The decoy was on the ground beside him, blood seeping out of her neck, her eyes open and unmoving.
“No fucking way,” Ethan muttered, inching back away from her. The two Hispanic girls were huddled on a cot, each of them shielding themselves from view, one of them crying. The gray-eyed girl crouched on the floor under the other cot, her eyes huge and her face pale as she stared at the bloody young woman on the ground.
It seemed liked they all sat there frozen in time, and Ethan barely got his gun up when he heard footsteps heading toward them again. He couldn’t get all the girls in one place behind him, so he hoped to God that it was the police heading back there and not Lane.
There was some urgency in the footsteps, and it sounded like at least two people. Lane and Max, or two police officers?
When the footsteps stopped outside the room, Ethan felt a hint of anticipatory relief. If it was Lane, he wouldn’t have paused outside of the door, right?
And then there they were, like two beacons of light, the police, shouting at him to drop his weapon.
“They’re down,” he said, releasing a huge breath of relief and dropping his gun, putting his hands in the air. “I’m unarmed,” he added, since presumably it was one of those guys who had just shot Chuck, and he didn’t want them to be jumpy and trigger-happy while they had their weapons trained on him.
“Stand up,” the one said, jerking his gun to indicate the direction, just in case Ethan didn’t know which way up was.
It was over.
He glanced over at the gray-eyed girl who tentatively stood as the cops shoved him up against the lockers and cuffed him, and for a moment, he felt free.
The cuffs were a formality. Once everything was straightened out he could finally go home. Amanda would be happy to see him, Alison would run over and give him a hug, Jackson would run over and shove his way in. He could finally hold baby Caleb again….
The second officer came in to check on the girls, and he saw the gray-eyed one go weak with relief. Then he remembered it wasn’t over.
Not for him.
Not by a long shot.
His feeling of freedom dissipated as quickly as it had occurred, and as the policeman led him out of the tiny room, every last thought of the happy reunion that awaited him at home evaporated.
After Willow finished the grueling process of giving the police her statement, she was finally reunited with her family—her mom, Lauren, Ashlynn, and her brother, Todd. It was jarring having all of them there, rushing her, grabbing at her, hugging her so tightly that it hurt. Ashlynn and her mother both cried while Todd stood off to the side, hands in his pocket, shuffling his feet.
Their relief was understandable—their joy that she was even alive. It had probably been a constant fear while she was missing that they might never see her again.
Willow felt a little guilty not feeling as excited as they did, but she didn’t have the energy—all she wanted was to get out of the police station and go home. She wanted to curl up in her own bed and never leave.
In the car on the way home, she sat in the back seat with Todd like they were kids again, toying with the white business card in her hands, running her fingers over the name and number of the officer in charge of her case, who had asked her to call if she remembered anything else.
Just walking into their home, Willow felt anxiety surge up inside of her. It felt like she had been away for much longer than just a few days. How could she be back so soon and yet nothing was the same as it had been when she got back from her run?
“Scott has been beside himself,” Lauren told her, coming up beside her to hug her again.
Instead of returning the hug, Willow stiffened, and after a moment her mother pulled back, forcing a smile, but unable to hide the flash of hurt that grazed her features.
“I’m not up for company right now,” Willow said simply.
“Oh, of course not. It’s late, he can stop by tomorrow.”
Another person who would ask her a million of the same questions she had already answered multiple times that night.
Since she hadn’t asked any of her own, she finally asked, “Did you hire a private investigator to come get me?”
Her mother frowned, then her expression cleared. “Oh, we tried to. We called someone Ashlynn’s boss knew of. We spoke to his assistant or whoever and she said she would forward the inquiry, but we never heard back from him. Why?”
Instantly regretting asking, she merely shook her head, not wanting to go into the conversation about Jack or whatever his name was.
“How did you know about that?” Ashlynn insisted, a frown marring her brow.
Sighing in defeat, she said, “He was there, I guess. That’s what he said anyway, I didn’t know if he was lying, or…telling the truth. I thought he was lying but he knew both of your names.”