The Watcher Girl(62)
I count three black SUVs, six officers, and an ambulance.
Today might have been a good day to die.
Fortunately, that’s not going to happen.
CHAPTER 40
They don’t arrest him.
I sit in the back of Officer Conrad’s SUV, the door open and my legs hanging out. After a quick check-over and vitals, a paramedic noted my chattering teeth and full-body trembling and handed me a thermal blanket, though I assured her it was nerves.
Two vehicles over, a couple of the cops talk to Sutton. No one rests their hands on their duty belts or looks remotely like they’re about to ready their cuffs. They’re just . . . chatting.
“Is there someone we can call for you?” Officer Conrad asks from the passenger seat. He’s young, easily the youngest of the group with his scrawny build and peach-fuzz goatee, and I’m assuming he’s been tasked with staying with me. If only he knew how accustomed I am to being alone, he’d know this isn’t necessary.
I shake my head.
My phone is back at the cabin. The only number I have memorized is Jonah’s, and there’s nothing he can do from the other side of the country.
I keep my gaze trained on Sutton, on the situation between him and the officers. I don’t understand why they aren’t apprehending him. The man held a gun to my back and marched me through a forest. At the very least he should be charged with an accessory to kidnapping or attempted second-degree murder.
As if he feels the weight of my stare, he glances my way, but only for a moment. And in that flash of a second, he almost looks sorry. Is he sorry for holding a gun to me for the last hour? Sorry for all the things he said? Sorry for marrying a psychopath? Or is he sorry for all of it?
A voice comes over the radio on Officer Conrad’s shoulder, someone saying they’ve got the suspect in custody as well as a small child.
Campbell.
Gigi.
I don’t understand . . .
Did he turn himself in? Did he turn her in? And when?
“Can I talk to him?” I ask. “To Sutton?”
Conrad angles himself toward me, lips pressed flat. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“So is that a no?”
He offers an apologetic wince. “Yeah. It’s a no.”
“I’m just trying to understand what just happened . . .”
Officer Conrad nods. “He saved your life, that’s what just happened.”
CHAPTER 41
My phone battery blinks to a sufficient 98 percent. I pluck it from the charger I borrowed and give it back to the woman in the pink scrubs behind the nurse’s station. This hospital is the size of most clinics back in Portland, but it’s buzzing with activity for a Sunday afternoon.
“Thank you,” I say.
The police confiscated my rental car as evidence and insisted I get a thorough examination at the municipal hospital in the next town over—protocol. Everything checked out, aside from mild dehydration, and they gave me a tiny white pill to help calm my nerves, though the trembling has yet to subside.
The first chance I got, I called Rose. I told her I was stranded and that I needed a ride. I promised to fill her in later. No sense in getting anyone worked up when I’m perfectly fine, and the worst is over.
She said she was on her way, and that was over an hour ago.
I replay the events from earlier, marching through the forest at gunpoint, the police, Sutton letting me go . . .
. . . the cop claiming Sutton saved my life.
I’ve yet to get an answer.
I’ve also yet to rectify how someone could go from doing something so vile to being my personal hero.
I grab a magazine from a nearby pile, opting to conserve my phone’s battery while I wait. An article in Psychiatry Now catches my eye—“The Psychology of Obsession”—but I make it through two paragraphs before deciding it hits too close to home. I fold the magazine, toss it back on the stack, and watch the circle drive for Rose’s car.
An ice-blue minivan creeps up to the curb, stopping to allow a frail older woman in a floral smock dress out of the back. Cane assisted, she makes her way to the automatic doors of the urgent care side. She disappears inside and another car pulls up; this one I recognize.
It’s Rose.
Standing, I slip my phone into my bag and check my surroundings, making sure I didn’t leave anything behind. I’m halfway to the exit when the passenger door swings open—and Bliss emerges. She scans the glass doors, and when she spots me, she presses a hand against her heart. The other holds a crumpled tissue. A second later, she’s all but running toward me.
We meet outside the automatic doors.
My father enters next, wearing an expression I haven’t seen on him since my mother’s guilty verdict—something that straddles terror and relief.
“I know you don’t like hugs,” Bliss says, eyes welling. “But I’m going to hug you.”
It’s strange, this moment. But after the day I’ve had, I allow it. I don’t have the energy not to.
I let someone hug me—and for the first time in a long time, it doesn’t kill me.
In fact, I’ve never felt more alive.
CHAPTER 42
I wake from a Valium-fueled sleep on my father’s family room sofa later that night. The house is quiet, though voices carry from the patio. Rose, Bliss, and Dad picked me up from the hospital earlier, and when I got home, Evan and Sebastian were waiting.