Page 86 of Damaged

I debated how much to tell him because it was Silver’s story to tell. But I was also desperate to get some kind of confirmation that the numbers were just gibberish. “The man who took your brother made him memorize this string of numbers. Silver… Andrew, has a very good memory. The man made him write the numbers down every night, sometimes more than once, then he’d burn the paper.”

Nick’s expression turned downright dangerous when I mentioned Ivan. Silver’s family was still in the dark about everything that had occurred during his captivity, including the revealing of Ivan’s name. Silver hadn’t told them the fucker was dead. I had no doubt that everyone likely knew what kind of cruelty Silver had suffered, but just like me a few weeks earlier, they were trying to pretend their son had been returned to them unharmed, even after his display of fury that morning on the boat.

Nick scanned the long number for several minutes before shaking his head. Then he reached for his phone and snapped a picture of the paper. I could tell by the whooshing sound his phone made that he’d sent the picture to someone.

“Nick—” I began because the last thing I wanted was for other people to see the numbers, especially since I hadn’t asked Silver’s permission first.

“I’ve got a friend who works in intelligence for the CIA. We went to school together. I trust him with my life,” Nick said as he hit the speed dial on his phone. He surprised me by putting the phone on speaker.

“Dude,” said the clearly irritated man on the other end of the line. “I don’t hear from you for months and the first thing you do when you pick up the phone is send me this shit?”

“Si,” Nick said, his voice hard and serious. “I need to know what the numbers mean.”

The man on the other end of the phone was silent for a moment. “I’ll get back to you in a few,” Si said before disconnecting the call.

“He’s a math genius,” Nick said as he returned his gaze to the numbers. “If it’s some kind of code, he’s got the resources to break it.”

I nodded and remembered to say, “Thank you.” I wasn’t someone who knew much about social graces, but I was learning. Even if I had to find a book called Social Graces for Dummies, I would figure it out.

“There’s something else,” Nick observed. It wasn’t a question.

“Shortly after your brother and I met, I was driving him to the—” I stopped abruptly when I realized I’d been about to say bus station. Nick more than likely would have wanted to know why I was driving his little brother to a bus station months before he’d been reunited with his family. “I thought we’d picked up a tail,” I said.

Nick didn’t call me out on the course change, but he’d definitely noticed it.

“I called a friend who had the ability to run the plates. It turned out to be a rental for a company in DC. It turned off a few minutes later and I never saw it again.”

“And?” Nick asked as he folded his hands together and leaned forward. God, the guy could read people like a book.

“There was an attempted break-in at my house one night. Silv—Andrew scared whoever it was off by setting the alarm on my car off.”

“And where the fuck were you?” Nick asked, his voice low and dangerous.

Fuck, this was not the direction I’d wanted this conversation to go in. “I’m an alcoholic… and an addict. Opioids. An IED took out my team and left shrapnel in my back. One prescription led to another and then another,” I admitted. “I was passed out in my bedroom.”

“So you left my little brother alone to fend for himself while you were passed out in your room. What’s the point of carrying that Glock around with you if you can’t be trusted to use it when the time comes?”

I sighed. Of course Nick would have picked up on the fact that I kept my gun tucked into the back of my waistband on a daily basis.

“I’m sober now. Thirty days.”

I doubted Nick would give a shit about that, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he glanced at the numbers again. He finally said, “You’re carrying because you still aren’t sure he’s safe.”

It was exactly why I was still carrying the gun. “There hasn’t been any proof of anything, and some friends of mine arranged for half a dozen men to have eyes on Andrew the entire time that I was detoxing and being treated for the IED injury. They never found any proof of tracks or debris. No leaves were disturbed except by wildlife.”

Nick let out a heavy breath. “What else can you tell me without violating my brother’s privacy?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “I have friends who don’t always follow the rules when it comes to the legal system. They’re the ones who saved your brother. When they found him, they were able to kill most of the men guarding the complex, but there’s no way to know if any escaped.”

“And the fucker who hurt him?”

“Dead,” I said simply.

Nick nodded, though I could see his frustration. Like me, he wanted to resurrect Ivan just so he could kill him all over again.

A good fifteen minutes passed before Nick’s phone rang. We’d spent the silence mulling over what little we knew.

“Yeah,” Nick said when he put the phone on speaker again.

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