Page 4 of Enthrall Shadows
“Reese Papadopoulos.”
“She wrote it years ago?” I said flatly.
“No.”
I felt the shock of an invisible defibrillator.
“Are you okay?” The girl’s voice found me in the darkness.
I’d barely been twenty when it happened.
Reese, a few months older.
I’d been too love struck to believe my girlfriend had a reckless edge. The victim blamed for the sins of others. I’d refused to bow to that theory.
I’d loved Reese so damn much.
A fissure struck my soul.
“The last time you saw her was at the beginning of her gap year?” she asked, her voice soft.
The last time I saw her?
At the airport.
Where I’d kissed Reese goodbye.
For the last time.
Reese had set off like so many before her on an expedition to build homes and teach English in Chile. Months in and she’d disappeared without a trace in Patagonia.
What followed had been worse than hell.
The ones left behind carried the guilt for what we should or could have done.
We’d searched for her tirelessly at the campground in Chile, including the surrounding areas. Some of us had hiked further into the wilderness.
We’d halted our lives for months.
Eventually, and reluctantly, I’d returned to the States. I’d had to face my parents, who’d found it hard to believe that I’d risked my life trying to save hers.
Grief from those years had been carved into my DNA.
Even as I’d finally made peace with her being gone.
This young woman—this stranger—was now asking me to reopen old wounds.
She could never understand the seriousness of this interaction.
The outcome of that college trauma had me hurtling into a different future than the one I’d first imagined for myself. Giving up my dream of becoming a Navy fighter pilot, I’d been jettisoned into the extreme life of a Special Forces Officer.
A trajectory that had proved every decision mattered, both Reese’s and mine.
The consequences of such a change in my career path had landed me as a prisoner in an enemy camp in Afghanistan—suffering unceasing torture.
Some part of me had never left that cell. My mind had fractured like shards of glass never to be made whole.
“Henry?” Lilly’s soft voice drew me back.
