was so entirely on her own, she couldn’t imagine any real refuge. He’d be willing to bet she’d grown up in an abusive home and had therefore gravitated toward an abusive man, unable to believe in any other reality.
She continued her story in the same soft, almost expressionless voice. The boyfriend had punched the young woman driver, then flung her, unconscious, out onto the pavement like garbage.
“She...she sort of flopped.” She did shudder there. “I don’t think he saw that I’d pulled over to the curb. He drove past, going really fast.”
The victim’s Chevy Malibu had been found two hours later, about ten miles out of town, on a dirt road graded for farm machinery between a vineyard and a wheat field. Pure chance anyone had noticed it so soon. It was currently in an impound lot. The department’s crime scene investigator was going over it with a fine-tooth comb.
Presumably, a buddy had picked up the scumbag.
“You think he’ll come after you,” Jack said.
“I know he will!” she flared. “He’ll kill me!”
He had to ask, even though he knew the answer. “Has he hurt you before?”
Hands writhing on her lap, she finally nodded. “He burns me,” she whispered.
“Show me.”
After a brief hesitation, she swiveled in her chair and lifted her T-shirt in back.
For all that he’d seen on the job, Jack cringed and then swore. A couple dozen small, round burns showed on skin that should have been smooth. Some were long-healed scars; a few, likely infected, seeped.
It was damn lucky for Dustin Tackett that he wasn’t there at that moment. Lucky for Jack’s career, too, he realized, anger sizzling his nerves like an electrical surge.
“We need to get you to the ER to have those looked at and documented,” he said, voice deceptively composed. “Once we pick him up, he should be charged for what he’s done to you as well as the holdup and carjacking.”
Robin protested, but not very hard. He guessed she was used to being obedient to a stronger will.
He asked some questions designed to find out whether she’d really seen the boyfriend at the store, since reporting him could be a revenge ploy. But she gave details she’d have had no way of knowing if she hadn’t witnessed events.
She also had a good idea where Dustin would be holed up. He had a best friend who was the same kind of scum. She knew, more or less, where this buddy lived. Jack ran him and came up with an address that matched her recollection.
While he was behind the computer, he ran her, too, and was sorry to see that she was older than she looked, barely twenty-one, which limited the resources available for her.
He drove her to the community hospital, where a woman doc went silent and grim upon seeing the damage. After talking quietly to the doctor, Jack called the founder of a battered women’s shelter here in Frenchman Lake and explained the circumstances. Without hesitation, she said she was on the way.
ICU was his next stop. There he was told the carjacking victim had yet to regain consciousness. Nobody was quite sure whether the punch had done the damage, or the skull-concrete collision.
Finally, Jack called out the combined county/city SWAT team, and set out to make an arrest that was going to give him a whole lot of satisfaction.
* * *
MEG HARPER COULDN’T settle to work or read or even just sit after her maddening visit to the police station Friday evening. Her worry consumed her. Her anxiety ran in a loop, replaying every few minutes.
Her truly awful week had started with the phone call from the police department Tuesday night letting her know that Emily and Sabra were being detained after a noisy kegger had been raided. And on a weeknight! Worse yet, the two girls were supposed to be at a friend’s house working on a project for school. In other words, Meg’s own, formerly reliable daughter had flat-out lied to her face so she could get drunk and... Please not have wild sex or do drugs.
To her shame, Meg wanted to blame Sabra, who had to be leading Emily astray. Right? And, yes, Emily’s best friend was pregnant, which meant she had already gone astray, so to speak. But Meg had a suspicion she had been hiding her head in the sand. Yes, Sabra was pretty mixed up right now—thus getting kicked out of her own home and needing refuge in Meg’s—but Emily was rebelling in her own way, something Meg had foolishly believed would never happen.
If only the school had called her, the way they should have. She should have known first thing this morning that Sabra had gone missing, instead of only finding out when Emily tore into the house after getting off the bus at the end of the day.
“How come you let Sabra stay home?” She had glared at her mother.
With a punch of shock, Meg echoed, “Stay home?”
Emily sank onto the couch, her book bag clunking to the floor. “She wasn’t at school today at all.”
“But... I dropped her in front five minutes before the first bell.”
Moving slower than usual that morning, Sabra had whined about her back hurting. Meg remembered acute back pain late in her pregnancy. Sabra wasn’t anywhere near that far along yet, but... Oh, God, what if she was having contractions anyway? The fetus wouldn’t have a chance of survival.
But Sabra had insisted the pain wasn’t anything like that. She’d just slept funny.
Of course, when the bus came, Sabra’s bag was upstairs, and she hadn’t made a lunch. Meg had waved Emily, protesting, out the door, then made a sandwich for Sabra while she’d finished getting ready.
Finally, Meg had driven her to the high school, pulled up to the curb in front of the main entrance and waited while she got out.
Not until that afternoon when she learned that Sabra hadn’t gone to her first class or any thereafter did she wish she’d stayed at the curb until the girl was inside. But apart from cutting a few classes here and there, Sabra had attended school without protest. She was smart, an A student in subjects that interested her. A few weeks back, the art teacher had told Meg that Sabra was gifted with exceptional creative ability. She’d pulled out Sabra’s portfolio, which included charcoal sketches, colored pencil pictures and some watercolors, and Meg could see right away what Ms. Guzman was talking about.
Looking out the front window at the dark street now, as if part of her expected Sabra to stroll up the walkway any minute, Meg murmured, “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know!” her daughter cried from behind her. “I suppose you think I’m lying.”
Meg had to gird herself before she turned around. Why, oh why, had Emily decided to go off the deep end now? “I was talking to myself. I know you’d tell me if you had any idea where she went.”
Emily’s face crumpled, and she began to cry. “She’d have told me if she was going to run away. I’m sure she would have.”
“Oh, honey.” Meg covered the short distance and gathered her daughter into her arms. Emily grabbed hold and sobbed. She would hardly ever consent to a hug anymore. Even hating to see her grieve, Meg was relieved that she would turn to her.
She pressed her cheek to wavy, bobbed hair the same color as hers. They looked so much alike, people sometimes stared. In the past year, Emily had inched up enough that they were now close to the same height, too, which still disconcerted Meg. Emily had her father’s brown eyes, though, and was slimmer.
Instinct had Meg rocking slightly on her feet as she said softly, “We’ll find her. She’s impulsive. She probably went off with someone today and will be back tomorrow. Or one of her other friends will hear from her.”
Sniffling and wiping her wet face with her shirtsleeve, Emily backed away. “It’s just...doesn’t she know we’ll be scared?”
“You’d