Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(101)

“Hang on. We might not be in a big city, but this hotel has a security system. Check it out.” He pointed back at the hotel roofline, where at least one camera was clearly visible. He turned on his heels, already heading for the front office. “We might have some tricks up our sleeves just yet.”

The nighttime hotel clerk identified herself as Brittany Kline. Blond, bubbly, and extremely excited to assist with an official police investigation. Yes, the hotel had an excellent security system, she informed them. Installed six months ago, great cameras, great imaging, tons of stored footage. She liked to peruse it herself on slow nights. You know, in order to augment her online classes in criminology. She led them toward a back office, where she immediately proved herself to be adept at retrieving video from the system.With Brittany’s assistance, they sorted out which security camera had the best view of the parking lot; then backtracked through the various video feeds in one-minute intervals. It took only four tries to get it right.

“There!” Tessa exclaimed excitedly, pointing at the screen, as Brittany manned the digital controls. “That’s Nicky, walking toward the parked cars.”

“And there’s person number two, pushing away from the tree,” Wyatt provided.

They watched the figure approach. Clearly a male, but his back was to the overhead lights, casting his face in shadow. Still, neither one had any doubt.

“Thomas,” Wyatt stated.

“She doesn’t seem afraid of him,” Tessa commented.

“And yet, no welcoming hug.”

“Can you zoom in?” Tessa asked Brittany. The night clerk did her best, but the resolution remained grainy. After a bit more playing around, they decided the footage was best in broad view. Brittany resumed normal screen size, hit replay.

Wyatt watched the screen. Thomas’s rapid approach upon spotting his wife, followed almost immediately by an obvious hesitation. Nicky’s instinctive lean toward her husband yet also drawing up short. Love and fear, he thought. Twin companions in any relationship.

Even his and Tessa’s.

Thomas held out his hand to his wife.

Nicky stood there. Doubt? Wyatt wondered. Hostility? Wariness? Did she still see her husband of twenty-two years, a man who’d pledged to take care of her? Or did she see the grim-eyed youth from the dollhouse, a boy clearly conditioned to do what had to be done, regardless of the cost?

Another moment passed. Two. Three.

Thomas stepped closer. Nicky tilted her face up. The lighting was wrong. Wyatt couldn’t see her expression, and yet what she did next didn’t totally surprise him.

She placed her fingers within her husband’s grasp. She handed herself over to him.

Brittany sighed heavily, as if watching a romantic movie.

While Tessa exclaimed, “Oh my God, they’re in this together!”

“Maybe,” Wyatt murmured. But he wasn’t thinking of joint criminal activity. Mostly he was thinking that love is like that.

Thomas led Nicky to the last vehicle in the row. Low-slung hatchback. Subaru, dark green. In a matter of seconds, he was backing it out of the parking space. Heading toward the exit.

Standing behind a seated Brittany, Wyatt and Tessa both leaned forward, willing the parking lot light to illuminate the back license plate, give them what they were looking for.

“Come on,” Wyatt whispered, grabbing a notebook and pen from his pocket. “Come on . . .”

One digit. Two, three . . .

He was hastily scribbling them down, when Tessa suddenly grabbed his arm.

“Stop!” she ordered Brittany. “Freeze that frame. Look. On the right. Another car is pulling out. Wyatt, someone is following them.”





Chapter 35




THOMAS AND I drive in silence. He has both hands on the wheel, his gaze ping-ponging from the front windshield to the rearview mirror. Checking for what, I’m not sure. But I can feel his tension.

Outside the car windows, the darkness rushes by. There are no streetlights out here. No road guards, traffic lights. We are in the mountains, carving our way up through vast wilderness. It should be raining, I think. Then it would be exactly as it was before.

“For the longest time,” Thomas says at last, “I thought if we just stayed away, if you just had more time to heal. There were moments, you know, entire months, sometimes even a year, when you seemed to be better. I’d catch you smiling at a bird, a flower, a sunrise. Your face would brighten when I walked into a room. You’d even sleep at night.”

I don’t say anything.

“But then the wheels would come off. Abruptly. Without warning. I read book after book on the subject. Tried to identify the triggers. Some PTSD sufferers can’t handle noise; for others it’s a smell, a color, the feel of the walls closing in. For you . . . I couldn’t figure it out. Ocean, desert, city, country. I tried it all. But no matter where we went, your nightmares found you again.”

My husband turns to me. It’s hard to see his expression in the dark, but I can feel the seriousness of his gaze. “I tried, Nicky. I tried everything. I believed for the longest time that I could be the one who saved you. But then . . .”

He pauses, returns his attention to the road.

“I fell down the stairs,” I fill in.

“Vero,” he states. He sounds bitter, though I understand, somewhere in the back of my head, that his feelings regarding her are as complex as mine. He found a way to move forward, however. I didn’t, and therein lay the difference.