Vanished (The Saved Series, A Military Romance) (8 page)

Abby’s hand was still trembling.
She stood in the doorway of a one-room suite that overlooked the dark alley and the garbage dumpster, and the smell wafted in even through the closed window. The building was old and rundown, but at least it was a roof over her head and she could afford the rent. She stared up at Eric, who looked so handsome and tall. She wanted to reach out and run her hand over his cheek and the darkness always shadowed there. He needed to shave. She squeezed her fist, feeling the wall she’d put between them. What right did she have to touch him? This was the first time she’d ever seen tears in his eyes, and that hurt worse than anything she’d been through.

“Why?”
he asked, his face taking in a mix of emotions she hadn’t seen before. She didn’t think she could stand to see the hurt she was responsible for. She hadn’t allowed herself to really think about the repercussions of her actions because they hadn’t seemed real. Now this was her reality, and she didn’t think she could bear looking at him one moment longer. She saw the hurt she had put on his face. If only someone could slice open her heart right now, it might relieve the incredible agony tearing her apart.

“Eric
, I…” She had to swallow the dryness in her throat. Her voice caught, and she was unable to finish.

Eric set his hand on her door and pushed it open
. He stepped around her, and that was when Abby noticed the woman beside him. She was tall, with dark hair and blue eyes, and quite pretty. Who was she?

“Abby, my name is Terri Marks
, with NCIS. We’ve been looking for you.” She gestured to where Eric was, already inside her apartment. “May I come in?”

Abby stepped back and allowed the woman to enter. She closed the door
, giving her back to both of them, struggling to come to grips with what to do, what to say. She faced them, and Eric was looking around, frowning. He had to be disgusted. This place wasn’t much, with a lumpy mattress, a rickety old table, a chair, and that was it. She had a box in the corner of the clothes she’d been given at the shelter. She swallowed again, afraid of how Eric would react to her right now. The woman with him glanced over and set her hand on his arm almost in a gesture of support, something close. Abby didn’t like it. She couldn’t help the hurt that hit her just watching this lady with her husband, and she was furious and angry at herself because she didn’t think she had a right to feel that way.

Eric faced her, his face hard and unforgiving. His icy blue eyes focused on her
in a way she’d never seen before. His stare was filled with disappointment and confusion and anger. She dropped her gaze to the floor and felt a tear leak out, streaming down her face.

“I’m sorry
,” she said as she somehow found the courage to look up at Eric.

“
You’re sorry.” He almost spat as he ground out the words. “What the hell happened, Abby? Did someone break in? The living room looked as if someone had been there. The lamp was broken, the table knocked over as if there’d been a fight.”

She was having a hard time seeing through her tears
, and she cried out, “I don’t know what happened! I thought Seyed was there. I saw him in the mall that day. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t real, it was a trick, but I couldn’t make myself believe it. I thought he was going to kill me. I don’t know what happened. Everything is a blur.…”

“Was someone there
, Abby? Did someone come to the door?” It was Terri who asked.

Abby
looked from Eric to Terri. They were standing together, watching her. She shut her eyes, trying not to think of that night. It was horrible, a living nightmare she still hadn’t been able to make sense of. She shook her head. “I don’t know what happened. Everything seemed so real. I don’t even remember leaving. I just remember walking in the dark on the street, and I just kept going. Someone helped me. I was afraid.”

“Do you have any idea what you did to the kids
? They were terrified, screaming for hours. Something could have happened to them, and there was no one there for them!” Eric said. He didn’t realize he was yelling until Terri touched his arm.

“Eric
, please.” She gestured with her other hand for him to calm down.

“Afraid
? Abby, you could have called me. I had Skyped you how many hours before, and you said everything was fine. You lied to me. You shouldn’t have been alone, yet you sent Joe and Mary-Margaret home.”

He was right about all of it
, but how could she explain it to him? Terror had taken over her brain, making her see things that weren’t real, twisting her reality. She had been sucked back into her nightmare, unable to get out. She’d been so sure Seyed was there, and even now her brain was playing tricks on her. She could feel him, she could smell him. It hadn’t sunk in until now what she’d done to her children in the middle of the night. She felt so cold. She opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn’t find one intelligent word, and her tongue stumbled. For a minute, she thought she’d choke.

“What happened
, Abby? Why didn’t you call, tell someone so they could call your husband?” Terri asked.

Abby was startled
, feeling ganged up on. How could she explain when she couldn’t understand and make sense of what had happened to her?

“We were told you were hurt
,” Terri said. “Did someone hurt you?”

Again
, Abby thought back to that night. She had sat in that shelter in a haze as a kind older woman bandaged her head. When she dabbed at the crusted-over cut on her forehead, she could relive the agony in her soul. She shook her head again. “I don’t know.”

Terri glanced at Eric, and he was watching her now
, trying to figure out what she was saying. He glanced at Terri, and for the first time, Abby didn’t know what he was thinking. She couldn’t read him at all.

“I didn’t know what to do
,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m no good for my children. I’ve never been so terrified. I had to go. I don’t know how to explain it.” She didn’t know what she was saying, and she ached from having to explain it in front of Eric, her husband, the man she loved, who appeared unusually comfortable with this other woman. That was all her eyes, her thoughts, her worry kept going to. How could she be jealous? She had no right, but that was what she kept seeing. She was barely hanging on.

“I c
ouldn’t call,” she answered. “I don’t know how to make you understand something I can’t myself. How are they?” Her voice shook as she asked.

“Are you kidding me
? You actually care about our children? After all this time, you want to know how they are? Who are you? Let me tell you something: Rachel was screaming for her mommy, and you have no idea the terror that went through me when I got that call from Joe, in another time zone, the other side of the world, in the middle of the night. Mary-Margaret and Joe found her and the baby screaming. They’ve been caring for them when you should have been there.”

“
Rachel just stares off sometimes,” he snapped. “I can see the worry that should never be on a little girl’s face, and she’s back in diapers full time. I lost count, the first week, how many times I had to get up in the night when she’d wake up screaming, and then she’d wake up Charlie. I finally moved them both in bed with me, not that I’ve slept much, worrying about you, searching for you every day, worrying my guts out that I was somehow responsible or had done something or missed something, that it was somehow my fault, only to discover now that you aren’t really missing. You never were. You just chose to leave. Why wouldn’t you at least have looked after my children, taking them to Joe and Mary-Margaret so they’d be safe?”

He was in her face, but at the same time she could feel the distance between them, and it was so wide she didn’t know where to begin
repairing the damage. He let out a sound of frustration that sounded more like a growl as he turned around, jamming his fingers in dark hair that was longer than usual. It was sticking up here and there, and his face was tinged with color. He was in a mood, and she didn’t know what to say, what to do to calm him down. For the first time with Eric, she felt like a stranger, someone on the outside looking in.

“If you didn’t want to be married to me anymore
, to be a mother anymore, you should have said something! But not this…” He gestured to the room she was in, and she couldn’t stop crying. She could feel the other woman’s eyes on her, watching her. Maybe she, too, had a few choice words for her about how badly she had screwed up, what a horrible, worthless person she was. “Why would you let all these people—Sister Carmen, your doctor, the people at the shelter—think it was me you were terrified of, me you were running from, that I was the bad guy? Why? All I wanted to do was protect you.”

“I didn’t want this
, Eric. I love you, I love my kids, but I can’t be there. I’m no good to anyone right now. I never told them it was you. I’m sorry I messed this up so badly.”

“You’ve been seeing a D
octor Blaney,” Terri said, and it dawned on Abby how Eric had found her.

“Did he tell you where I was
?” she asked. She was worried about what else he had said, what he had shared, the intimate, degrading details of her living nightmare. She had never shared them with Eric. She never wanted him to know some of the things Seyed had done to her. He would see her as damaged, soiled, and he’d be disgusted. Had her doctor shared everything? Maybe she wasn’t so safe after all. “Did he tell you…” She swallowed, wrapping her arms around herself.

“No
, it’s not like that, Abby,” Terri said. “He didn’t share anything you said to him. You’re listed as a missing person. We’ve found you, and now the file will be closed. He had to tell me where you were,” she said, glancing from Eric to Abby.

Abby could only nod.
Her mouth trembled as she fought the wave of heartache that would soon have her curled up in the corner, weeping.

“Eric
, I’ll wait for you downstairs,” Terri said as she glanced again at Abby.

Abby
wasn’t sure what to make of the woman’s interest. What she did know was that this woman had made her way into her husband’s life, and Abby could do nothing about it. Through all that had happened, she had never once thought of the repercussions.

Abby jumped when the door shut behind her.
She was left alone with the one man she should have felt comfortable and safe with, but the guilt of what she’d done overshadowed all the love she’d built with this amazing man.

Eric couldn’t believe the hovel
Abby had chosen to live in. The questions in his mind were coming too fast. How was it better to live in a slum, with the worst of the worst around her, than with him and his kids?

“What are you living off of
, Abby?” was the only thing he could think to ask. He didn’t like where his thoughts were going—or the fact that the slimy caretaker downstairs had been anywhere near his wife.

Her eyes were red and swollen, her eyelids puffy from all the crying she’d done since he
had arrived. She ran the back of her hand over her nose, which was running, and then sniffed. “I got a job,” she said as she hiccupped. She gestured nervously toward the grimy window. “Just down the street, there’s a coffee shop. I’m waiting tables.”

“Waiting tables in some
two-bit greasy spoon?” he asked. He couldn’t understand how she could hurt him and their children just to be around a bunch of strangers, a bunch of men who’d be ogling her. Maybe she liked it?

“This is all I can afford, and I had to pay rent
, to eat. It’s all I can get. I’m not qualified to do anything. I know you hate me right now, but you can’t hate me more than I hate myself!” she cried out.

“
Were you ever going to tell me you were okay? Do you have any idea what I went through, freaking out and worrying that something had happened to you and I wasn’t there to protect you?” He was circling her, and all she did was stand there and let him.

She was crying
softly again. She looked so helpless that even after everything she’d done, he couldn’t stop his heart from softening. She was his wife, and, damn him to hell, he wanted her back. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering it, though: What if something happened and she hurt the children? For the first time, he realized he didn’t trust her.

“Eric
, I’m sorry. I wish I could go back and make it all not happen, but I don’t even remember everything. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

“Is this doctor you’re seeing helping you?”

She nodded as she wiped her eyes. “I still have nightmares every night. They were worse for a while. I relived every moment of what I went through with Seyed.” She shrugged.

“When you had Charlie
, was that what happened? Was that when it came back?”

Abby looked away
, her lip trembling, and then shook her head. “It never really went away, Eric. It was always here. I just ignored it and pushed it out of my mind. It was always easier to do when you were home.”

This time
, when he looked into her pale blue eyes, he thought he saw something inside her that showed the damage he hadn’t seen before.

He shoved his hands in his pocket
s and, not knowing what else to do, asked, “Are you going to come home?”

He
had to resist the urge to hold out his hand, to touch her. When she started crying again and shook her head, he realized he already had his answer.