Vanished (The Saved Series, A Military Romance) (5 page)

A
nd it stung. She blinked because she was somewhere else, staring at the door in her dimly lit living room, the only light shining in from the kitchen, and it took her a minute to understand she was on the floor, the blanket tangled around her. She jumped up, kicking her legs out from the blanket, her heart racing, and jammed her fingers in her long blond hair as she turned in a circle and knew the threat was real. The lamp on the floor was shattered, the coffee table kicked over, papers and books scattered. The yellow curtain fluttered, and she stared at the front door, but the chain was still on and the deadbolt locked. She walked toward it and watched her trembling hand slide the chain off the door. The same hand turned the lock and opened it as a gust of icy wind swept in. It was black outside, but the street lights were on. She could go, get away, escape. This time, she wouldn’t be caught. She needed to hurry. She didn’t know where he was, but she needed to go now, so she stepped outside into the shadows and started walking.

Eric heard a
banging on his door, and then his light flicked on. He blinked as he was rudely pulled awake. “What the hell?” he muttered.

“
Sir, you got an emergency call.”

Eric slid out from under the covers in
only his boxers and reached for his pants, tossed on the chair beside the bed. “Who is it?” he barked, glancing at the bedside clock. He’d just gone to bed, and it was ten after one.

“Sir
, I was ordered to get you now. Call from home, sir, is all I was told, and it was urgent.”

Eric pulled a
T-shirt over his head, swallowing the panic that was trying to choke him. Abby had seemed too good on the phone when he Skyped her. He went into his office. The light was already on and the outside door open. The officer who had awoken him followed him in and picked up the phone, punching in some numbers before handing Eric the receiver.

“Put the call through
,” Eric said. He took the phone, dreading what was coming. As he stared at the freckles on the face of the composed man before him, Eric felt as if his blood had turned to ice water in his veins. He was chilled from fear he’d never felt before.

He pressed the receiver to his ear. “Captain Hamilton
,” he growled into the phone, a thousand different things flooding his mind and none of them good.

“Eric!” It was Joe
. His heart thudded, and he could feel the officer’s eyes on him.

“Joe
, what the hell? It’s the middle of the night.”

“Eric
, she’s gone.”

He felt as if the room
were swaying, and he had to sit, so he perched on the edge of the desk. “What do you mean, she’s gone? Who’s gone?”

“Abby is gone. Woke up at dawn
, and your front door was wide open. My God, when I went inside, your living room was wrecked, things knocked over as if there’d been a fight. A lamp was shattered. The baby was hoarse from crying, and Rachel was screaming, sitting in the middle of the hall, calling for Abby.”

Eric couldn’t speak
, and he felt nausea roil in his gut and slam up into his throat. He stormed with an overwhelming need to scream and yell, to roar like a lion, but that would get him nowhere. His logical mind had somehow taken a hike as he tried to understand what Joe was saying.

“You need to come home now. Abby is gone. The base police have been everywhere
, looking for her all morning. We have no idea what happened.”

“What the hell
, Joe?” Eric snapped. “You’re right next door. You promised me, you son of a bitch, that you’d look after my wife. Did someone break in? Did they hurt her?” He was desperate, lashing out, grasping at straws. She wouldn’t have left on her own. Abby was a fighter, his wife, who’d walked barefoot through hell and right out again.

“That’s the thin
g, Eric. We don’t know what happened. There are no signs someone broke in. She’s gone. I’m sorry.…”

“Where’
re Charlie and Rachel?”

He listened to a sigh on the other end. “Mary-Margaret has them. They’re with us.”

“I’m coming home.” His voice was raspy as he choked. Eric dropped the phone and glanced at the officers. His current XO hurried in as if he’d already been briefed, and Eric said, “Get me off this ship now. I’m going home.”

“This is how we found it
, sir.” The military policeman on the front step of his house pushed open the front door. It had taken Eric twenty-six hours to get home, and that was with everyone pulling strings and creating miracles. A chopper had taken him to the base in Germany, and he’d hitched a ride out on a military transport plane. The entire time, he hadn’t slept a wink. Between worrying about his children and what happened to Abby, Eric had barely held it together during the rough and very long flight. A car had picked him up, and now it was late afternoon and he didn’t have a clue what day it was, but he stared at a shattered lamp, an upended coffee table, books and papers scattered everywhere, and the baby swing on its side.

He stepped inside and walked into the kitchen, flick
ing on the light. There were a few cups and glasses on the counter, but everything was neat and tidy. He stepped down the hall, looking left and right for anything out of place. The bathroom was dark, so he flicked on the light, but everything was in order. He went inside the kids’ bedroom, staring at Rachel’s little girl’s bed covers tossed aside, stuffies on the floor. The crib was empty, and he felt the overwhelming panic and guilt of not having been there to protect his children. He shut his eyes as he relived his little girl’s fear, what must have gone through her head when she couldn’t find Abby. His baby, Charlie, was so helpless. It made him sick to think what could have happened to them.

“Eric
,” Joe barked behind him.

Eric
jumped and faced his friend, who was dressed in his tan uniform and was standing a little warily. By the way he held his jaw, Eric knew he was on edge, probably wondering how Eric would react. Of course Joe thought he blamed him. In a way, he did.

“Joe. Where are
my kids?”

Joe gestured
next door. “At my house. Mary-Margaret has them. They’re fine.”

“Abby…
” he said. “What the hell happened here?” He had a thousand questions, and he stepped out of the room just as another officer stepped inside the small house. Joe moved back, glanced away awkwardly, and then gestured helplessly.

“I don’t know what to say
, Eric. She said she was fine. We were just here before bed, and the kids were asleep. We checked on everything: the baby, Rachel. Abby didn’t want Mary-Margaret here, told her to go home. She wouldn’t come with us, either. I checked myself, Eric. She seemed okay. I never would have let her stay alone if I thought for a moment she wasn’t. I can’t explain this.…”

Eric walked into their bedroom
. The room was neat and tidy, the bed still made. He walked over to the queen-size bed, the pillows set neatly on the blue comforter. The nightstand, with its lamp and bedside clock, had not a speck of dust anywhere. Her brush and small jewelry box sat on the dresser, and Eric lifted the box and gazed at the gold earrings and watch he’d bought her, the ones she never wore. He opened the closet, all neat and orderly, his clothes on one side and hers on the other. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he knew she hadn’t gone to bed.

“Eric
,” Joe called out.

Eric set the box down
and swallowed the hard lump in his throat. “You’re telling me no one broke in?”

“No.”

“You think my wife did this?” He gestured to the destruction in the living room. Abby could never have done anything like that.

Joe just shook his head and said, “I don’t know, but I was right next door
, and I didn’t hear anything.”

“So
my wife is gone, vanished, and no one has any fucking idea where she is.”

“Abby is not on base. Whatever happened here
, she just disappeared from a very busy base, and no one saw anything,” the officer said.

Joe glanced at him and then back at Eric. “Yes
,” he agreed.

“Why? Someone explain to me why my wife would just walk out the door in the middle of the night
, leaving her baby, our children, as if they were nothing.”

He heard a baby fussing and turned to see Mary-Margaret holding his son in the doorway
. A slim, dark-haired woman was with her. His gaze instantly went to his son, and he reached out and took him from Mary-Margaret. He’d grown in such a short time, and his blue eyes were open. He had Abby’s mouth, her lips, her button nose, but his eyes. His heart tightened as he held his son. He couldn’t help the resentment and anger he felt toward Abby, and, at the same time, he feared something awful had happened to her. Had she been taken, or had she left? She was secretive with him; he knew it. He should have made her open up, talk to him. He should have been there. He couldn’t get his head around the fact that she had left, abandoning his helpless son and Rachel just as he’d been abandoned by his own mother as a young boy in East LA, in one of the worst neighborhoods, as if he were a sack of garbage. Abby had left them alone. He held his son tighter and turned away, fighting the burning in his eyes. How could she?

“Eric
,” Mary-Margaret called to him.

“What the hell
, Mary-Margaret? Did someone take her, or is it that she didn’t want to be here? Why didn’t she tell me?” he said. He didn’t miss the look of shock on her face.

“I doubt very much that’s what happened here
,” the dark-haired woman in black jeans and a dark coat said as she stepped closer and held out her slender hand. “My name is Terri Marks, NCIS.”

Eric didn’t take her hand right away
, but he finally accepted her slender hand in a firm handshake.
Unusual for a woman,
he thought. “What are you talking about? Are you saying someone didn’t take her and she didn’t just walk out on my children?”

“
We’re not ruling anything out, but as far as someone breaking in, we know that didn’t happen,” Terri said, gesturing to the other officer.

“Eric
, she could have opened the door to someone and let them in. A fight happened, and he took her,” Joe said, but Eric realized he didn’t believe one word of what he was saying.

“Cut the crap
, Joe. Someone got on base and specifically came after my wife, and you didn’t hear the commotion from next door? I know you don’t believe that.” He stopped and shook his head. Joe gave him an odd look, and Mary-Margaret swept her gaze between them.

“What gives
, guys?” she finally said.

“What about that guy who had her
, Eric?” Joe said. “You wouldn’t think…” He stopped. Mary-Margaret was staring at him as if she hadn’t realized there could be another possibility.

“Hossein
,” Eric spat, as if the name itself was disgusting and vile.

“He wouldn’t come here
,” Mary-Margaret said. “How would he get on base? Seriously, after all these years, he wouldn’t come after her, not here. Would he?”

“Sir, what’s going on
?” Terri asked. She was watching each one of them, studying them, appearing out of the loop, along with the prying ears of the military police lingering in the background. He tried not to share what Abby had been through, what she’d survived. He didn’t like people in his business or in Abby’s.

A man stepped inside the house
, dressed casually in a tan sweater and dress pants. He wore dark shoes. He slid off his dark glasses to reveal a square face, square jaw. As the man looked around, he showed not an ounce of compassion. He spotted Eric, walked toward him, tapped Terri, and said, “Jason Baker, NCIS.”

Eric didn’t bother shaking the man’s hand. He appeared older than Terri,
with brown eyes. His hair was longer, curling at the ears—sloppy, definitely not up to Navy standards.

“So you two are looking for my wife
,” Eric said just as Charlie started to fuss in his arms. “Shh, it’s okay, Charlie.” He glanced over at Mary-Margaret, and she reached for him.

“He’s probably hungry. I picked up
some formula for him. He doesn’t like it much, but he doesn’t have a choice.” She sounded irritated.

Mary-Margaret left with Charlie
, and Eric said to the two NCIS officers, “So how much do you know about my wife?” He glanced up at Joe, and his friend shook his head.

“I never said anything
, Eric. It’s quite a reach, really. You’d think he’d come here?”

“Who’d come here
?” Jason asked, looking at Eric and Joe and then at Terri beside him, who shrugged.

“Two years ago
, I rescued Abby. Found her floating in a dinghy in the middle of a war zone in the Persian Gulf. She was pregnant, beaten up. She’d escaped from a man named Seyed Hossein. He had bought her. She had been his prisoner for almost a year, taken in Paris. She had been sold to him, but she survived it, and I knew she was terrified he’d come looking for her. As he said, he owned her. He told her he’d never let her go.”

The two officers exchanged a look. “
Do we have a description of this Hossein?” Terri said.

“He’s been on the terrorist watch list
,” Joe said. Eric let him talk and explain how the CIA had wanted to use Abby as bait since Hossein was in their database. The police would be able to get a clear description of him and find out if he was, in fact, on US soil. Eric looked around his living room, feeling a burning rage at the thought that the man could have walked into his house, touched his things, his wife, his children.… He froze. He thought about Rachel, his little girl, and realized it didn’t make sense.

“Eric
, what is it?” Joe asked as Eric ran his hand over his chin roughly, thinking.

He shook his head
. “It doesn’t make sense, Joe. Why would he come here and not take Rachel?” He took in the wondering looks of the officers. “He fathered Rachel,” he explained. “Abby had her after I rescued her.”

Eric turned in a circle
, taking in the room and the disarray. He stopped and looked again at the blanket on the floor, how everything seemed to have been moved and the easy chair was set at an odd angle in the corner. “Joe, did you move the furniture?”

“No, why?”

“Why is that chair pushed into the corner?” Eric said. Everyone’s eyes went to the easy chair and the way it was facing the door.

Terri stepped over to the chair and sat in it
, frowning as she looked around. “Well, this is odd. It’s comfortable—safe, rather. Your back is to the wall. You can see everything from here, as if she was waiting or watching for someone.”

Eric tried to
understand what Terri was saying, and he wondered what could have happened that had Abby watching the door.