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Once he had the older man on the line Friday afternoon, he got right to the point. “We were involved in an incident with another victim this week,” Tad told the chief. “Nothing notable with that case, except that for a while there, it looked like the woman and possibly her young son were in immediate danger. I was with Miranda. She was beyond frightened, Chief. It was difficult to watch. More so because she doesn’t have to live this way. I’m recommending that we tell her the truth. She deserves to know that she doesn’t have to live in fear. That her ordeal is done.”
“Was she afraid for herself on Wednesday?”
“No.”
“Then her knowing the truth wouldn’t have changed anything. I imagine she’s suffering from some form of PTSD. Or at least memory-related stress. Wednesday’s incident was a trigger, and there’s no guarantee that will ever end for her.”
Tad let the anger surging inside him burn silently for a few seconds. And saw the reason in what the chief was saying.
But did he have to be so...cold, so scientific about the whole thing? This was his daughter they were talking about. If he’d seen Miranda, seen his own daughter teetering in a hell of her own and yet managing to stay afloat, to tend to others...it would break his heart.
Which was why the chief had to approach the situation from a cerebral place. Understanding dawned on Tad as he stood there in his bedroom, looking at the open sock drawer from which he’d pulled the burner phone.
Brian O’Connor might be a hero, might seem larger than life, but he was just a man, too. One who’d lost his wife to illness and then his only child to a fiend who’d beaten her to the point of fearing for her life. Running for her life.
Like his daughter, the chief might grieve, but no matter how intense his personal pain, he managed to stay afloat. To tend to others.
“You two need each other,” he told his superior.
“I’m not at all sure she’d agree with you on that.” O’Connor’s tone was less robust than Tad had ever heard. “I haven’t been completely forthright with you, Detective.”
Heading out to his balcony, Tad counted the black bars across the front of the space by rote. There were twenty-four of them, mounted on top of a four-foot-high stucco wall. Spaced four inches apart.
Do not tell me her husband’s still alive. Not trusting himself to speak, knowing he had to learn the facts before he acted, Tad waited.
“The truth is, finding out that I know where she is could trigger Dana to disappear again,” he said. “I don’t think it would. If she’s as far along in her healing as you’ve reported, then she almost certainly wouldn’t. Trouble is, I’m not ready to take even that minute chance of losing her again.”
Tad was trying to keep pace with him. And to understand what was being said behind and inside the words, too.
“You think that anyone from her past life finding her could trigger the fight-or-flight reaction?” he guessed. Miranda in no way seemed to him to be so vulnerable that she’d run without first seeking assistance. Her whole world was filled with professionals trained to help those in her situation.
That was no mistake, he realized. Even the doctor she worked for was dedicated to the fight against domestic violence; not only that, he was a donor to The Lemonade Stand.
And the man she’d befriended, with the clear indication that she’d be open to more, the first man she’d, by her own admission, been interested in since her ex’s death, was a detective on leave volunteering on the High Risk Team.
As far as he knew, none of them had any idea about her past—except him, and she didn’t realize that—but she’d planted herself in the middle of a fortress.
A surge of emotion flooded him—like nothing he’d felt in many, many years. Deeply warm. And fiercely protective. The woman impressed the hell out of him over and over again.
“I think my daughter could still be hugely angry with me.”
Not at all the words he’d been expecting. Or any version thereof.
“Excuse me?”
“We didn’t part on good terms,” the chief said, giving Tad a feeling he didn’t like at all. Like when an investigation took a bad turn. A really bad turn.
“Mind explaining that one?” He didn’t consider himself subordinate at the moment. Or the receiver of a paycheck. This was news to him and he didn’t like being misled.
“I was trying to get her to leave the bastard,” O’Connor said. “She said I didn’t understand, that she loved him and he loved her...”
Lips pressed firmly together, Tad waited.
“The truth is, he turned her against me, Tad. I couldn’t believe it was happening at first. Didn’t believe it. I thought she was just having a hard day or was taking it all out on me. She said she could handle him. That I was making things much worse. Said she wanted her space, so I did my best to give it to her. And she’d go longer and longer between phone calls. Too late I realized he was isolating her from me, the one person who could protect her. She had few friends, had been a quiet child ever since her mother died. Didn’t date in high school or go out much. She was ripe for him and no matter what I tried to do to help her, it was always the wrong thing.”
Tad slumped into one of the two chairs on the balcony, elbows on his knees as he stared at the artificial-grass-covered floor. Having spent close to four months studying the insidious hell of domestic violence from all sides, he could hear the truth in every single unbelievable word O’Connor was saying.
His heart went out to the guy.
