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Julien shook his head. “I don’t know. I really don’t fucking know.”
Which was more than a bad sign. Julien was the group’s one-man think tank. Sometimes, he had so much intel, he was like the team’s psychic. If Julien didn’t know who appeared to be tailing them, it wasn’t a situation they could deal with lightly.
“We’ll head back,” Gage said. “John, keep us posted?”
John nodded. “Definitely, but there’s more. One of the children told us that we weren’t the first group to show up. The first group took the ‘rest of the men,’ which is why there was only one when you arrived. They also let us know there are more children, so I have a feeling we will see each other again soon.”
Giorgio’s growl penetrated the darkness.
They headed downstairs.
An hour later, Denis showed up with the jeep.
As they headed back this time, the sun was only beginning to break the horizon. No children played, and the approaching morning turned the beige sand orange. The trash remained, piled seemingly higher than when they arrived.
Houses remained shut.
People slept.
For the people inside those homes, this was a moment of peace. A moment where slumber offered them a slight reprieve, nourishing their dreams with coated steel walls being turned into gold and the fleeting promise of an easier life.
As if they were all thinking the same thing, no one spoke. Regardless of what the team had just accomplished, their actions were a drop in the bucket. Therefore, whatever they could offer, they would. Right now, that was silence—respect for these few moments of dawn’s solitude.
CHAPTER8
The guys didn’t ask him anything else about his and Sydney’s situation on the ride to the airstrip to head home, the jet, or after they landed. Even if they had, he wouldn’t have had anything to offer.
Gage and Giorgio continued on to California.
Mike headed to Texas.
Dez and Julien asked him whether he would be all right to head out on his own, a roundabout way of trying to determine where his mind was, but he told them it was fine. He also didn’t ask Julien to find where Sydney now lived; he didn’t want Julien involved in their drama when Julien had his own wife and a daughter to care for.
Still, he received a text on his way home.
Julien
8815 Connecticut Ave NW Washington, DC 20008
From Ari.
Sydney said it was okay.
Joel, staring at the message, shook his head. “What games are you playing, Syd?”
Considering no one met him at the airstrip, he’d had to hire a driver.
As the driver ambled up the long driveway of the home he wasn’t sure he’d ever share with Sydney again, the massive structure stood like a monument, much too large for two people.
He thought back to rural Angola, to the tin and grass houses with the cloth roofs. Had it been up to him, he would have gone with something that didn’t cross over into the two-digit millions, but it was Sydney who’d taught him that it wasn’t a character flaw to enjoy luxury and convenience—the finer things in life.
To her, marble floors were simply “the kitchen,” while he couldn’t get over the heated floors and full-body, post-shower air dryer in the owner’s suite upstairs.
He thanked the driver, exited the car, and headed to the front door. It unlocked as he approached, and the heavy double doors slowly opened, welcoming him inside.
Regardless of Sydney and her apartment and her thinking he would let her slash a knife through their story without a fight, he imagined her hurrying down to meet him in the foyer, arms open. Those open arms would then turn into him making love to her, sometimes no further than that entryway.
As he walked through the house, his shoes echoing and bouncing off the walls, he realized things had gone missing. They were minor—accent pieces, pillow cushions. Plants and their vases. The, admittedly, ugly black and white oversized wall art that used to hang above the sofa in living room number one.
