Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
In creating Torus Intercession, I had a clear mission, which was to be a fixer for others. If people needed protection, mentoring, coaching, or someone to be their advocate, that was what Torus was about. We would always leave a situation better than we found it, and would not leave until the job was complete. What I never imagined was that when people saw their lives changing for the better, the person responsible for that metamorphosis would be the person they wanted to stay with them for the rest of their lives. I lost more fixers to love than injury. I had a definite Cupid problem.
It had been alluded to over the years, especially by Nash Miller, my longest-tenured employee, that perhaps I was running a matchmaking service. For the record, I was not. But it made sense that the person who came to help you, who assisted you in fixing your life, either by guarding you or finding avenues to improve your outlook and state of being, would be the person you would fall head over heels for. When I started out, the turnover of personnel was not something I had accounted for. Now I expected it. And it was always surprising to see who left. The person I was certain no one could love, that no one could get through their considerable armor, was, inevitably, the one love caught up with. Astounding to get that phone call saying: I’m staying here. Thank you for everything.
Honestly, now and then, I did know that sending a fixer somewhere was more for them than anything else. I would send a guy who’d never had a family out to a place where all the family needed was that one person to make them complete. At times, I could see that my fixer was the one who needed fixing. I tended to hire people who were broken in different ways and sent them out to be heroes. At other times, the person asking for help needed more than they thought, because beyond the protection or babysitting, it was connection. Mostly, my people drew others back into the world, which allowed them to see those around them who’d always been there, ready.
At the moment, I had four fixers I could send out into the field, but I had Shaw and Benji looking to hire two more. Six was my comfort spot so they could provide backup to one another if necessary, and I could send someone from Chicago, where we were based, to the opposite side of the country. I liked being able to handle client issues if emergencies arose. It was important to me to be able to help. It was my mandate at Torus to bring syzygy—connection and alignment—to everything we did. I found that lives were saved, either literally or mentally and emotionally. And every now and then, I got my fixer back too. Maybe that was what was on Owen’s mind as well.
Love.
He saw people he worked with fall in love and leave all the time. Perhaps that was weighing on him, the desire for connection. I had no idea. But when I saw him next, certainly before he left for Thailand, I would find out what was wrong with the man I shared a home with.
TWO
“Well now, Mr. Colter. Can you identify him? Is it Mr. Moss?” asked the police surgeon, a slight man in his midfifties, of Taiwanese descent.
“Yes, it’s him,” I answered, my voice trembling as a tsunami of emotions overtook my laryngeal muscles, forcing my voice to crack. My relief was as overwhelming as my grief had been two days earlier when I got the call that Owen was dead.
I had been with an old friend, one of my best, Darius Hawthorne, who, it turned out, was also in Paris on business. As I was fretting over the radio silence from Owen, Darius was trying to take my mind off the situation by taking me to the most outlandish places for dinner he could think of. I loved him for it as well as for the daily check-ins. To say he was busy was an understatement, so the fact that he was making so much time for me, was telling. When I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize, I turned the screen so Darius could see.
“That’s Thailand’s country code,” he told me. “Isn’t that where Owen is?”
When I answered and was given the news, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t even have to reach for my friend; he was there in an instant, holding me up.
He was dead. Owen was dead.
I couldn’t grip my phone, and it fell, hitting first the table and then the floor. Before I could even think to pick it up, Darius had snatched it and put it to his ear. He listened, spoke, then listened again. When he hung up, his bright-green eyes met mine.