Page 56 of Vanishing Point
“He shoved you and held a gun pointedatyou.”
Dianne didn’t say anything. Just went back to furious scrubbing.
“There’s no lesson to learn. No perfection to claim. He will beat the will to live out of you, and then you’ll be wishing he’d just kill you and get it over with.”
Dianne whipped a furious gaze at Vi. “You’re the one who’s going to wind up dead.”
“Maybe, but you’ll only be next.”
“He won’t kill me. Helovesme. And it took a lot for him to trust me after whatyou’ddone to him.”
“You mean, when I was busy scrubbing his counters terrified he’d come home and beat me again, and you two were apparently having an affair?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But Vi absolutely knew exactly what she was talking about. Now she just had to think of what she could say that might get through to Dianne. Was there anything? Was there anything anyone could have said to her to get it through her head that she didn’t deserve what Eric was doing to her?
“He’ll never come back, you know. That man you first met. Who charmed you. Whoyouthought was building you up, making you forget whatever failure you were mired in.” She could see it clearly now, but in the moment she’d only seen someone giving her attention.
Not someone who made sure she knew how little she deserved it. Not someone who knew just what wounds to press on. She’d spent a good amount of years thinking maybe she deserved the abuse if she could be so blind, but to see him do the same thing to someone else, to make a victim out of someone else to the point this woman was willing to hurt other people…
No, she wasn’t stupid. No, it wasn’t her fault. And if she got out of this, she certainly wasn’t going to be worried about anyone thinking that anymore.
Chapter Sixteen
By the time Thomas had left Mags with Franny and Audra and headed back to Bent it was late. He didn’t go to his house, for a lot of reasons, but the main one was being there without Vi and Magnolia might just break him. He was barely hanging on as it was.
He went to the station instead. Copeland and Laurel weren’t there, but they had been texting him updates, and he knew they were hard at work. Unfortunately, most of the updates were boring, pointless and unhelpful.
They were running the prints. Talking to the hotel where the postal inspector had stayed. Waiting to hear the results of pinging the postal inspector’s phone.
So Thomas spent the entire evening leaving messages, sending emails, spreading as wide a net as possible. He asked anyone he knew of with even the tiniest connections to law enforcement to see what they could do. Zach’s FBI connections. Jack Hudson, the sheriff of Sunrise, who Thomas had worked with at Bent County when they’d both started out as cops and then again over the past year, when Jack’s family had been in some trouble. He was friends with Zeke Daniels, who was pretty tight-lipped about his past, but Thomas knew he had something to do with some secret gang-busting group, so he messaged him too. He even reached out to his cousin’s husbands who were former military, to see if they had any ideas.
He thought about driving around with some half-cocked idea that he would justsensewhere Vi was, but it was dark and he was exhausted, and while sleep would be impossible, driving around wasn’t smart.
He wasn’t going to magically find her like that. It required work, and investigation, and beingsmart. Everyone was working overnight on this. Everyone he trusted. The best detectives he knew.
But he had never been onthisside of things, not like this. And suddenly he had a lot of empathy for the people in his past who hadn’t followed his, at times, black-and-white view of the law and helping people.
Was this his punishment?
He shook that thought away because this wasn’t abouthim. It was about Vi. Who had driven off with the postal inspector for some unknown reason. He held on to the tiniest sliver of hope that it might have been of her own volition, for a good reason that would become clear as soon as possible.
Thomas went back to his computer, focusing on Dianne Kay. But there was nothing to indicate a woman who was anything other than what she’d presented herself as. A postal inspector from Texas. And wasn’t that good? That Vi was with someone who appeared to be on the up-and-up?
Except for the whole quitting her job thing and questioning Vi when she technicallywasn’ton the job.
He clicked off the monitor with more force than necessary. He needed more coffee, and probably some food. Though he didn’t think he could stomach either, but he’d try.
Before he could leave his office, and still far too early for anyone to be awake, Rosalie stormed into his office. “I got some intel for you.” She slapped a grainy black-and-white still from a surveillance video to his chest. “That son of a bitch isn’t in Virginia.”
Thomas took the picture away, stared at it, resisting the urge to crumple it. He could surmise who theSOBwas just by the violence in Rosalie’s tone. “Where was this?”
“Convenience store in Fairmont.Friday.”
Thomas swore. Fairmont.Friday.Eric Carter was in Wyoming. In Bent County. In the same town the postal inspector had stayed.
He couldn’t hear much else beside the hammering beat of his heart echoing in his ears.
