

I’m so exhausted I feel it down to my bones, and as I change into a tank top and panties for bed I once again feel a pang as I stare at that horrible patterned coverlet on this hideously empty bed.

I’d never realized just how much those nights with Gabe restored me.

It’s like he was this endless well of comfort and strength. Just by holding me he bled his strength into me until I was replenished, at peace, whole.

When I think about it, that makes me sound – and feel – like a parasite.

Always taking from Gabe while he was always so very, very giving.

God.

I drop down on the edge of the bed and bury my face in my hands. I’ve been awful. Selfish.

Some might say I have a right to be with everything crushing down on me right now, but I never wanted to be that person. That huge, cagey asshole who takes their problems out on other people and makes them suffer for things that aren’t their fault.

I have to talk to Gabe. I owe him an apology. A real conversation. An opportunity to say his piece.

A chance.

A chance for something real with someone who genuinely wants to try, rather than with the snarling little rage bucket I’ve been for months.

I’ll call him soon.

My phone’s got enough of a charge to turn on now, at least. I flop back onto the bed and wait for the Samsung and Android logos to roll past, then flinch back from the cacophony of buzzing, trilling, and jingling blaring out of my phone.

So many missed calls and text notifications. One sound doesn’t have a chance to stop playing before the next starts rolling over it.

Wincing, I thumb through the notifications. Alarm pricks my skin first, but when I see only two calls from Grandma and a couple of texts from Monika, I calm down.

Until I realize every other call and text is from Gabe.

My stomach clenches. He must have found something, because I know like hell he’s not the stalker type to blow my phone up being all creepy and obsessive when I don’t answer.

I make myself go through the notifications in order.

First Nika. Wait’ll you see Gabe again, her text says.

Meanwhile, my Grandma's voice mail is really odd. Something about how when I was a little girl I could never eat Ring Pops because they kept falling off my slender fingers.

Then Gabe – a voicemail. Just a few words in his sweet, sexy drawl that stops the breath in my lungs.

Can we talk, darlin’? I don’t want to pressure you but...call me.

I melt like a fool when he calls me darlin’ even though if you’d asked me a week ago, I’d swear I hate it.

Screw his Southern charm for getting under my skin.

But I’m not thinking about Southern charm anymore when I start reading his texts.

Texts asking me about Jim.

His texts telling me about Jim coming to my Grandma's house to get those disgusting pastries.

Something’s not right.

Jim’s been in the back of my mind this entire time, but my common sense, my need to have faith in someone, keeps telling me no.

No, not him. Anyone but him.

When I’ve had my guard up for so long, it was nice to have one person outside my family that I could trust to be there, to be safe, to look out for Monika and Grandma when I wasn’t there.

I can’t face the thought of that kind of betrayal, and I’ve been avoiding it all day, all night, chalking it up to paranoia. But it’s not paranoia if Gabe suspects something, too. Especially when a flashback hits in force.

Sixteen.

I’m sixteen, small and angry and quiet, and still full of hurt when I’m still living the day my parents died, still living that moment when my father promised he’d come home and then neither of them did.

Not until they showed up in a box and I was staring at them like they were dolls instead of real people who'd been living flesh and blood, empty of whatever made them my parents.

That moment lives inside me, and I’m living inside it, and anything that takes me out of myself is a relief.

That’s why I’m tagging along with Grandma Eva today.

I’m not good at having friends, but I’m good with Grandma, and when she decides to go to the community center for Mr. Appleroth’s cooking classes, I go with her.

It’s where I first start seeing Mr. Appleroth not quite as family, but as safety.

Hell, it’s where we met him. We’re living in this dirty neighborhood full of burnt-out buildings where it seems like there’s a new crime scene every night, but there are nice people at the community center who come from other neighborhoods to volunteer their time.

It’s Jim who, years later, helps make the decision for me when I’m finding somewhere safer to move my Grandma and sister. He’s someone I trust, and I want them near somebody who makes them feel safe. I want them near someone who's the first man in a long time who doesn’t make me feel like he’ll let us down. Just like that puke Nika got herself wrapped up with, Harmon.

But here, back in time with my sixteen-year-old self, still furious and stinging after Casey Hicks, the community center is where he teaches me how to make stir-fry, how to make steamed vermicelli, how to make a number of delicious and simple dishes.

Making simple things good is his specialty, but he stays away from spices. It’s over kneading bread dough one day that he tells me he lost his sense of smell in Vietnam. Something about breathing in smoke from burning napalm fires damaging the nerves and receptors inside his nose, so he can only smell things if they’re really, really strong.

“That’s why I never cook with nutmeg or cinnamon,” he says sheepishly, leaning in as if it’s a conspiracy between us, a secret for my ears alone.

It makes me feel special in a way no one has since my Dad used to take me on slow rides around the neighborhood on his bike.

“Be mindful of the spices. Always. They require a delicate hand and a nuanced sense of smell, and that, my dear, I do not have.”

He’d never have even tried to make those pastries, not even for a neighbor who loved cinnamon. He wouldn’t make them unless he was desperate and had no other option.

Like if he was trying to calm down a teething, upset little girl who loves apple cinnamon and needs something to sink her aching gums into.

Probably a good way to slip her sedatives, too, to keep her quiet when he can’t be around to make sure no one hears the coos and gurgles and screams of a baby coming from his house.

I'm shaking, clenching my phone tighter. I taste metallic blood on my tongue as my teeth dig into my bottom lip.

Gabe’s next text, as I keep scrolling frantically through, sends chills down my spine.

A photograph inside a trash can. A tray of pastries half-wrapped in cloth, and past them a trash bag with diapers and a gnawed-up teething ring.

Everything inside me crashes together like angry bells. Like the commotion Grandma said the old church bells made when the Soviets came and blew them up for subversive meetings or whatever.

And my chest is caving in. Ruined. Destroyed.

I grasp at the front of my shirt, struggling to breathe, then curl forward and press my forehead against my knees. I’m hyperventilating, choking, scared, elated, hopeful, hopeless, hurt, furious, betrayed.

I’m everything and nothing, this white-hot screaming firework of emotion about to fizzle out if she doesn’t get herself under control.

There’s more, too. Gabe talking about going in, getting a closer look.

Then another message, this one more urgent. More terrifying.

I’m going to find her, sugar. I’m going inside.

That was half an hour ago from the timestamp.

And now?

Nothing.

Nothing else.

My throat knots up. God, no.

No, I can’t lose Joannie and Gabe all in one fell swoop. I feel like I’ve lost Jim, too, because if we’re right, then the Jim I knew and trusted never even existed. Just a mask over a monster.

Fingers trembling, I hit Gabe’s contact and lift the phone to my ear, listening to it ring again and again and again. Nothing again.

Nothing but the voicemail, Gabe’s voice drawling cheerfully, “Hey, it’s Gabe. Probably forgot my phone somewhere, but I’ll get back at ya. You know what to do at the beep.”

I suck in several shaky breaths before I can say anything to that canned recording, then manage, “Gabe! I got your messages. I’m coming back. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t get hurt. I’ll be there in...” Crap, how long is it from San Francisco to Redding? “Give me three hours, if the cops don’t catch me going over the limit. Stay put, wherever you are. I believe you. I’m coming.”

I hang up, then send a text, fingers swiping rapidly across the screen. If you’re in a place where you can’t answer the phone, just send me back a text. Even one emoji. Anything. Let me know you’re okay.

I wait. And wait. Then wait some more, keyed up and counting the seconds and losing my mind between every breath. My phone doesn’t ring. Doesn’t buzz.

I wait a whole ninety-four seconds before I’m on my feet again, dragging my jeans on, stuffing my feet into my boots, throwing everything into my duffel and heading out to my car. I don’t even bother to settle up with the motel. I just leave a few crisp hundreds I brought as extra cash on the table next to the bed. I don’t care. I’ll call them and sort it out later.

Gabe, that noble stubborn guard dog bastard, might be in trouble because of me. For me.

Because he wouldn’t give up on trying to help me, even when I told him to shove his help right up his ass.

I don’t care if he never wants to speak to me again, after how shitty I’ve been to him.

I just need him to be okay.

I need him not to pay the price for what I've missed all along.

As I hit the highway, foot on the gas, gun in the glove compartment, I break my own policy and try calling Gabe again and again, even when I almost ride right up on the bumper of a semi.

I don’t know why I’m so convinced something awful has happened, but my pulse is going wild and there’s a battle readiness in me I haven’t felt in years.

That’s the thing with being military, you defend what’s yours.

Somewhere along the way, I started thinking of Gabe as mine.

After one last pleading voicemail, I give up on trying to ring Gabe and just focus on driving. I’m not sure what else I can do without being there.

I’m not even sure what I’m going to do when I get there, other than bust Jim Appleroth’s door down with the fucking crowbar in my trunk. If I find Joannie in his house, he’ll be lucky if that crowbar doesn’t go straight for his head.

I can’t even imagine why he would take her. For a moment, the worst possibility crosses my mind, but I can’t even consider that.

I can’t look at it head-on, so my mind chases other paths.

Is it because of his lost daughter? Has he been planning this ever since Joannie was born, coveting her as his own, working his way in closer and closer to our family until he saw his chance? Or was it a crime of opportunity, an impulse that, once he acted, he had to follow through?

One thing’s for certain: he took advantage of my trust, and that’s not my fault.

Of course, I wouldn’t have been on the alert had I picked up on him in the vicinity subconsciously. He’d spent half my life building trust with me, replacing my father as a calming, supportive male figure in my life, cultivating Nika until she thought he could do no wrong.

He abused that trust, abused the natural sense of safety I felt around him, and that’s not my fault.

All the blame and self-loathing and recrimination I’ve wanted to aim at myself for months explodes outward, directed at Jim. I’d sob with the sheer betrayal if I wasn’t so fucking angry.

This car isn’t moving fast enough. I check my mirrors for lights and speed traps, then edge it a few more miles over the speed limit. I need to be there now – but I can’t let my anger make me rash, or I’ll endanger Gabe and my beloved niece.

I shouldn’t go in without backup, but I can’t tell my Grandma or Monika just yet.

I’m not even sure they’ll believe me. The police would be preemptive, too, and could get me arrested for making a false call if it turns out we’re wrong or Jim manages to throw them. There’s only one person I can turn to.

Landon.

My boss is one of the most steadfast people on the rapidly shrinking list of people I can trust.

I wedge my phone into a safe spot on the dash, and steering one-handed, manage to jab at his number and put it on speaker. I don’t realize it’s after midnight until he picks up, his voice sleepy, ragged around a yawn.

“‘lo?”

“Landon? It’s Sky.”

“Yeah, I have caller ID.” His voice is already sharpening, alert. Like there’s this wordless communication between us that tells him if I’m calling at this time of night, it must be for a dire reason. I hear rustles, murmuring, then the other voice drawing away; he must be leaving the bed to keep from disturbing Kenna. And right off the bat, he asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. For right now,” I say. “But I might need backup. I think I got a hard lead on Joannie, and it’s not Harmon.”

“What?” He almost barks it. “Who is it? Where are you?”

“I’m about thirty minutes outside of San Francisco and closing in fast. I don’t have time to explain, and it’s complicated. If I give you the address, can you just meet me there in an hour if I don’t check in?” I take a shaky breath. “I don’t think anything will happen, but...”

“But you want to be safe,” he finishes for me.

“Exactly.”

I can almost see him rubbing his temples. “I’m on it, Pixie. I’ll scramble a team.”

I don’t even want to bite his head off for the Pixie comment. All I feel right now is a rush of relief that someone in this world is still reliable, and still everything he made himself out to be. “Thanks,” I murmur.

“You know you can call me any time. But what about Gabe? Where the hell is he?”

“I...I don’t know, boss.” I try to keep the fear out of my voice, but I can’t help how it cracks.

How the hell are people so short-sighted? We only realize how much someone means to us when we’re afraid of losing them.

“He figured out some of the same things I did and went to check it out...and now he’s not answering his phone or texts.”

Landon swears profusely. “That goddamn lunk. I hope he didn’t dive in over his head.”

“Yeah,” I exhale roughly. “Me too. But I’ll be there soon. If he’s in trouble, I’m on it.”

There’s a pause, strange and quiet, and then, “You really care about him, don’t you?”

Guilty.

I bark out a miserable, nerve-wracked laugh. “Not sure how it happened, but yeah.” I swallow thickly. “And if anyone’s hurt him, they’re gonna have to deal with me.”

“Well, they’d better have the sense to be damn scared, then.” The warmth in Landon’s voice is the equivalent of a companionable nudge. “Go get your niece, Pixie. And go get your man. I got your back.”

“Thanks, boss,” I manage, my throat increasingly tight, then reach over and end the call before hitting the gas.

Joannie. Gabe. I’m on my way.

And nothing – not Jim Appleroth, not Hell, or high water – will stop me from getting to you.