The Siren (20 page)

I forced a half-smile. “That is good news.”

He squeezed my hands. “We’re going to take off. Will you call me if you need anything at all?”

Nodding, I rose to my feet. I put my arms around his neck and hugged him for a tad bit longer than was probably appropriate. “Thanks for being here, Nathan.”

He rested his cheek against mine and spoke softly in my ear. “I wish I could fix it.”

I smiled. “I know.”

Shannon stepped over and hugged me also. “I’ll be praying for you and your family,” she said as we embraced.

When they were gone, I sat back down by Warren and put my head on his shoulder.
 

Adrianne rolled her wheelchair closer and pointed at me. “You just hugged Shannon Green.”

“And neither of them burst into flames. Aren’t you shocked?” Warren teased.

I tried to laugh, but it came out as a throaty cough.

Adrianne leaned on her elbow. “You want some more good news?”

I straightened and looked at her. “Absolutely.”

Biting her lower lip, she put her hands on the armrests of her wheelchair. She locked the wheels and pushed herself up.
 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Warren shouted as he jumped up to grab her arm.
 

She swatted his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

He kept his hands close just in case, and I sat forward on the swing and watched her as she straightened all the way up. I covered my mouth with my hands and teared up again. I stood and put my arms around her. “Congratulations!”

She laughed and pushed me away. “I can’t stand up forever.” Warren and I helped her settle into her chair.

“But you can stand!” I cheered.

“I took five steps at physical therapy yesterday without holding on to anything.” She smiled with pride. “I’ll be wearing my stilettos and dancing again before you know it.”

Genuinely happy for the first time in days, I leaned over and hugged her. “I can’t wait! I’ll let you dress me up like a paper doll and put as much makeup on me as you want. We’ll dance until we’re dizzy.”

She squeezed me. “I love you so much.”

I smiled. “I love you too.”

* * *

The next morning when I came downstairs, I smelled coffee and sausage cooking in the kitchen. For a split second, I completely forgot Mom was gone. I stepped around the corner and saw Warren at the stove. I walked over and put my arms around his waist and rested my head against his back.
 

He rubbed my forearms and looked around at me. “Good morning,” he said. “The coffee is ready.”

I squeezed his waist, then crossed the kitchen to retrieve a coffee mug. “Have you seen Dad yet this morning?” I asked.

He shook his head. “He’s not up yet.”

Glancing up at the clock, I put the mug down next to the coffee maker. It was after nine. “That’s strange. I’m going to go and check on him.”

“OK.”

I walked out of the kitchen and down the hall past the stairs to the door of the master bedroom. Gently rapping my knuckles against it, I pushed it open just a crack. Dad was sitting on the edge of the bed in his flannel pajama pants and a white t-shirt, staring at the carpet. I pushed the door open farther. “Dad?”

He looked up. His eyes were red, and there were dark circles beneath them. I walked over and sat down beside him, looping my arm through his. For a while, neither of us spoke because there was absolutely nothing to say.

Finally, Dad sucked in a deep breath. “It’s just so hard to even get up in the morning now.” He was shaking as tears streamed down his cheeks.

I turned and put my arms around him, our roles for once reversed.
 

After a moment, his weeping subsided and he pulled away. Wiping his eyes on the back of his hand, he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to keep it together,” he said. “I never even thought about a life without her in it.”

On the nightstand was a box of tissues. I grabbed one for Dad and one for myself. “Me either.”

He sighed and stood up, dabbing his eyes with the tissue to dry them. “Come on. Let’s get some coffee. I’m going to need it. I’ve got to figure out how to pay the mortgage today.”

* * *

The fourth day of what I had dubbed
Dad Intervention Week
was laundry day. When I returned to his house after putting in a few hours at the office, we spent ten minutes discussing the importance of sorting the colors from the whites and figuring out which buttons did what on the washing machine. While Dad gathered the laundry from the house to practice, Warren carried boxes of Mom’s stuff to the garage.

When we passed in the hallway, I grabbed Warren by the arm. “How do you think he’s doing?”

He nodded his head. “He told me a dirty senior citizen joke over breakfast this morning, so I would say he’s doing better.”

I squeezed his forearm. “Thank you for staying with him so I don’t get fired.”

He shook his head. “Stop thanking me.” His eyes widened. “Guess what today is.”

“Laundry day?”

He smiled. “Halloween.”

“Oh geez. We’d better get candy today,” I said.

He nodded. “Remind me and we’ll pick some up on our way home from dinner.”

“Sloan, honey! Can you come up here please?” Dad shouted down the stairs.

“Coming!” I called and headed up the steps. When I got to the top, I looked into his office, but it was empty. “Where are you?”

“Your room,” he answered.

I walked down the hall and found my father sitting on my bed, holding a file folder. “What’s up?” I asked.

He held up the photograph of Abigail Smith. “I found this on top of your clothes. Do you know this woman?”

Puzzled by his intrigue, I walked over and peered over his shoulder. “Yeah. Her name is Abigail. I met her in Texas. Why?”

He looked out the window and rubbed his hand over his mouth. Finally, he snapped the folder shut and looked at me. “Nothing, honey. She just looks really familiar.” He put the folder in my suitcase.

“She was a missing person in Greensboro for a while, but we located her in San Antonio,” I explained. “You might have seen her on the news.”

“That must be it.” He stood up. “Excuse me for a second.”

He walked out of the room and left the laundry on the bed. “Dad, you forgot—”
 

The sound of his office door closing cut me off.

I looked down at the clothes and at the file folder, then scratched my head. “That was weird.”

A half hour later, Dad was still in his office, and because I’d skipped lunch to leave early, I was starving. I went back upstairs and knocked on his door. “Dad, we’re going to go out and get some food, do you want anything?” I shouted through the wooden door.

“No, thank you!”

“Are you all right in there?” I called.
 

“Just fine!”

I shook my head and galloped down the stairs. Warren was holding my jacket at the bottom. “He’s not coming?” he asked.

“Nope,” I answered, shrugging into the black coat. “He’s acting really strange.”

“How so?” He opened the front door and stepped aside to let me exit first.
 

The brisk October air slapped me in the face. “Brrr.” I zipped my jacket closed and shoved my fists into my pockets. “I don’t know what’s up with him. He saw that picture of Abigail up in our room earlier, and he’s been locked in his office ever since. He looked like he had seen a ghost or something.”

“Do you think he knows her?” he asked.

I looked up at him and tried to hide my face behind the collar of my jacket. “How would he?”

“I don’t know.” He clicked the button to unlock the Challenger.

I held out my hand. “Can I drive? I haven’t driven a car in weeks.”

He hesitated for a second. “Will you be careful?”

With a hand on my hip, I reached for the keys. He held them up away from me, his eyes demanding I answer the question.

“Yes, I’ll be careful!”

He laughed and handed them to me.
 

When we climbed inside, I sank down in the leather driver’s seat and moved it up so I could reach the pedals with my feet. My eyes closed involuntarily as I started the engine and felt the beast roar to life underneath me. An unstoppable moan slipped out.

When I looked over at Warren, he was frowning. “Please don’t make me jealous of my own car.”

I laughed and put the transmission in reverse. “Oh, I love driving this thing.”

He pointed at me. “No hot-rodding it while I’m gone.”

Gone
.
 

The word reverberated in my skull like a clanging cymbal inside a racquetball court.

I slammed my foot down on the brakes, and my hands released the steering wheel in shock. “Oh my gosh! With everything going on, I completely forgot you’re leaving. When is it again?”

“Seven days.”

I muttered the worst of all curse words and pressed my temple against the ice cold window. “What am I going to do?”

He reached over and put his hand on my thigh, and I realized an entire year without the calming zing of his touch was going to feel like an eternity.
 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he said.

“No, I’m glad you reminded me. Seriously, what am I going to do while you’re gone?” Panic was pushing my voice a full octave higher.

“You could take up knitting,” he suggested.

My eyebrows scrunched together. “The Angel of Death is suggesting I adopt knitting as a hobby?”

Warren’s shoulders shook with silent laughter.

I stared out the windshield. “Maybe I’ll stay with Dad for a while. Maybe till you come home,” I said. “I don’t think either of us are going to be able to tolerate being alone.”

He stretched his arm over the back of my seat. “I would feel better if you weren’t in the house by yourself.”

“Can’t you tell the military to buzz off?”

He laughed. “Sure, I can. Then I’ll wind up in the brig and we still won’t be able to see each other.”

I looked both ways before backing the car out of the driveway and turning down the hill. “You still have no idea why they’re recalling you?”
 

“No, but I’ll start digging more in the media this week to see if I can figure out any leads,” he said.

“Did you ever check the FBI’s Most Wanted list like Nathan suggested?” I asked.

“I actually forgot about it.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll do it right now.”

I drove as Warren searched the Internet on his cell phone.
 

The houses in the neighborhood were decked out with pumpkins, tombstones, and ghosts made out of bedsheets. I had always loved Halloween—the dressing up, the plethora of chocolate, and the thrill of haunted houses and scary movies. Almost every year since high school, Adrianne and I had celebrated with an
Exorcist
movie marathon before dressing up and hitting the hottest costume parties in town. The year before, we’d been a pair of severely underdressed angels. The irony was not lost on me. Along with so many other things in my world, Halloween would never be the same.

After a few minutes of driving, I pulled the Challenger into a parking space at the Sunny Point Cafe just down the road.
 

Warren was flipping through web pages on the screen with his index finger. “Huh,” he said as I turned off the engine.

“What is it?” I asked.

He handed me his phone. “Check this out.”
 

In my hand was a mugshot of a Middle Eastern man, with more thick black hair in his beard and eyebrows than on his balding head. There was emptiness behind his eyes. “Is he alive?” I asked.

Warren shrugged. “I don’t know. Normally, I would say no, but we were wrong about Abigail, so I’m not sure.”

An interesting thought occurred to me. All my life I’d seen photos and videos of people I assumed were dead. I suddenly wondered how many times I’d been wrong.

Warren was still reading. “He’s wanted for terrorist attacks in Palestine and threats against the U.S. as recent as two days ago. It says he’s responsible for the deaths of over 1,500 Israeli civilians.”

I cocked my head to the side as I tried unsuccessfully to pronounce the series of S’s, A’s, B’s, and K’s. “How do you say his name?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Beats me.” He looked at me, the sides of his mouth dipping into a deep frown. “What do you want to bet this freak-show is my dad?”

I laughed, but it wasn’t exactly funny. I examined Warren’s face and shook my head. “You don’t look Palestinian to me.”

He laughed. “I’m not sure genetics works the same with supernatural creatures, and I could have taken after my mother.”

A sickening feeling settled in my stomach. “Oh no.” I groaned. “What if you’re right and genetics with angels doesn’t work the same? What if the DNA test we had done was faulty? Even Dad said they aren’t absolutely accurate as it is. What if we really are related?”

His face twisted with disgust, and he wrenched his car door open. “Why, Sloan? Why would you go there again?” he shouted as he angled out of the car.

I got out and skipped around to meet him. “Eww…what if you’ve been sleeping with your sister all this time?” I squealed.

He grabbed me by my collar and jerked me under his arm. “You’re not my sister.”

I laughed and clicked the lock button on the Challenger’s remote. “You’d better hope not or that’s sick.”
 

The cafe was buzzing with early bird diners when we walked inside. We followed the hostess to an empty table by the window and sat down across from each other. I opened my menu and looked it over. I settled on my usual, a sweet potato waffle and a side of chipotle cheese grits, and placed the menu down in front of me.

I folded my hands under my chin and leaned on my elbows. “So,
brother
, I’m thinking they might send you to Palestine or Israel instead of Iraq or Afghanistan.”

He bit his lower lip and playfully smacked me across the head with his menu. “No more talk of war or incest. I’m hungry and you’re killing my appetite!”

The sun was setting when we got back to the house after stopping at the store to stock up on candy for the inevitable flood of trick-or-treaters. My father was sitting in the kitchen with my file folder on Abigail Smith spread out before him when we walked inside. Perplexed, I dropped our Halloween haul on the table and leaned against his chair. “OK, Dad. Why are you so fascinated by this?”