The Truth About Comfort Cove

So maybe he’d scared her off with his fine-wine comment. For all of her strength and energy and determination, Lucy Hayes was fragile.

Which was why he was getting worried.

He’d give it fifteen more minutes and if she still wasn’t answering, he was going to call Lionel Smith, Lucy’s captain. If he woke the man up in the middle of the night, it wouldn’t be the first time someone had done so.

Thirteen minutes later, his phone rang.

“Hello?” He put a rein on his fear. If she was fine, then everything was good.

“I saw you called. Sorry I missed you.”

She wasn’t fine. At all. She was talking like she had marbles in her mouth. Or had just been to the dentist. Or something… Sitting up, his entire being on alert, Ramsey said, “What’s wrong?”

Had she been crying?

Her mother again?

“I…”

“Lucy?” She was scaring him. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m home.” He started to breathe a little easier.

“And?”

“I took a drive tonight, Ramsey.” Her voice wasn’t just tired. It was weak. He waited.

“I mapped those numbers from Wakerby as coordinates on an Aurora area map.”

With several uncharacteristic pauses and starts and stops, she told him about starting at the grocery store where her mother had been attacked. About coming to a dirt track and trees and looking around.

“I fell, hit my chin. I’ve just come from the emergency room. I’m not concussed, but I punctured the side of my tongue and have four stitches in my chin.”

Her tongue injury explained some of the difference in her speech.

“You fell?”

“Tripped over a root.”

Lucy hadn’t been watching where she was going? Didn’t sound right.

“I…just…went a little crazy, Ramsey. Thing is, I knew it. I just didn’t stop myself. I was so determined to find something.”

Another pause. Frustrated that he was so far away, that he couldn’t do more, Ramsey waited.

“What if we don’t break Wakerby? He meets with his lawyer on Monday, and then who knows? We still only have him for Mama’s rape. The DNA evidence could be thrown out. Which only leaves Mama’s testimony and she’s a wreck. Any half-decent defense attorney could cast doubts on her ability to get things straight. He might walk.”

“If he does, you’ll get him again.”

“I can’t just sit back and let that happen. I have to look at everything.”

“You weren’t wrong to look, Lucy. It’s what any good cop would have done.”

“That’s not what Lionel said.”

“You’ve seen your captain?”

“I called him.”