so much junk and fast food a man could take. He’d lost all enthusiasm for the food trucks he once enjoyed—now all they did was remind him of Summer—so his survival demanded he finally sit down with the manual for the two-in-one microwave and convection oven in his kitchen and figure out what the fancy appliance could do. It turned out, it made his life a whole lot easier.
Clearing a space on the kitchen table, he pushed a pile of paper shit out of the way and pulled up a chair. Eating alone wasn’t his favorite thing, but hanging out with others reeked of effort.
Plus, there was the small matter of having no interest in anything except finding Summer. Irked by his slow progress, he did some soul searching and made a few decisions. No matter how he laid the situation out, he couldn’t make a reasonable case for invading Summer’s privacy, so involving NIGHTWIND and its considerable assets to hunt her down for purely personal reasons was a solid no. For all he knew, she was running from bill collectors.
The possibility that her disappearance was a fuck you aimed at him was another good reason to keep the matter to himself. He was painfully aware he might be the only person she cut off. Giving his co-workers a front row seat to witness his embarrassment didn’t sound appealing either.
As he mindlessly shoveled lasagna into his mouth, he thought about the one proactive decision he was comfortable with. For a whopping two hundred and ninety-nine bucks, an online service gathered the publicly available information on Summer Warren.
What did he find out? All sorts of random nothing, like in what hospital she was born. But there was also a library of newspaper clippings and school district media with quite a look at teenage Summer. She wasn’t kidding about her athletic pursuits, but the gymnastics squad and swim team didn’t show the complete picture. She tried everything from field hockey to track and field to soccer, and for a while, she had even tried her hand at archery.
Among the other things he found was her father’s obituary. It was hard to read, and he wondered how much of a hand she had in the wording.
Stalking Summer might be off-limits, but he had a different view of her brother. In the obituary, it named him as Army officer, Reed Warren.
Summer told him her brother had something to do with an elite training program. Arnie didn’t hesitate to take advantage of his government access to stick his nose in the other guy’s record. He didn’t care what anybody had to say about it either until he hit the top secret security wall shielding Captain Warren’s record from view.
Arnie knew all about government and military security walls because almost all his adult life had taken place in their shadow. It was curious he and Summer’s brother had this unusual thing in common.
Reed Warren aside, the rest of the stuff he found on Summer was interesting but not helpful. Her last known address and phone number were dead ends. She sold her car through a broker and skipped town, but weirdly enough, she did so responsibly. She paid off all her utility bills so no creditors were clamoring for money.
More than four months lay between today and their time together.
Where she was and what she was doing remained a mystery.
He wasn’t giving up, though. He just didn’t know what to do.
Just then, his phone rang, and he saw his brother’s name on the screen. Stan never called him. The last thing he needed right now was for his goddamn family to make an unexpected appearance.
“This can’t be good,” he mumbled to the empty kitchen and then answered the call.
If his head pounded any harder, Arnie was sure his brain would explode from the pressure. Compounding his concern was an uncontrollable twitch in the corner of his right eye. It was starting to make him mental.
Were the walls closing in? Ugh. His neck cracked when he twisted it.
Sitting rigidly on a lumpy sofa, he glanced around the surprisingly spacious hotel room. His eyes shifted to the thermostat. Maybe it felt like he couldn’t breathe because the air conditioning wasn’t working.
“I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to this.”
The sound of his little brother’s voice made him uneasy. He swung his gaze to the nervous man facing him. Awkwardly perched on the edge of a side chair, Stanford Wanamaker was sweating bullets and had the look of a