Thank you for everything, Jack. If you ever see Lee, please don’t mention me to her. Don’t say anything that will dredge up memories she should just forget. I’m not worth the trouble. She just needs to get on with her life and never look back.
And then she had signed the letter with her real name, Amanda, as opposed to Julia.
The tears that had fallen from Pine’s eyes had stained the pages in several places. She read it through three more times, clinging to different words and phrases with each pass. She finally folded the pages and set them next to her as she watched night fall over the lighted Atlanta skyline.
Her family was out there somewhere, but the reality was all three of them could be dead now. If so, would finding their graves, if there even were graves, be enough for her?
I don’t know the answer to that. I can’t possibly.
Her phone dinged. She looked at the screen. It was a text from John Puller.
She sat up straighter. Leonard Atkins was receiving aid from the VA. And it was going to an address in Huntsville, Alabama, that Puller had also provided in the text. Pine Googled the location. It was about three and a half hours by car from Atlanta.
She went back inside and climbed into bed.
Her last thought before she fell asleep was, Just keep plugging, Atlee. Every day. And you’ll eventually get there. You’ll find them, one way or another.
CHAPTER
6
WHEN THE WOMAN ROSE FROM THE chipped wooden stool, she stood a statuesque six foot one in her long, bare feet. She flexed her right hand and then her left. The fingers were callused and strong, just like all the rest of her. She felt pops, twinges, and creaks as bones and cartilage resettled into appropriate grooves; more cantankerous elements refused to fully reset, but grudgingly moved a bit closer to normal. She stretched her long, muscled neck, rolling it one way and then the other. She pushed her sculpted shoulders away from her neck, and her ripped traps and delts thanked her as the release of tension was both palpable and immediate.
She wore a frayed black sports top with a faded Nike swoosh, and a chest protector under that along with a pair of faded black Lycra athletic shorts. Both pieces of compression clothing sharply defined her long, muscular, and scarred physique.
The short, trim man standing next to her helped the woman slip on her gloves, and then he commenced rapidly massaging her long, ropy arms.
“You ready?” he asked, looking up at her.
She glanced down at him with a frown. “I’m here, Jerry. So what the hell do you think?”
He put in her mouthguard and then made the sign of the cross. He always did that, and it always irritated the crap out of her.
“Who you trying to signal, dude, your bookie?” she muttered through the mouthguard.
“See you on the other side, El,” said Jerry as he hurriedly left the ring.
Eloise “El” Cain was getting a bit long in the tooth for what she was about to do, though she did it only when she really needed the money. Her opponent tonight was four inches shorter, but a real stud; at 190 pounds she outweighed the taller Cain by ten pounds. And, like Cain, almost all of it was bone, gristle, and muscle displayed across her broad shoulders, sinewy core, abs like rows of stacked bricks, barrel-thick thighs, muscled glutes, and diamond-hard calves. She could destroy 99 percent of the guys out there and give the other 1 percent a run for their money. Her technique was rock-solid: She could fight all day, could absorb terrific punishment, and had crushing power in all four limbs. She was over a dozen years younger than Cain, and many thought she had a shot at the big time. The only question marks were her fighting smarts and mental toughness. And the fact that the women’s UFC world topped out at featherweight, or a 145-pound limit.
Cain had always thought that was sexist bullshit. There were some women out there who could fight with the best of them. The men had heavier weight divisions in the UFC, so why were the bigger women ruled out? Maybe they would just have to start their own league, or the larger women would have to make the jump to boxing, with its far heavier weight divisions. But ultimately it wasn’t fair, and, like always, the women got the short end of the athletic stick, Cain believed.