Page 18 of Vanishing Point
Oh,God. For a second, she thought her knees might buckle. She shouldn’t have come to his work. She shouldn’t have come. She shouldn’t have.
He skirted the desk so quickly, she didn’t even have time to flinch when he grabbed her. But it wasn’t agrab, or at least not the kind her body was preparing for. He hugged her. Tight and close.
She felt her knees sag. Fear had propelled her from the ranch all the way to the Bent County Police Station, but Thomas’s strong arms around her was like a wake-up call.
“Thomas, I have to…” Run. Justrun.
“Let me see the envelope,” he said, carefully loosening his grip but only just, so enough space remained between them to take it out of her hands. When he held it out, the woman who’d been in the office with him—no doubt Laurel the detective he occasionally talked about—had a bag open and he dropped the envelope in.
“Copeland?” he said.
The man was another detective Vi knew just from putting little clues together, because Thomas didn’t talk about his jobmuch. Purposefully. He had taken herI’m not sure I’m ever going to be okay with you being a copto heart and did everything he could to keep that life separate from theirs.
For a moment, that felt like another pain, just to go along with all the others. Another failure in the never-ending cascade of them.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Those knee-jerk meltdowns would probably never go away, but she wouldn’t let them sabotage the life she was building.
Copeland took the bag with her envelope in it, while holding another bag with an identical envelope in it.
“I’ll get them processed and printed.” He nodded at her, intense and direct. The female detective—short, blond, pretty, no doubt Laurel—was watching Thomas.
Thomas kept his arm around Vi, but moved so they were more hip to hip. “Copeland will see if we can get a print, more information on where they came from,” he said. He pointed to the woman. “This is my other partner, Laurel Delaney-Carson.”
Vi nodded, beyond uncomfortable his coworkers were witnessing this…awful, awful thing. She didn’t want them seeing the pictures. She didn’t want Laurel, this person sheknewThomas looked up to, seeing…all her failures.
Not failures, Vi. Don’t let him win this.
“I’ll give you two some privacy,” Laurel said with a kind smile. “You let me know if I can be of any help.” Then she left.
Thomas rubbed his hand up and down her arm. “Did you drive out here? Where’s Mags?”
“Franny’s got her. I didn’t want to… I was going to call you, but I didn’t want you coming to the ranch, bringing all this ugliness out there more than it already is. I couldn’t…” She wouldn’t cry. She just wouldn’t allow herself to do that here. Maybe once she was back in her car alone. Definitely tonight in bed. Alone.
Because how could she keep doing this thing with Thomas with this hanging over her head?
Eric had sent him those pictures too. A new bolt of fear struck her at her core. Eric had never involved anyone else once she’d left her father’s house. All his threats were toherand her alone.
But if he knew she was dating Thomas… If he was threateninghimby sending these pictures…
She turned to face Thomas again, grabbed on to him. He was real, he was strong. But… “If he sent them to you, this is more. It’s… He can’t come here. He can’t know about Magnolia. He can’t—”
Thomas took her hands in his. Squeezed. “So he won’t.”
His gaze was so direct. So sure.
She wished she could believe his certainty. But she’d once been certain. She’d once believed all it would take was going to the police to save her from Eric.
She’d been so wrong. “Thomas. I have to leave. I have to run. If he comes here…”
“You will be protected.”
“I don’t think you understand,” she said, trying to maintain her calm, her composure. She had to be composed or he’d look at her and see everything those other cops had seen.
Hysteria. Overreaction.
“It’s not like I just ran. That was a last resort. I tried to tell people. I tried to get help. But his entire precinct believed him, supported him. He wasthisclose to having me involuntarily committed. If I hadn’t run away, he would have made it happen.”
Or maybe he would have killed me.She knew how possible it was. How likely he would have been to get away with it.
