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I don’t… have any words. The shit Wilder says confuses the fuck out of me. I’ve learned to ignore most of what comes out of his mouth.
“No,” I deadpan.
“Of course you don’t,” he grumbles, taking the gun without answering my question and tucking it into the waistband of his jeans before he strides from the room.
“Be on your guard,” I shout after him, “and call if you find anything.”
He gives me a two-finger salute in return. Cursing him out under my breath, I turn and stride in the opposite direction, ready to find Emilia and eliminate this stalker once and for all.
* * *
As I’m finishingup clearing the top floor of the building, my phone buzzes, Hawk’s name appearing on the screen. I haven’t seen any sign of Emilia yet, and the few students I saw just looked at me likeIwas the crazy one when I asked if they’d seen someone carrying an unconscious girl with black hair.
I can feel myself spiraling. That’s the thing about trauma. It makes no difference how much training I have or how much distance I've put between myself and that night. What happened is always there, festering in your mind and waiting for the most inopportune moment to taunt you with the memories and bring you crashing to your knees.
Except I can’t allow it to do that. Emilia is counting on me.
My ability to think logically and treat this situation like any other is already compromised. The truth is, I’m too emotionally involved. With every room I searched, I kept expecting to see her lying on the floor, slouched in a chair, or draped over a desk. Dead. Her lifeless eyes staring at me, silently demanding to know why I let her down.
My stomach heaves, and I close my eyes against the suffocation of failure. As soon as I do, the memory of blood smeared across the walls and seeping into the floors assaults me, and I snap them open.
No. That won’t happen this time. I won’t let it. I can’t.
A coldness has settled into my bones, making my fingers stiff as I finally answer Hawk’s call.
“Yeah?” My voice is hoarse, and I cough to clear away the last cobwebs of my past. Dwelling on that shit won’t help me now. It’ll only further impair my judgment, and then we might not find Emilia in time.
“Nothing on the tapes,” Hawk growls down the line. “No sign of her anywhere on campus. Whoever this guy is, he knew enough to stick to the blind spots.”
Fuck.It’s entirely possible he could have gotten her off campus without being caught on any of the cameras. In which case, we might never find her. He could take her anywhere in the city, in the state. Hell, in the goddamn country.
“I’ve reached out to the tech team,” he continues. “They’re scouring traffic camera footage as we speak.”
Dammit. I should have thought of that. Maybe I would have if my head was clearer and I wasn’t behaving like a frantic boyfriend.
Forcing my teeth to unclench, I spit out, “Smart.”
"What now?" Hawk asks when I don't say anything else because I'm still caught up in the fact that Emilia might not even be on campus, and we don't have a single lead as to where she is.
The question reminds me thatIam supposed to be in charge. The one he’s looking to for direction because situations like this are where I thrive. Because Hawk’s job is mainly conducted from behind a desk, and mine is keeping people like Emilia safe.
PeoplelikeEmilia.
Children who need rescuing from abusive parents; men and women escaping their violent exes; women running from obsessive stalkers.
People who the legal system has failed. Who the law can’t protect. Cops who won't intervene until it is too late. By which time, an innocent person has become just another statistic, nothing but a half-hearted political speech about how we need to do better. Only nothing will ever change.
It’s my job to extract these people from their precarious situations and take them to safety.
It isnotmy job to develop feelings for them and mess with their already delicate emotional states. When I enter their lives, these people are in highly volatile situations, making them vulnerable. I’ve had more than one woman develop feelings for me because they viewed me as their savior.
Nevertheless,Ihave never developed inappropriate feelings for one of them. If anything, I’ve kept every one of my charges at arm’s length, treating them with clinical proficiency. My top priority was ensuring their safety, and I refused to let anything interfere with that.
Until Emilia.
I don’t know if it’s because Hadley approached me and asked for my help as a personal favor or because this job has lasted longer than most, resulting in Emilia and I spendinga lotof time alone together. Or maybe it’s because she reminds me of Laura when I catch her in a particular light, or the way she chews on her lip when she reads, or how her nose wrinkles when she laughs. In those moments, I find it impossible to glance away.
It’s been a long time since the pain of my past has been this raw and exposed. I thought I’d come to terms with what happened. All my guilt and grief have been channeled into something positive, something that ensured others didn’t suffer the same fate as Laura. However, since Emilia stumbled into my life, I’ve begun to notice similarities between the two of them. Each one I find picks at that long-buried wound, prying it apart. Today has been the last catastrophe to rip it wide open.
