Chasing Shadows (First Wives #3)(63)

“Thank you.”

“If you’re here to see Ms. Grant, she’s not home.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. She told me.” That confirmed that. “I was dropping by to see Lori and Reed Barnum.”

“Are they expecting you?”

“No.”

James walked him over to the desk and picked up the phone.

“Good evening, Mrs. Barnum. Liam Holt would like to come up.”

“Of course.”

James smiled. “You know where the elevators are.”

Liam took two steps. “Wait, what number are they again?”

James told him and he disappeared around the corner.

Lori answered with a smile and a short hug. “This is a surprise. Come on in.”

“Thanks for seeing me.”

Reed walked over from their dining room table, dropping his napkin on his plate.

“I’m interrupting.”

“No, no. We just finished,” Reed assured him. “Sit.”

Yeah, Liam didn’t want to sit.

“Listen. This feels awkward for me.” Liam glanced at Lori. “At the risk of sounding like a stalker, I just have to know she’s okay.”

Lori moved to Reed’s side. “Who, Avery?”

Liam nodded. “Yeah. Have you guys heard from her?”

“No. Not since last Monday.”

Liam ran a hand through his hair. “She told me she went to Seattle with some kind of urgency for her last job. She’s texted me twice, but all distant stuff. Which, hey, if it’s me she’s avoiding, fine. Not fine, but okay. Then today I learned that she told Sheldon Lankford that she had a sick aunt she was taking care of in Seattle. Blowing me off . . . yeah, I don’t want that to happen. But work and appointments?”

He realized when he was done talking that he sounded like a lovesick teenage boy. Which was sadly accurate.

Lori shook her head while she turned to her husband. “I knew there was a problem.”

“We don’t know that.”

“It’s been a year. She was having nightmares.”

Liam felt some of his insecurities dissipate, rapidly replaced with concern. “A year since what?” All he could think of was her divorce. But he was pretty sure she said that had been a couple of years past.

“Since New York,” Lori said as if he should understand.

“What happened in New York?”

Both Reed and Lori turned to him.

“She didn’t tell you?” Lori asked.

“Tell me what?”

“Wait, you work out doing krav with her, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And she didn’t tell you why she picked it up?” Lawyer Lori kept asking questions. Each one made his concern grow.

“No,” he said. “When did she finally decide to tell you she was taking krav?”

“Last week.”

“Babe, I’m betting she’s just working through it,” Reed said.

“I’m betting she needs help with that.”

Liam lifted both hands in the air. “Can one of you tell me what happened in New York?”

Lori tilted her head to the side. “If she doesn’t want you to know . . .”

No way, he wasn’t going to let that happen. “Avery told me she didn’t want you knowing about krav because all of you would worry. If you think I should know about New York because of krav, then that ties it together. And now I’m scared shitless.”

“She was attacked.”

“Reed, damn it,” Lori yelled at her husband and smacked the side of his arm with the back of her hand.

“Sorry, hon. He’s right. If it were you, I’d be ripping things apart to get to the truth.”

Lori tossed her hands in the air and walked away.

“Attacked by who?” Liam asked Reed.

It took ten minutes for Reed to spell out what New York stood for. As Liam heard the story of the brutality that drove Avery to learn to defend herself, a much clearer picture of how strong the woman he was falling for became. The only saving grace to the information was that the man who did it was dead.

“So my take is, she’s working through the anniversary. Unlike my wife, I think sometimes that’s a solo journey. My guess is she’ll be back when things are straight in her head.”

“She doesn’t have to do this alone,” Liam told him.

“Yeah, but Avery doesn’t open herself up. The girls know her better, obviously, but even they don’t really have a handle on what’s going on in her head. Since the injury, that got worse.” Reed smiled at Liam. “Until lately. Until you came along. She seems a lot happier and more settled with you in her life.”

He didn’t mind hearing that. “But she doesn’t trust me enough to ask for my help.”

“Don’t take it personally. We didn’t know she was out of town, and we know everything.”

During their conversation, Lori was standing by the floor to ceiling window, talking on the phone.

“Of course I’m worried. Even more now. No. Don’t hurry. I’ll find out what’s going on and call you. Love you, too.”

“Who was that?” Reed asked.

“Trina.”