Wild Men of Alaska Collection - By Helmer, Tiffinie Page 0,139
earth swallowed her blood.
CHAPTER ONE
“For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow.”
~ JOB 8:9
Present Day
“Cache, I know you’re in there. Open up!”
Cache Calder hobbled to his front door, a crutch under his left arm. He was going to kill the son of a bitch on the other side. Why was it so much to ask to be left the hell alone?
He yanked open the door to find his poodle of an editor, Tom Passey. “What do you want?”
Tom pushed his way into the apartment. “If you’d answer your blasted phone, I wouldn’t have had to trek all the way across Manhattan to tell you.” Tom looked around the dim and dirty apartment. “Wow. I’d heard you’d gone into cave-mode, but this...is disturbing.” He kicked an empty pizza box out of his way and continued toward the drape-shrouded windows.
“Get the hell out of here, Tom.” Cache held the door open, using the doorknob to keep himself upright.
Tom flung the curtains wide and turned. Cache averted his head as the sun sliced like fire through his brain.
“Fell off the wagon, huh?” Tom surveyed the sea of Chinese takeout containers rivaling the discarded pizza boxes. He wrinkled his nose and fingered the edge of a Styrofoam box containing leftover petrified chili cheese fries. “What happened to your health nut regime?”
“Can’t find a health food store that delivers,” Cache grumbled. Obviously Tom wasn’t going to leave until he had his say. Cache pushed the door shut. Pain radiated up his leg, and he shook with the effort it took to stay on his feet. He limped to the recliner, sank into the cushions, and tossed the crutch to the floor, feeling every tense and aching muscle in his forty-two year old body sigh with relief.
“Cache, I know that the last few months have been tough, but it’s time you got back to work. World Events needs you.”
Cache glared at Tom standing there without any effort, dressed in a navy Versace pinstriped suit, his dark hair slicked back, the top buttons of his paisley silk shirt left purposely undone. What did this pompous piece of leftover runway model know about how tough the last few months had been? Tom hadn’t been in the Middle East when the insurgent’s bomb had exploded. He hadn’t watched helplessly as his friends had been blown to bits.
He hadn’t been cursed with surviving.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the magazine.” Cache gestured to his leg wrapped in a brace. “I can’t work with this.” His leg was a raw jigsaw puzzle stitched back together. He had more steel pins and screws holding it together than a Frank Lloyd Wright house. He was lucky to still have it. Though there had been times, when the pain was so intense, he’d wished it gone. Guilt drowned him. What right did he have to bitch and moan over a little thing like pain, when Hank and Sarah were dead?
“I have the perfect assignment for you. One that will give you time to recuperate and help you rediscover your ‘edge’.” Tom’s face lit as the passion for the sell stole over him. The man would have made a killer used car salesman. As it was, he was making a fine name for himself as an editor for World Events.
“What possible assignment would allow me time to heal?” He was a photojournalist. His job required that he be ready at any moment to chase down the story. Capture the soul of his subject that portrayed a story with a single snapshot. How was he going to accomplish that with a bum leg? Besides, scary as the thought was, he didn’t think he had it in him anymore. The spark which usually fired his “shutter bug muse” was snuffed out, extinguished with the force of the blast that wiped out the lives of so many people in the Middle East.
“Remember Amelia Bennett? The magazine wants to do an exposé.” Tom held his hands up wide, his fingers simulating quotes. “Twenty years later. ‘Where Is She Now’?” He lowered his arms, his eyes glowing with excitement. “What do you think?”
Amelia Bennett.
His breath caught in his throat. He swiveled in his chair and studied the award-winning photograph, framed and hanging on the wall in the prized spot. His walls were covered—a gallery of his work—with pictures depicting people and places. All told their own story of life, and death, and hope.