Chapter 14
Tanner
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEYcan’t fucking find him?” I roar into the phone on my desk.
“He’s in the wind, Savage,” Holt informs me.
“Well someone better fucking find him before he gets here!” I shout.
“We’ll find him,” he promises me but we both know he can’t guarantee that. “We’ve got people looking for him all over between West Virginia and here.”
“He’s here,” I say voicing my biggest fear.
“We don’t know that yet,” Holt says trying to placate me.
“I feel it in my bones, man.” I sigh. “He’s here.”
“Major has a call in to his super-secret squirrel contacts—” he starts, but I don’t let him finish.
“I gotta go. I have to find Abby,” I say before I hang up the phone. “Thanks for all of your help, brother.”
“Anytime. All you have to do is call.” At least there’s something satisfying about slamming a desk phone down. You can’t do that with a cell phone. But now, I have to find Abby.
I put on my white Ranger hat and jog to my truck. I need to see Abigail. If not for her, for me. I need to know that she’s still here, that she’s okay. I fire up my truck and peel out of the station lot.
My drive home is full of anxiety. I hate the unknown. I hate that this asshole is here somewhere in my town, threatening my woman. And that’s exactly what she is. Abigail is as much mine as I am hers. Somewhere along the line this tiny little slip of a woman stole my heart. It’s then that I realize.
I’m in love with her.
I press my boot down on the accelerator. My need to see her, to tell her how I feel before it’s too late just ratcheted up tenfold.
I pull into the driveway and cut the engine. I run up the steps and throw the door open and find complete and total chaos to me neat and orderly home—our home.
“What the fuck?” I shout as she races by me, not noticing that I’m home. Abigail is in a frenzy and it makes me wonder if that asshole has contacted her.
“I have to go,” she shouts, her eyes wide like a deer that realizes it’s about to get smoked by an eighteen-wheeler.
“No, you don’t,” I tell her in my calmest voice. I hold my hand out, palm down, towards her as if I’m gentling a skittish colt.
“Yes, I do!” she screams as she tears at her hair. “But I can’t find the money. Where is the money?”
I always knew this day would come, the one where she would try to leave me. When Abby first moved in with me after the football game, I found her bug out bag—a small duffle containing two changes of clothes, travel toiletries, and just enough cash to start over somewhere. So, I did what I had to do. One morning when she had to open at the cafe, I took her bag and locked it up in my locker at the station. It was selfish of me, but I couldn’t bear it if she left without word, disappearing into the wind then and I couldn’t bear it now.
“Where is the money?” she shouts.
“Gone, baby,” I tell her. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Don’t you get it?” she shouts. Abigail is coming undone at the seams and I inch a little closer to her. “I’m a murderer! I killed my husband. I’m a killer! Please let me go,” she cries.
“No, honey,” I say as I inch a little closer. “I can’t let you go.”
“So that’s how it’s going to be?” she asks me with tears in her eyes and it breaks my heart.
“Yeah, darlin’,” I say moving just a little bit closer.
“You’re going to throw me in jail.”
“No, darlin’,” I say.
