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“No. You shouldn’t.” For a second he goes to take her hand, but he pulls himself back. “He’s trying to control you. Again. He’s sensed a way to get to you, and he’s using it to his advantage.”
“But what if he knows something?”
“He doesn’t,” Adam says firmly. Inside, he’s not so sure. What if she’s right, and the old man is connected? But his visitation request to the prison had been denied. And they checked the house, the old crime scene. What more can he do?
“How did he even know my address?” she says. “The restraining order prohibits it.”
“He must know someone. He must have friends.” Adam feels the anger growing. He can still get to Romilly, even from his tightly locked prison cell. Adam wants to do something, to protect her, to keep her safe. “I’ll get one of my detectives to take a statement from you now. Report it properly. Harassment.”
But she shakes her head. “No, no, I’ll go down to the front desk. Nothing should take you guys away from finding Pippa. That’s the most important thing.”
She stands up suddenly, taking the newspaper article and note back from Adam before he can stop her. Then she turns and walks quickly out of his office.
“Romilly?” he calls. “Milly?” But she’s gone.
He stands up, debating whether to go after her. To offer his help? His support? But that’s not him anymore. She has a boyfriend for that.
He’s always admired the way she faces up to her past, like she isn’t afraid of it. That nothing can stop her despite what happened all those years ago. It was one of the things that had first attracted him to her, that made him fall in love. Feelings that hadn’t abated, but had been submerged, drowned by the worries and doubt that eclipsed them as the years passed.
Romilly is right. Nothing is more important than finding Pippa right now. Certainly not him and Romilly and their failed marriage. But the fact remains that those pieces of her, their life together, have lodged in his brain like shrapnel. And now, slowly, his subconscious pushes them to the surface.
Adam sighs, then goes back out into the incident room. He looks at the whiteboard. Someone has added another thought to the list. Psalm 20, a psalm of David.
Adam’s never put stock in God or the Bible; religion hasn’t meant much to him over the years. But he looks at the words written on the board, the first two lines.
May the Lord answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you.
And he thinks of Pippa.
CHAPTER
26
ROMILLY’S STILL SHAKING when she gets back to her car. She hasn’t done as she said: to report it would mean explaining everything, and what happened, and … and … She can’t right now, she just can’t.
Especially with what’s happened to Pippa. Seeing it this morning on the local news was surreal. Taken straight from her nightmares and plonked into real life. She’d tried to phone Adam, but he hadn’t answered.
Phil rings now, making her jump. To her surprise, Phil’s advice last night had been to call Adam. “He’ll know what to do,” he’d said, giving credibility to her ex-husband for the first time.
“And?” Phil says now. “What did he say?”
“He said not to contact him,” Romilly replies.
“Well, then. We’re all in agreement.”
Romilly pulls the envelope out of her pocket and lays it in her lap. It’s now crumpled and smudged but has the same hold on her as the moment it came through her letterbox.
“Rom?” Phil says. “Aren’t we?”
“Yes,” she mumbles.
“You’re not going to contact the prison?”
“No.”
“Promise? Please, Rom? You know this won’t do you any good. Phone Dr. Jones again, if you need to. But don’t contact him.”
She imagines her boyfriend standing in his consultation room at work, hand on hip, confident in his assertion. She remembers Pippa’s assessment of him when they first met: “He’s so together,” she’d whispered, as if a sane, logical man was something fanciful. A unicorn among New Forest ponies. Rarely seen in the wild, and even more unusual, one willing to be caught. But rather than enjoying this stable, sensible influence, Romilly feels like his perfection highlights her flaws. Her madness magnified by comparison.
