Wherever It Leads (41 page)

I don’t know what to do, where to go. I have no idea what just happened. Fear and uncertainty tear me into shreds, making it hard to breathe, let alone to focus.

A valet meets me at the threshold and gives me a tepid smile. “Ms. Calloway?”

“Where did he go?” I cry, wiping the tears from my face.

“He said you may need a ride home. Can I drive you?”

“I . . . I . . .” I fall onto a settee, my sobs wracking my body.

“I can take you anywhere you want.”

“No,” I sputter, not wanting to be anywhere with some strange man. “I’ll call my friend to come and pick me up. What just happened? Who were those men?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

I bury my head in my hands and feel the hot liquid pour through my fingers.

“I’ll be on the other side of the door if you need anything. Please, take your time.”

The door shuts softly and I find my phone, but don’t want to leave. I don’t want to call Presley. I want Fenton and right here is the closest I feel to him.

Rolling my phone over in my hand, I scroll through my contacts until I find my mother’s name. I’ve tried to keep this from her, but I need a friend and I need my mom. I press the call button and attempt to reel myself in before she answers and I completely freak her out.

The line picks up and there are so many voices on the other side I can’t keep them straight. “Hello?” I ask, trying to make sense of the chaos.

“Brynne! Is that you, little sister?”

I drop the phone. It smashes against the floor, the sound echoing off the walls of the room.

Surely I’m hearing things. I’m so overwhelmed I’m hallucinating.

Scooping it up, I put the phone to my ear again. I can hear my harsh breathing through the speaker. “Who is this?” I ask.

“Brynne! I’m home!”

“Brady?!”

The room spins like a top and I spring to my feet anyway. I wobble on my heels, the room starting to twirl. The spinning gets faster and faster, and as Brady begins to speak, I hit the floor and darkness settles over me.

T
he trees zip by, the outside nothing but a blur as Presley drives like a bat out of hell. I know we’re flying faster than we should be. But still, it feels like we’re creeping along, puttering down the dark highway. I lean over and check the speedometer. “Can we go any quicker?”

“Not if you want to get there in one piece and without getting pulled over,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m going as fast as I can, Brynne. How do you feel, by the way? You freaked out the guy at the restaurant with your little fainting spell.”

“I’m fine. I think. I don’t know.”

I rest my head against the window and glance at my phone again. My head is a disaster, swimming from Brady to Fenton to the feeling of complete and utter helplessness that I can’t alleviate. Trying to talk to my brother on the phone was useless; my mother’s back-and-forth of wailing and cheering makes it impossible to hear. All I know is that he’s okay, he’s home, and I’ll be seeing him in approximately eleven minutes.

Presley gives me a sympathetic glance and presses forward, working our way through the night. I look again at my phone, silently praying to see a message from Fenton, but there’s nothing. No call. No text. I even check my email, although he doesn’t have my address, but it’s empty too.

As is my heart.

Brynne, do you hear me? I love you.

My throat squeezes as I force a swallow down the constricted tube. I don’t know what to think, what to believe. I try to gulp passed the tears I feel building, will them to go away, but my emotions are more powerful than my control. My lashes wet as they spill over, making their way down my cheeks.

The look on his face. The way he glanced at me over his shoulder, his beautiful face crinkled, lined with concern and frustration. I can only imagine the horrified look I gave him back, and I wish in retrospect I had given him a smile or some sort of encouragement.

“It’s going to be okay, Brynne.”

“Brady’s back,” I smile, but the jazz that should be leeching out of my tone isn’t there. It’s dampened with the loss of another man, another one I love.

“He is,” she smiles, more brightly than me. “He’s home and he’s safe and we’ll be seeing him in just a few minutes. And Fenton will be okay too.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Nah, I do.”

“We don’t even know why they whisked him away, Pres. Duke isn’t answering, the staff and the restaurant looked and seemed as clueless as me. No one will tell me anything.”

“Just don’t get overwhelmed.” She looks at me out of the corner of her eye and snorts. “Well, no more than you already are. Just take it one step at a time. Fenton is a big boy and you can’t fix any of that, regardless of what it is. So let’s go see Brady and wait for Duke to call you back. And for the record, that’s a super awesome name.”

My head lies against the cool glass again and I watch my best friend nod her head like she’s got it all figured out. It’s an act; most of Presley is just that. But it’s why I love her.

She turns the car into my parents’ subdivision and I unbuckle my seatbelt, my hand already on the door. I watch the houses tick by as we near the end of the cul-de-sac. The car doesn’t hit a full stop before I’m out the door and running up the flagstone steps.

I burst into my childhood home, a small white split-level my family has lived in since before Brady was even born. It smells just like always, like I’m going to walk in and have a roast on a random Sunday afternoon. Like warmth and food and heavy doses of cinnamon and vanilla with a touch of bleach. All I need to round out the scenario is a baseball game playing on the television.

Instead, I hear something even better. Robust, booming laughter from the kitchen.

The door slams behind me, tears coursing down my face as I run down the hardwood hallway, slipping on the stupid woven rugs my mother buys on clearance somewhere every year. Almost falling into the wall before I can catch my feet and turn the corner, I dash into the kitchen.

I run blindly to my brother, sitting in his chair at the kitchen table. I can barely even see him, to see that he’s in one piece, and too thin, and a little scarred from his journey. He’s there. And as I lunge into his arms, he stands and I almost knock us both over.

“Brady!” I sob, my arms around his neck. He smells faintly of himself, of the boy that used to hold me down and dangle spit over my face.

“Brynne,” he says, wrapping me in a huge bear hug. He’s much smaller than he was a few months ago and the bones in his back are easily felt beneath my hands. I pull back, laughing and crying at the same time, wiping my eyes so I can see him.

“You’re home,” I choke out. “You’re really here!”

Tears flow down his face too, but a smile that’s as wide as the room shows his joy. And it makes my heart burst.

I shove him gently on the shoulder. “You should’ve listened to me, you fucker!”

“Brynne!” my mother admonishes, a laugh in her voice.

“So I’m back for a full five minutes and you’re already starting with the name calling. Thanks, little sister.”

“I can’t believe my eyes,” I declare. “How did you get here? How did this happen? Senator Hyland?” I look at my parents and they sit in their seats, smiles as wide as Brady’s on their faces.

“Hi, Presley.” My brother looks past me, his eyes settling softly. He sidesteps me and encompasses Pres into his arms. She gives him a quick hug, murmuring something in his ear, before releasing.

“Does anyone want anything to drink? Coffee? Wine? Water?” My mother motions for us all to sit. She looks more content, more peaceful, than I’ve seen her in so long. Even with her tear-streaked cheeks, she’s radiant.

“I’m good,” I say, sitting across from Brady. Presley sits next to him and shakes her head at my mother. “So, how did this happen? Where were you? Were you okay? How did—”

“Breathe, Brynne,” my father rumbles. “Let’s do this one step at a time. He might not want to tell us everything right off . . .”

Brady takes a long second to look across the table. He takes my mother’s hand in his and squeezes it, making her tear up again.

“I could talk all night about this,” he points out, biting his lip. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“How did this happen?” I ask. “Where were you? Why did they take you?”

My brother laughs and I notice the deepened lines around his eyes. His face is more weathered than when he left, his hair scruffy, in definite need of a cut. There’s a scar along the right side of his face, near his jawline, and I’m too scared of the answer to ask where it came from.

Seeing him across from me feels surreal and I keep blinking just to see if he goes away—poof!—like an apparition. But every time, he’s still there. Still smiling. Still on the verge of cutting a joke. Still Brady.

His features darken and he composes himself before he starts talking. “The night before I was taken, I was looking for a magazine you guys sent me. I’d loaned it to Grant a couple of days before and figured he hadn’t given it back. So I go to his bunk and start looking through his shit and find ivory.”

“Ivory?” my father asks, leaning against the table.

“Yeah. Ivory. I was stunned. He comes in the room and realizes I’d found it and wants to take a walk, away from prying ears. So we do. Come to find out he was buying ivory from the locals and then trafficking it to foreign dealers.”

“I’m shocked,” Dad says, shaking his head. “Why on Earth would he get into something like that?”

“Because there’s money to be made. Lots of it,” Brady says. “It’s illegal, but there’s a huge demand in foreign markets. You can make a killing if you have the contacts, and Grant apparently made them. He said he did it one time and this would be the last one. He was worried he was going to get caught anyway and he said he’d quit. He’s not a stupid guy, you know, so I believed him. It was the logical thing for him to do.”

“How does that tie in with your disappearance?” I ask.

Brady looks around the table. “Well, the day I went missing, we were on a mission. There were three of us and we were in a low-risk neighborhood. The other two were providing light security to the homes in the area and I was being the intermediary between the people and the organization. Doing well-checks on kids, elderly, things like that. It’s what we did day in, day out. But then Grant says we got a call to move. So we load up and take off and as soon as we roll into the area, I know we aren’t supposed to be there.”

A knot twists in my gut, a clenching of anticipation mixed with dread that almost makes me nauseous. It might be the way his voice hollows as he’s getting to wherever he’s going or it might be the way his gaze has focused on Mom’s apple clock on the far wall. But my father notices it too, and he tries to comfort me with a look. It doesn’t work.

“Grant and the guy with us head immediately into a building and I suspected then that this was about ivory. I pull out a map and realize we are not only in an area we shouldn’t be in, we are in one we aren’t legally allowed to be in. Boundaries and things aren’t what they are here and we definitely crossed a line.”

“So I’m waiting on them to come out and a little kid races into the street after a ball. He falls and a dog comes at him, one of these feral animals that are ruthless—I’ve seen them take out grown men. So I rush out there and fire some shots and get the dog to leave and check the kid out. And before I know it, I’m face-first in the dirt and being kicked in the ribs and tossed into the back of an old SUV.”