Officer in Pursuit (14 page)

CHAPTER 11

“
I’ll walk you to the
door.” Grey met Kerry’s eyes as he put his car in park. He’d pulled
it as close as possible to Kerry’s front door, so the walk would be
short.

“Thanks.” A flush of
self-consciousness heated her cheeks as she unbuckled her seatbelt
and opened the passenger-side door. He probably thought she was a
big baby, but she was too grateful for his presence to care much.
This was the first time she’d been home – other than a brief stop
with Sasha – since she’d discovered the deliberate damage to her
tires.

“No problem.” He stepped out of the
car, giving her the courage to do the same.

No sooner had her shoes touched gravel
than her vision blurred with vivid red and blue, the strobing
assault of police lights.

Lights, but no siren – a small town
courtesy an unidentified officer was showing Kerry’s quiet road as
he cruised down it, pushing the speed limit.

Kerry’s heart skipped a beat. In her
mind, police lights were the stuff of nightmares. It’d been that
way ever since that summer, when she’d been surrounded by lights
and sirens on Wisteria’s lawn, penned in. Now, she felt heat and
pressure on her shoulder as Grey wrapped an arm around her and
pulled her to his side.

She was frozen in the bright primary
lights radiating from the car, and it didn’t seem like much of a
surprise when it came to a rolling halt at the curb in front of her
house, though she had no idea why it would be stopping
there.

“It’s all right,” Grey said, and in
that moment, Kerry realized it was obvious how scared she
was.

She didn’t have time to reply before
an officer climbed out of the car, coming toward them with
surprising speed.

It was Jeremy.

“We got a call from one of your
neighbors,” he said. “She thought she saw someone snooping around
your house. Did you know about that?”

“No.” Kerry heard the word spoken in
her own voice, though it felt as if someone else had said it for
her.

“Stay back. I’ll have a look around
the house.”

“Come on.” Grey ushered her back
towards his car. “Let’s get you in here.”

She let him guide her back to the
vehicle, where she sat in the passenger seat, her heart beating
fast, her fingertips strangely numb.

Grey braced an arm above the open
driver’s side door and leaned down to talk to her, but didn’t get
in. “Hey. It’s probably nothing – and if it isn’t, well, you’re not
alone.”

She nodded, wishing for bravery that
seemed ridiculously out of her grasp. Despite what Grey said, she
couldn’t help but dwell on what seemed obvious: whoever had slashed
her tires had returned to do something else, something
worse.

The white beam cast by Jeremy’s
flashlight preceded him when he rounded the house, his gun drawn.
The sight of his hands against the Glock’s grip kicked Kerry’s
uneasiness up a notch, and she wondered if he’d seen or heard
anything out of the ordinary.

He hadn’t. There’d been no sign of
anyone, he explained to her and Grey as they stood together beside
the car.

“I didn’t see anything, but I don’t
want to write off your neighbor’s complaint. Not after what
happened to your car,” Jeremy said.

Kerry nodded. “What did my neighbor
say, exactly?”

“She didn’t have the clearest of
views, with the way houses are spaced so widely apart on this road,
but she thought she saw someone looking in your windows. Like a
burglar might, casing a place, but I doubt that’s what was going
on.”

“Why?” Kerry asked, though she had the
terrible feeling she already knew what he was going to
say.

“Well, it’s unlikely that two
unrelated crimes would occur on your property within a day of the
other. And whoever slashed your tires wasn’t looking for money –
they didn’t even break into your car to steal the stereo or search
for other valuables. It was an act of spite or just plain meanness.
I don’t mean to scare you, Kerry, but are you sure you can’t think
of anyone who might want to bother you like that?”

Without meaning to, she bit her tongue
so hard she tasted blood.

“It doesn’t have to be an enemy,
necessarily, or even someone you’ve actually spoken to. It could be
a stranger who you’ve seen around lately, maybe someone you thought
you were seeing coincidentally. Anyone who’s said or done anything
weird, maybe followed you home from work or a public
place…”

Her throat drew up tight, almost too
tight to breathe, and she knew it was time to finally tell the
truth.

* * * * *

Grey reached out and took one of
Kerry’s hands, squeezing. He could feel the way she was shaking,
all the way down to her fingertips. Standing in her driveway in
front of Jeremy, she seemed tongue-tied, or maybe she was just
thinking, trying to fathom who might want to victimize
her.

Grey thought about it too, trying and
failing to come up with a helpful suggestion. It made him sick to
think someone might be harassing or stalking her, probably with
malicious intent. Maybe some kind of pervert. The gumbo he’d eaten
at the rehearsal dinner rose in his throat now, burning.

“Actually,” Kerry said, so quietly he
almost didn’t hear, “there is someone I can think of.”

Jeremy waited, his expression sober,
ready to write down what she said. “I’m asking because I want to
help,” he said when she didn’t continue.

She nodded. “His name is Bradley
Sawyer. He’s my ex-husband.”

Kerry’s words hit Grey like a ton of
bricks, and he actually felt the breath disappear from his lungs,
as if by magic. Ex-husband? Of all the wild possibilities that’d
occurred to him, he hadn’t thought of that.

“I haven’t seen him for three years.”
Now that she’d started, her words poured out like heavy rain,
washing away Grey’s preconceived notions about her past. “He lives
in Kentucky – or at least, as far as I know, he still does. I
haven’t had any contact with him, but before I left, he – he swore
to do the most terrible things. That’s why I left: I was
afraid.”

“Was he physically abusive when you
were with him?” Jeremy asked.

Kerry nodded.

The night wasn’t that cold. Grey had
been overly-warm at the party, crammed together with so many
people, but the temperature seemed to drop significantly as Jeremy
took down a physical description of Kerry’s ex-husband, asked what
kind of vehicle he might be driving and promised to set up an extra
patrol on Kerry’s road.

“Thank you for your help,” Kerry said
when the interview was done, her hand still trembling inside of
Grey’s.

“There’s one more thing that might
help,” Jeremy said, “and that’s an ex parte protective
order.”

“I could really get one of those?”
Kerry asked. “Even though I don’t know where Brad is?”

“Probably. It’d just be temporary, but
it’d be an extra precaution for the time being. That way, if he
approaches you any time soon, it’ll be unlawful. On Monday I can
help you file the necessary paperwork at the courthouse and
hopefully the judge will grant the temporary order same day. You’ll
have to describe what kind of abuse he last subjected you to and
when. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

Jeremy nodded. “Okay. Monday it is.”
He tipped his head. “Listen, I know Liam and Alicia’s wedding is
tomorrow. But maybe you could stay at Sasha’s place with her and
Henry. I don’t like the idea of you being here by
yourself.”

Slowly, Kerry nodded. “I could
ask.”

“I’ll call her for you,” Grey said,
“and give you a ride.”

She thanked him, but when Jeremy left,
they didn’t get back in the car.

“I don’t want to go to Sasha’s,” she
said, “and not just because I’m embarrassed after last
night.”

A sense of wariness seized Grey. He
couldn’t let her stay here on her own, not in these circumstances,
and definitely not in her state of mind. She was still trembling,
and hadn’t made any attempt to remove her hand from his.

“I think you should,” he said. “I
think Jeremy was right. Why don’t you want to go?”

“Because if I do, this’ll be the
second night I was too afraid to spend the night in my own home
because of him. Him, or maybe just the memory of him – I don’t know
for sure. But I feel like the world’s biggest coward. I can’t let
him take my home from me. I can’t.”

He wracked his mind for a way to talk
her down, to convince her that she couldn’t stay here. Her pride
wasn’t worth risking her life. If her ex had scared her so badly
that she’d fled the only home she’d ever known, he had to be
dangerous.

“I know it sucks to be afraid, but
don’t let this cloud your judgment. You’re not a coward – staying
away for the night is the smart thing to do.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to
live in fear. You have no idea what it’s like – how much it rules
my life. I can’t stand it anymore. I’m staying.”

He felt everything slipping through
his hands like sand and was suddenly terrified – for her and for
himself, because he couldn’t stand the thought of anything
happening to her. “Kerry—”

“Grey…” Her voice was so soft, it was
almost a whisper.

A pang of frustration sailed through
his chest. “What?”

“Will you come inside with me – stay
for a little while? I know it probably seems hypocritical after
what I just said, but I don’t want to be alone.”

“Of course I will.” Hell yes, he would
– and she’d have a hard time getting rid of him, if she really
planned to stay here all night. He kept the worst criminals in the
state behind bars for a living – there was no reason he couldn’t
use his skills to keep someone equally twisted out of her
house.

They were inside five seconds later,
the door locked behind them.

“Thank you,” she said, walking over to
the couch and sinking down into the center of it.

He joined her on the sofa, unable to
help watching the windows for any sign of movement beyond the
curtains even though he knew whoever had been trying to look
through them was probably long gone.

“It’s no problem,” he replied, “I’m
relieved that you asked me to stay. I couldn’t have left you here
alone. And if you change your mind about wanting to go to Sasha’s
place, I’ll take you there.”

“I won’t.” She looked up, locked him
in eye contact. Her eyes were huge and dark, a little wet. “I’d
much rather be here with you, even if this is the most embarrassing
thing that’s happened to me in the past three years.”

“Embarrassing?”

“Oh, come on. Like I ever wanted
anyone to know I have a psycho ex-husband who vowed to track me
down and kill me if I ever left. This was supposed to be my fresh
start.”

Something flared hot and sharp in the
center of Grey’s chest – an anger he rarely felt the likes of. “He
said that?”

“Only about a hundred
times.”

Grey couldn’t think of anything to
say. Instead, he took one of her hands again and held it tight.
“What a fucking asshole,” he eventually said, unable to hold
back.

“I know.” Her voice was flat, and
there was still a trace of wetness in her eyes – a hard gleam that
wore on Grey’s emotions, making him feel useless. “I hated him. I
still hate him. Please don’t think too much less of me because of
this – if you can help it, I mean.”

“Why would I think less of you? I
think we’ve established who the fucking asshole in that
relationship was.”

“I was the one stupid enough to be
with him. Don’t think I’m not ashamed of it – I am.”

“You must’ve been young. Everyone
makes mistakes.”

“Barely eighteen. I married him
straight out of highschool, and we were together for five years
before I grew a spine and left him. Really, it was six before the
divorce went through.

“As for mistakes, a normal mistake is
something like getting a bad ankle tattoo. What I did is something
that messed up my entire life.”

“You really feel that way?”

“I’m sitting here embarrassing myself
in front of you, forcing you to babysit me, aren’t I? I haven’t
seen him for years, but sometimes it feels like he still controls
what I do. Marrying him was like slapping myself with a life
sentence.”

“It sounds bad, but it won’t be
forever. It can’t be. If he’s really here stalking you and
destroying your property, he’ll be caught and you can press
charges. He won’t get a life sentence, but a little time in a cell
might be enough to shake some sense into him.”

She shook her head. “Knowing him, I
doubt that. You have no idea – there’s no way you could. He’s a
psychopath.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” He
wasn’t sure if she would, but he couldn’t imagine how she’d kept
silent for three years. The way she made it sound, no one knew. And
Grey couldn’t help but think that if Sasha had known, she wouldn’t
have let Kerry go home alone tonight without knowing who’d damaged
her car.