by Susan Stoker
Looking down the ravine to the small creek running alongside the road, Roberta gasped. She looked twice to make sure she was really seeing what she thought she was, and fumbled for her phone. Yeah, she’d definitely be calling the cops.
23
Ninety-Eight Hours Missing
* * *
Coach paced the small interrogation room. The police officers had not-so-politely shoved him into the room and told him to take a seat. As soon as he’d invoked his right to have an attorney present while being questioned, and informed the officers that a lawyer was on the way, they’d nodded and said they’d be back as soon as Montesa arrived.
He knew this ploy. The cameras were on him and the officers were analyzing his every movement. He’d seen enough crime shows to know that his actions right now could be scrutinized as much as the words that came out of his mouth. Everything he did could be a reason to put more suspicion on him.
Coach gritted his teeth and continued pacing. Every minute that went by was one more that he wasn’t able to be out looking for Harley, or at least planning what he should be doing. He didn’t really blame the cops for doing their job, he was the most likely suspect, especially with his background and since there was absolutely no trace of Harley, but it was frustrating as hell. She was still missing.
So he paced.
It was four steps to the right, a turn, two steps, another turn, four more steps, and then two more paces back to where he started. He’d lost count of how many times he’d circled the small room, but it hadn’t even begun to calm him down. Coach wanted to know what it was the investigators thought they had on him, but he wasn’t going to talk to anyone until John or Montesa got there.
Coach’s stomach growled, but he ignored it. He hadn’t eaten much in the last few days, he simply couldn’t keep anything down. The few times his teammates had convinced him he needed to keep up his strength for Harley, he’d had a nightmare about her, and thrown up whatever it was he’d eaten. It was simply easier not to have anything in his stomach to throw up.
Just when Coach thought he was going to lose it, training on how to keep his cool while under interrogation by the enemy be damned, the door to the room popped open, making him jerk in surprise.
A middle-aged man who could only be Montesa’s partner stood in the doorway with a look on his face Coach couldn’t interpret.
“John Black?”
“Yes. Listen, something’s happening.”
“Yeah, the cops want to accuse me of something I didn’t do,” Coach told his lawyer in obvious irritation.
“No, I mean with your case. Something’s happened. The police are running around as if a fire was lit under them and no one will tell me what’s going on. I finally asked the secretary where you were being held, and she gave me directions to get to you.”
“Harley?” Coach asked in an urgent tone.
“Maybe. I’m going to lurk out there and see if I can’t get more information.”
“Dammit! I need to get out of here.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not happening right this second,” the other man told Coach sympathetically.
“Fuck.” Coach pulled out a chair and fell into it, resting his elbows on his knees and putting his head in his hands. He stayed that way for a second, then pulled his head up and met John’s eyes. “Go. But if it has anything to do with Harley, I don’t care who you have to beat up to get back here, I need to know.”
“Will do. If it was someone I loved, I’d want to know too.” John turned on his heel and left the room, the door’s lock echoing loudly in the small space.
There was absolutely nothing Coach could do but wait. If he was lucky, whatever was happening meant that Harley had been found. If he was extremely lucky, she’d been found alive.
Coach prayed harder than he’d ever prayed before in his life. As much as he wanted to be with Harley, he’d be content for her to be breathing and in the care of someone else. His teammates would be on it. They’d take care of her until he could get to her.
Just in case, Coach crossed his fingers on both hands and said another quick prayer. “Please, let her be alive. We can deal with anything that happened to her as long as she’s breathing.”
Coach sat alone in the interrogation room for another ninety-three minutes, each ticking by slower than the last, before one of the officers who’d collected him from his apartment finally opened the door. His words stopped Coach’s heart.
“We found your girlfriend.”
24
Coach sat on the hard chair beside Harley’s bed in the ICU and simply watched her chest move up and down. It was the most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.
He’d been released from the police station without so much as an apology after being informed that Harley had been found barely alive.
Thankfully, John had still been there and had driven him straight to the hospital. A nine-one-one call had come into dispatch right after Coach had arrived at the station. A woman claimed to be on the side of the road on Main Street, five miles outside of Temple city limits, looking at a car that was on its side. It was resting in the water at the bottom of the ravine and she’d claimed it looked somewhat recent.
The cops had gone to investigate and had found the Ford Focus…and Harley. She’d been unconscious, but alive. She was dehydrated, had a broken collarbone and arm, and a severe concussion. The medics on scene had told Montesa and Davidson that based on the fact she wasn’t in acute organ failure because of a lack of water, it looked like she’d been conscious for the first few days and had been able to somehow get water from the creek to drink. It had saved her life. Her cell phone was found lying in the water next to her, useless.
Trapped by her jammed seat belt, and the fact that she’d been crushed up against the steering wheel, Harley hadn’t been able to free herself. With her broken arm and collarbone, her mobility had been limited. She couldn’t do anything but lie sideways in her wrecked car and hope someone found her.
The most pressing issue at the moment was that Harley was extremely dehydrated and they were concerned about her kidney functions. She was too weak for the surgery needed to repair her arm, so the doctors were waiting until she was more stable before deciding when they’d operate.
The machines around Coach beeped and hummed, but all he could see was Harley’s chest moving. She was breathing, albeit with the help of machines at the moment, but she was alive. She hadn’t regained consciousness at all yet, but Coach wanted to be there when she did. He wanted to be the first thing she saw.
“She wake up yet?”
The question was soft, but Coach knew it was Ghost.
“No, but she will.”
“Of course she will. She’s tough, Coach. No way she would’ve survived being out there for four days if she wasn’t.”
“Yeah.”
“You need anything?”
Coach appreciated the fact that Ghost wasn’t trying to talk him into leaving, or giving him any more platitudes. “No. Thanks though.”
“Montesa and Davidson said they’d stop by in the morning.”
Coach nodded.
“We checked that road. There was no sign of the accident,” Ghost told him, knowing exactly what his friend was thinking. “Blade and Hollywood went out there after the ambulance left and double-checked. No skid marks. The guardrail was damaged, but nothing that would be noticed from the road itself. The only thing they could find was part of her front tire on the side of the road. The best they can figure is that she hit something in the road, there was some debris in the area that looked like it might’ve fallen off the back of a truck at some point. If she hit it, lost control of her car when the tire blew and overcorrected, she could’ve flipped the car. It’s a long shot that she could’ve flipped it over the edge of the road without leaving a trace, but from the evidence, it looks like that’s what happened.
“The ravine had a large gouge in it where the car hit, but then it rolled back the other way
and came to rest on the side near the road. It was invisible from the street above, from either direction. It was literally a miracle that woman hit the coyote where she did and stopped to investigate. Half a mile in either direction and she wouldn’t have seen Harley’s car at all.”
Coach merely nodded again. It was a relief that his friends hadn’t missed anything, but it still hurt to think about Harley being scared, in pain, and alone by the side of that road. Later, he’d find out the name of the woman who’d found the car and reward her. Right now all he could think about was Harley.
“I’ll tell the nurse you’re staying,” Ghost reassured Coach.
“Thanks.”
“The team’ll be here in the morning. When her brother and sister visit, you can talk with them and get any other questions you have answered.”
Coach didn’t like the thought of spending even one minute away from Harley’s side, but he knew her siblings needed to see her too. He wouldn’t begrudge them that. If things had been different and it was Jenny lying in a hospital bed, he wouldn’t want anyone to keep him from her. Coach turned to his friend for the first time. “Appreciate it, Ghost. I know it’s been a long week, and even though I haven’t said it, I’m glad you’ve been there for me.”
“You’d do it for me and Rayne. Or Fletch and Emily. We all know it. I said it before and I’ll say it again. She’s one of ours. Now, try to get some sleep.”
Coach didn’t answer and Ghost obviously didn’t expect one. He turned and left the room, the door snicking closed behind him with barely a sound.
Coach turned his attention back to Harley. She hadn’t moved. Her lungs continued to be pushed upward by the pressure in the machines helping her to breathe. He hated to see her as helpless as she was, but damn was he thankful she was here. He’d honestly begun to think he’d never see her again. That someone had kidnapped her for whatever reason. He’d been sure it was somehow related to Jacks, but both Tex and Beth had said over and over that they didn’t think the man had anything to do with her disappearance.
Coach was both relieved and horrified that Harley had been within five miles of her house the entire time she’d been missing. They should’ve had a helicopter search, or used dogs…or something. He shook his head, knowing better than to second guess the last week. Sure, they debriefed their missions all the time, trying to figure out what they could’ve done better, but this hadn’t exactly been a mission.
He settled back into the uncomfortable chair, keeping his eyes on Harley’s chest and his hand on her arm. He needed the connection. Needed to feel her warm skin. Coach let the rhythmic motion of the breathing machine lull him into a restless sleep.
Four hours later, in the dark of the night, Coach came awake with a start. Something had woken him up.
Harley.
She was jerking under his hand and making frantic gagging noises in her throat around the breathing tube.
Coach stood up, the chair screeching loudly before toppling over. He immediately found and pushed the call button for the nurse, then leaned over Harley until his face was inches from hers.
“Relax, Harl. I’m here. You’re okay. You’re in the hospital. You have a breathing tube down your throat, don’t fight it. I called the nurse.”
Her brown eyes met his and he could see the panic in them. Her eyes were wide and she was choking around the tube in her hysteria. He put one hand on Harley’s forehead and the other on her cheek and leaned down even closer. His nose was touching hers now. Instead of being tender with her, Coach hardened his voice, wanting to pull her out of her panic to concentrate on what he was saying. “You’re okay, Harley. We found you. You’re safe. Hear me? I’ve got you. I’m here.”
Remarkably, his words seemed to work. Her eyes stayed wide and frightened, but she wasn’t fighting the tube anymore.
“That’s it. Good girl. Stop fighting. Let the machine breathe for you. Just hang in there. The nurse’ll be here in a second and she’ll see what you need. I’m so fucking glad to see your brown eyes, Harl. You have no idea.”
Her mouth opened like she wanted to respond, but Coach shook his head. “No, don’t try to talk. Just keep your eyes on me. Okay? I’m right here. You are absolutely fucking beautiful. Thank you for fighting to stay alive out there. Thank you for coming back to me.”
The nurse came through the door at that moment. “What’s wrong?”
Coach didn’t turn his head, keeping his eyes on Harley’s. “She’s awake. She panicked.”
“Ah, okay, let me check her out.”
Coach eased back, but told Harley, “Eyes on me. That’s it. You’re okay.”
He didn’t lose eye contact with her as the nurse checked the various machines around her.
“I’ll call the doctor. I can sedate her until the doctor gets here or I can see if I can get authorization to pull it out now.”
Harley’s gaze pierced Coach’s. Even without a word, he knew what she wanted. “Make the call and get the doctor to authorize you taking it out.”
“I think we should—”
“No. She’s lucid enough right now. Harley?”
She nodded vigorously.
Coach lifted his eyes from hers for the first time to look at the nurse. “Remove it.”
Knowing the nurse would have final say, Coach stared at her, willing her to make Harley more comfortable. Finally, she nodded. “Okay, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Coach didn’t watch her leave, but merely turned to Harley. “No problem, Harl. This is easy compared to what you just went through. Hang on a bit longer, okay?”
She nodded at him, and Coach’s chest hurt at the trust he saw in her eyes. For the first time in almost a week, he felt the itchy feeling on the back of his neck dissipate. She was going to be okay. He’d make sure of it.
25
Harley sat on Coach’s couch and smiled at everyone around her. She was so happy to be out of the hospital it wasn’t funny. She knew she’d come too close to death. Way too close. She’d felt it as she lay pinned inside her car. The accident had happened so fast she hadn’t even had time to hit the brakes. One minute she was driving along, lost in her thoughts and enjoying the warm weather, and the next she was stuck in her car in a couple inches of water.
She had a ways to go to get back to her old self, including gaining back the ten or so pounds she’d lost and getting her strength back to sit at her computer for hours at a time, but overall she was lucky—and knew it.
“I don’t know how you did it,” Emily told her. “I know I was scared to death when those guys kidnapped me and Annie. But I knew it was just a matter of time before Fletch found me.”
“That’s how I did it,” Harley told the other woman. “I knew Coach wouldn’t stop looking for me.” She felt Coach squeeze the back of her neck, and smiled as she continued. “The first night was the worst. I thought someone would see my car the first day. But as the hours passed, and I could hear the cars zooming by over me, and no one stopped, I knew I was in trouble.”
“It’s almost creepy how your car landed in a way that you were invisible to anyone driving by,” Rayne commiserated.
“Yeah. My phone landed in the creek when the car stopped rolling, and I couldn’t reach it, not that it would’ve mattered, it was waterlogged anyway. I couldn’t get out of the car because of the angle and my arm. All I could do was wait. After the first night, it weirdly got easier though,” Harley tried to explain. “I think I designed at least three new games in my head, and I went over every single minute that I had spent with Coach. It was almost…calming.”
“You should know, Harley,” Truck told her in a gruff voice, “that we pulled every string we had to try to find you. There was a former SEAL in Pennsylvania trying to find you, along with a firefighter’s girlfriend in San Antonio, a highway patrolman, who we just happen to know from the Army, down in San Antonio also doing his part. Not to mention all of us.”
“I appreciate it. Every second,” Harley said in a br
oken voice.
“You’re one of us,” Ghost told her, echoing what he’d told Coach more than once when she’d been missing.
“Has that asshole officer apologized to you yet, Coach?” Harley asked in a hard voice, obviously wanting to change the tone of the gathering away from a sad one.
“Heh, no. But I don’t give a fuck. I knew I hadn’t hurt you. My friends knew it. I didn’t give a shit about what anyone else thought.”
“I can’t believe they wanted to blame you. Assholes,” Harley said to no one in particular. “It pisses me off. There’s no way you would ever hurt me. I hate that you might’ve gone to jail,” Harley pouted.
“Fat chance,” Montesa scoffed. “They didn’t have any real evidence. The police chief was feeling pressure to do something after all the press, and since they didn’t have any leads, they decided to concentrate on Coach.”
Harley smiled at her sister’s staunch defense of Coach. She loved that both her brother and sister approved of him. It was important to her. “Thanks, sis.”
“You know it.”
“I got a call from Fish this morning,” Truck told the group, unexpectedly.
“Really?” Ghost asked.
“No shit?” Hollywood exclaimed at the same time.
“Yup. Apparently Tex called him and told him what was going down. He was pissed the hell off. But the weird thing is that I think it was the best thing that could’ve happened,” Truck said as he chuckled.
“How in the fuck was Harley disappearing a good thing?” Coach asked in a low, lethal tone, his grip around Harley’s nape tightening in his agitation.
Without seeming to be concerned about Coach’s anger, Truck explained, “He’d been moping around the hospital. Not caring about doing his physical therapy and getting better. The fact that he couldn’t do anything to help look for Harley, or to assist in the investigation, pissed him off. He’s been doing everything he can recently to get better and get released.”