“We’ll take him,” said Blake. “The girls love him. We’ll make it fun for him, like a sleepover.”
Wolf nodded, as if considering. Even Blake, who was so close to them, so well meaning, just didn’t get it. There were no “fun sleepovers” in Jackson’s immediate future. He’d been shot by a man who’d abducted his sister, almost bled to death while he thought he was watching his father bleed to death. He was shattered, glued back together, and barely holding on to the pieces of himself. It was true of all of them. Other people, even close friends and family, their lives were moving forward, as they should. But Wolf, Merri, and Jackson were still back in those woods while Abbey was being dragged away. That sick feeling of helpless rage was an echo in his psyche. How could he ever forget those moments, watching her while nothing in his mind or spirit could make his body do what it needed to do? He still regularly dreamed about it, woke up in a sweat, searching for their faces. But he’d never seen them, the men who took Abbey. Without his glasses or contacts, they were just dark, nebulous forms. He looked down at his hand. The beer bottle was empty. He lifted it to the bartender for another.
“I’ll think about it,” said Wolf. “Thanks.”
“You know we’ll do anything,” said Blake. Wolf knew that his old friend was one of the few people in the world who said it and meant it. But there was literally nothing anyone could do for them. Except . . .
“I wanted to ask you something,” said Wolf. He took the article he’d printed from the web and unfolded it, smoothed it out on the bar in front of them. “Hear anything about this?”
Blake put his glasses back on. “Yeah,” he said. “I heard about this guy on the news and then there was some chatter about it at the office.”
Blake was a criminal defense attorney, had lots of connections with other lawyers, cops, and detectives. He had been a huge help in dealing with the police, especially when they were tearing Wolf and Merri apart.
“What kind of chatter?” Wolf asked.
“Well, foul play is definitely suspected. The guy was like Mr. Nice, happily married, very successful, into his job, no debt, no affairs, not even a parking ticket. Not the kind of guy who typically takes off on his family. There’s no signal from his phone, which means it was probably destroyed. No credit card activity.”
Blake looked down at the article again. “The Hollows,” he said. “Where Abbey—I’m sorry, man. I didn’t make the connection.”
Wolf nodded quickly. “Jackson’s obsessed.”
“The news thing?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s more intense than it’s been. He thinks the story has something to do with Abbey.”
“Why does he think that?” asked Blake.
“I don’t know,” said Wolf. He took a sip of his next beer, which was ice cold and tasted good. Usually, he tried not to drink when he wanted it as bad as he did right now. Because when he felt this bad, it all went down too easy; he drank too much, did stupid things, was useless the next day. It was the only thing that smoothed out the jagged edges of his inner life. But he couldn’t afford that kind of carelessness anymore. “I don’t think he even knows.”
Blake tapped a finger on the bar, thinking.
“I heard today that the guy had some kind of new technology in his car. If it’s tampered with, reported stolen, or damaged, it apparently sends off some kind of beacon to the leasing company. They can control the car remotely, render it inoperable, find out exactly where it is in the event that it needs to be repossessed.”
Wolf felt an unreasonable flutter of hope, in spite of himself. This was a symptom of Jackson’s PTSD, and it was contagious in a way because the shattered, hopeless mind reaches for any kind of hope, no matter how dim. Ostensibly, Wolf was only asking because it helped calm Jackson down. Once he realized that there was no connection between whatever news story and the fractured lives of the Gleason family, Jackson moved on. Of course, Wolf didn’t actually believe that this story had anything to do with Abbey. But still, wasn’t there just the faintest glimmer of maybe? “So—”
“There are channels that need navigating, some initial resistance to the warrant that was needed because there’s no real evidence of foul play,” he said. “It’s taking some time. They were talking about it today, privacy and legality issues.”