Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5) (20 page)

“Whoa, Creed.  There’s so much messed up about what you just said, I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Then don’t.” Creed tossed the football back at Alik, turned and jogged back to the motel.  Over his shoulder he called, “We need to gear up, Al.  Enough talk, I need action.”

Alik held the football under one arm, hands on hips, watching the soldier run from his emotions.  Creed would deal the only way he could, by strapping on weapons and readying himself for battle
.

They should be getting ready to go with night falling, but he was seriously worried about taking what was clearly an unstable team member into the field.  With a heavy weight on his heart, he followed Creed back into the motel.

Chapter 40  Lean On Me

Farrow’s brows were raised when Alik walked in.  She didn’t have to say anything for her boyfriend to read her facial expression.  She was worried about Creed, too.

“What are we going to do about our miserable meta?” she nodded toward the closed bathroom door where a shower was just turned on.

“Misery I can stand, it’s the ominous fatal obsession I’m worried about.”  Alik was grabbing his change of clothes and heading to the bathroom in Farrow’s room.   “You okay if I take a fast shower?” 

“Sure, I’m already dressed and ready.  You boys are slowing me down,” she teased wrapping her arms around Alik’s waist and standing on tiptoe for a kiss.

“I’m all sweaty, Sparrow,” Alik murmured at her lips, a teasing smile tweaked the corners of his mouth adorably.

“Yet, you still smell like a mixture of evergreen and lemons.  How do you do that?”  Farrow leaned down and buried her nose in his damp T-shirt, inhaling deeply.  She wanted nothing more than to surround herself with him and snuggled in even closer when he sighed deeply and wrapped his thick arms around her back.  They held still together for a moment, as if both knew something momentous was going to happen that night. 

“What are we going to do if this lead is another dead end?” Farrow asked carefully.  She’d seen how torn up Alik and Creed got every time one of Greg Burns’ leads turned up dry.  The two boys had been a couple bears to travel with, but she wasn’t going to give up.  She wanted to be a part of Alik’s life and Meg was a huge part of him.  He loved his sister as if she were his twin. 

Farrow ran her strong hands up and down Alik’s tense back, willing her touch to help him feel some sense of calm.  He just leaned down and curled his thick body around her, demanding the air between them to move aside. 

They’d been searching for Meg for the past three and a half months.   They had been chasing shadows.  Williams kept relocating Meg, and the three would find their location a few weeks too late.  Always ten steps ahead, Williams had a shrewd way of behaving unpredictably.  So far, Meg had been hidden on every continent and never stayed in one place longer than a month.  Alik would do everything in his gifted power to track with his retro-cognition skill, but every time the trail ran cold. 

Farrow saw how tormented the brother was.  At night, she would sleep in her own room and see the glow of the lights from the adjoining room as the two boys passed the nights by watching television, playing video games or just staring off into space.  The dark circles etched themselves deeper in to the handsome brothers’ faces. 

Alik never wanted to leave Farrow alone.  Farrow knew it was because he was so afraid of losing another person he loved.  He felt determined to protect the former assassin turned girlfriend, however capable Farrow was at protecting herself.  She let Alik do what he felt he needed to do—she let him do anything to help him find some sense of control and peace.  There wasn’t a whole lot of either being felt among any of them.

“Alik?” Farrow prompted, as he hadn’t responded other than to breathe shallow breaths forcing his body to demand more air with periodic sighs. 

“If tonight is another dead end, we keep searching.  Farrow, listen,” Alik pulled back to look into the large doe eyes of his love.  “You don’t have to live your life like this.  You are free to go anytime you want.  I’ll give you money and you can go start over somewhere far away.  No one will need to know you’re different.  You could live a completely normal life.  You know?”

Farrow was shaking her head, no.

“Don’t.  Farrow, don’t choose to live like this with me.  You’ve spent the past three months chasing the ghost of my sister around the world.  You could be enjoying the simple, normal pleasures of life.  You could get a job as a personal trainer or a middle school coach, like you’ve dreamed about.  You’d be great with those kids.  You could even find a normal guy, fall in love and someday marry.  You know, live the normal life of an eighteen-year-old?”

“I choose you, Alik Winter.  I choose to walk at your side because I love you.  Your battles are my battles.  Would you leave me if the roles were reversed?  Would you leave me to make a home where life was simpler?”

“No, of course not.   Nothing would be worth anything without you.  You
are
my home.”  Alik’s strong hand gently cupped Farrow’s delicate cheek.  She couldn’t help but lean into his touch.

“You’re staying?”

“I’m staying.”

“Do you love me—even when I’m angry and heartbroken for my sister?”

“I love you because of the devotion you have for your sister, and for so many other reasons, Alik.”

“Creed said something just now.  He said Meg was the glue that held the family together.  I think he may be right, I just never realized it before.”

“Each of you plays a part in the ties that bind.  You just feel Meg’s loss more acutely because she’s been gone for so long.”

“Sparrow, it’s like she’s died.  It hurts to admit it, but it’s the truth, and I can’t get closure.  Hell, I don’t want closure.  I want my sister back.  I can’t wait until we find her, but I’m scared that even when we do find her, she’ll be gone.”  Alik motioned to his head.  “It’s so painful not to know what’s happened to her.”

Farrow nodded quietly, letting Alik wallow for a while.  He was usually so upbeat, pulling the others in the family with him in his efforts.  He only showed these moments of doubt to Farrow and she felt honored to be so trusted by him.

“Let’s take this one day at a time, Alik.  Just tonight.  All you have to think about is tonight.  Tomorrow will come and we’ll deal with those issues then; we’ll deal with them together.  Okay?”

Alik nodded slowly, too much tension molded into his young face.

He pulled away from her and quietly headed into the second bathroom so he could clean up.  He knew he needed to get it together.  They had room for only one heartbroken soldier in their group.  He had to be the strong one, for his sister’s sake.

Chapter 41  Modus Operandi

“Evan is that you?”  Margo called from the living room.

“Yes, Mom.  I’m back.”  Evan tossed the keys to his motorcycle on the kitchen island and headed right to the fridge. 

“I hope you progressed at the lab today.”

“Well, I’m getting closer.” Evan poured himself a tall glass of milk and chugged half, leaving a white mustache in the peach fuzz on his upper lip.  

“Do you let Sloan help you?” 

“No, I do my thing in the research lab and she studies in the pathology lab.”

“I’m so thankful to Greg for getting you two the proper credentials so the hospital would accept you.  What a blessing he has been to our family that he could help from afar.”

“We’re fortunate to have the University Hospital right in Giza.  They’re used to students coming and going on that hospital’s campus, so Sloan and I blend right in.”

“When are you going to tell me what you’re working on, son?  You spend so much time up there.”

“Mom, we’ve been through this.  I’ve been given keys to the lab so I can come and go as I please.  I do some work for the hospital and work on my own thing between projects,” Evan offered cryptically. 

He walked into the living room to find his mom holding Danny in her lap.  The little guy was sound asleep, drooling on her pink sweater.

“Do you want me to lay him in his bed, Mom?”

Margo smiled down at the top of the little boy’s head and wrapped her arms around him even more tightly.  “Not yet, he just dozed off, and I love feeling him relaxed and peaceful.”  She tried to study Evan’s face inconspicuously.  He looked exhausted, as though he hadn’t slept properly in weeks—not since the family escaped the country without Meg.

“Yeah, but Mom,” he was saying. “The additional weight on your hips and back could cause damage.”

“I feel better when I hold him, Ev.” Margo looked into her son’s hazel eyes and tried not to wince at the pain she saw twisting behind them.  Her son wasn’t just overworked, though he’d been keeping very long and unpredictable hours at the University Hospital’s Research Lab.  He was haunted by the night in Tucumcari nearly four months before.  He didn’t talk about that night, but Margo knew he beat himself up over Meg’s disappearance.  He and Alik hadn’t spoken more than cursory words since that night.  Margo prayed for peace, for her daughter and for their survival, but she was starting to wonder if her prayers were falling on deaf ears.

“Honestly, the more I hold him, the better I feel.”  She smiled at Evan’s perplexed frown.  “I loved holding you when you were a baby.  You know you had a ‘lovey’ too.”  She motioned to the blue pillow Danny held tightly in his pudgy arm.

“I did?” he asked in an uncharacteristic appreciation of nostalgia.

“Yep.  A little blue bunny.  Do you remember it?”  Evan just frowned trying to recall.  “Alik would remember,” she
blurted, then quickly wished she could take back the words, seeing the pained expression on Evan’s face at the mention of his estranged brother.

Trying desperately to maintain the small connection Evan was allowing just then, Margo kept talking.  “You used to chew on his ear and tail.  I had to wash the poor thing plenty of times in
a pillow case on delicate, with as much attention as you gave it.  I suppose you were about two years old when you first got attached to it.  He was just a stuffed animal in your Easter basket that year, but once you dragged him around by his floppy hand and showed him all  your other toys, I knew you’d found a special friend.”  Margo smiled at the memory before continuing.  “I still have the bunny.  Well, he’s back in Texas, in a box tucked away in the attic, but he’s there.  Someday if we ever get to go home, I’ll show him to you.”

“On a sappiness scale from one to ten, that’s got to be a twelve,” Evan teased gently.  So seldom did her son smile these days, even the small smirk he offered startled Margo. 

“Oh, you’re right.  Poor you, you have a sappy mom.” Margo offered a cautious smile.  She had been doing that a lot lately.  They all had.

Evan turned away and started to leave the room.  “Was Theo coming home, too?”

“I heard them call a ‘code blue’ just before I left,”  Evan said over his shoulder as he walked his milk glass back to the kitchen and slipped it into the dishwasher so he could hide his face.  He leaned over the counter, affording himself a moment to take some slow deep breaths, but however he tried, he felt no relief from the heaviness in his chest.  Maze limped up to him and sat at his feet.   Evan slipped quietly to sit on the floor beneath the sink and let Maze drape himself across his lap.  Absently, he rubbed the coydog’s ears and stared off at nothing.

They’d escaped the United States by using Greg Burns’ contacts.  All of them were given new identities and passports then directed to a lock box in a bank where Burns had already stashed thousands in euro for them.  His retirement money, they later learned, funded their escape. The Winter clan had been living under the radar in Cairo, Egypt since that night back in June when Meg left for a run and never came back—the night that changed Evan forever.

“Would you please help me to bed?” Margo called from the living room.

Abruptly, Evan scooted Maze off his lap, stood and hurried back to his mom.

“Sure.  What about Danny?”

“He can lay on the bed with me,” she leaned down and kissed the top of his head, breathing the little boy scent.

Evan nodded, then leaned down to unlock the wheels on his mother’s chair and started pushing her down the hall to the room she and Theo shared in the modest house.  Once beside her bed, Evan easily lifted Danny off his mother and laid him carefully on the bed.

“Do you need to use the restroom first
, Mom?” Evan knew it was important for her to clear her bladder on a schedule. 

“I guess I should,” Margo sighed.

“Do you want my help?” Evan asked nonchalantly.  Sloan and Evan had taken turns helping Margo with her physical tasks during the past three months as Theo wasn’t strong enough to lift her, but the loss of Meg had put an enormous strain on Evan’s relationship with everyone.  No one had outright said it, but Evan knew he was blamed for her loss.

“No, thanks, Evan.  I’ve got it.” 

Though still wheelchair-bound, Margo was making slow but steady progress in regaining sensation and even some movement in her legs.  Cole had made it his job to work on her physical therapy daily.  He’d buried himself in studying the best techniques, stretches and exercises.  When he wasn’t helping Margo, Cole was taking martial arts classes as his way of dealing with his heartache over Meg.  Keeping busy helped him hit the bed at night exhausted, making it less likely that he’d have nightmares.  He avoided Evan as much as possible.  They all did.