Empty.
No belt. No holster. No radio. No cuffs.
Her other hand moved just as fast to pockets, the hem of theduvet, the space under the chair—anywhere a knife or baton or even a pen might have been tucked.
Nothing.
No obvious weapons in reach. The typewriter was heavy. The lamp was weighted. The chair was light, but not much of a shield.
A half-open door revealed a small bath tiled in white.
She went for it like a lifeline and shut the door behind her, hand lingering on the knob until she heard the latch catch. It wasn’t a lock, not really, but it was one more layer between her and the clothes on the rod.
The mirror caught her.
Clean face. Hair brushed. No mascara smeared, no split lip, no obvious bruises on her cheek or throat.
Someone had smoothed her, erased the night from her skin.
Her pulse thudded in her ears. She didn’t want to. Every cell in her body screamed not to. But the cop in her—the woman who’d knelt beside too many women in exam rooms and bathrooms and ER cubicles—knew there was only one question that mattered right now.
Did he touch me like that?
Her hands felt numb as she untied the robe and peeled up the hem of the flannel top. Ribs. Stomach. Hips. She forced herself to look for finger marks, for new bruises that didn’t match Highway 73, for any tenderness that meant a line had been crossed she could never uncross.
Nothing obvious. No bloom of purple on her inner thighs. No tearing heat when she shifted her weight. Just the deep ache in her upper arm and a generalized soreness that could have been dead weight and chemicals.
She couldn’t tell if the relief in her chest was real or just wishful thinking.
Drugs stole memory. Absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence. She knew that line by heart from the reports she’d written, the statements she’d taken.
Her eyes met her own in the mirror.
“You’re here,” she whispered. “You’re breathing. You’re not broken.”
Not that way,her mind amended.Not yet.
She retied the robe hard enough to bite into her waist, adding one more barrier that felt like control, however small.
White towels stacked neat. A tray of amenities—comb, toothbrush still in its wrapper, lip balm, tiny lotions—hotel-perfect, as if comfort could be curated.
She opened the door and stepped back into the room, the robe belt pulled tight like armor.
The last thing she remembered came back in hard, fractured images.
Frost-laced pines crowding Highway 73. Scout’s taillights slipping around the bend. Lights glowing among the trees behind her cruiser—too high for headlights. The radio crackling, then exploding into static.
“Dispatch, this is Unit Three. I’ve got?—”
Nothing.
Frozen mud, the beam of her flashlight cutting through brush. A shape in the trees.
A hand, fast and sure, stole the air from her as cloth slammed over her nose and mouth, heavy with something chemical and wrong. The world dropped away. Sleep, deep sleep.
A muffled sound caught in her own throat.
Darkness folding.
