Finding Summer (Nightwind Book 3) Read online

  He wasn’t giving up. He was just stepping back to give her space and him some time to figure out what his next move was.

  16

  Ignoring Dottie’s grumbled threats about the consequences for not getting his ass back to New York tout de suite, Arnie took a Vegas detour after leaving Santa Barbara. It was the one place where no one was going to bother him or give him shit for parking it at a bar and plowing through martinis.

  He needed to decompress and told Dottie so in a terse message. Declaring a state of post-assignment psychic whiplash was a cheap ruse, but he didn’t care. Blaming the maniacal right-wing Nazi fucknuts he infiltrated in Germany for his foul mood bought him a little time.

  Unfortunately, copious amounts of vodka failed to bring clarity to his love life predicament. The bottom of a drained martini glass didn’t reveal Summer’s whereabouts, explain why she left, or offer a scintilla of hope for fixing the situation.

  When he eventually returned to New York, the chill world he expected at NIGHTWIND was transforming into a circus. A lot had changed while he was saving the US from an international incident.

  First, King letting Milo tag along on an assignment ended with NIGHTWIND’s tech wizard getting the snot beat out of him.

  And that was just the beginning.

  King was in charge while Jon Weston was in Europe on assignment. NIGHTWIND’s CEOs were great guys, but what they knew about managing a business wouldn’t make it onto a postage stamp. This left Dottie to fill the vacuum, and what the woman did best—besides run NIGHTWIND like a badass—was make everyone else crazy.

  With Dottie’s attention focused elsewhere, she didn’t cross-examine him when he blithely turned up at work without warning and acted like nothing was wrong. Thank god because he was pretty raw at the time and wouldn’t have handled a confrontation in an adult fashion.

  Weeks flew by. He let his work life take over.

  King shocked everyone by getting romantically involved with a pretty and very cool single mom named Dawn. Overnight, NIGHTWIND became an actual family with a mom and dad.

  And Dawn wasn’t the only new face around the office. There was also Jade Morris—another single mom who turned out to be a game changer. Jade was a streetwise gamer pro. Her generation was raised on technology. She was one hell of a smart lady who brought advanced expertise to what had been Milo’s private tech kingdom until her arrival. The stage was set for an epic clash between the two, and for real, Dottie was ready with microwave popcorn for the audience.

  In real time, life moved at an incredible clip. NIGHTWIND was his focus morning, noon, and night. There was so much going on that he had no trouble staying off everyone’s radar.

  The oven dinger went off. Tossing aside the pencil he was using to fill in a New York Times crossword puzzle, Arnie stood and shook each leg to get the blood flowing. He’d survived a grueling early morning workout with his trainer and felt pretty good about it because nothing said “I’m the man” like besting one’s coach.

  His body guy ticked all the right boxes. Big, solid, and straightforward, Stone Madison was a stereotypical Marine Corps veteran. He also didn’t give a rat’s ass about propriety. Calling life as he saw it, the guy had a knack for the creative use of vulgar language. He channeled the physical conditioning he learned in the Corps into a lucrative business. At first, he only took private clients willing to plunk down a hefty sum for his hard-core training regimen. One thing led to another, and a studio called Stone Body followed. Arnie liked him because Stone was also a driven motherfucker. They enjoyed challenging each other and pushing buttons. Theirs was a match made in testosterone overload heaven. Now that he’d survived today’s physical test, he was free to carb load, and there was no better way than with comfort food.

  The aroma from a store-bought family-size container of meaty lasagna filled the air. Where his stomach was concerned, practicality and his desire to be left the fuck alone forced a culinary come to the Lord moment. There was only 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 fo
r 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 guy with a terrible lawyer who found himself on the witness stand.

  “What do you want, Stan? Why the undercover vibe and for real, man, Weehawken? A Marriott?”

  He eyed his brother’s wincing reaction and wished to hell the fucker would just spit out whatever he had to say so Arnie could cut and run.

  Stanford Lane Wanamaker was a mere three hundred and fifty-three days younger than him. Three hundred and fifty-three days, not even a full year.

  The family timeline said it all. Arnie was born, his mother died, his father hired a social-climbing nanny, knocked her up, married the bitch, and one day not long after presented his eleven-month-old first born with a kid brother.

  Stan took Arnie’s disparaging shot at the choice of hotel and location with a sigh. The lack of spoiled rich kid pushback surprised him. Usually, his brother came back with one lame excuse after another. Being a life-long slacker with entitlement issues gave his kid brother a lot of practice too. Add raging alcoholism to the mix, and things got really fun.

  The uncomfortable silence and Stan’s constant hand wiping on his thighs caught Arnie’s attention.

  “Mom pays a little too much attention whenever I’m in New York.” Stan sarcastically grumbled. He gave Arnie a hard look. “Sometimes, I swear she had me chipped.”

  His reply was immediate and delivered with the bitchy delivery it deserved. “Oh, yeah? Hmph. How weird because Giselle doesn’t give a rat’s ass that she and I live in the same town. As a matter of fact, I think she walked right past me on Fifth Avenue not too long ago. Looked right through me too.”

  Unless he was hallucinating, Stan cringed. Cringing about his gold-digging mother was new.

  “Anyway,” Stan mumbled. “Jersey is just less complicated.”

  The explanation left a lot to be desired, but he wasn’t here for more than was necessary, so he moved the conversation along.

  “When do we get to the part where you tell me why I’m here?”

  “This is why.”

  Stan reached into his back pocket and held out his hand. Arnie took what he handed him and was dumbfounded when a bronze medallion dropped into his palm. He’d seen it probably half a dozen times over the years It was the Alcoholics Anonymous thirty sober days chip.

  “I’m here to make amends with my brother,” Stan declared in a shaky voice.

  Arnie’s jaw dropped. “Does Dad know you’re sober?”

  “No, not yet. I’m starting with you because April’s antics were over the line. What you put up with is not okay. I’ve been a shit-tacular brother,” Stan muttered. “Bro, I’m so embarrassed.”

  Hearing April’s name made Arnie tighten up.

  Four years ago, Stan made what their father hoped was a positive step toward growing up and took a wife.

  A wife. Pfft. April Haynes was not standard Wanamaker wife material. She was twenty-two and a mall sales clerk with an unseemly habit of jumping from dick to cock searching for a way out of her less than glamorous life when Stan picked her up in a bar, fucked her in the back seat of her Toyota, and got her pregnant.

  Like mother, like son?

  To no one’s surprise, their shotgun wedding was a shitshow of gargantuan proportion. Giselle tried to save face and took control of the planning. What she failed to do, however, was get control of her son. On the day of the wedding, Stan’s drinking began with breakfast cocktails.

  And it wasn’t just his brother getting hammered. The bride’s friends were double-fisted drinkers—mostly beer and cheap whiskey. When the time came to navigate a church aisle, not one of them was sober. It went straight downhill after that.

  A lot of incomprehensible behavior took place, including but not limited to the bride and her maid of honor cornering Arnie at the reception to offer a wedding threesome. The newest Mrs. Wanamaker had a hankering for anal sex, and her BFF expressed enthusiasm for giving head. It would be a funny albeit pathetic story today if the BFF’s lesbian girlfriend hadn’t walked in on them and overheard the offer. A fight broke out—a chick fight. Arnie tried unsuccessfully to escape. The fracas drew a crowd, and before he could mutter, “Fuck my life,” the entire guest list was served a three-course delight of salacious gossip along with dinner portraying him as a sex-starved home-wrecker with Arnie being jealous of Stan’s success and good fortune.

  Before the ink barely dried on the marriage license, Darnell Senior was apoplectic when he learned his grandson hadn’t insisted on confirmation of the pregnancy. It got worse when it became apparent a doctor wasn’t involved. People barely reacted when six weeks later, a very conveniently timed miscarriage occurred.

  Despite everything, the couple bought a fancy house and played at suburban domesticity. April kept the family updated by email blast on their fabulous life and ongoing attempts to start a family. Giselle, never far from the drama, thought marriage was good for her idiot son. She was willing to part with some of her money for shopping sprees and vacations. Whatever it took to keep the farce alive.

  With their dad living in Hawaii and no happy family to fake, Arnie found it easy to avoid all contact with his brother.

  “Why are you doing this? Now?” he asked in a sharp tone.

  “Because I’m too old to keep taking Granddad’s handout. Because my wife is a whore. We’ve split up, by the way. Because Dad moved to Hawaii to get away from my mother. And from me.”

  “Well, that’s not true,” Arnie muttered although he didn't know why he cared about Stan's feelings. “Distance from Giselle was necessary for Dad’s health. Leaving us behind was collateral damage.”

  Stan looked and sounded miserable as he kept explaining.

  “There are a lot of reasons I’m getting sober and taking back my life, Arnie. Some are crystal clear, and others are in murkier waters, but what does it matter? My sponsor says I should speak my truth, so here I am.” Stan cleared his throat and met Arnie’s gaze. “Look, I could apologize all day, every day, for months, and it’d never be enough. Not with you. That’s a hard fact to accept when I’m in the fight of my life and could use a brother. A real one. Not just a relationship in name only.”

  The wall around his feelings for Stan loosened up. Not by a lot but enough for Arnie to extend an olive twig. A whole branch would have to wait.

  “We used to be close when we were kids. Before history and everyone else’s bullshit got in the way.”

  Stan gave him a half-smile. “Remember when Granddad took us to his private box at Yankee Stadium? We had a good time, didn’t we?”

  Darnell Templeton Wanamaker Senior was a diehard Yankees fan. Despite an unyielding reputation, their granddad was, in Arnie’s estimation, one of the coolest guys to walk the earth. Yeah, he was a gigantic dick, but who could blame him? He was the spiritual, emotional, financial, and hereditary patriarch of a huge family burdened by money, family prestige, and mind-numbing conceit. But he was also a rebel when it mattered and knew when to cut the crap—traits Arnie admired and tried to emulate.

  “I have a legends box,” he admitted with amused chagrin. “Totally Granddad’s fault, too. He hooked me up with a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy.”

  “For real? Aw, man, now see? If we were real brothers, I’d know that.”

  Yeah, well, and then there was that. He studied his brother for a moment. “Tell you what. Bring me a sixty-day chip, and we’ll have a bro meetup at the stadium. Any home game you want. Just you and me, Stan. Deal?” He held his hand out.

  Stan regarded his extended hand. “Is this us starting over? As brothers?”

  “Yes.” Arnie was surprised by how easy it was to let go of the past. At the end of his life, none of this shit was going to matter.

  There was a short pause before Stan solemnly shook his hand. “I won’t let you down, Ar
nie.”

  “Just take care of yourself, okay?”

  With an amusing smirk, Stan drawled, “I’m in Weehawken. At a Marriott. Hiding from my mommy. If that’s not taking care of myself, I don’t know what is.”

  Tossing his cell phone into Stan’s lap, he said, “Call Dad. Tell him you’re sober. You’re on my phone, so he’ll know we’re together.”

  “You think?”

  Checking his watch, Arnie did the mental math. “It’s two thirty here, so it’s nine thirty in the morning on the Big Island. You’ll catch him in the middle of his morning java buzz. Go for it.”

  When Stan didn’t look convinced, Arnie reached for the phone and initiated the call before tossing it back.

  “I’m gonna hit the vending machines. You want anything?” he asked while not waiting for a reply and making a fast beeline for the door.

  As he stepped into the hallway and pulled the door closed, he heard Stan’s nervous stammer. “Hi, Dad. It’s Stan.”

  Outside the room, he headed for the ice and vending room. Walking the long hallway, he turned into the small room and confronted a lone, sad-looking, mostly empty machine.

  For shits and giggles, he put in a request at NIGHTWIND for a row of machines in the lounge. He did it because the request would piss off Milo. He hoped Dottie would approve and fast track the request for the same reason. Arnie was in good company when it came to being just another face in a crowd of pot-stirring renegades, rabble-rousers, and rejects.

  He liked Milo. The guy didn’t have any fucks to give for what people thought of him and was exactly what he appeared to be. Part genius, part geek, part unapologetic super-nerd, and part urbanite. He was a technology brainiac with mad skills in the spy-gadget department. One time, for no reason and because he had an unlimited development budget, he ingeniously fashioned a pair of glittering faux diamond earrings into a surveillance tool with a camera, sound, the whole deal.