Page 213 of Back in the Saddle

“I know,” I whispered. “But it’s worth a try, right?”

He squeezed my hand, said nothing, and set us again to moving farther into the camp.

We found the Johnsons deep in the bowels. Mr. Johnson was staring off into the distance, a haunted look on his face. Mrs. Johnson was staring at someone’s grocery cart filled with junk, openly struggling with tears.

Mr. Johnson turned to us first, then he wrapped his arm around his wife to hold her close while we approached.

“Mr. Johnson, I’m Eric Turner. I work with Nightingale Investigation and Security,” he said, holding out a hand for Johnson to take.

Johnson let his wife go and shook. “The firm that found our son.”

They disengaged as Eric nodded and looked to Chris’s mom. “Mrs. Johnson.”

“Is he here? We can’t find him,” she said.

“He goes on…” I searched for a word that wouldn’t trigger them, “walkabout at night sometimes. Some of the community are looking for him. Can we escort you back to your truck?”

“I’d like to see my son,” Mrs. Johnson said.

“Let me rewind. I’m Jess Wylde,” I introduced, glancing between them. “I was looking for my brother, which is how I became acquainted with the camp, and met Chris.” I gestured to Eric. “This is my…”

Oh shit, was I going to say it out loud?

Oh yes.

I was.

“…boyfriend. He met Chris too, and one of their team is former Army, so they got the balls rolling to see if we could get Chris some help.”

“We know. They told us they found him a placement,” Mr. Johnson said. “But he doesn’t have insurance. We stepped up, our families kicked in, but we couldn’t find a facility that could keep him?—”

“Nathan,” Mrs. Johnson whispered as Mr. Johnson cut himself short. “Chris escaped,” she put in quietly. There was pride tinged with sadness when she finished, “He’s good at that.”

The man cleared his throat and continued, “The VA should take care of this. They put a lot of effort in training them to kill. They order them who to kill. Then they come home, and they put no effort at all into helping them deal with killing people. It doesn’t matter if those people were a threat. It doesn’t matter if they’d done horrible things and hurt people. That obviously doesn’t make my son feel okay about taking lives.”

“No argument, they should,” Eric replied. “But in the now, we have a relationship with a couple who work at a place that offers assistance to folks like your son. They dove into this situation. We’ve spoken to the administration of the facility they identified. There are funds available, which we’ve secured. His place is assured, the fees are covered, we just need to strategize how we’re going to extract him from the camp and get him to help without causing any more damage.”

I wondered if the “funds available” were from the miraculous slush fund NI&S seemed to have to pay Mary’s hotel bills, as well as Chris’s mental health facility bills.

If it was, then it was hemorrhaging money.

“And we don’t know if seeing you will help or hinder that process,” I said cautiously.

I didn’t go cautiously enough. Mrs. Johnson’s face got hard, as any mother’s would at the very thought that her presence wouldn’t be a balm to her child.

Her husband put his arm around her again and tucked her close, murmuring, “Shay.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That came out bluntly. I know how hard it is not to know where someone you love is and how they’re doing.”

“Did you find your brother?” Mr. Johnson asked.

I nodded and shot him a rueful smile. “He didn’t want me to, but I did. It wasn’t fun, but we worked it out. He got help. He’s a lot better now.”

At least he was in one important way.

Mr. Johnson looked beyond us, so we turned around and watched Cap and Raye walking toward us.

“These are the Johnsons,” Eric introduced when they arrived. And to the Johnsons, Eric said, “This is Julien Jackson and Rachel Armstrong.”

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