Dear Adam (39 page)

Eden’s throat tightened. She couldn’t
breathe. She would have fallen to the ground and begged if she
could.

“
Hey, mom, hope you're
having a good time. Got an A in Stats,” he read out loud. He looked
at her and smiled, a chilling picture. She could see it written
clearly on the triumphant expression on his face. There was no
doubt now that she would do anything he told her to do, that she
would be obedient and cooperative and would persuade Adam to meet
her not for her own sake, but for her son’s.

She had been wrong. This was her worst
nightmare.

He continued working on her phone and meeting
with little success for his frustration only grew.

“
Fuck!” Her phone had
locked again.

He got up.

“
Who are you?” she asked
although she knew it was futile.

“
Who I am is none of your
concern. All you need to know is that I will kill you and I will
kill your boy if you don’t get Adam to come here so I can meet him.
It doesn’t matter if your boy is in America,” he sneered. “There’s
no place safe from me,” he said as he untied her right
hand.

That was all she needed. No thought, no
wavering, no hesitation as she simultaneously rose and swung a
fisted hand as hard as she could into his face. Her right hook
surprised him but didn’t knock him down. What knocked him down was
the ferocious kick to his groin with her platform wedge heels that
followed just a second after. She stomped on it once more to keep
him down a bit longer.

“
You fucking bitch!” he
moaned.

As he writhed on the floor, Eden freed her
left hand and reached for the nightstand nearby. She grabbed the
large lamp made of blown glass and hit him on the head with it. It
took five more hits and the lamp breaking in two before he stopped
moving. Eden kicked him several more times in the groin to make
sure he was really out.

Someone began ramming against the door. Eden
clutched her lamp, at the ready. The door burst open. Jack entered
the room, saw the man on the floor and then rushed at her.

Chapter 20

“
Don’t come any closer!”
Eden screamed as she held the broken lamp in her hands, the jagged
pieces pointed at Jack, who stopped where he was.

“
Eden, I’m Adam’s friend.”
Jack held his hands up in the air. He started walking towards her
again.

“
I swear I’ll cut that
pretty face of yours.” She jabbed the lamp at his
direction.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the man
on the floor start to get up and swiftly swung the butt end of the
lamp on the back of his head as hard as she could, yelling a cry of
outrage as she did so. The man slumped and stopped moving.

Jack instantly backed up and hit the
doorframe, his hands still up in the air.

“
Help!” she screamed at the
top her lungs. “Help!
Aiuto
!
Aiuto
!”

“
Eden –“

“
Just let me through the
door. That’s all I want.” She started to inch toward him, gripping
the lamp in front of her. Jack slid with his back against the wall,
away from her, his blue eyes wide.

“
Adam sent me. I
swear.”

“
I don’t know where Adam
is. So if you think you’re going to get to him through me, you’re
fucking wrong.”

“
He’s at sea. He asked me
to find you and stop you from coming here. You just called his
number awhile go. It forwarded to my phone. He had it activated it
again in case you called. Watch.”

Eden stopped short.

Jack fumbled for his phone and pressed on it.
Her phone, which was on the floor, started ringing. The screen said
“Adam.”

Jack stayed with her throughout the police
interview, a laborious three hours wherein Eden, the police and
Jack struggled under language barriers. She could truthfully say
that she didn’t know who was the man who assaulted her and held her
against her will. At one point, Jack set aside one of the senior
officers and stood in a corner talking to him in low whispers.
After that, they were released. Jack didn’t need to ask her for
discretion. Adam’s name was never mentioned.

He tried to explain as best he could on their
way to the hospital. Her face was swollen from where she had been
struck and her right hand felt funny.

Three days ago, Jack had been in London when
he received an urgent phone call from Adam. He had discovered that
Eden was flying to Sicily, figured out why, and asked Jack for help
because he wouldn’t be able to get to Eden in time.

“
Adam never asks for help,
you understand.” Jack said. “It’s usually the other way around.
People come to him for favors, for the impossible. So I knew this
was very serious. He didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. He
wouldn’t have asked me if it hadn’t been important to him. Told me
to do whatever I had to do to keep you from coming to Sicily. And
then told me I would probably fail because,” Jack chuckled, and
shook his head, “He said in so many words how determined you
were.”

Eden looked at him in suspicion. “What did he
say about me exactly?”

“
Er,” Jack said, avoiding
her eyes. “Can’t remember now, but he was right.”

Belatedly, Eden just realized what Jack had
just told her. “You hacked into the airline’s computer
network?”

Jack gave her one his brilliant smiles. “I
was too late to stop you from leaving the States. Rome seemed my
best chance.”

“
How?” Eden shook her head.
Her confusion was growing by the minute. “How did Adam even find
out I was flying to Sicily?”

Jack stared at her, as though seeing her for
the first time. “You really don’t know about Adam, do you?”

Her face must have crumpled. “I mean,” he
said helplessly, at a loss, “I don’t want to get in the middle of a
bloke and his woman. Adam should be telling you all this, not
me.”

“
Yes, he should be. He
should have told me all this and I would’ve …” she trailed off, her
sudden anger dissolving as she considered the thought. What would
she have done had she known what she knew now? Adam had friends who
could easily hack into secured networks. He had at least one
dangerous enemy from his past who was willing to hurt her to find
him. Had he been afraid that if she knew the full extent of his
background she would have broken it off?

“
So he knew that man was
here?”

“
You realize, I don’t know
that much about it myself,” Jack said apologetically. “I only know
what Adam told me. That someone from his time with … certain
associates was hunting for him and had somehow found out that he
was in Agrigento.”

Eden raised her eyebrows. Jack sounded as
irritatingly evasive as Adam.

“
Certain associates, you
mean from the time when he was doing business with the
mob?”

Jack looked like he wanted to shush her.
“Adam wouldn’t like that. Especially considering where you
are.”

“
Who was he
then?”

“
I don’t know. I don’t
think Adam knows for sure either. He just heard rumors over the
past nine months. Underground whispers. These things aren’t ever
out in the open or confirmed, you know. Especially when dealing
with people of that element.”

“
Well I don’t think they’ve
ever met. And he thought I was lying when I said we had never met
either and that I didn’t know what he looked like.”

Jack couldn’t hide his shock. “So you and
Adam never … ?”

Eden shook her head. “We wrote to each other.
Phone calls.” It sounded so mundane when reduced to that. But it
was – still is – so much more.

“
And yet you flew halfway
around the world to look for him?” From mundane to ridiculous. She
nodded, too embarrassed to defend herself. She thought she could
fly to a foreign country, just start driving around, and magically
run into Adam. There was no way she could spin it so that she
looked anything other than crazy.

They arrived at the hospital just then. Eden
though it would be another bureaucratic and language maze, but she
was seen right away. They took x-rays of her right hand and gave
her an ice pack for her face. Jack winked at her when she remarked
how fast everything was and how unusual that she was getting her
own room while they waited.

She nodded to the black iPhone he held. She
now recalled he had been on it the whole time she was in the
airport in Rome. “That’s all you need to hack into an airlines or a
hospital? A phone?”

He put it in his pocket. He was sitting on
the hospital bed next to her. He crossed his long legs and folded
his arms against his chest. His charm was muted with solemnity. It
was clear that he held Adam in great respect.

“
It’s not my place to tell
you about Adam. But I can tell you this. He and I, for a time, were
in the same line of business so to speak. That’s how we met. He
taught me certain skills.” He gave her a meaningful
glance.

Eden felt like screaming. Why did everyone
speak with such enigmatic ambiguity? “So you and he were hackers
together? Is that how you met?”

Jack threw up his hands in frustration. “Adam
warned me about you.”

“
Let me guess – that I
wield a double-edged sword of stubbornness and fight?”

“
No, but that sounds
apt.”

“
You haven’t said anything
so I guess I just have to ask. Is Adam coming here?” she asked
bluntly. “I mean, I know I just showed up out of the blue, but I
did try calling before stopping by.”

Jack looked as if he wanted to be anywhere
but in the room with her. “I’m sorry, Eden. I don’t know.”

“
Oh.” She turned and looked
at the wall.

Just then, the door started to open and for
one glorious moment, Eden’s heart bloomed with hope. It was Adam,
rushing in from wherever, just to be by her side. Until, a male
orderly peeked in, saw the two of them, and went back out, shutting
the door. The disappointment was crushing. If Jack hadn’t been
there, she would have been curled up into a sobbing ball.

“
Amazing,” Jack said
softly.

She turned to him.

“
Every time that door
starts to open, you look like you’re dying of thirst and whoever’s
on the other side was bringing you water.”

“
He’s really not coming is
he?”

“
I don’t think so. Oh,
Eden. Please,” he said, distressed. “Please don’t cry.”

“
It’s just that I’ve come
from so far away,” she managed to say in between sobs. “Then that
horrible man. And Adam’s not even here.”

“
Oh, dear. He cares for
you, obviously or else he wouldn’t have sent me. I’m sure if he
hadn’t been in the middle of the sea, he would have been here
himself.”

“
You said he called you
from his boat?”

“
Yes, he has a satellite
phone.”

“
Can we call him please? I
just want to talk to him, even if it’s only a minute.”

Jack looked more than uncomfortable at this
point. His manner indicated that he was keeping something from her.
He was weighing whether to tell her or not.

“
I’ve tried calling him
since then. I haven’t been able to get through.”

Eden’s heart suddenly felt like it was being
squeezed by a giant vise.

“
You’re just trying to
discourage me, right? Maybe Adam told you not to give out his
number? He doesn’t want to hear from me. Right?” She could hear her
voice rising with fear.

Jack shook his head. His face was clouded
now.

“
Where was he, did he
say?”

Jack shook his head again.

“
He’s been out to sea for
over five months now. I’ve heard from him sporadically. When he
wants to be left alone, people know to leave him alone. I guessed
that he was going through a crisp of some sort. The last time
something like this happened, his grandfather had passed away. Adam
shut himself in his apartment for six months, wouldn’t see anyone.
Some friends and I tried to get him to come out but he wouldn’t do
it. Told us all to go away and leave him alone. We called it his
Howard Hughes phase.” Jack chuckled.

“
Then one day he stopped
mourning and joined the world again. Well,” Jack corrected himself,
“Joined the world his way.”

“
On the
periphery.”