We’ve only been apart for two days, but it feels so much longer than that. Maybe because I got used to seeing him all the time; first at B&A, and then at Yara’s place. I got used to sharing meals with him and cuddling while we watch TV in the evenings and falling asleep with his arms around me.
I got used to Indy being here, which makes it even harder when he’s not.
I understandwhyhe left, of course. I’d never, ever begrudge him leaving.
“Tyler or Ace could go,” Indy told me after the team meeting where they discussed their new plan. “I could stay back,” hecontinued, “and if you want me to, I will. But I really want to look this guy in the eye. I want to make damn sure he knows what’ll happen if he even thinks about coming after you again.”
Selfishly, I wanted Indy to stay with me. But I knewheneeded it. Though it didn’t matter to me who caught the monster who killed Jenna, it mattered to Indy.
So I told him to go. I said I’d be fine in Rainier Beach with Ace, Tyler, and Yara. I told him to be careful and that I’d miss him.
But I didn’t let on—or I tried not to, at least—how worried I was. Or how much I was dreading him not being with me. Instead, I sucked it up, busied myself cooking for Yara, Ace, and Tyler pretty much non-stop, and tried desperately not to think about all the ways things could go wrong.
Not to me. With three former Green Berets guarding me, I knew I was safe. But Indy and Webb were in Springdale; just the two of them waiting to face an unknown enemy. Or enemies, for that matter, because at the time, we didn’t know who they’d end up facing.
Just because I was attacked by one man didn’t mean there couldn’t have been more involved. And Indy and Webb could have been confronted with several dangerous men instead of the one they captured instead.
Manny Davis. It seems like such a harmless name. Manny makes me think of a friendly neighbor who always offers to carry my groceries or a kindly senior who sits at the local diner, drinking cup after cup of coffee and saying hello to everyone who walks through the door.
It doesn’t make me think of a cold-hearted murderer who thought nothing of killing Jenna just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or a man who plotted to kill a veteran who spent twenty-five years defending his country.Or someone who would frame me for the death of my friend because hethoughtJenna told me something.
She hadn’t. Whatever she saw, she never shared it with me. And since Jenna can’t tell us now, we can only speculate about what sheactuallysaw.
Not Manny Davis killing John Adamson, of course. She wouldn’t have known that’s what he was doing. All she would have seen was a man wearing scrubs standing beside a patient’s bedside and injecting him with some sort of medication. Nothing unusual, given the circumstances. But something about the situation must have struck Jenna as off. Not enough to go straight to security, but enough to want my opinion about it.
I knownow, because while Indy and Webb were wrapping things up in Springdale, Tyler and Ace told me everything they knew.
So what do we know about Manny Davis?
We know he works—well, worked, since he’s currently in jail—on the production line for a factory in Scranton. He’s thirty-six years old, with no close family aside from his mother, who passed away last year, and he’s been on a homicidal mission ever since.
Apparently, Manny’s father was killed in action while serving in the Marines. Decades ago, when Manny was just a baby, Hank Davis was on a mission overseas with his Marine Raider Regiment. Things went south, and Davis was killed, while the rest of his teammates barely made it out.
It’s tragic. But what happened afterwards made things even worse.
Manny’s mother went off-grid, moving to a tiny house in the woods of West Virginia. She homeschooled Manny and spent the next thirty-two years convincing him that his father had been killed by his traitorous teammates. And when she died last year,her final plea was for Manny to punish the men who betrayed his father.
So he did. Or he tried to, at least.
Manny started methodically collecting information about his father’s now-retired teammates. And then he tracked them down, one by one. First Shane Hammond, owner of a car detailing shop in Binghamton. Manny went there as a customer and killed Hammond the same way he had Adamson, with a lethal dose of Black Cobweb.
Though it’s terrible that two men died—men who hadn’t betrayed anyone, according to military records—at least Manny was stopped before he could move on to the rest of the team.
It’s a silver lining I’m trying to cling to.
When I think of Jenna and her dreams for a husband and family, about how funny she could be, about those misplaced metaphors and her silly self-deprecating jokes, and the loss feels like it’s closing in on me, I remind myself of the men who were saved. Of the men who will still get to be fathers and grandfathers because Indy and his team stopped Manny before he killed them.
It hurts, even so.
Add in my conflicted feelings about this all being over, it’s no wonder I’ve been cooking like a dervish. And now I really get it: why my mom baked all the time after my dad was hurt.
At the time, it didn’t make sense. Why was she cooking when my dad was in the hospital? Why was she cooking once he got home when she could have been sitting right beside him, ready to jump up if he needed anything?
But now I get it. Cooking was a way for her to focus on something other than how she was feeling. On her sorrow and worry and anger over what happened to my dad.
I’m feeling the same emotions. And I can’t stop cooking, either.
My phone chimes from the counter, and as I jolt in surprise, the package of chocolate slips from my hands.
