Page 37 of Vanishing Point
She looked away from him, at the window. The curtains were closed, so it wasn’t like there was anything to see beyond, but she still stared. He gave her time. Time to breathe. Time to think.
Eventually, and gingerly, she nodded. “Yeah. Whatever will end this.”
He set up the recorder, then asked her about the evening, and she answered questions in surprising detail. There was a kind of determined detachment as she described how the man she’d been dating had started to beat her in a furious rage.
She didn’t shed any tears, until she got to the last part. “All I did was ask about his wife. And he just…lost it. He wanted to kill me. And I still don’t knowwhy.”
Thomas’s heart beat triple time, but he kept his voice even. His eyes steady. “Does Scott have a wife?”
“She died. And he’d mentioned it, played up the grieving widower thing.” Christine swallowed. “So a few times I’ve asked what happened, thinking that’s kind of what he wanted. To talk about it, you know?”
Thomas nodded.
“But tonight, the story didn’t match what he’d told me a few dates ago. I pointed that out. I haven’t had much luck with guys, so maybe I was kind of a bitch about it.”
“Doesn’t mean he gets to hit you, Ms. Smith.”
She inhaled sharply, then winced a little. “No, it doesn’t. Anyway, I was getting on him for lying to me and he just…snapped. Said he was going to kill me.”
“He said that to you? In those words?”
She looked Thomas dead in the eye. Tears glimmered there, but she didn’t blink, didn’t look away. “He told me in those words. He told me he was going to kill me, just like he killed his wife.”
For a moment, Thomas didn’t say anything. He had to fight his reaction. It wasn’t enough to charge Allen with murder, but it was a step toward this being a lot more than just a domestic assault case.
“Are you willing to say all this in front of a jury?”
Her jaw worked for a second, and she was clearly in pain, even if she was on some pain medication, but when she spoke, it was with conviction.
“I’m willing to scream it from the rooftops,” she said firmly, her expression grim, despite the bruises, bandages and swelling. “I want him to rot in hell.”
So do I.
VI HAD THOUGHTabout waiting. She’d thought about trying to wave down the cop Thomas had driving by the house intermittently.
But in the end, she’d called Laurel Delaney-Carson. If only because Rosalie was too far away. It felt safer, smarter, to call someone she knew lived close by. Someone Thomas trusted more than anyone else. Someone he’d told her to call if there was trouble.
She was considering it a leap of faith. A gesture to Thomas that…she was here to stay and fight for their lives together, even if sometimes she wanted to stay hidden away forever.
God, she hoped it was the right choice.
She opened the front door, because Laurel had called and told her she was there. The woman stepped inside, closed and locked the door behind her in quick, efficientcopmoves. She was dressed in the same kind of drab uniform Thomas usually wore—khakis, a Bent County Sheriff’s Department polo. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and even though it was the middle of the night, she looked ready to handle anything that came her way.
Vi had to swallow down the battalion of nerves duking it out in her throat. She was in pajamas. Her hair was probably insane right now. She should have thought about her appearance, but she hadn’t wanted to wake up Magnolia and…
This wasn’t asocialcall. Vi breathed out. It didn’t matter how she looked. It mattered that she’d received a threatening text message in the middle of the night, after Thomas had been called in to work.
When she’d called Laurel, Laurel had assured her that Thomas was fine. At the local hospital questioning a victim. So, it hadn’t been some fake call. Thomas was okay.
And Vi was okay too. Maybe the text was more threatening than the usual screeds about how useless and terrible she was, and even more threatening than the voicemail he’d left a few months ago saying he couldn’t wait until she was a rotting corpse. Because that had been disturbing, but vague enough.
Count your dayswasn’t vague. It was a countdown.
Vi let out a slow breath to steady herself. She’d done the right thing. This woman was Thomas’s friend, his mentor. Even if Laurel didn’t believeVi, she’d at least do her due diligence for Thomas.
Unless she convinces him you’re just as crazy as Eric always said.
The fear of that, no matter how hard she tried to push it away, made her stutter when she spoke. “Thank you for coming. I shouldn’t have bothered you in the middle of the night. I know you’ve got kids and…”
