Page 85 of Never Stay Gone
“I don’t wanna live without you anymore,” Dakota breathed. “I’d rather have died with you that day. I spent an hour in that car, beggin’ you to hang on. Don’t tell me you wanted to go, Shane. Don’t tell me that.”
“I’m a failure—”
“You’re not. Your dad, he messed with your head. You’re not a failure, and you never were. Lemme prove it to you. Please?”
He was asking more than for Shane to love him or to be his partner, more than for Dakota to have permission to call Shane his, to love him and make love to him, to wake with him every morning and fall asleep holding him every night. He was asking Shane to stay, to live. To build a life with him, a long, full kind of forever.
The tears came again, flowing like rivers down Shane’s cheeks. He couldn’t speak, but he nodded, and he squeezed Dakota’s hand.
Dakota spent the next hour peppering Shane’s fingers and his wrist and the inside of his elbow with kisses, whispering promises and words of love and devotion on Shane’s skin. “I’ll never leave you” and “I’m going to make you smile every day” and “You’ll never hate yourself again,” mixed in with “I love you, Shane” and “You are my world.” He started humming “Cowboy Take Me Away” as Shane’s eyelids drooped. He softly sang the chorus until Shane fell asleep, a smile trying to tease up his lips.
Shane had been released from the hospital only that morning. Dakota didn’t want to leave him, and he didn’t want to bring him along either. Neither option was right, and he’d cursed himself and Wayne and kicked the dust as he and Heath and Bennet loaded Shane gingerly into Heath’s truck, propped him on what seemed like all the pillows in Big Bend County, and then started for Austin.
Dakota spent the whole eight-hour drive on the edge of his seat, tuned to every flinch and wince and flicker of pain that creased Shane’s face. He was ready with water and pillow fluffing and open arms, pain pills when Shane needed them, and his voice, softly humming in Shane’s ear as the miles rolled on.
Shane waited now, along with Chief Ranger Skidmore, in the surveillance van parked outside. Dakota could feel the wire taped beneath his collarbone, the adhesive pulling on his scattered chest hair. At the end of the wire—at the end of the radio transmitter—was Shane. Dakota imagined a coiled loop of electrons spiraling from where he sat to the curb, connecting him and his love.
“I’m relieved to hear he’s doing well.” Amanda gave the three of them a watery smile. “Wayne tore enough lives apart.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Heath said. “He sure did.”
Amanda unfolded her hands and spread them over a manila file folder lying on her desk. “Shall we dive in?”
Her office door opened and Drew strode in, looking frazzled and rushed and bone-deep exhausted. He seemed to have lost at least ten pounds, and his normally well-fitted suit hung off his frame like a burlap sack. His face was sallow, cheeks sunken, eyes so dark they looked like they were bruised. His shoulders sagged forward, and he walked with a hint of a shuffle. He radiated defeat and despair.
He looked like a man with a noose closing around him.
“Drew?” Amanda frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“We called him to join us, ma’am,” Dakota said. He shifted forward in his seat, both bootheels bouncing now. “You both were close to Wayne, and we thought it would be best to speak with you at the same time.” He gestured to an empty seat at the end of the governor’s desk, like Drew was being invited to take his place at the head of a long dining table.
Drew hesitated, then sat. He didn’t meet his wife’s gaze.
Amanda’s gaze bored into Drew as he settled, sighed, and fiddled with his phone. He wouldn’t look at her. After a moment, Amanda turned her attention to Dakota.
There was something in her gaze, some shiver deep in the backs of her eyes. Dakota held her stare and didn’t blink.
“Let’s begin,” Heath said. “Here’s what we know so far. Dakota?”
Dakota walked Drew and Amanda through Wayne’s murders, starting with Amber Serrano four months ago. Now that they knew who they were looking for, it was easy to spot Wayne in his rental Jeep pulling into the truck stop. He wore a trucker’s hat tugged low and kept his face turned mostly away from the cameras, but it was Wayne. They’d matched the Jeep’s license plate to the rental he’d signed for in Odessa too. As Dakota spoke, Heath and Bennet laid out blown-up surveillance photos: Wayne at the truck stop outside Rustler, filling up with gas. Wayne spotting Amber from across the station. Amber walking away, and Wayne following by car.
“We believe he used a ruse to get her to speak with him. Either he was asking to buy drugs, or he was asking for directions, or he used some other line. She was hitching, so maybe all he needed to do was offer her a ride. Whatever he said, she got in his Jeep willingly, and that’s the last time Amber was ever seen alive. Dr. Trevino puts her time of death on the same day these images were captured.”
“But you don’t know for certain that Wayne is the one who killed her?” Amanda’s voice was sharp, cutting.
Dakota hesitated. This was their gamble. “No, ma’am.”
He moved on quickly, running through Sophie Espinoza’s murder—same setup at the truck stop, same last known location, same circumstantial evidence that put Wayne and her in the same spot at the same time.
Then Carly Hurst. Dakota read off the mutilations to her corpse from Dr. Trevino’s report as if he was reading a grocery list. He kept one eye on Drew. When he was done, he turned to Amanda.
She was like stone, barely breathing, pupils tiny as pinpricks. “My God,” she whispered.
Drew was in constant motion, fidgeting with his phone case and shifting his weight in his chair, bending at the waist and balancing his elbows on his knees before he hung his head and stared at the floor.
Dakota didn’t say anything about the text message from Carly to Drew, about Carly having seen Drew and Jessica on their lover’s weekend at Big Bend.
From Carly, he moved to Libby, and then, finally, to Jessica. Dakota laid a frame captured from the surveillance video of the Odessa motel parking lot on the desk. “We believe Jessica was abducted after she left this motel, where she was meetin’ her lover.”
