Officer in Pursuit (23 page)

“Listen, I hear you,” Jeremy said.
“And I want to find her just as badly as you do. No—” He grimaced
at the look on Grey’s face “—I do. Believe me, after this summer, I
can’t stand the thought of another person being lost on my watch.
Especially not her.”

“What are you doing to make it
happen?” Frustration broiled inside Grey’s stomach, making him feel
sick – too sick and too mad to drink the soda that Jeremy had just
brought him.

“I contacted her parents back in
Kentucky a few hours ago, asked if they had a picture of her ex.
They just got back to us.”

“Did they give you a
picture?”

Jeremy laid what Grey had assumed to
be a piece of paperwork on the table.

It was a photograph – a print-out on
office paper, slightly grainy. It set Grey’s teeth on edge to look
at.

Here was the past Kerry had tried so
hard to hide from everyone in her new life. In a white dress, she
looked young – unbelievably young. If Grey had seen her on the
street, he would’ve assumed she was a child. She didn’t even look
18.

Her dark hair was shorter than it was
now and styled in wide curls that made her face look smaller,
whiter – almost as pale as her wedding dress. She held onto the arm
of a man in a tuxedo – her ex-husband.

He was nearly a foot taller than her
and twice as wide. He looked young in the photo, but not nearly as
young as her. His hair was sandy and his face was one Grey would’ve
liked to punch. As he stared at the print-out, he wished he could
step into the picture and tear him away from Kerry, hurt him before
he had a chance to hurt her.

“That’s him,” Jeremy said. “About ten
years ago, but it’s all we’ve got right now. All our officers are
gonna see this picture. We’ll all be looking for him, and for
her.”

Grey nodded. He couldn’t tear his eyes
away from the photograph.

Maybe Jeremy sensed that. He picked up
the picture, tucked it away in the folder he’d used to carry it
in.

Grey didn’t know what to say now that
Jeremy had showed him the photo. Sitting there across the desk from
him, it felt like his role in finding her had been pulled out from
underneath him like a rug. He should be glad Jeremy was being so
proactive and taking Kerry’s fears about her ex seriously. And he
was, but at the same time, he felt useless now.

“I’m gonna look for her around the
area where she crashed,” Grey said. “There are woods there. Just in
case she got hurt and wandered off confused or
something.”

It was all he could think of to do,
and doing nothing wasn’t an option.

“We already looked,” Jeremy said. “She
wasn’t there.”

Grey was about to say he was going to
search again anyway when the office door swung inward, creaking a
little on its hinges.

Another uniformed officer stood in the
doorway. “Conner,” he said, tipping his head toward Jeremy, “you’re
gonna want to hear this. We just got a call from the Mercer County
Sheriff’s Department.”

Jeremy frowned. “Mercer County?
Where’s that?”

“West Virginia. They have that woman –
Kerry Harlow.”

* * * * *

“You know, it won’t be any help to
Kerry if we don’t make it to her alive,” Grey said as Sasha passed
a couple of cars that had to be pushing 80.

Sasha looked away from the road for a
second, just long enough to raise one of her eyebrows at him. “It’s
eleven o’clock already. I’m not going to let her be alone in a
strange place any longer than she has to be.”

They’d spent the first four hours of
their trip in the fast lane. Grey was fine with that – he wanted to
get there as quickly as possible too. But if someone had to drive
like a maniac, he’d rather it be him than Sasha.

At first, they’d argued about who
would go to Kerry’s rescue. Jeremy had called Sasha to let her know
Kerry had been found almost as soon as he’d told Grey, and Sasha –
apparently anticipating Grey’s plans to go rescue her – had
immediately called him.

Sasha had been like a dog with a bone:
she’d refused to stay home while Grey made the six hour drive to
Mercer County, West Virginia. Burning with anger and desperate to
see Kerry, who was in the hospital, Grey hadn’t wanted company. But
Henry had asked Grey to let Sasha go with him, because Brad Sawyer
was still on the loose and Henry had used up all his vacation days
and sick time that summer, when he’d been shot and Sasha had been
in the hospital, too.

Grey had spent every mile wishing he
was alone. A half hour ago, he’d stopped to fill up on gas and had
finally given in to Sasha’s constant requests to ‘help’ by taking
on some of the driving.

“Want me to turn the radio on?” Sasha
asked.

Grey stared out the window at the cars
blurring past, the mountains that’d risen up out of the earth as
they’d left the coast and the Piedmont area behind, crossing into
Appalachia. “Yeah.”

The radio was probably as close to
silence as he was going to get. He’d take it.

As they drove farther into the night,
he thought of the wedding photograph, of Kerry in her white dress,
holding onto the man who’d dragged her across state lines and put
her in the hospital.

He didn’t know the whole story yet,
just that she’d been taken from the scene of the wreck in Riley
County and that she’d been found in a small town along the route to
Kentucky, a couple hours away from her old hometown. He didn’t know
the details of what Brad had done to her during their marriage, but
he knew that it had been bad enough to make her flee. And he could
imagine the sort of things that had probably happened. He didn’t
want to, but he couldn’t stop it. That was the worst
part.

CHAPTER 18

Hospital rooms always seemed strange
and impersonal, but this one was worse because Kerry knew the place
beyond the window was unfamiliar, a strange town she’d woken up in,
caught in the throes of a nightmare.

Or, what had seemed like a nightmare
at first. She remembered now how she’d managed to sleep for a solid
six hours in Brad’s truck after being taken from the scene of the
wreck: she hadn’t.

She’d drifted in and out of fuzzy
consciousness, had heard his voice once or twice, and let herself
think it was all a bad dream. She’d wanted to believe that so badly
that she hadn’t even opened her eyes. The truck’s movement had
lulled her back into a deep, dragging sleep and she hadn’t had to
face the reality of her situation until she’d fully come-to in that
motel room.

Her heart sped and her mouth dried out
every time she thought about it, even though it was over. She
stared at the two police officers at the foot of her bed – a man
and a woman, both in black and grey uniforms.

“I don’t know what else I can tell
you,” she said, thinking of how the uniforms she saw so often at
home were different: dark blue for the prison officers, solid black
for the local sheriff’s department. Still, she was glad she wasn’t
talking to anyone from Riley County. It was humiliating enough,
explaining to strangers what had happened. It would be even worse
when her friends and acquaintances found out.

“I’ve told you everything,” she said,
taking a drink of water from the Styrofoam cup on her wheeled
bedside stand. She used her good hand, the one that wasn’t stitched
and bandaged from where she’d picked up a handful of broken
glass.

If she had to guess, she’d say she’d
hurt herself almost as badly as she’d hurt Brad when she’d done
that. It had been worth it, though.

“You’re sure you didn’t see what
direction he drove in when he left the motel parking lot?” the
female officer asked.

“No. I didn’t even realize he’d gotten
in his truck. I was running through the lot beside the motel, then
into the parking lot of the liquor store in the next lot over. I
had a sort of tunnel vision; I thought he was right behind me the
whole time. I wasn’t paying much attention to anything
else.”

Apparently the motel Brad had chosen
was either too broke or too seedy for a security system. There was
no video of him running out of the room, getting into his truck and
driving away. There was no video of anything until Kerry appeared,
alone, on the liquor store’s security footage.

A knock came at the door. It was a
nurse, and she wasn’t alone.

“You have visitors.”

When Grey and Sasha stepped out from
behind the nurse and into the room, Kerry’s heart skipped a beat,
and her mouth went dry all over again.

For a small eternity, she just stared.
An officer had told her a friend would be coming, but they hadn’t
said when or who. Without her phone, Kerry hadn’t been able to
easily call or text her friends, whose numbers she’d never
memorized. She hadn’t expected two people, or for them to get there
that soon. It was one o’clock in the morning.

It was Sasha who rushed to the side of
her bed first, her blonde hair streaming behind her. “Kerry! Oh my
God, are you okay?”

Grey was behind her, but he hung back
a little. He stood with his arms crossed, his jaw tight, looking
tired and angrier than she’d ever seen him.

Something inside her shriveled up at
the sight of his expression, shrinking beneath the weight of shame
and fear. Shame that he’d seen her like this, that he now knew just
what kind of price she was paying for her past mistakes. And fear
that he’d start to see her as she saw herself: as someone who’d
irreparably damaged her life with bad decisions, someone who
couldn’t shake her past.

Lately, thanks to Grey, she’d started
to see herself differently, but it was hard to feel anything other
than pathetic sitting there in a strange hospital bed like some
sort of half-mummy, with her head, one hand and part of an arm
wrapped in bandages. Not because she’d been in an accident, but
because she’d been deliberately hurt by someone she’d once been
stupid enough to marry.

And it wasn’t like Brad was behind
bars now and she could just start over. He was God knew where by
now and despite having hit her head in the car crash, she was
keenly aware that no one had witnessed what he’d done to her – the
kidnapping, or the blows.

The person who’d rented out the motel
room to him had positively identified him from a photo, but even if
he was caught, there’d only be Kerry’s word against his.

“I’m fine,” Kerry said as Sasha
squeezed her good hand. “Thanks so much for coming. I can’t believe
you two drove all this way.” They were far from the North Carolina
coast – Brad had made it to within a couple hours of Kentucky
before stopping.

Sasha tossed her hair, making a sound
of disgust. “You really thought that after finding out that you’d
been in a car wreck and abducted, we weren’t going to
come?”

The police officers finally moved from
where it seemed they’d been standing for hours. “Ms. Harlow, we’re
going to leave now. We may come back tomorrow if we have any more
questions.”

“Tomorrow?” Sasha asked as they left.
“So you have to stay overnight?”

The nurse cut in then and said that
yes, she did. Most of what she said was a spiel that had to do with
Kerry’s head injury. It reminded her of Grey’s jiu-jitsu
concussion, and for a split, fleeting second, she felt like she was
back in Riley County.

The nurse didn’t stay forever, though.
Eventually, she left Kerry alone with Sasha and Grey.

The bedsheets felt like sandpaper
against her skin, and she felt awkward in her gown, awkward in her
own skin.

“Kerry…” Sasha sat down on
the side of the bed. “Is it true that your ex-husband did this to
you? Why didn’t you tell us that you
had
an ex-husband? We’ve been best
friends for years! I don’t know how you kept a secret like that for
so long.”

Kerry’s feelings of discomfort
intensified. The air in the room felt heavy with all the things
she’d left unsaid for so long, things she had no choice but to say
now. The nurse had given her a pain reliever and it loosened her
tongue a little. She was grateful for it, because otherwise, she
had a feeling she wouldn’t have been able to force her confession
out.

“Riley County was supposed to be my
fresh start, my new life,” she said. “I didn’t want anyone to know
that I got married to a loser like Brad when I was 18. It was
embarrassing, and I was afraid that if I breathed a word to anyone,
he’d find out somehow. It had to be my secret.”

“I wouldn’t have told
anyone,” Sasha said. “It could’ve been
our
secret.”

Sasha’s words slipped
between Kerry’s ribs and filled her heart with doubt.
Could
she have shared
her secret with Sasha?
Should
she have?

Maybe she should’ve swallowed her own
pride and trusted her. It might’ve been nice not to be the only one
in on her secret.

“Well, now you know,” was all she
could say.

Sasha made a bigger deal out of
Kerry’s injuries than they really warranted, and eventually, she
asked when the last time Kerry had eaten was, and whether she
wanted her to go out and pick up some food.