Invisible (12 page)

Chapter 14

Jax

Talk about feeling helpless! I could only watch in horror as Keith followed Lainie out of the cabin; his gun pointed at her back to keep me from following them. Any sudden movement made me want to puke. When I was sure that I wouldn’t lose my breakfast, I headed to the car. God, how could I have been so careless? I couldn’t believe he was able to knock me out. It took me forever to get to the car where I located one of the cell phones and started dialing as I drove, praying that Matt would pick up. “Matt, he’s got her! They headed east.” The last thing I remembered was blurry vision, and I said, “Call Brent. I can’t follow…” And I blacked out.

“Jax?” I heard, “Come on, Jax, wake up.”

And then a blinding light in my right eye and then my left.

“You trying to blind me, Jordan? How long was I out?” I tried to push her hand away to stand up. The ground tilted and I grabbed the door as my knees started to buckle.

“Only about ten minutes. I made Brent come back so I could apologize for the way I acted. Jordan pushed me back down. “Sit down, Jax, before you fall down. You’ve probably got a concussion. If you move too much, you’ll just pass out again.

“I can’t. Gotta find Lainie. Keith’s got her.” I moved to pull myself up again.

“What do you think you’re going to do? You can’t even stand up without passing out.” She pulled the blood pressure cuff out of her medical bag.

After making sure I wasn’t on my deathbed, Jordan made me get in the backseat of Brent’s SUV. She climbed in beside me as Brent got behind the wheel.

“Don’t worry, Jax. We’ll get her back,” Brent said as he shifted into drive, and we pulled away from the cabin.

We’d been driving for about ninety minutes when Brent’s phone rang—it was Matt. They had spotted Keith and Lainie on the highway and were following them.
God, please keep her safe,
I prayed as we headed east.

Twenty minutes later Matt called back—they’d lost them. They got stuck waiting on a train in the little town where Keith stopped for gas. Suddenly, Brent frowned and stepped on the gas. “What? What’s happened?” I asked.

“Matt just spotted Keith’s car. It hit a tree head-on,” Brent answered.

God, now I was going to be sick. My head pounded as I willed Brent to go faster.

“She’s not in the car, Jax. There’s blood on the dash of the passenger side. Matt thinks she did it on purpose.” Brent lowered the phone and looked back at me in the rearview mirror as if he were trying to decide whether or not to tell me something. “Jax, Matt just heard a gunshot.”

Lainie

Everything was quiet. I raised my head and saw the tree we hit. Looking to my right, Keith was lying halfway out the windshield on the hood of the car. The force of the impact threw him forward just as I’d hoped. He was groaning while I unbuckled my seatbelt with shaking hands. Just as he started to move, I spied the gun laying on the floor between us. Reaching over and picking it up, I put it in my pocket before carefully getting out of the car. Hearing more moans, I started running.

I took off as fast as I could considering my knee and ankle issues. Keith was now yelling, and I could hear him following me through the woods. It was impossible to hide my path with the damp ground showing every footprint. He was getting closer, so I looked back over my shoulder to see where he was, forgetting that I needed to be watching where I stepped. It only took a small root sticking out of the ground to trip me up, sending me face down into the forest floor as my knee twisted in pain. When I stood up and tried to put weight on my left leg, I realized there was no way that I could outrun him even without knowing how bad his injuries were.

There was a tremendously large tree close by, and I thought that might be my best bet to hide there while I caught my breath.

My imagination magnified every sound. I had no idea how close Keith was to finding me. There was a tree to my left that looked even wider than the one I was hiding behind, and just as I made up my mind to try and get to that one, a hand grabbed my shoulder.

“That was not a smart move, Elaine,” Keith said as he leered at me. Blood was running down his face from a long, gaping cut on his forehead. He wrapped his right hand around my neck as he grabbed my locket with his left, breaking the chain. He started to smile, thinking he had what he’d been waiting to get his hands on all these years.

“It’s not there. We found it a couple of days ago,” I said as I smirked at him. “You’re going back to jail for good this time.” I watched as he used his thumbnail to open the necklace one-handed and pry the picture out, looking for the slip of paper. When he didn’t find it, he dropped the locket and lightly brushed my hair away from my face with the back of his hand.

“No reason to keep my hands off you now, little girl,” he said as he ripped my shirt down the front, exposing my chest to his lecherous gaze.

I wanted to vomit.
No,
I wanted to vomit on him. I’d never seen so much hate and evil in a person’s eyes, and I was now more scared than I had ever been. He held my throat, choking me, squeezing tighter and tighter. I used fingers, arms, and elbows—slapping at him and digging my nails into his arms trying to loosen his hold on me but nothing worked. I let myself go limp, resigned to the fact that I was going to die out here in the woods. My thoughts were of Jax, hoping someone would find me so he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life searching for me. He would need to move on and find someone who made him happy.

Then I remembered the gun in my pocket.
Oh my God, how could I forget about the gun?
I grabbed it, brought the muzzle up and pulled the trigger

.

Chapter 15

Lainie

Someone was calling my name. I couldn’t move. Something heavy was lying on top of me. “Elaine?” Suddenly, whatever weight was there was gone. I gulped in air, finally able to breathe deeply. My throat burned and every muscle ached. Someone pried my fingers from the gun. Opening my eyes, I saw Matt. “You okay, Elaine?” Tears were running down my face. I looked around trying to remember how I got here.
Oh. Keith. The car. The gun.
As reality sank in, I stood on my good leg and leaned over, losing everything I had eaten today.
Oh my God, I shot him.

Jax

Getting jumped by Keith was a rookie move, and it should never have happened. I was supposed to be the one keeping her safe, not the other way around.
Please God, let her be okay.
I continued to pray in earnest as we pulled up next to Matt’s car. When I took my first step out, I almost hit the ground as my head continued to spin. I gritted my teeth and willed the nausea down as I leaned against the car.

Then I saw
them
…Matt was carrying Lainie out of the woods. Her face was pressed into his shirt. Liz ran to them and hugged them both as Matt made his way to Brent’s SUV.

He set her down on the tailgate, and I made my way to the back of the SUV, stepping lightly so everything would stay in its proper place in my head.

“He can’t hurt you anymore. You did what you had to do,” Matt said. Her throat was red, and I saw the imprint of Keith’s hands encircling her neck. I wanted to empty a clip into his head. I didn’t even care that he was already dead.

I made it to Lainie without falling on my face, and we were cuddling close, each consoling the other as we began to hear sirens in the distance. She started to shiver. “Thank God, you’re okay,” I said through the lump in my throat. She began to cry again, softly at first, just whimpering and then uncontrollable sobbing with her face buried in my shirt. I held her tight and let her cry it out.

The state police arrived and took Lainie away to another area to question her. I watched her walk towards the cruiser with the officer, and it was all I could do to stay seated. Then someone called my name. “Jax?”

I looked up and saw an old friend. “Evan? Last I heard you were in California.”

“I moved up here about six months ago. What the hell happened here?” he asked.

Before I could answer him, someone in the other direction was calling to me. “We’re ready for you, Detective McKenna.”

Jordan barked at the officer. “You will question him over here. He’s got a concussion and shouldn’t move for your convenience.” She looked straight into my eyes. I guessed it was to make sure I wasn’t going to keel over any moment.

“Don’t you move, Jax. You need to get an MRI as soon as possible. I’m giving them five minutes before I bring over the EMTs.”

“Please check on Lainie. It looks like Keith tried to strangle her,” I said as the baseball took up residence in my throat again. I smiled when Evan told the officer that he would question me.

“Thanks, Evan.” I scrubbed my face with my hands, wincing when I touched the tender spot where Keith had hit me with the canoe paddle. “You remember when I told you about what happened when I was in high school?”

Evan looked at me in shock. “The blonde is the girl you told me about? The one who disappeared?”

I was sure I was grinning like an idiot. “Yeah, that’s her.” The EMTs were checking my vitals as I continued filling Evan in on the important details about what had happened since I walked into Lainie’s office, only stopping when Evan asked questions. It was hard to believe it was just a couple of weeks ago that this all began.

Lainie was sitting on the bumper at the back of the ambulance, talking to the other officers as Jordan hovered nearby. Didn’t those idiots realize she had almost died today?

Evan noticed that I was about ready to jump up and go rescue her, and he put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll go get her, Jax. I know you’re worried about her.”

“Damn right, I’m worried. Keith almost killed her today. They should let her change out of those wet clothes. I can see her shivering from here. I’m a cop, too. I get the protocol, but they need to take into consideration what the hell she’s been through the last few weeks.” I had to stop as my head started to spin. “When you get Brent’s statement, you’ll have three officer’s details about what’s been happening. That should be enough. They don’t have to risk her health.”

“I’ll take care of it, Jax.” Evan got up and headed to the ambulance. He pulled the officer aside and explained the situation. The officer frowned, but he closed his notebook and walked over to his cruiser.

As soon as he was gone, Liz rushed to Lainie and wrapped her in a hug. The last few weeks had been hard on both of them. Reliving that night had taken its toll.

I introduced Matt to Evan. “Are we done here, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Yes,” Evan said. “Let’s get you to the hospital before Jordan blows a gasket.”

The EMTs helped me onto a gurney and led Lainie into the back of the ambulance with me.

Chapter 16

Lainie

It took three hours to get Jax into a room. The doctor said they’d keep him in the hospital for at least twenty-four hours to make sure there weren’t complications with the concussion. Thankfully, I wasn’t admitted and only had minor abrasions and bruising; and an additional injury to my knee. I would heal physically long before the memories faded. Someday, I hoped to be able to close my eyes without seeing Keith leering at me.

Jax’s hair was in his eyes again, and I brushed it off his forehead, frowning at the dark purple bruise. Keith kept hurting the people I loved. I was glad I shot him and glad he was dead.

“I’m going downstairs to the gift shop. My laptop is still in the Chevy at the cabin, and I need to transfer some of these thoughts to paper.” Jax started to nod, but the pain immediately radiated to his face, and he just smiled.

By the time I returned to his hospital room, he was asleep. The tears ran down my cheeks as I turned to a blank page and started writing. Five pages later and I was finished. I carefully tore out three of them, folded the papers in half and wrote Jax’s name on the outside, leaving them beside the bed. Once I was out of his room and in the hall by the nurse’s station, I pulled out the cell phone and sent Matt a text.

Matt pulled up at the hospital entrance as I made my way out the door. “Take me back to the cabin.” One look at me and he started driving, somehow knowing that I had just made the hardest decision of my life. He called my mom, letting her know that he was with me and would be back in the morning.

Two hours later we arrived at the cabin. “What are we doing here now that couldn’t wait until morning?” he asked. I tore a few sheets of paper out of my notebook and handed them to him. I knew he was going to ask that, and I wasn’t sure I could speak the words so I had my answer already written out. He read it and asked, “Are you sure?” At my nod, he hugged me tightly and told me to call if I needed anything at all. Pulling out his wallet, he gave me all the cash he had on him. Money wasn’t going to be an issue for me since the tidy sum Dad left me was still collecting interest. I couldn’t access it while I had been hiding from Keith; however, with that situation resolved, I had the means to disappear forever if I wanted.

Matt and I swapped car keys, and he handed me the laptop out of the Chevy. My possessions could all be replaced but the words I’d already written couldn’t. He hugged me again and told me to let them know when I was safe and to call once in a while. I smiled and thanked him for everything. He was such a good man and never batted an eye when I asked to switch cars with him since I couldn’t drive the Chevy. I was very thankful that Mom and I had him in our lives.

Matt remained outside the cabin, waving until I was out of sight and headed south.

Jax

Something was missing. I was a bit disoriented and looked around the room remembering that I was still in the hospital when I saw Liz standing there crying. “What’s wrong? Is it Lainie?” Her eyes drifted to the paper on the nightstand beside my bed. Liz froze as I read the letter Lainie had written. Then I got
pissed
. “How can she do this to me after everything we’ve been through together? What does she mean she has to discover who Elaine is?”

Liz hugged me. “I don’t know, Jackson. She didn’t explain it to us either.” She brushed my hair off my forehead just like Lainie did, and the baseball was back in my throat. My eyes burned from unshed tears as I tried to wrap my head around the fact that she was gone. Again.