Page 84 of Unbroken

“Bye!” Ivy and James both waved and hollered before slipping into their car.

They pulled down the driveway, and we waited until they were out of sight before Devon kissed me again. The second time was slower and more thorough.

“If I don’t stop touching you right this second, I’m going to take you back upstairs.”

I groaned and put my hands on his chest, pushing lightly until he wasn’t in reaching distance. “Although that sounds amazing, I have to get Tato.”

Devon nodded, but when I dropped my hands, he closed the distance I’d just created between us. He took my mouth one last time in a kiss that I knew I would feel for as long as it took for us to kiss again.

“I’ll call you later, okay?” he promised, and I nodded.

My drive home was thankfully uneventful, as was picking up Tato, who had managed to wrap himself around every single one of the employees’ fingers.

They even sent me home with a goody bag of his favoritetreats and a new blanket he’d apparently claimed as his own. Tato slept the entire way home, and I was dying to do the same. I’d planned to drop my bags and curl up on the couch with him.

I’d loved my night with Devon, but it wasn’t conducive to getting a lot of sleep.

Pushing open the front door, more worried about getting Tato inside, I almost missed the small bag sitting on the chair on my front porch. I’d never used the chair, but it was cute, and served as a good spot for me to set things when I had to get the door open.

I grabbed the bag as Tato hurried in ahead of me. I dropped his leash, and he didn’t hesitate to hop up on the couch and curl in a little ball. I could have sworn I heard him snoring before I locked the door.

I dropped my keys on the table near the door and remembered the bag in my hands. Glancing down, I looked over the baked goods sealed in cellophane and straightened. I didn’t have to open the bag to know they were peanut butter cookies. I could just tell by their beige, brown appearance. It was the third time my neighbor had prepared some sort of peanut butter treat for me. But rather than curb my sweet tooth, they only led to flashbacks and memories I would do anything to forget.

There was a white note attached to the top of the bag by a small string. Carefully, I opened the note and furrowed my brow at the words written there.

Missed you.

“What the—” I mumbled. I read the four words a second time before crossing into the kitchen and chucking them onto the counter. Such a weird note to leave someone who was gone not even two days.

I was considering making a snack before taking a nap when my cell phone began vibrating. I fished it out of my pocket, expecting to see either Devon or Amanda’s names, but it was anumber I didn’t have in my phone. I stared at the screen for a few seconds before I realized it was a Colorado area code.

My stomach dropped in an instant. I hadn’t heard much from the detectives or the prosecutor assigned to my case since I’d moved back to Texas. Nick Hammond confessed to kidnapping and was charged with a myriad of crimes while I was still in Arkansas with my parents. Otherwise, we were waiting for the legal system to do what it was supposed to do. But the cogs of that particular wheel moved so slowly I thought I might never see him officially sentenced.

With shaking fingers, I pressed the accept button and put the phone to my ear. My “hello” was quiet, but the person on the other end heard me all the same.

“Hi, Blakely, this is Detective Wilcrest from the Colorado City Police Department. How are you?” I’d spent a lot of time with Detective Wilcrest following my kidnapping. I’d talked him through everything from top to bottom and front to back. He was a kind man in his late fifties who had a very successful career as a detective in Colorado.

I swallowed around thick emotion clogging my throat. “I’m good. How are you?”

“Well, I’m going to be honest, things have been better.” When I didn’t respond because I didn’t know what to say, the detective took a deep breath and continued. “I’m just going to cut right to the chase. Nick Hammond died two days ago.”

Somehow, I managed to mutter the words, “How—what—what do you mean?”

“Blakely, is there someone there with you right now, or maybe someone you could call to?—”

“No, just tell me what happened!” I bellowed into the phone. I was trying to stave off the panic that was already trying to take hold of me, and with every passing second, it was growing more difficult.

I waited for a moment while Detective Wilcrest cleared histhroat. I heard a door shut on his end of the line, and the background noise I hadn’t noticed faded to silence.

“We found him in his cell two days ago,” he said, blowing out a long breath. “And about a week before, he’d started trying to recant. He claimed he was set up. It’s a tactic a lot of criminals use: they finally realize that they’re pleading guilty and what that means for the rest of their lives. But…”

“But?”

“But he left a note. We found it on his bed, and it made the same claims—that he was innocent. We started looking into it, and Blakely?—”

“No,” I muttered. “No.”

“We now believe that he wasn’t acting alone. It appears that Nick Hammond was only the fall guy.”

---