Page 13 of Four Times Saved

Chapter 7

Eric

There was no end to the night. I hadn't slept. I was helpless over here in Florida.

Lacking the ability to pretend with my parents, be strong for them and think about their triggers, I was swallowed up by the guilt coming in waves. Fear was my blanket through the uncharacteristic chill of Florida's end of summer night. I was afraid that if I left, my father might have another episode and my mother's life might be at risk. Even my father's life could be at risk if my mother was triggered and felt the need to defend herself from real or imaginary threats.

But I couldn't be my best self for my parents right now, because I was consumed by the need to be out there, doing something to help find Lily. Besides, I was sure they'd be happy to see the back of me. I'd hire another nurse for them, a team of nurses if I had to, but I had to leave.

Even if Lily had Ethan, Ryan and Matt fighting her corner, I couldn't play the role of bystander in her return. I was being pulled to breaking point at the thought of choosing between both life and death situations.

I was strong but I was falling apart here. A decision had to be made.

The reality was that my parents had access to professionals. I was sure Ethan or Matt wouldn't mind helping me pay to hire a team of nurses to keep watch over my parents, although I doubted that would make things easier for them. My parents weren't on guard with me because I wasn't a professional. They could barely stand one nurse. Several of them could worsen their mental health.

Pressure ballooned in my chest and I gulped. I didn't want to leave and come back to the news of my parents going on a rampage, threatening not just their own lives, but the lives of their staff as well. I didn't want to lose either of my parents to a moment of weakness. But they were on medication, and the nurses could find creative ways to make sure that they stayed on that medication, even if they refused to take it themselves. I was overthinking this. Of course the nurses were trained to handle them. It wasn't like they were caring for veterans for the first time. The nurse assigned to them now was hired by the army.

The truth was that if I left here, I wasn't abandoning them. However, if I stayed here, I was abandoning Lily. She could use all the help she could get. With no news from the police, all she had was us and that wasn't a whole lot, provided we didn't know where to start.

I was convinced we should start with her father, but Ryan had the other guys convinced that it was her ex-boyfriend, Marco, who was responsible for her disappearance. I was beginning to waver in my certainty. Her father struck me as an idiot and he'd have to be an idiot to kidnap Lily after the scene he caused several weeks ago. He'd be putting the spotlight on himself, so the question was, just how stupid was he?

The ex-boyfriend made a lot of sense and none at all. He'd been out of the picture for so long, he had no reason to come back now. Except, if he was psychotic. According to Lily, he was a nutcase. I didn't need convincing of that after hearing Lily's recount of what happened between them, but Ryan's conversation with Ann-Marie confirmed it some more. In that case, it made sense for him to have been planning and plotting all this time, to have waited until he was forgotten about, lowering suspicion about him. If it weren't for what Ann-Marie said, we wouldn't have even considered him an option, which would play into that sort of strategy.

From how obsessed he was with Lily, and how possessive he was of her, it wouldn't be bizarre to consider him coming to Durham to stalk her, learn her habits, prepare somewhere to keep her until he was ready to get rid of her.

Oh, shit.

Jumping out of bed, I threw on some shoes and started hurrying down the stairs. My clothes and shit could stay here for now, but it was beginning to come together and I couldn't stick around here any longer.

My feet pounded the hardwood floors as I swore at the realization that I forgot my keys for the rental car upstairs, along with my phone. However, I might get back to Durham faster if I caught a flight rather than drove. Shit! Shit! I was beginning to think Ryan was right. I didn't know where to find that Marco fucker, but I was ready to search the ends of the earth for him and squeeze Lily's location out of him. She'd always been good about keeping my anger under wraps. She even had me convinced that I didn't have an anger problem. But, this was her life we were talking about.

Pounding the stairs back up to my room for my phone to book the first flight back, luckily, I managed to book the one leaving in three hours. Thank goodness something fucking good had happened.

Here's what clicked for me and has me freaking out. If Marco is the kind of sick and twisted stalker who likes to play the long game, it could be coincidental that his plan to capture her coincided with our entrance into Lily's life. But I doubted it had anything to do with coincidence. My best guess was that our arrival threw off the rhythm of the routine he'd begun to associate with her. He had to take time to relearn patterns and since we weren't discreet with our affections for her, his possessiveness and his ego took a beating. He had to have her, punish her and teach her a lesson as soon as possible. So, I believed that as soon as the coast was clear and he saw that she was on her own, he snatched her.

Fuck, it IS him! It has to be him.

'What's the latest on Marco?' I texted the guys before throwing all my shit in my suitcase and hurrying back downstairs.

"What's all this ruckus?" My mother and her ancient vocabulary. Her bedroom door popped open. It was like five in the morning and dark as hell. She flipped on the hallway light and I could see that beneath the curtains of her reddish-brown hair, her eyes were bloodshot. Damn it.

"Mom, go back to bed. It's nothing." I attempted to soothe her but her eyes dropped to my suitcase.

"Where are you going?" She balked, wrapping her arms around herself. Well, at least she recognized me. Thank heavens for small graces.

She was startled, but not triggered. Let's keep it that way.

"I'll explain some other time. After all, weren't you both itching to see the back of me?" I smiled at her before hurrying down the stairs and keeping myself from slipping up.

She followed me. "I wasn't. Eric, has something happened?" Her tone was urgent and my chest was pounding as I bit my tongue.

As soon as I got downstairs, another door opened. Great. It was my dad. Seeing my mother, he paused. They both stared at each other and I screeched to a halt. An alarm went off inside my head and I stepped in between them, doubting my decision to leave. It was like watching two cats glare at each other, each anticipating the other's attack. My lungs expanded with air again when the nurse came down the stairs.

"Oh thank goodness." I breathed. "Mom, why don't you go back to bed? I started nudging her toward the nurse but she shrugged me off.

"Stop treating me like an invalid or I'll wring your arm." She pulled her beige lightweight sleeping robe tighter around her body like a safety blanket, letting me know that despite her bravado, she was still a bit fragile. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's wrong. I know I haven't always been able to be there for you emotionally, like a mother should, but I know you, son. It's clear that something grave is going on."

Grinding my teeth, I let out a breath. I didn't like that she used that word, grave, and I shook my head to prevent myself from attaching any other meaning to it. Ready to deny any issues again, I opened my mouth but my father interrupted, letting the cat out of the bag. He grunted with his eyes lowered to the ground, but waved his hand toward her. "His girlfriend has been kidnapped."

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