Page 39 of Operator
I’d looked at Gwen when we were together and saw our future already written out. We’d get married, she’d pop out a couple of kids, and too many deployments would make me a hard man. Harder than I already did. The man who would like to take out his healing on his woman. At the time, it looked better for both of us if I left her the hell alone.
Her hips sway to the music, and from my vantage point at the eat-in kitchen dining table, I’ve got the perfect view of the two of them. My girls.
Giving myself a mental shake, I turned back to the computer. I may not have been close with my brother, but I’ve known him my whole life. If there was something this bad as it must have been going on, then he would have left some sort of evidence. Gwen has been right all along. It has to be somewhere no one would look. The only place I can think of is the online gaming community he was part of.
Is the online first-person shooter we used to play together. When we were younger, we used to play for hours. It’s one of the only things we could do together without competing.
I’d already looked through his phone, his text messages, his social media. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in his profiles or on his phone. He abhorred social media for the most part and rarely updated. He barely even used his phone aside from when it was absolutely necessary, like calling and scheduling doctor’s appointments or calling Gwen. The only other person he talked to was Bunny. She called most of all.
I toss the phone onto the counter. Useless. The game finally loads on the gaming console I had Gwen dig out of the closet as well. The sight of his gamer tag has a knot swelling up in my throat. Stupid fucking thing to get emotional about. I didn’t even cry when Gwen told me he died.
Scrolling through his messages and I find more of the same innocent conversations. Messages from people he knew from his time in the service asking to get together to play. Random game invites. Messages to me—unanswered—asking to play.
No doubt about it—I was scum.
I close out of the game, too. When was the last time I even talked to Ian? His wedding? A phone call here and there? Maybe I’d emailed him a time or two on deployments, but even that was rare. I barely ever checked my email, so I probably missed most of his replies. It was easier to keep him at a distance. Easier to pretend the part of my life that contained Gwen in it was over. Unfortunately, that included the part of it with Ian.
The wedding was a concession to him—and a warning to me. I knew if I ignored it, I could always imagine her as mine. But seeing her going through with the ceremony, seeing Ian kiss her, it had been the kick in the balls I needed to force myself to move on for good. Besides, if I hadn’t gone, Ian would have been on my case about it. He would have wondered why his own brother hadn’t come home for it and would have started putting the pieces together. I didn’t want to hurt him, couldn’t stand it. Ian had never hurt anyone and didn’t deserve to have that rubbed in his face. It’s exactly why no one ever said a word to him. Why Bunny and Dad never told him, though I know they suspected. And he was a local hero as far as the town was concerned. Small towns do know how to keep secrets when they want to. And no one could seem to bring themselves to break Ian Reece’s heart. I’m grateful for it because it allowed me to move on and put Gwen and Sweet Creek behind me.
Until the day I got the call from Gwen that Ian had died.
My email is chock full of random subscriptions I don’t give a shit about. According to my inbox, about thirty thousand of them. Who has time to delete any of it? I filter through, scrapping all the junk, scanning quickly for anything from Ian’s handle. I have to go back quite a bit to find anything.
Then I see it.
An email from [email protected].
I straighten at the table, a white noise filling my ears. I’m shocked to find my hands trembling as I click on the subject line. “Hey, big brother,” it begins.
Give me a holler when you get this. Miss you.
Which doesn’t tell me anything. All it does is make the guilt swim in my stomach. Frustrated, I slam the laptop closed and press my palms into my eyes. Why couldn’t he have just said, “This dickhead is trying to kill me. Here’s where to find him. Make him pay?”
Gwen places a steaming, fragrant serving bowl on the table in front of me next to a dish of fresh French bread. “What’s wrong? Did you find something?”
I shake my head. “Nothing useful.”
She doesn’t seem surprised. “I’ve been looking for months. I’d been convinced I was going crazy.”
“Maybe that’s what they want you to think.”
Gwen shudders as she goes to retrieve a pitcher of sweet tea and a couple of glasses. “That I’m crazy? That’s messed up. Seriously, that’s sick. Why would someone do that?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. Ford, a guy on my team…his woman witnessed a murder over in Windy Point and the chick who did it tried to make it seem like she was imagining things.”
Her lavender eyes widen. “Wow. You’re kidding. That’s so awful. What happened?”
“She tried to kill Ford and his girl, but they caught her.” A thought strikes me. What if whoever murdered Ian was doing the same thing? Trying to cover something up that Ian knew. I feel in my gut that I’m onto something. Gwen had mentioned Ian wasn’t the same after the last deployment, the one where both he and I were overseas at the same time.
The conversation drifts off as I become lost in thought. Because I know what I have to do, but I’m man enough to admit the thought terrifies me.
I have to reach out to Ford to see what he knows. Hell, if I’m going to try to mend fences with the team, he’s the one I should start with.
I owe it to Violet—and to Gwen—to be a better man.
I owe it to all the guys, too.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
