Chasing Shadows (First Wives #3)(54)

He paused. “Are you okay? You sound tired.”

“I am tired. Not a lot of sleep this weekend, or last. Now I have to be here. I think I need to go to bed early.”

“Sounds like a good idea. We wouldn’t want you getting sick.”

“Not that, please.”

“What hotel are you in? I’ll send flowers since you had to leave the ones at your place.”

“You’re too much, Liam.” No point in telling him a hotel. That would be the fastest way for all of them to know she wasn’t there. “Orchids last forever. They’ll be alive when I get home.”

“Okay, then. I won’t keep you.”

“We’ll talk soon,” she told him.

“Good night.”

“Night.”

Avery tossed her phone on the bed, opened the notebook she’d been drawing in since she made it to the airport, and continued to sketch.



“Detective Armstrong.” Avery stared at the uniformed officer. “Or Gray. Either one will do.”

“You are?”

“Avery Grant.”

“Are they expecting you?”

“No.”

“I’ll see if they’re available.”

“It’s important.”

It was coffee-and-donut early, so Avery banked on them being in.

The officer lifted the phone to her ear and dialed. “Yes. An Avery Grant is here to see you.”

Good, they were in.

“Grant?” the officer asked Avery.

She nodded.

“Yes,” the officer said back into the receiver.

She hung up the phone. “He’ll be out in a minute. If you’ll take a seat.”

Avery moved away from the desk but didn’t sit.

She recognized Detective Armstrong when he pushed out the doors leading to the back of the police station. “Ms. Grant.”

He reached out a hand.

“Detective.”

“You look much better than the last time I saw you.”

“That wouldn’t have taken much.” She’d been black, blue, purple, and green for six weeks.

“What can I do for you?”

“I need to see the pictures of the man who attacked me again.”

“The case has been closed.”

She lifted her chin. “I think you need to reopen it.”

Armstrong shifted back on his heels, his eyes blank. “Okay, then. Come with me.”

He walked her behind the reception desk and through the doors he’d emerged from. The noise behind the wall was ten times what it was in the lobby. It might be first thing in the morning on a Wednesday, but apparently that didn’t matter when it came to cops and their work. She walked around several old desks, all of them piled with papers. There was a wild-eyed young man sitting with his hands behind his back, telling an officer he “wasn’t there.” The exhausted officer talking to him wasn’t buying it.

They rounded the corner to a slightly less populated part of the space and into a semiprivate office.

“You remember Detective Gray.”

“Vaguely. I was pretty drugged up when I saw you both last.” They shook hands.

“Sit.”

She took the edge of the chair and waited for them to follow.

“I’ve started remembering things. Details of that day.”

“What kind of details?” Gray asked as he picked up a pad of paper and held a pen at the ready.

Avery held her notebook in her hand but closed her eyes in an effort to bring the image back up. “Boots. The work kind. I think they were new, because I remember a spiky edge to the tread coming at me.” She looked beyond the boots in her mind and described the man’s tan pants to them. “New boots and old pants you’d see on a homeless man, the contrast is clear in my head.” She opened her eyes to see the men watching her.

“The man who attacked you is dead, Ms. Grant.”

She narrowed her eyes. “No. The man in my memory is not the man in the morgue.”

The detectives looked at each other.

“Anything else?” Armstrong asked.

She nodded and placed her notebook on the desk.

Opening it to her amateur artwork, she turned the page around and pointed. “He had a tattoo on the inside of his right arm. I saw it when he dragged me around the car. This spider. It covered his skin and was so lifelike . . .” She shivered. “There were bones and hair. The eyes had color. Red.” No wonder she had blacked the image out.

Avery shifted her gaze between the two detectives and placed both hands on the desk. “I don’t remember this from the pictures you showed me. All I’ve seen in my nightmares is the mug shot of the guy you said did it. All the while I’ve kept thinking it wasn’t right.”

“Do you remember a face?”

She shook her head. “No. But I’m remembering details every time I close my eyes. The doctors said the day of the attack might flood back in, and it is. So it’s only a matter of time. I need to see the evidence you have. I need to know if this guy”—she pointed at her drawing—“is still out there.”

Armstrong sat back in his chair. “We need to pull your files and bring you back in. Where are you staying?”