Page 26 of Waiting for Him
Kat stood and hugged her aunt, and the flood of tears started again. Harry caught Boomer’s eye and jerked his thumb toward the front door. Happy to get away from the crying—he never knew what to do or say around women in tears—Boomer followed the older man to the front steps. Harry gave a fake, exaggerated shudder and shook his head. “Damn, I hate when women cry. Gives me the fucking willies.”
Boomer barked out a laugh. “Same goes for me.”
“Glad they waited until I was done with my pie. Now, why don’t you tell me what you don’t want Irina to know.”
He filled the man in on the abduction attempt. “I’m going to call my boss before we leave and have him send someone to keep an eye on Irina, just in case.”
Pulling out his cell phone, Harry replied, “No need. We may be a small town, but our sheriff is former special ops himself. Makes sure his deputies aren’t slackers. He also happens to be my younger brother. If it’s all right with you, I can have him come by, and you can fill him in. If you hadn’t noticed, strangers kind of stick out around here, especially city slickers.”
Boomer knew the man was right but would reserve judgment of the locals’ ability to protect Irina until he met the sheriff. “Okay. Why don’t you call him while I check on the status of my team? My backup should’ve landed by now.”
As if summoning them, Boomer’s phone rang, and Marco’s nickname of “Polo” appeared on the screen. Answering it, he gave his teammate an update and Irina’s address for their GPS. Confirming they were about thirty minutes away, he hung up and waited for Harry to finish his own call. With everything under control at the moment, the only thing bugging him was they had no idea where to go from there.
When the two men reentered the house, they were relieved to see the waterworks had been turned off again. The women sat at the table, going through the old photo album as the men retook their seats. Kat flipped a page, and Boomer immediately noticed something . . . actually, several somethings. “Kat, let me have the album a second, please.”
At his excited tone, she glanced at him and shrugged. “Sure, what’s wrong?”
He quickly scanned the pages before and after the one she’d been on. There were six photos on every page, each neatly lined up with the others. But on the left side of the current page, a picture was missing, probably the one from the deposit box, and the picture next to the empty space was turned upside down.
Boomer gently peeled back the plastic sheet protecting the photos and removed the inverted one. It was another picture of Ivan standing at the corner of the old house, but Irina was also in this one. The seven-year-old was grinning and showing off her missing front tooth.
Boomer flipped it over and found what he hoped was their next clue.
“That’s my dad’s handwriting.”
Kat hadn’t needed to tell him. After all these years, he still recognized Ivan Maier’s precise penmanship.
“What’s it say, son?” Harry asked.
He read off what appeared to be some sort of code. “NW-X-17D-24A.”
“Does anyone know what it means?”
They all looked at each other with confused faces. Kat asked what they were all thinking, “Now what?”
Boomer sighed. “I’ll call Brody. Maybe he can figure out what your father was trying to tell us. Kat, while I’m doing that, can you check the backs of all the other pictures in there? Irina, is it okay if we take this album along with the others? There might be something else in them we’re missing.”
“Of course, Benny. They belong to Katerina anyway.”
Boomer tried to hide his wince at her calling him “Benny.” She obviously picked it up fast from Kat’s use of it.
He strode to the front door and took out his phone again. When he was done filling in Egghead, a patrol car pulled up to the mailboxes next to the road. Harry must’ve heard it because he came outside when the sheriff exited the vehicle.
Harry introduced the two men, and they shook hands. “Pleased to meet you, Sheriff Bernhard.”
“Same here, Ben. But call me Marty. Harry tells me we might have a problem here.”
“I hope not, Marty.” Boomer filled the other man in, and just as he was wrapping things up, a rental sedan pulled into the drive. “Here’s my backup.”
More introductions were done as Devon and Marco joined the group. Devon clapped his teammate on the back. “So, what’s next, Baby Boomer?”
Boomer growled but didn’t take the teasing bait. The guys only added the “Baby” to his nickname to get a rise out of him or ease tensions. Instead of getting snarky, he told them about the note on the back of the photo. “I think our next stop is Mint Hill. There’s gotta be some reason why Ivan used those two pictures as clues.”
“I agree. It’ll take about four and a half hours to get there, so it’ll be too late to look around tonight. We can stay at my folks’ place. They’re visiting my brother in San Diego while his team’s INCONUS.” Nick, the youngest of the Sawyer family, had followed in his brothers’ footsteps and was a Navy SEAL on Team Three. It’d been a few months since he’d been on U.S. soil.
Boomer looked at his boss in confusion. “Why can’t we make a puddle jump in the jet? We can be there in under an hour.”
“CC’s daughter went into labor about two hours ago with his first grandchild. He was refueling and heading right back down to Tampa. I’ll call Ian and have him get ahold of Chase. He can send one of his jets to Charlotte for us.”
