When she went missing, it hit me hard, but it hit Darren and his parents harder. She was a dental hygienist and had gone to work one morning, left at her normal time, and never made it home. Three months after her disappearance, when the local law enforcement ran out of leads, a miraculous turn of events happened. The ATF showed up with some loose information they had about a notorious biker gang known as Mayhem’s Mission, who were suspected of numerous criminal activities, one of which was sex slavery. There was some consideration thrown around that Jackie could have been kidnapped by them.
“I can’t tell you how that made me feel,” I tell Andrea as we stare out over the ocean. She knows I’m talking about Jackie’s disappearance. “But there I was… sitting with a degree and no real direction in life, and I just knew… when Darren told me about the ATF’s involvement, I just knew that I had to join in on it.”
“You thought you could save Jackie?” Andrea asks.
“Not really,” I admit with a heavy heart. “I had accepted that if she’d been taken, she was probably long gone from the area. But I hoped I could find answers that could lead to her. More than anything… I wanted to bring them down.”
Andrea turns her head and looks at me. “All those years of your life… committed to that one cause.”
“Wasn’t easy,” I say as I reach out and take her hand. We both turn back to look at the ocean, and it fills me with some measure of peace. “I had to get on with the ATF first, and because Darren had always kept me involved with the investigation of Jackie’s disappearance at the local level, I was no stranger to it when the ATF got involved.”
“Was it your idea to go undercover?” she asks softly, and I sense the hesitation in her voice. She’s asked the question, but I can tell part of her doesn’t want to know the answer.
“Yeah,” I admit to her. For a woman I didn’t love, but did care for, I hatched a plan to try to achieve justice. “I presented it to them and offered to do it. I had to take their entrance exam and make the cut as an agent, just like any other. But after my initial training, I immediately went undercover.”
“It’s when you relocated out to Jackson, Wyoming,” she says in remembrance. “You told me you wanted to be a motorcycle mechanic.”
“Well, that was sort of the truth,” I say with a chuckle.
She’s silent for several moments, but then she gives my hand a squeeze. “I’m proud of you, Kyle. I honestly cannot imagine the horrors you’ve faced. And I know that you had to sacrifice yourself to get the job done. You ever want to talk about it, I’m here. You want me to mind my own business, it’s done. I’m here for whatever you need.”
I squeeze her hand back in grateful acknowledgment, and my lack of words tells her clearly I’m not ready to talk about any of it.
Except, well… maybe one thing.
“I met someone while I was living in Maine this summer,” I say in an abrupt change of subject.
Andrea sits up straight in her deck chair and turns to me. Her eyebrows are aimed high as she gives me a smirk. “Really? Tell me all about it.”
I shrug. “I was in hiding. Using an alias. Couldn’t be truthful with her.”
“Not exactly the right time to get involved with someone, right?” she asks.
I laugh, because damn if that wasn’t the entire problem. “She got under my skin,” I admit to my sister. “Just kept pushing at me, and finally… well, I just sort of went with it.”
“What’s her name?” she asks, and I hear that dreamy, romantic tone in her voice. Wyatt admitted to me last night after Andrea went to bed and we were sucking down a few beers that she was operating on pure hormones these days, which means whatever emotions she was feeling were intensified.
“Jane,” I say softly, and I’m truly surprised that it hurts as much today to think of her as it did two months ago when I walked out of her life.
Andrea settles back in her chair, and I release her hand. I slouch down, propping my feet up on the railing that runs the length of her back deck.
“Tell me about her,” Andrea prompts me.
And while I have no desire to ever tell Andrea about the horrors of my life while I was in deep with Mayhem’s Mission, I’m oddly okay with spilling my guts to her about Jane.
Maybe because I have nothing to lose at this point.
“She’s an artist,” I begin my story. “A good one at that. Mainly watercolors. I have one of her paintings in the backseat of my car. No clue where I’ll end up settling, but that will be the first thing that gets hung.”
Andrea smiles, her tone sounding dreamy again. “I can totally see you with an artist. I bet she’s quirky, isn’t she?”
“So quirky,” I admit with a sad smile. “But she also reminds me a little of you.”
“Of course she does,” Andrea says with a huff. “I’m fabulous, after all. Tell me more.”
And I do.
I tell Andrea every bit of it.
The initial and swift attraction I tried to fight.
The way Jane pursued me in that incredibly sweet way, inching her way under my skin.
The attempt at friendship when we both knew that would never work.
Vaguer details about the intimacy we developed.