Chapter 11
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Two weeks later . . .
I COULDN’T WIPE THE SMILEfrom my face if I tried. Life with Abigail is anything but boring. I should have known it would all come crashing down.
I sit down at my desk in the station with a smile on my face. I had a great couple of dates with Abigail and I can’t wait to see her again.
My fax machine starts beeping with an incoming message, but then it freezes, not printing anything with no sign of who it’s from. I sigh before slapping the side of the geriatric machine in hopes to get it moving along with no such luck.
I move along, writing up my reports that are due to headquarters and then look to the stack of files on my desk to see what needs to be looked at next when my desk phone rings.
“Savage-Ranger Division,” I bark into my phone.
“Hey, Magic. Long time no talk,” my old unit commander says into the phone. I had heard he was the Sheriff now somewhere in East Texas.
“What’s up, Ghost? How’s it been?” I ask recognizing Holt’s voice anywhere.
“Not too bad,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “I got married and adopted twin boys.”
“You’re kidding,” I say. Glad to hear he’s settled and happy. If anyone deserves it, it’s Holt. His twin brother, Will, was killed overseas more than a decade ago when we were ambushed on a routine patrol. “Who’s the lucky lady?” I ask.
“Aliza Wilson, Stone now,” he says. I recognize the name. Wilson was in our unit too and happily married to Aliza with a couple of kids. I had heard last year that he and their girls were killed by a drunk driver. It’s a reminder that life can be cruel, and we need to live in the moment.
“I was sorry to hear about Sam,” I tell him. Holt and Sam had been best friends their entire lives, growing up in the same small town. “But I’m glad to hear that everything is going great for you both.”
“It means a lot to hear that,” Holt says then after a slight pause, “But this isn’t a social call.”
“What can I help you with?” I ask him, suddenly serious.
“I sent you a fax this morning on a BOLO, did you get it?” he asks telling me about a Be on the Look Out order he sent me. It must be important.
“No, the damned machine jammed before it could come through. What’s the BOLO?” I ask.
“We had a woman pass through here about a month or so ago,” he tells me. “She was nice enough. Kept to herself mostly. Worked with Katy at the diner and then one day just disappeared.”
“So, you have a missing person?” I ask not quite sure where this is going.
“Well, that’s where things get kind of hinky. I knew she was down on her luck. I was pretty sure she was running from a mean husband, you know? She just had that look in her eyes.”
“Yeah . . .” I say with more red flags popping up in my head than at a God damned ticker tape parade.
“When she disappeared, I didn’t think much of it, but then a few days ago we got this BOLO from West Virginia,” he goes on. “It seems the wife of a big coal guy got tired of him and tried to kill him.”
“For the money?” I ask.
“That’s the funny part, she hasn’t touched a dime of it. She went into the wind and never looked back. But the guy’s not dead and really wants to find his wife,” Holt says, and I feel a pit in my stomach open up and take root.
“And you think she’s the same woman who blew through Tall Pines?” I ask.
“The very same one,” he sighs.
“And you think she came this way? Because I have to tell you I served on a search warrant team not even a month ago, looking for someone from the east coast suspected of killing their husband but we had no details and it wasn’t her. It was someone using the same name to book a motel for their affairs.”
“After talking to the husband and some of his very powerful friends on the phone, I think she’d go to the ends of the earth to not be found, so who knows where she will pop up next.”
“It sounds like she’s already been to hell and back,” I muse.
