Adrenaline fuels me, making me run across the room, quickly grabbing what I brought when they insisted I come here. Holden is already standing up, ready to leave when I come back out.
“I’m ready.”
“Let’s get going.”
Both of us run out to the parking lot. He goes to a fast-looking Dodge Charger, I follow. As we get inside and buckled in, he looks over, grinning. “It’s been a long time since I drove one of these, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not looking forward to this.”
“It’s definitely a nice piece of machinery.” I inhale the smell of the leather seats and admire the dashboard. “I have one like this, but I bet mine can’t do what yours can.”
“You ever rode with a cop before?”
“Tucker’s driven me around.”
“No.” He chuckles. “Like in a police car?”
“Oh.” I shake my head. “No, haven’t had the pleasure.”
“There’s an oh shit handle above you, feel free to grab it if you need to.”
I don’t even have a chance before he peels out of the parking lot, squealing tires. It’s obvious he knows how to drive though, because even though my stomach is in my throat, his hands are firmly around the wheel, holding it securely.
“Trust me,” he tells me as we get on the interstate. “I know how to drive; I can handle the speed, and I won’t do anything that puts us in danger.”
We hit the interstate, sirens blaring, and my eyes widen as I see the speedometer rise past a hundred miles an hour. I decide really quickly I don’t want to watch this. Instead I grab my phone out of my purse and start reading up on what they know so far about Leah. It’s research, I tell myself, not a sickening need to know what he’s doing.
“I should have us down there in less than an hour.”
“Got it,” I whisper, fully engrossed on what’s going on, and deciding this time, he won’t get to keep this girl for as long as he kept me.
Tucker
“If he’s following his previous MO, he’s got a hotel room somewhere,” I mention to Caleb as we discuss where we can search next.
“But which one?” He pulls up a Google map. “There’s legit a hundred around here.”
“Okay.” Nick comes into the conversation. “Let’s think about this. He’s been in jail for fourteen years. He doesn’t have a credit card. He doesn’t know about chips in debit cards. What he was able to get on work detail, or through prison is probably cash.”
“We need a seedy motel.” I’m thinking as I start narrowing down the options by excluding places that would need a credit card.
“He’s not got an ID either,” Caleb reminds us. “If he does, it isn’t his. It’s one of those EMT’s, so we need to get their names.”
“Okay.” I tap on the tablet we’re using. “There are five motels in the area that are legit motels. I’m talkin’ these are probably rented by the hour. We need to get these checked out.”
We’re convening with the Birmingham police as well as the FBI when I see one of our Chargers roll up to the scene. Karsyn gets out of the passenger seat, and immediately I’m on high-alert.
“What the fuck is she doing here?”
“Before you say anything,” Holden stops me at the pass, “she wanted to come, and I think she’s right. She’s the only person who knows Clarence. I say let’s give her a chance to help us. If it doesn’t work out, then we haven’t lost anything. Hopefully we’ve gained a whole hell of a lot.”
Karsyn is standing next to him, those eyes of hers big as hell. “C’mere.” I motion with my hand, pulling her back behind my SUV. “What the fuck are you thinking?”
“That I can help, Tucker. Please let me help. I know him, and I can’t live with myself if something happens to this girl.”
“This isn’t your responsibility,” I remind her.
“It is,” she argues. “I owe it not only to her, but to the girl I was all those years ago. Nobody could help me. I can help her, please don’t stand in my way.”
“What are you going to do if I don’t let you help?”
Her chin lifts in defiance, her eyes spark and fuck if it’s not sexy as hell.
“I’ll go above you.” She folds her arms across her chest. “You’re not the one in charge here. You may have a badge, but you don’t have the authority to tell me if I can help or not.”
She’s got me there, and I know Mason; he’ll let her help and he’ll have her ride with someone else if she goes over my head. It’s against my better judgement, but I relent.
“Let me go tell Mason you’ll be with me, but first we lay down some ground rules.”
“Okay.” She nods.
“You do what I tell you to do, every time I tell you to do it. This is my job, it’s my specialty and there are situations I won’t allow you to be a part of.”
“Got it.”
“That’s not it. You wear a vest. Anything can happen out there, and I want you as safe as possible.”
“No question,” she agrees.
I can’t believe I’m doing this as I go tell Mason she’s here and wants to help.
“Get her over here,” he barks at me. “She may be able to tell us which motel he’s more likely to be at.”
Running back to my SUV, I reach in the back, grabbing out my extra vest. “Come here, Syn.”
As I help her pull it on and secure it around her, I feel an unexpected rush of tears. Pushing them back, I use my index finger to tilt her face up to mine. “Thank you for doing this, but if you get hurt I’ll never forgive myself.”
“I’ll be fine, Tuck. Just like you are.”
She leans in, kissing me softly. I let her, but in the back of my mind, I know that everything isn’t always fine, no matter what I tell her at the end of every shift. Some of them are worse than others. Some I’ll never be able to forget. There are a few that still keep me up at night.
“I love you,” I tell her, pulling her into a hug.
“I love you, too, and I promise to listen to everything you tell me. I don’t want to distract you from doing your job and you end up getting hurt. All I want to do is help.”
“Come on, Mason thinks you can help us pick which motel he might be at.”
Hand in hand, we walk over to where everyone’s crowded around the tablet we’ve been using.
“Hey, Karsyn, if you could help us, that would be great.” Mason moves the tablet so she can see it. “These are all motels we think he may be at with Leah. Is there anything that stands out to you about any of them?”
She picks up the tablet, going through the pictures we’ve managed to collect of them and their surrounding areas. I watch her, her brows drawn together in concentration.
“Can I see more of these two.” She points to honestly the two I would have ruled out.
Mason checks which ones she’s pointed to, and then speaks to one of the IT people on scene. When they get more of them, he hands her the tablet back.
“This one.” Her voice is confident.
“Want to tell me why?” Mason asks.
“Two things.” She uses her fingers to zoom in on the one she’s picked. “This one is a complete motor court. There aren’t stairs. I don’t know if he makes this known or whatever, but Clarence walks with a limp. It’s very hard for him to climb stairs. And, I’m looking at the timestamps here.” She points to a set of pictures. “There’s a nondescript van in that parking spot now. Something tells me this is it.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Tucker
“Run a report on that van,” Mason yells. “Find out if the owner knows where it is, or better yet, find the damn owner.”
We decide quickly that we’re going to wait until we hear back from the owner. Birmingham police have already sent a unit over to the last known address. My heart is pounding as I stand with the rest of my fellow officers and Karsyn, waiting to hear if this van is stolen.
When our radios start squawking, my adrenaline spikes again.
Registered owner of the van say it’s stolen. Repeat registered owner of the van is reporting it stolen.
That’s all I need to hear. I grab Karsyn’s hand and together we run for my SUV.
“What does this mean?” she asks as she buckles in. “It means he’s probably right where you said he was gonna be.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for everyone else?”
“It was already discussed and decided that Ransom and I would take point on this. If he runs, we need to be there ASAP to get the dogs on the scent.”
Major is whining and barking in his cage in the back. If I could will my SUV to move faster I would. My hands are shaking and sweating as I navigate the streets, following my on-board GPS. Ransom is hot on my tail as we speed through town. I have to give it to Karsyn, she’s quietly holding on as we’re jostled with every turn we take. We’re approaching the motel, and just as we get eyes on it, I see something that makes my stomach turn.
“He’s taking her out!” she screams, pointing to what’s going on in front of us.
“Be advised, suspect is moving the girl. He’s getting into the van right now,” I tell everyone of the situation going down on the radio. “Permission to initiate chase?”
“You have to ask for that?” Karsyn yells.
I tap the mic off. “It’s not my jurisdiction, Karsyn. We have to get permission.”
A voice I’ve never heard comes over the radio. “Permission granted. Do what you have to in order to get her back.”
“We’ll need backup.” I can hear Ransom over the radio.
“It’s coming.” We’re promised.
I have a feeling it’s not coming fast enough as the van squeals out of the parking lot. There are many times in this job when I wish I had wings to fly, or super human skills so I could stop bad things from happening. This is one of those times.
The atmosphere in the SUV is tense as we give chase. Ransom is calling out where we’re going on his radio, because it’s taking all I have to keep my SUV on the road. A summer thunderstorm has roared up onto us, and it’s dropping rain in buckets.
“Fuck!” I punch the steering wheel. “If he gets out, this rain is going to make it harder to track him.”
“Do you think he knew this?” Karsyn asks quietly. “Like did he have the perfect plan?”
“I don’t know,” I answer her honestly. “I’m not sure what he was given access to in prison as far as weather reports or anything of that nature. Could be he’s just getting really lucky. One thing we do have over him,” I nod as he almost loses control of the van, “is he hasn’t driven like this in fourteen years. Sooner or later, he’s gonna wreck out.”
“At what cost?” she asks. “What if the girl is hurt?”
“Even if she’s hurt, she won’t be with him anymore. You were hurt from your wreck,” I remind her. “But you were okay with it because you no longer had to be with him.”
She’s biting her nail in the passenger seat, and for what’s it worth, I can understand where she’s coming from. It doesn’t make things any easier, knowing she’s worried, but I’m doing what I have to do. This is the part of police work no one ever sees. The moments when we’re forced to make decisions that have life-altering consequences. We make the best decisions we can, but sometimes they aren’t perfect. Actually more often than not, someone can find fault with them.
“Shit,” I curse as I watch him barely miss someone on the interstate. When he swerves to avoid hitting them, he hits a puddle of water.
We watch, both of us shouting, I’m not sure what we’re shouting, but we are, as the van goes airborne, turning over and over, before coming to a stop in the grass.
“Stay in the car,” I tell her as I get out.
I grab Major, and we approach.
“Get out of the van with your hands up!” I yell, authority in my voice.
Beside me Major is barking ferociously. There’s no movement, and I approach as slowly as I can.
“Clarence Night, come out of the van with your hands up.”
“Fuck you!”
So he’s at least able to respond. “If you don’t come out, I’m sending the dog in and you will be bit.”
“Send him in, I’ll take care of him,” he yells.
The fuck he will.
Ransom comes up on the other side of the van. I can hear Rambo barking too.
“Gun!” Ransom yells.
And it’s then I see him crawling out on his stomach. It happens so fast. He crawls just enough to give himself the stability to fire a shot. There’s a double pop pop in the air as I release Major’s leash, go down on one knee, and fire two shots in succession. It’s a kill-shot and I know it as soon as I pull the trigger. There wasn’t anything else for me to aim at other than his head.
My vest takes his shot, sending me flying backward with the force of impact. I hear Karsyn scream in the background. She must get out of the SUV because she’s standing over me. “Tucker, are you okay?”
One thing most people don’t know about vests is they hurt like hell when they catch a bullet. All that centrifugal force is stopped on a dime, and I took two of them. I’m struggling to catch my breath. To let her know I’m okay.
“He’s fine.” Ransom kneels next to me. “We need to get the vest off so he can take a breath.” When he releases one side, Karsyn releases the other side. It’s then that I can finally take a breath.
“Shit,” I heave trying to get my bearings back. “The girl?”
“The EMT’s are here,” Ransom tells me.
I look over and she’s being taken from the wreckage to the back of an ambulance, no doubt to be checked out.
“Clarence?”
“He’s gone,” Mason tells me as he walks over to me. “I need your gun.”
This is standard operating procedure, and we know it, but it still sucks.
“Why is he taking your gun?” Karsyn looks between everyone.
“When you kill someone in the line of duty, they always have to do an investigation,” Ransom explains to her. “But this was completely justified. He’ll get a few days off with pay, and then be able to return back. It’s normal.”
She looks relieved. “Shouldn’t you be checked out by the EMT’s too?”
“He should be,” Nick says as he reaches down to help me up. “You could have some internal bruising.”
“I’m tough.” I try to act that way, but I have to bend over at the waist to try and get my breath.
“More than anyone, I know you are,” Karsyn whispers in my ear. “But please get checked out. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to you because of him.”
We hold hands tightly as she helps me walk over to the ambulance.
Three hours later we’re getting an escort back to Laurel Springs. She’s sitting in the backseat of a car with me, and I’m holding her tightly in my arms. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispers, rubbing at the places where I have bruising.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” I whisper back. “My biggest fear was he was going to get out and get to you. I can only imagine what he thought of you. How much he blamed you for all the shit he went through. Of course I was worried about the girl too, but you’re always my top priority, even when you maybe shouldn’t be.”
She reaches up, kissing me on the jawline.
“Where am I taking you?” Nick asks as we hit the Laurel Springs city limits. “Your house or her apartment?”
Today has put a lot of things in perspective for me. One being that life can be taken away from you at any time. I’m not an idiot, I always knew that was the case, but there’s something about being on the receiving end of two bullets - it makes you think about all the things you’ve been putting off.
“My house,” I tell him. “Our house.”
She looks at me, tears pooling in those dark eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve wanted it for a while, but I didn’t know how to tell you, or I put off telling you. Today taught me a lot.”
When he pulls in, and we get out, we walk in as a family. Her, me, and Major. The family we’ve been for each other since she came into my life. Maybe I wasn’t smart about it to begin with, but I’ll be fucking damned if I let this gift go.
Not everybody is given second chances, and I promise myself I won’t fuck this one up.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Karsyn
“How’s it going?” Kels asks as I have a seat in the chair next to her.
She’s updating her charts, while I’ve already done mine. “I want my peace back again,” I grimace. “I’ve had to change my number again.” I frown. “You should be getting a text from me tonight with my new one.”
Since everything came out with Clarence, news organizations have found my name, and they’re all asking for interviews about what happened not only recently, but back in my childhood. To say I’m sick of it is an understatement.
“It’s a good thing you and Tucker moved in together, huh?”
“Yeah,” I agree. “I went by my apartment yesterday because I have like a box of clothes left there. I can’t tell you how many news vans were there. I just said fuck it, I’ll buy new clothes. So far no one seems to know I’ve moved in with him.”
“Today’s a big day for him, isn’t it?”
I grin. “It is. He should get the okay to go back to work. Not that I haven’t loved having him off to help me move and get stuff set up, but he’s starting to get cabin fever. So is Major. They’re both slightly starting to get on my nerves.”
“I feel ya. If Nick’s home too long, him and D-man decide to do projects.” She uses air quotes for the word. “Typically I have to hire someone to fix what they’ve messed up. I love them so much, but damn.”
“So the news, is that why you’re hanging out in the back?” She flips over her chart.
“Yeah, Dr. Patterson was scared for me to work the registration desk.”
“Good call.” She gives me a wink. “That means maybe you can go to The Café and get us lunch?”
Enigma (Laurel Springs Emergency Response Team Book 3) Page 18