Page 25 of Manhunt in the Narrows
He couldn’t stop his laugh at seeing the pinch between her brows. As if he’d personally given her reason to react on his behalf. “What do I sound like?”
Sayles slowed her pace. Seemingly giving herself time to form the words without offending him altogether. “Like you’ve accepted your fate, and there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
He pulled up short. A tug started in his gut. In a way, she was right. He’d never imagined another life for himself than the one he had now. Maybe a few changes in the details, but this—working for the FBI—was where he belonged. Where he felt his purpose. “My dad served as a highway patrol officer for thirty years. Everything I know about law enforcement came from him before I was fifteen years old. It’s in my blood, and the second I turned eighteen, I applied to the local police academy looking to follow in his footsteps. I wanted to be just like him. Protecting people, making sure the bad guys didn’t get away.”
Guiding them deeper into the corridor, Sayles kept at his side instead of ahead. As though she knew the cost of giving up this small part of himself. As she had.
“He worked hard. Gone every week on shift, driving up and down the state, mostly pulling people over for speeding. My mom and I would see him on the weekends, and I looked forward to every Friday night when he walked through our front door with stories from his week. I’d wait in the kitchen with a chilled beer ready for him and a pizza on the way. After a while it just became our tradition.” Elias remembered every single story. Held on to them as best he could. It was the only way he could think to honor his father’s dedication to the job. To turning Elias into the man he was today, whether he’d been there or not. “Until one Friday he didn’t come home.”
Sayles’s attention settled along his left side. “What happened?”
“He’d pulled over a suspected drunk driver on I-80, outside of a little nothing town you’d never heard of. Nothing but desert around. Multiple calls had been made about the truck hitting both lines, cutting people off, going slow, then speeding up. Typical driving under the influence.” Except the stop had been anything but routine. “He was sideswiped by another vehicle. Killed instantly.”
“I’m so sorry.” Genuine regret laced her words and tunneled through him, straight through his skin, muscle and bone, and settled in his soul.
“It’s one of the risks of being highway patrol. Motorists, no matter how much driving experience they have, aren’t paying as much attention as they should. He knew that and wanted to do the job anyway. That was just the kind of man he was. Saw a need and worked to fill it, even if it meant putting himself in danger.” Because who else would step up to do the right thing? His father had made sure Elias had absorbed that mentality from a young age. “We got the call he’d been in an accident, and the paramedics hadn’t gotten to him in time. We found out later the driver who’d hit him hadn’t bothered to stick around, and the one my dad had pulled over had taken off.”
“They just left him there?” Her voice wobbled, and Elias couldn’t hold himself back from looking at her anymore. His sorrow had become her own, as if she were trying to shoulder some of the weight.
“Another driver called it in a couple minutes later. Tried to help him, but there was nothing they could do.” Tension radiated from his shoulders down his spine. “Later on, we learned the truth of what’d happened. Once I was in the academy, I convinced my dad’s former supervisor to show me the dashcam footage from his car that day. Turned out the driver he’d pulled over hadn’t been drunk. He’d had a woman in the car with him. Someone he’d kidnapped. She’d been trying to fight him off while they barreled down the freeway, and the vehicle that’d hit him was his partner.”
Sayles’s jaw slackened. “Your dad was trying to help her?”
“He didn’t get the chance, but I think he realized what was happening when he stepped up to the car. He was in a position to help, and he would’ve done anything to get her out of there safely.
“I’m not sure I had much of a choice about joining the academy after that. I wanted to keep him with me, help people, and falling into law enforcement seemed like the right way to do it. I worked for Las Vegas Metro police department for a few years before turning my sights on the FBI. So, yeah. Being an agent makes me happy. Gives me a reason to keep going.”
“What happened to the drivers?” She didn’t need to voice the rest of that question. Worried about what’d happened to the woman in the car.
“They were never found. The license plates on both vehicles had been stolen. A search of local auto body shops never turned up anything concrete. State police closed their investigation three months after the incident without any new leads. We were told to move on. That that’s what my dad would’ve wanted.” But he’d known better. He’d known his father never would’ve given up had Elias been in his position. His own regret soured at the back of his mouth. “But I’m still looking.”
Her eyes widened at that. A secret he’d never told anyone but his mother before now. Not even Grant. “What will you do if you find them?”
He didn’t bother lying. “I’ll make them pay.”
Chapter Nineteen
Her heart hurt.
Along with the rest of her.
She could feel the pain rippling off Elias as he’d relived the last few memories of his dad. It was a wonder he hadn’t let that loss corrupt him. Turn him bitter and guarded. As she had. How had he done it? How had he managed to keep himself grounded when all she’d wanted to do was run, to hide and forget all those broken pieces of herself?
Flecks of water caressed her face as they passed beneath a tendril of water snaking down the rock canyon wall. He was going to make the people responsible for his father’s death pay. Because Elias was the kind of man who never gave up on the ones he cared about. He’d proven that coming after her, hadn’t he? Loyal. Warm. Dependable. She wasn’t sure her ex had ever possessed those qualities, and maybe she’d blinded herself to the red flags. Maybe her standards for affection had been so low that the small amount she’d received from her ex had felt like a privilege instead of a given, but that wasn’t the case anymore.
Elias had shown her that in the span of mere days as they’d worked together, survived together, saved each other. It was in the way he’d treated her as an equal and trusted her experience. How he’d let her take the lead and speak her mind. Respect. He respected her, and the realization imbued her with a sense of power. And desire. For possibility and change and…hope. Itwas an odd feeling. The shift that came with looking toward the future instead of living in the past.
Her ex was still out there, though she’d been granted a divorce by the state considering law enforcement couldn’t find him. He would always shadow her every thought, every choice, but she was so tired of letting him win. And that was exactly what she’d done by running from Colorado after her release and the courts had settled on her wrongful imprisonment. She’d let him win by giving up contact with her family, by pushing her away from her friends and her home, by not fighting back.
“I hope you find them. The people who killed your dad.” She meant it. Wanting that closure for Elias, even though she couldn’t have it for herself. To see her ex pay for what he’d done to her. They were nearly through Wall Street Corridor. The sun’s rays descended along rough outcroppings and sharp edges of the canyon wall. Her body temperature dropped as they crossed into the shade, then immediately spiked entering the sunlight. “I know what it’s like to not have closure. To wish you could change things.”
It wasn’t a great feeling, succumbing to a feeling created solely by a man determined to give up her entire identity for him. For nothing in return.
“You’ll get yours.” Elias’s confidence fought to soak into her, would if she let it, but she’d become all too accustomed to wearing a mask. A thick layer of protection against any and all feeling. It’d been the only way to get through those horrible months behind bars, to not hope. But the federal agent at her side had slowly started dismantling the darkness she’d lived in these past few months. Bringing with him a hint of light so small she hadn’t recognized it for what it was. A raft. He winked at her. Still playful after everything they’d survived. She hoped he never lost that ability. “It might not be today or next week, but sooner or later, he’s going to make a mistake. People like your ex thinktoo highly of themselves. Think they’re smarter than the rest of us. Most of the time to their own downfall.”
Why did she get the feeling Elias would ensure her ex’s arrest if given the opportunity? Sayles didn’t let herself follow that thought down the rabbit hole too much further. If she was being honest with herself, the comparisons she’d drawn—between her ex and Elias—were another added layer of protection. Trying to find similarities. A reason to shut whatever this was between them down before it had a chance to get under her skin. But he’d saved her. When she’d had nothing more than a palm-size rock and a knowledge of the park to her advantage against the Hitchhiker Killer, he’d saved her where her ex had purposefully tried to destroy her. And fear that had nothing to do with the trail and everything to do with that distinction slithered into awareness.
“I think I would like to see that.” Maybe she could somehow get a front-row seat in the courthouse. Just to watch her ex betray himself as effectively as he’d betrayed her. He deserved it. For what he’d done. For what he’d turned her into.
