Page 7 of Dark Memories
“The man on my side had brown eyes and was around six feet tall and muscular. The other one I’m not so sure about. Maybe hazel eyes and a little shorter and leaner. They both wore knit caps over their hair, long-sleeved shirts, and gloves, but when man one reached in for my gun, his sleeve rose up and I saw the tip of a tattoo. Unfortunately not enough to tell what it was, but it could have been the tail of a snake or something like that.”
His eyes slid closed, and she knew he was fighting to stay awake. She took a card from her purse. “My cell number is on here. If you think of anything else, call me. I’ll probably want to talk to you again at some point.”
He blinked his eyes open. “Whatever you need from me.” When she stood, he grabbed her hand. “Please find Kali.”
“I plan to.” Failure was not an option. “One last thing. Mr. Jamison received a text warning him not to contact the police. So I wasn’t here, okay?”
“Got it. Never saw you or heard of you.”
“Good man,” she said as she gave his shoulder a squeeze. Every instinct she’d honed as a cop said he had no part in the kidnapping.
* * *
She finally found Zach in the hospital’s chapel. She stood at the door, her heart heavy at the sight of him. So many thoughts and feelings were crowding her head that it was impossible to wade through them. Memories of their time together, Abbie and the darkest days of her life, and now another little girl lost. She wished she could go home, lock herself in, sort them out, and put them in their proper places. But she didn’t have the luxury of time. Everything except finding Kali needed to go back into their boxes.
Zach sat in a pew near the front, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. Harry blinked away the tears burning her eyes. She didn’t have time for tears either. She walked to the pew and slid onto the seat next to him.
“Do you believe in prayer, Delaney?” he said through the hands covering his face.
The agony in his voice sent an arrow straight to her heart, splintering it, and the heavy weight of her own memories threatened to crush her. The two weeks they hadn’t known where Abbie was or what was happening to her had been the darkest of her life. And oh, how she’d prayed for Abbie’s return. Her prayers had been answered, but the sister who came back to them was broken beyond repair.
When Harry would hear Abbie cry at night, she would go into her room, crawl into bed with her, and hold her. At seventeen Harry was old enough to understand the words torture, rape, and sodomy. She hadn’t been old enough or wise enough to know the magic words that would heal Abbie. She hadn’t known how to save her sister. Abbie was the reason she’d dedicated her life to saving other children from the degenerates who preyed on them.
“I don’t know, Zach. It certainly can’t hurt to pray.”
He sat up, reached for her hand, and tightened his fingers around hers so hard that it hurt. She bore it. For him. This wasn’t touching, not the kind she’d forbidden him to do. It was a man she cared about needing comfort. She could never deny him that.
“What now?” He swiped a hand over his face, and she pretended not to see his tears.
“We get to work. Larson got tag numbers on both cars—”
“That’s good, right?”
She hated how hopeful he looked because she was about to take that hope away from him. “It’s likely the plates were stolen.” He seemed to deflate, and as if her heart was connected to his, she deflated right along with him. Unless they as much as beat the odds of winning a mega lottery and the plates weren’t stolen, all she had were brown eyes and maybe hazel ones, sketchy heights, part of a tattoo, and a white van and white SUV.
“Let’s go,” he said, pulling her up with him.
“Where?”
He turned on her, rage burning in his eyes. “How the hell do I know? You’re the cop. Find my daughter, Delaney.” He let go of her hand and walked out of the chapel.
Harry understood his rage and didn’t take it personally. She exhaled a breath mixed with frustration on how little she had on Kali’s abduction, the way her heart was reaching out for Zach, and the fear that she wouldn’t find his daughter in time to save him from having his own nightmares.
She sat down in the pew Zach had vacated and for the second time in her life prayed for a little girl.
* * *
After leaving the chapel, Harry found Zach sitting in his car, his gaze what she’d come to know as the “thousand-yard stare.” Soldiers returning from the horrors of war had it, but they didn’t own it. She’d seen that vacant look on families who’d lost loved ones… Or on the families left behind when a brother, a sister, a parent couldn’t see past tomorrow. When their pain became too much to bear and ending their life seemed like the only answer. She’d seen it in her own parents’ eyes.
“Drop me off at the station,” she said after buckling her seat belt. “I need to run the numbers of the license plates Larson gave me.”
He speared her with his pain-filled eyes. “I’m not dropping you off anywhere. Wherever you go from now on, I go.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Zach. You’re a civilian—”
“A civilian?” he snarled. He jerked the wheel, swerving across a lane of traffic, coming to a jarring stop on the side of the road as car horns blared. He slammed the car into park and then crashed his fist down on the steering wheel. “I. Am. Not. A. Civilian here, Delaney.” He shifted to face her. “I’m her father. If I have to, I’ll buy out the entire Dark Falls Police Department, but I’m your shadow until we find my daughter.”
“You can’t buy a police department.”
