When he was oh maybe four years old, Gabriel remembered one of his good friends, Jim, describing his mother as the most beautiful woman in the world.
Gabriel filtered the memory of meeting his friend’s mom through an adult’s understanding; what he’d noticed back then was how rough and swollen her hands were from working as a maid at a hotel. Her face was lined, and her eyes were red-rimmed from little sleep as she took care of her disabled daughter. Yet when those eyes focused on Jim, they would soften with love and satisfaction. It was as if she thought, “I made him; he’s amazing.” It oozed out of every pore, the awe she felt when she saw her kid.
It was that way then, and it was that way now.
And Jim was right: his mom was the most beautiful woman in the world. It wasn’t an external beauty; it was a vibration.
Gabriel’s mom had loved him.
But she had been a precise, soldierly woman, and that had always come off as cold.
She had risen through the Army when women had extra to prove, and he was sure that it was the thing that gave her that hard coating.
Gabriel often wondered what it would be like to have grown up with Jim’s parents instead of his own.
With a final pat on Whiskey’s head, Gabriel punched his pillow, hoping to find a position where his body could relax, and he could sleep. He usually slept better when someone was in his bed.
It had been a while since his breakup.
Gabriel missed the quiet solace of lying with a woman in his arms and whispers in the dark.
But he wasn’t going to look for a new relationship while he was in a toxic headspace. He wasn’t a shit head that would impose his crap on someone, especially someone who didn’t know that normally he saw the world as sunny and fun, that he liked to laugh, and eat, and dance.
He thought he’d eventually feel like that again.
Time didn’t, in fact, heal all wounds.
But at least he’d like his emotions to scab over a bit.
Right now, he was raw grief.
As he settled under his blanket, Gabriel’s phone buzzed on the side table.
Gabriel wasn’t at all surprised. When he left the office after handing Hinton and Walsh two Washington D.C. addresses—one for the apartment the videotape had been filmed from, and the second for the parking garage the victim had been marched into—Gabriel had offered to come back in. “If you get there, and you need me to look at something else, just call. I’ll come. No man left behind.”
But when Gabriel saw the readout through squinted eyes, it was Reaper Hamilton on the line.
It was two in the morning.
Gabriel snapped upright in his bed and flipped on the light.
Reaper Hamilton wasn’t just Whiskey’s trainer. He lived across the street from Cathy. And Reaper and Daniel had been neighbors and friends for years. A fine friend, indeed. Reaper and his family—wife Kate and two little ones—often showed up at Daniel’s house with something they thought might tempt his appetite or to share a funny story, a bit of gossip, or to pin a child’s picture on the fridge while Daniel was going through treatment.
As things progressed to hospice, the Hamiltons made stopping in to see Daniel part of their daily walk, so they could check in and let him know he had a bigger family than just Gabriel and Cathy.
Illnesses like Daniel’s required a bigger family because it took time, effort, and a heavy emotional toll.
Knowing that others stopped by with glued pasta art for the walls and banana pudding for the fridge meant a lot to Gabriel and Cath.
But now that Daniel was dead, there was no reason for Reaper to be calling at zero-dark-thirty.
Gabriel jabbed his finger against the button to open the line. “I’m here. Is everyone okay? What do you need?” Gabriel flung his covers to the side.
“I can tell I got your blood flowing,” Reaper said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. My family’s fine. Kate and the kids are sleeping. I was just on the line with the state emergency management team. They’re the ones who organize search-and-rescue missions and coordinate disaster response. They’re staging a search for two little kids in their pajamas and bare feet who got out of the trailer house earlier tonight.”
“Is Cerberus going?” Gabriel asked. They probably wanted to use Whiskey.
“The call-outs started at eleven. They’ve been pulling in people from all over. We already have Cerberus Team Charlie and some of Team Delta on the mountain with their K9s. But the grid they were given is a good distance from the ‘point last seen.’ Their job is to keep an eye on the outer search ring and make sure no one gets out of the lasso.”
