Corps Security: The Series (16 page)

How laughable that thought is. I would have gladly given every single penny to my name away if it meant I would have had my Izzy with me all these years. But this Izzy? No. I don’t even know this Izzy.

The house I bought was over the top, I know this, but fuck if I would ever live cramped for space again. I’m sure there are plenty of shrinks who would love to get into my head; there’s plenty of jacked-up shit in there. I know why I bought this place and I don’t need anyone to tell me that I am making up for my childhood haunts.

We clear the last of the Bradford pears that line my half-a-mile drive and the house is coming into view. Large and imposing. The deep red bricks almost look black against the night sky. The light next to the red double front doors beams bright and cheerful, almost inviting. Again, laughable. The colonial-style house is made to be a home, not this farce I have going. The huge front porch looks cozy with the rocking chairs positioned between the large four columns, and the flowers look domestic; it is just some huge juxtapose of my life. The outside doesn’t match the inside. The house is just as vacant as I feel right now and I don’t like it at all.

Time to get this over with.

Time to figure out whatever the issue is with her husband and find out what the fuck happened to
her.

Izzy is still just gazing out her window, but since we are sitting in my dark garage, my guess is this is her attempt at avoiding me. How the hell she plans on doing that when she is in my damn house and unable to leave without me taking her is beyond me.

I can feel my temper rising. I’m fighting myself for control—control against my own frustrations, control over the pain that has no place in my heart anymore, and control against my raging hard-on that seems to be pointing right at Izzy. I have never had this many issues with controlling the situations around me.

She must feel my eyes on her because she finally turns to me.

“What now?” It’s barely a whisper, and if I hadn’t been looking at her, I might have missed it.

“Get out of the truck. We talk. Simple as that. It only becomes this giant mess of immature games when you become difficult. So work with me, because I’m sick of fucking playing games.” I think that is nice enough until the tears start rolling down her velvety cheeks.

Goddammit.

I climb down from the cab and start making my way around the hood to her side, fully expecting to have to pull her out and throw her over my shoulder. Surprisingly, she is waiting next to the door, and is clearly pissed about her long climb down.

“This way.” The welcome is just rolling off my words. I’m sure she can feel the vibes choking her. It’s hard to miss when someone would rather be anywhere than with the person they are with. Hard to tell if I would even be going through all this shit if it hadn’t been for Greg and his request to help his friend. My gut tells me that I should just leave her alone, forget about her and the answers I crave. My gut is screaming at me to let it die, pass it over to Locke or Coop, and pretend I never looked back into those pale green eyes again.

Fat chance of that.

I open the door to the mudroom off the garage and motion for her to enter. The house is dark, so she pauses next to the door. Coming in behind her, I enter the alarm code and snap on the light to the kitchen. There are chrome appliances, dark wood cabinets, granite countertops, and a whole lot of nothing else. No table, just two barstools next to the island. It screams welcome home.

I point over to the stool and bark off one word. “Sit.”

She is looking at her feet, doesn’t even attempt to fight me, and sits. I give her a second. She knows why we are here, so hopefully she will just tell me what I need to know without making this a big deal. Ten minutes go by with me looking at her and her wringing her hands together in her lap.

“Talk,” I bark, the sound vibrating off the naked walls.

If I hadn’t been observing her for the last eternity, I might have missed the small jump she takes at my tone. It’s hard to tell if I scared her or if something else is working behind her eyes when she snaps her head up.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” More whispers. Seems like I might need hearing aids for this conversation.

“Well, let’s see. I didn’t drag you down here to give you a tour, I don’t need to catch up on the latest town gossip, and I sure as fuck didn’t bring you here for the company, so that just leaves one thing. First, you explain, in detail, what is going on with your husband.” I spit the word out, the bitterness on my tongue loud and clear. “Then you can explain to me what that fucked-up package meant. Details, Izzy. This isn’t a game, and I tell you this, if it hadn’t been for Greg basically begging me to help you, I would not be doing this.”

It takes her a second; I can see my words working around her mind. She opens her mouth a few times, but words never come out. Right when I start to lose any thread of patience I have left, she finally speaks.

“Can’t someone else do this? Do you have to be the one?” I want to throttle her. Fucking bullshit. Greg will owe me big for this.

“End the high school bullshit. He didn’t ask me personally to take your shit for the hell of it. I’m good at what I do, Izzy. Locke and Coop? Sure, they could do it, but I can do it better. Now, what the fuck?”

She closes her eyes for a few minutes before inhaling deeply. “Brandon, my ex . . . well, almost ex. We had a . . . challenging marriage. I left a little over two years ago and moved here. He’s been fighting the divorce.” Didn’t take much of a deduction to guess she was leaving something out—a whole lot of somethings.

“Let me ask you something, Izzy. How do you expect me to look into this, into him, without anything other than your telling me your perfect marriage didn’t work? What, did he cheat on you or something? Finally get enough of living the perfect little life? Tell me, because I just don’t get it. The little I was able to dig up this week makes it look like you had everything your little heart desired. And what I really don’t get—what I really don’t understand—is why he won’t just let you go.” Even to my own ears, that comes out harsher than I intended it to.

A little light on this situation would have been nice, because when she bursts into tears and runs off into the darken halls of my house, I am completely thrown. Shocked. What in the fucking hell? Grumbling like a fool, I take off to find her.

Almost thirty minutes later, I finally narrow the search. Really, it shouldn’t have been this much of a challenge since I have more empty rooms than furniture. This is what I get for buying a six-fucking-bedroom house I do not need. I look in every room on the main floor—nothing. I jog up the stairs and look in every room—nothing. I finally catch a break when I pass the bedroom next to the stairs—soft crying. I already checked this room and she wasn’t there. I use this room to store all my old case files. Being that all the other rooms except the one I sleep in are empty, she couldn’t have picked a better hiding spot.

I finally find her wedged between two big stacks of boxes. She has completely moused her way between them and turned into herself, legs pulled close to her chest and arms wrapped tightly around her body. She is rocking, fucking rocking, back and forth.

“Izzy, come out.” I try.

Nothing but soft cries.

“Come on now. Get out of there.” And try.

Silence.

“Really, Izzy, I’m too fucking big to crawl in there for you. Out.” And try.

I keep going for ten long-ass, frustrating minutes with no luck.

Enough of this shit. I start picking up the boxes around her, moving one at a time away from her small ball-like body. Once I have enough cleared that I can touch her, I reach my hand out to pull her up and out. I don’t expect her to throw herself back away from my outstretched hand. She has holed herself up so well that there isn’t much room between her head and the wall. She makes contract with a sick thud.

“Fuck,
” I hiss out before scooping her up and carrying her down to my room. Flicking the lights on with my elbow, I walk over to the bed and place her gently down against the mattress before running my fingers through her hair.

Nice lump, stupid girl.

“All right, Izzy. Enough of this. Now we can add explaining what the hell that was to the list.”

My patience is shot, blown to fucking dust. My mood is deteriorating with every second, and she just looks at me with empty eyes. It’s like she isn’t even here with me. She just keeps roaming her eyes over my face. As pissed as I am right now, I can’t help but become sucked into her all over again. She looks so scared, but it’s the longing I see all over her face that has me transfixed. It’s like someone just kicked her puppy, killed her cat, and told her she wouldn’t get a pony for Christmas.

“Please, talk.”

She jumps at my hushed pleading. It takes her a minute and more of that heavy analyzing gaze before she speaks again. Her tone is dead; she sounds so small and defeated. Chills break out all over my body with her next words.

“It was so hard, Ax. So hard.” She looks away, focusing off into space instead of on me. “The first year was okay. He worked a lot but it wasn’t bad. He didn’t want me to work, said the only thing I needed to do was care for him, the house, and any . . . kids. What did I know? Stupid, broken Iz, what did I know? Huh?”

She finally looks back at me; she looks like some spirit has returned but not much. I know this won’t be good before she even says a word. I have to fight the urge to punch something, reminding myself that I asked for this.

“The second year was when he started to change a little. We didn’t go visit my grandparents as much. He was always asking me to stay home and not meet Dee for lunch or dinner. Little things that I didn’t notice at first . . . until they became big things.” She gives a bitter snort before taking another big intake of air. “I hadn’t seen Dee in a few weeks. I think it was a Wednesday . . . I don’t know. He was going to be late that day, and the only thing I could think was,
Finally . . . finally I can see Dee.
A half-hour coffee date with Dee turned into a split lip. I didn’t even think he was out of line, you know. I thought I deserved it. I think Dee always knew things were off in the Hunter house. About a month after that, I ran into her again. She begged me to open up to her, but I told her I was fine. Fine. What a joke that was.”

If I couldn’t feel my blood rushing through my body right now, I would be convinced I have turned to stone. Words were beyond me, and my earlier taunts were smacking me all in the face.

I will kill this motherfucker.

“Princess,” I reach down for her hand but she pulls it close to her body. “Was that the only time he put his hands on you?” I try for soft, but the lethal fury in my voice can’t be missed.

“For a while. They didn’t start getting bad for another few months. He acted like he was sorry and it was an accident. They didn’t get bad until around our third anniversary.”

“What exactly is defined as bad? Because I can’t find any good way for a man to touch a woman like that.”

When her eyes come back to me and that single fat tear slips from her eye, I know. I just know.

“Don’t you feel pity for me. This wasn’t your mess. You didn’t make him do it. I should have left, been strong enough to leave. I didn’t have anyone, Axel, so don’t think I didn’t think about it. He was smart. He cut me off from everyone. I didn’t even get to go to my grandmother’s funeral, and Pop . . . He wasn’t doing well either. I didn’t want Dee to know how bad it was. I was stuck . . . Stuck with no one.”

This heavy pain shoots through my left side at her words. I should have been there, and as ridiculous the thought is, I can’t shake the thought that I let this girl down somehow. I have spent years hating her, thinking she had just forgotten us and moved on. To know she suffered is not sitting well.

“You know about Mom and Dad, right?” She looks up at me, all sad and broken, for confirmation. With my weak nod, she continues. “Dee was all I had left. She finally caught me alone one day. I was picking up some groceries. That was one of the only things I was allowed to do alone. She pulled me into the bathroom and begged me to talk, begged me to leave. I brushed her off again. She bought me a prepaid phone and told me to call her, day or night, if I needed her. We were able to sneak a few calls and secret meetings but not many. She didn’t live far, close enough to come when I could get away.” She stops for a while, and I just sit there, struck dumb, waiting on her to continue, all the while struggling not to go find this fucker.

“Are you sure we need to go over this? It isn’t pretty, Axel.”

I want to scream,
No. No I don’t want to hear this. Anything but this.
“Yeah, Izzy, keep going.”

“Okay . . .” Pause. “Well . . .” Pause. Inhale. Exhale. “A few years back, I went to meet Dee. Nothing big, just wanted to see her. We had it all planned. I called her the day before from the phone she gave me, told her I missed her and just wanted to spend some time together. I set dinner in the slow cooker, ran my errands, and snuck in a Dee visit. It would have been fine and he never would have been the wiser but I was running late. He got home right after me, and even though I thought I had made it . . . he knew.” She stops and levels her eyes with mine. Her eyes almost look gray. Her eyes always used to change with her moods . . . and gray was always the one I hated the most. “That was the night I finally used that phone for her to save me.”

I don’t realize I’m not breathing until my chest starts hurting. I can’t even move, can’t even allow myself to move. My God . . .

“I got lucky. When I passed out, the game wasn’t fun anymore, and for the first time, he left after he finished with me. Dee got there and got me out quick. I haven’t seen him since the day I picked up my stuff. The divorce has been in limbo for the last six or so months.”

I can’t stand to hear this story. I wish to God this were just a tale, not the life she was living when I thought she was happy. Not touching her is becoming unbearable. I reach over and grab her hand before she is able to pull it away, rubbing my thumb over her soft skin and looking into her eyes. As hard as it is for me to hear, it can’t be easy to retell.