The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(116)

Strickland continued to stare at her, disbelieving. Then she asked, “So what do I do now?”

Tracy stood. “You live your life, Andrea. You just live your life. And love your child. And if you’re fortunate enough to meet someone down the road, someone who loves you unconditionally, who makes you laugh and smile and forget the bad parts of your past, you grab on to him, and hold on to him with both hands.”

“My aunt told me you’ve been through this,” Andrea said. “She said you lost your family.”

“I did,” Tracy said.

“How did you get through it?”

Tracy gave the question some thought. “One day at a time,” she said. “You focus on the good days. You focus on that child of yours.”

“Do you have children?”

Tracy shook her head. “No.”

“But you found someone, someone who loves you?”

“I did,” she said.

Andrea Strickland smiled. “Maybe you’ll have kids.”

Tracy returned the smile. “Maybe,” she said, and she stepped toward the porch.

“Detective,” Andrea said.

Tracy turned back. The young woman came close and embraced her. “Thank you,” she said. “And I’m sorry about your family, that you had to go through this.”

Moments like these, Tracy realized what it meant to be without her family. “I’m sorry you had to go through it, too.”





CHAPTER 37


When Tracy returned to work, Johnny Nolasco summoned her into his office. He sat behind his desk, cheaters on the end of his nose, reading her draft report. Nolasco set down the report and removed the cheaters, holding them.

“Am I to understand that you just let this woman go?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you kidding me?” When Tracy didn’t answer, Nolasco said, “She’s led two police departments on a wild-goose chase for more than two months that resulted in the wrongful prosecution of her husband and two deaths, and you just let her walk? You want to explain that?”

“Devin Chambers was killed by Stan Fields,” Tracy said calmly. “He admitted it to me. That was my case. That was my investigation.”

“And Chen?”

“He killed her also. That was Portland’s case.”

“So what about Strickland? You just let her walk?”

“Well, Captain, as you advised me early and often, that’s a missing persons case, and that’s out of my jurisdiction. That’s Pierce County’s problem.”





EPILOGUE


September


The morning weather dawned iffy, which was not uncommon in the Pacific Northwest, especially near Puget Sound. On a woman’s wedding day, however, it was one more thing to cause worry. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Tracy knew you did not plan an outdoor wedding before the Fourth of July. She knew that until that magic date the weather remained too unpredictable. You risked your guests standing in a sudden rain. She’d thought they’d be safe mid-September, but when she awoke, alone—Dan had spent the week at the farm in Redmond, old-fashioned about not wanting to see the bride before the wedding—and looked out the sliding-glass doors of her bedroom, she saw an overcast and drizzly sky.

She fretted for about an hour, then decided to adopt what had been her father’s mantra when she and Sarah traveled with him to compete in single-action shooting competitions all over the Northwest. “You control what you can control. You give the rest to God.”

By noon, the gray haze had burned off, and the temperatures had topped out at a comfortable seventy-eight degrees.

Tracy had spent the day a bit of an emotional wreck, thinking about how much her father would have loved to have walked his daughters down the aisle on their wedding days, about how much Sarah would have loved to have been her maid of honor, and how her mother would have fussed over her dress and her hair.

Tracy wore a white tea-length bridal gown with lace and an asymmetrical hem. Tucked inside her gown, near her heart, was one of her favorite pictures, a family portrait taken at one of her parents’ renowned Christmas Eve parties. They would all be with her today, in spirit, if not in body.

Her hair had been professionally styled, pulled back and tied with white lace. She didn’t care if it accentuated her crow’s-feet. She wasn’t twenty-three anymore, and she wasn’t trying to be either. She was happy with her age, and for the first time in a long time, she was happy with her life.

“You ready to do this?” Kins said. He’d worn his blue pin-striped suit that he normally reserved for trial appearances.

“Ready to do this?” she said. “We’re not running out of the tunnel for a game.”

He laughed.

They stood at the end of a white runner leading to a white awning just beneath the Alki Point Lighthouse. Her castle. Beneath that white awning waited a justice of the peace and, next to him, Dan, as much a prince as any man she’d ever met. At his side sat Rex and Sherlock, wearing white bow ties, her two knights—not always chivalrous, but always there. Forty guests had risen from their white lawn chairs and turned to face her and Kins. The invitation had said to dress casually, in anticipation of warm weather, but Del and Faz, creatures of habit, wore suits and ties anyway.