Free The Unforgivable Fix by T. E. Woods

taken against Olwen. They’d organize a plan. Patrick would have her back by midnight.
    Then he’d go after Tokarev.
    Patrick went to the bedroom he shared with his beloved. He inhaled deeply and caught her favorite scent hanging in the air as he crossed to the safe mounted behind the long row of suits hanging in his closet. He keyed in a code and ran his hand over stacks of neatly bound US hundred-dollar bills. He grabbed six bundles and tossed them on the bed. His troops needed bribe money to hit the streets and loosen tongues about Tokarev’s activities. He grabbed six more. He would offer them as a reward to the man who brought back Olwen. He was about to close the safe when his eye registered something missing. He used both hands to shove aside stacks of cash in various currencies. He opened sliding drawers and rifled through Olwen’s rings and necklaces and bracelets.
    It wasn’t there.
    Patrick marched across the bedroom to her closet. He shoved aside a rack of haute couture and opened Olwen’s safe. The code was his birthday. He warned her it was predictable, but she was too trusting to change it. Patrick found the small stack of money he supplied her with for her daily expenses. The handgun he’d given her their first year together was there. He pulled open a drawer and saw the newspaper clippings of her father’s police cases, as well as her mother’s obituary and several reviews of her brother’s book. He ran his hands through the various papers and wondered, as he always did, why they were so important to her they were always the first thing she packed whenever they relocated.
    What he was looking for wasn’t there.
    He slammed the safe shut and turned to examine the closet. Rows of shoes, handbags, and scarves were undisturbed. Racks of designer dresses, slacks, blouses, and coats were just as they were yesterday.
    Patrick’s chest heaved as he tried to determine what this meant. The sound of his front doorbell pulled him away. His men were here.
    The war with Russia would begin.
    And Olwen’s passport was gone.

Chapter 14
    O LYMPIA
    “Vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit.” The young man collapsed back against the sofa and gulped in air. “I did it.”
    Lydia picked up the twenty marbles from the bowl sitting on the coffee table that separated them. He’d deposited one marble each time he said the word. “Now, what’s your anxiety level? Use our old friend zero to ten.”
    “I’d say an eight.” Tim Jenkins had had his first visit with Lydia the day before. He was nineteen and living away from home for the first time. Several of the kids on his dorm floor had organized a ski trip to Snoqualmie over Thanksgiving break and Jessica Banner, the cute blonde two rooms down from Tim, had made it a point to invite him along. Despite never having skied in his life, the very notion of three days with Jessica inspired him to plop down his nonrefundable deposit immediately. There was only one problem. Snoqualmie was a three-hour bus ride away and Tim was phobic about long rides. At his intake, he described the elaborate machinations he’d gone through to survive high school without ever getting into a car with his friends. Lydia questioned him further and Tim admitted it was his loathsome fear of vomiting, and anything associated with it, that shrunk his world. Despite the fact he’d never been carsick, he avoided long rides unless his parents, who understood his dread of nausea and assured him they’d pull over whenever he wanted, were driving. The thought of being in a bus with twenty fellow students had him paralyzed with fear. What if he got sick? Surely some of the students would be drinking. What if one of them overindulged and vomited in front of him? He was certain he’d dissolve into a quivering mass of panic. Tim had never been to a psychologist before, but the vision of Jessica Banner in