Page 5 of Operation: Unify

“Connor, I’m safe. I’m here. Let me sleep for a few hours and I’ll let you know what I find. With a little grace from God, I’ll be back on the road in a day or two.”

“Ferd is here. Is there anything you want her to do while you’re gone?” He glanced up at his sister.

“Just put up the Christmas trees, wrap the gifts that should be coming, and check my emails. I have a book of logins in my right, locked drawer. It’s purple. I lock that drawer and log out of everything when I leave every day. I also set my preferences to forget everything, so I have to manually login every single day.”

Ferd gave the thumbs up, and he realized she could hear every word, despite the fact that he wasn’t on speaker phone.

“Thanks. Get some sleep.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Be safe.” It was the closest thing to ‘I love you’ Lacy would allow.

“I will. Talk to you soon.” She hung up the call.

“Emails will be the hardest part, but, like you said, it’s the week before Christmas.” Ferd looked around the office as if she might be worried there was something she was missing.

“Lacy usually welcomes guests, shows them to their cabins, makes sure their luggage is waiting for them, and finds anything for guests they need, like clothes, winter coats, whatever. But there won’t be any new guests until one of the current people graduate.”

She smiled. “I like that. You don’t call it ‘becoming well’ but graduation. That makes it sound more achievable.” She raised the side of her mouth.

“Exactly.” His mood immediately improved after hearing from Lacy. She was safely in a hotel room somewhere, getting some sleep. She’d check in with her friend and then she’d come home. Hopefully by Christmas.

His mind fired off an idea and he went with it. “Hey, I was just thinking . . .” Christmas meant a good time for Ferd to meet her other brothers, if they were up for it. He’d almost forgotten. “I can try to get my three brothers to come for Christmas to meet you. Dad would probably want to see them too. Between introducing you and Dad getting shot, I would think that would be enough to bring them to Wayside.”

Her brows furrowed. “They haven’t come before?”

He almost hated that Lacy had been right. Forcing him to talk to her was exactly what he’d needed to do in the situation. There was literally nothing wrong with Ferd. She wasn’t the typical young person he saw when he went into town, stuck in their phone and oblivious to the world. She had a head on her shoulders and made good observations.

“We had a falling out after Mom left. I don’t think they knew about your mom, but they felt the breakup was Dad’s fault and didn’t talk to him after that. Since I was still relatively young and I didn’t want to switch schools, I stayed. Plus, Wayside was allI’d ever known. I never dreamed Mom would give up on me and then die before I had a chance to find out why.”

Ferd closed her eyes and frowned, then turned away. “That’s really sad. I’m thankful I got the chance to say what I needed to in order to get my heart straight. You won’t get that chance.”

“Yeah.” He wanted to end the conversation now, right here. “Anyway, I’ll call my oldest brother today and see if he’ll come. You never know.”

She gave him a weak smile. “Nope, you never know.”

Lacy pressedthe bottom of her phone to turn off the alarm and it didn’t stop. That’s when she realized it was the ringtone. She pressed to answer. “Hello?”

“I don’t know who you are, but you’d better leave my wife alone,” a male voice threatened.

“Excuse me?” Lacy’s sleep blurred brain didn’t recognize the voice.

“I checked Melinda’s phone, like I always do. She’d deleted this number, but I found it anyway. Who are you?”

He’d searched her phone? A heaviness pulled on her.Lord, help me know what to say to diffuse this situation.“I’m so sorry. I’m just an old friend. I’m sure you can tell from the number that I’m nowhere near you. There’s nothing to worry about from me. She just called to say hello and see how I was doing. She knew I’d worry about her since I hadn’t heard from her in so long. I’m glad she did because I was about to go to the police and file a missing person’s report.” Lacy bit her lip, hoping that hadn’t been too far. Maybe he would be thankful Melinda had thought to call if he thought that was the case.

“She’s fine. We’re living our best life over here. No need to call back. She is happy with me.”

Bravado surged and she was too tired to be having this conversation. “You have a strange way of showing it. My husband doesn’t search my phone and call numbers he doesn’t recognize. That seems kind of unhealthy to me.”

“Oh, and you’re a shrink now? You going to tell me how to live my life and how to treat my wife?” he screamed an expletive at her and the line went dead.

Lacy jumped out of bed and yanked on her jeans from the night before. She’d been so tired when she’d arrived that she hadn’t unpacked, instead sleeping in her tee. She whipped her hair up into a messy bun without combing it and grabbed her keys and the card to her room and raced out the front door.

She pulled up her phone and found the address Melinda had sent to her. It was still about ten minutes away. Melinda’s husband might be smart enough to look up what had been deleted on her phone, but there was nothing he could do about information that had already been sent.

She raced through the small New Mexico town into a little neighborhood where all the houses had peeling paint and dogs roamed the streets. Two kids played hoops on a bent metal bar tacked above a garage door. The hoop had a permanent crook in one side, and she wondered if the ball would actually go through it at all.

A few blocks in, she found the address and parked her car two driveways away, then got out, leaving her car unlocked. She didn’t want to have to fight to open the vehicle if she had to make a hasty get away. Her small pistol rested on her hip, hidden under her loose flannel, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it.

A muffled scream came from inside the house. A man sitting across the street on his porch with a cigar dangling from hismouth didn’t seem to notice at all. Were they used to hearing Melinda scream like that? Her chest heaved as she rushed up the weedy front walk and knocked on the front door.

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