There’d been no official documentation of Walters leaving Washington DC during the break; however, utilizing different cameras around the city, establishments he frequented, and a stoplight near his home, I learned he’d been off the grid for the first three weeks of August.
A week and a half ago he returned.
I can only assume his travel wasn’t commercial but facilitated by the Order.
The bunker where Christian and Romero found the ladies’ shoes was near Anaconda. I cross-referenced facial recognition software with the stored data I had from tracking down the old Ford truck.
Simultaneously, I compiled as much as possible on Sergeant Major Andrew Jettison. Patrick and Mason had compiled most of his service record. I went back further, remembering Mason’s advice: if you really want to fuck Jettison, remind him who he was before you kill him for good. If you kill him as he is today, it won’t make a damn bit of difference—he’s already dead.
Unlike all of us who had been born in and around Chicago, Andrew Jettison was born in Sacramento, California, to David and Melissa Jettison. He was the third of four children. They all survived him.
“Oh fuck,” I said as more information came up.
My phone vibrated with a text message. My wife’s name came upon the screen. I hit the green icon.
“I CONTACTED RENITA. SHE HAS MY TEST RESULTS AND WILL BE HERE AT FOUR. I’D LIKE YOU TO BE WITH ME, BUT I’M GETTING THE RESULTS.”
I continued to stare at her words.
Test results?
There was only one test we hadn’t mentioned.
Rape kit.
How did Lorna know Dr. Dixon had the results?
Crimson flowed over my vision. Lorna wasn’t ready for this information. Only this morning she was crying in the shower.
How in the hell did she learn there were results to be had?
Not only wasn’t she ready for this information, fuck, I wasn’t ready.
And then I had a thought—we had Jettison’s DNA. The kit would provide DNA if she was...I couldn’t even make myself think the word. My teeth ached as I applied pressure.
If the DNA matched...
Andrew Jettison was already taking his last breaths. If this could be added to his list of sins, there would be no salvation. And now I had more information. I’d fucking work overtime to bring back his memories, reminding him of who he was before killing him for good.
Taking a deep breath, I laid my phone on the desk and pushing back my chair, I stood.
The tension and tightness could be felt in my muscles. I hadn’t moved from that chair in hours. Walking away from the monitors, I stretched my shoulders. One arm over my head, I pulled my elbow upward. Closing my eyes, I pulled harder, relishing the burn. Next, I did the same with the opposite arm. Rolling my head from side to side, I knew it would take more than a few stretches to work out this tension.
I wasn’t willing to devote the time to the weight bench or treadmill. My muscles could coil into a massive ball of yarn before I devoted more time to anything that didn’t work toward my ultimate goal.
Finding Jettison.
Meeting with Walters.
And ultimately learning why the Order was after Laurel. That still seemed like a missing piece of our puzzle. At first, we assumed it was her formula, but why would they want her when it appeared as though they had a superior compound?
The clock in the large screen above told me I had half an hour before Dr. Dixon would arrive to the apartments.
Shaking my head, I hit call.
“Lorna.” I spoke as soon as the phone connected.
“Did you get my text message?”
“Yeah, I was wondering—”
“Reid,” she interrupted, “I can’t stand not knowing. I’m having what Laurel calls flashes—small snippets of memories. But they don’t make sense. I can’t place them or connect them. There is so much that I don’t know. I need to know something, to have an answer.”
Her fucking voice tore at my heart. She was fighting thoughts and feelings because of me.
If she’d been kept safe...
My grip of the phone grew dangerously tight.
“Reid?”
I wanted to ask her how she even learned of the kit. I wanted to reassure her that I loved her, yet as guilt morphed into self-loathing, I turned to the six-year-old picture of Andrew Jettison.
“Reid, are you still there?”
“Tell me what you want, Lorna?”
She cleared her throat. “I want to wake up and have it be three weeks ago. I want no blanks in my memory and not to hurt with every step. I want to go back to believing that despite the danger in the world, I’m safe. I want to not feel vulnerable. I’m not, Reid. I’m not. I am strong, and I want to feel that way.”
Fuck.
I walked over to the computers and hit a few keys, putting my screens to sleep while keeping programs running. “I’m coming up.”
Lorna
Twenty-six years ago
After our grandmother died, Mason, Missy, and I moved in with our mother, Nancy Pierce. It was the first time we’d lived with our mother, other than when she would stay at Grandma’s. When she finally claimed us, she wasn’t living alone; she lived with a man named Gordon Maples and his two daughters, Anna and Zella.
Mom told us and the lady from Children’s Services that we would all be a family and made it sound like a story from a book.
While Missy was excited, Mason and I were weren’t sure how it would work. Why after having three children, the oldest one eleven, would she suddenly want us?
When the car pulled up to the large white house, Mason and I looked at one another with a seed of hope. Maybe this would work. Maybe our mom could keep us and we wouldn’t end up in foster care or separated.
It was clear even to me that Mr. Maples wasn’t pleased about the extra mouths to feed. It wasn’t unusual for one or all of us to be sent to bed without dinner. Even though he had a large house with four bedrooms, the three of us were given the attic as our room. If we behaved to his approval, we would have light. If not, there was one window and a streetlight below.
There were ever-changing rules and long lists of chores.
Not meeting his expectations led to punishments. Mason took the brunt of the beatings, but no one was immune from Mr. Maple’s belt, not even our mother. There were times I’d preferred the belt to the humiliation of standing in the corner of the living room while Anna and Zella watched television and laughed at me.
Mr. Maples came up with what he called punishments to match the crime.
One time after I’d completed washing the dishes, he found a glass I’d missed. That night, I was made to stay up all night and wash every dish. I’d put them away and he’d empty another cupboard. By morning, everything had been washed and dried five or six times. Another time it was floors that needed scrubbing.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months.
My tenth birthday came.
Then one night as I was about to sleep, the door to the attic opened. His outline appeared in the light from the stairwell. I reached for Missy, who was asleep next to me.
“Lorna.” Mr. Maple’s voice was thick, the way it became at night after he’d drunk beer.
Mason’s head lifted, but I shook mine at him, telling him to stay quiet.