Chapter Twenty-One
Ellender Garza.
The dark-haired woman Drennan had collected from the Emerald Pools trail finally had a name.
It would take more than that to discern who could’ve ended her life, but it was a start.
The background check the law enforcement rangers had run told her the victim was only in her early thirties.
Never married, employed by Springdale’s very own mayor as an assistant for the past several years.
She didn’t have any large debts or a mortgage that might’ve gotten her in trouble, and a quick review of her social media accounts hadn’t pinpointed any kind of boyfriend who might’ve been the father of her child.
Her parents had passed years before, leaving their victim everything, including her childhood home and two vehicles, one of which was recovered in the visitor’s center parking lot once they had the license and registration info.
The rangers were searching the vehicle and had brought Springdale PD in to search her home, but as far as Drennan could tell, Ellender Garza was very much an average woman who probably hadn’t meant to get pregnant.
Like her.
Hot water coasted down her body as she rinsed shampoo from her hair.
Stinging needles pricked at her scalp as the soap made contact with the sensitive skin around the stitches.
It didn’t matter how many times she’d scrubbed herself from head to toe, she could still feel her abductor’s grip around her arms, feel him tightening the rope at her wrists.
Taste the scummy water of the pond. She’d fought back, but it hadn’t been enough.
He’d left bruises on more than her skin. They were etched onto her soul now.
But she thought they might not have ached as much when she’d fallen asleep with Harvey’s fingers drawing circles around her navel last night and his hand in her hair.
Or when she’d woken in his arms this morning.
Having him in bed with her—just holding her—had eased the pressure in her chest and fought back the nightmares that usually came.
Dreams her brain conjured showing her exactly what she’d never have.
Her parents, happy, healthy and alive, doing random, everyday things like getting into arguments about where to eat for dinner or visiting her long-since-passed grandmother.
Most people would consider images like that as anything but a nightmare, but every time they came, her heart broke a little more. What else would she call them?
But she remembered her dream from last night.
She’d woken up to it this morning. Real and warm and within arm’s reach.
Literally. Except something had changed.
Regret had infiltrated Harvey’s voice, his expression and his body language.
He hadn’t said it in as many words, but it’d been there.
In the way he’d extracted himself from her bed, how he’d rushed to leave.
He’d made a mistake. That much she could see of the few minutes they’d had together, and she’d known it’d been coming.
She just hadn’t expected to be so…hollow.
But she wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t try to convince him to see her worthy of the risk of getting close to someone.
She’d spent far too many years asking people to love her, and not a single one had ended in her favor.
She wouldn’t put herself through that again, no matter how much she wished Harvey could see himself as she saw him.
As devoted and aware, to the point he understood exactly what was needed in any given moment.
As intriguing and discerning of who he allowed into his life, as she’d failed to be so many times in hers.
Curious and impressive in every way that counted.
Kind, brave, responsible. He’d told her she was strong, that she was important, but didn’t he see the same attributes in himself?
Another slap of pain arched across her scalp, and Drennan turned off the water.
Her skin had pinkened just under blistering from the temperature of the water and the amount of times she’d scrubbed herself clean, and already she wanted to climb back into the shower.
She wouldn’t. She didn’t care what Harvey thought she should tell Dr. Yarrow.
She needed to get to the office to help the ME finish out the autopsy and provide law enforcement as many details about Ellender Garza as possible.
She needed to see this investigation through.
Drennan grabbed for the towel she’d left on the toilet seat and stepped in front of the fogged mirror while drying.
Her lower belly looked as it always did as she dragged the terry cloth across her midsection.
No signs of showing yet, but within the next few of weeks, her pants would fit tighter and she’d have no choice but to shop for maternity clothes.
Had Ellender Garza started showing? According to Harvey, she’d been a few weeks ahead of Drennan’s pregnancy, but it’d been hard to tell with the amount of bloat given off by the bacteria in her body breaking down upon death.
The on call ob-gyn had been rerouted for an emergency delivery during the ultrasound to check on the baby.
Drennan and Harvey had left the hospital with assurances everything was okay with the pregnancy, and she’d been too tired and beaten to let the anxiety win.
But what if the doctor had been wrong? What if something had been missed?
Now she’d had at least eight hours of sleep, a shower and soon an entire plate of breakfast food.
Her head was clear, and the spiraling thoughts were at full force.
The friends from her previous life—including Cassidy—had all been career-focused women putting off having families until their practices were established.
She didn’t have experience with what was normal or abnormal in a pregnancy, and the one person who might be able to help her through wasn’t in a position to do anything for anyone but herself.
Ellender Garza might’ve seen an ob-gyn once she found out she was pregnant.
Maybe even the same doctor Cassidy had recommended to Drennan.
She would’ve gotten to hear the heartbeat of her baby and see the sonograms of the little gray-and-white outline growing week by week.
She would’ve had questions and gotten answers and wondered if eating sushi really wasn’t allowed.
But someone had taken that from her.
Cut her life short, her baby’s life short.
And Drennan had come so close to the same end. That was why she had to see this through, why she’d run herself into the ground if it meant getting justice for those two souls. Ellender Garza hadn’t deserved her death. So Drennan would make sure her killer paid the price.
“We’re going to be okay, right?” Turning to one side, she slipped her hand over the spot where the baby would round out.
Harvey was right. She was skin and bones, the impressions of her ribs peeking through her skin.
She’d have to move to a high-fat diet full of peanut butter and avocados if she couldn’t keep anything down soon.
Securing the towel beneath her arms, she wrenched the bathroom door open. And saw Harvey. She sucked in a lungful of air as he stood on the other side of the bed, his phone in hand. “Oh. I… I didn’t think you were still here.”
Her skin flushed with the awareness that all that separated them was a bath towel and her queen-size bed.
Honestly, she wasn’t sure how they’d fit together so well last night with his broad chest and ability to take up an entire room with his intensity.
Drennan clutched the towel harder at the memory of his body pressed against hers, his knee wedged between her legs, how he’d held on to her hip and dragged her closer.
His agreement to stay with her might not have sounded like much, but it was everything to her.
“What are these?” His cheeks seemed to sink in, carving out deeper shadows running the length of his jaw and under his eyes. “All these messages from an unknown number.”
“Wait. Is that my phone?” Fury replaced the tendrils of appreciation and desire. She took a step forward to grab it from him from over the bed, but Harvey easily dodged her attempt. “You had no right to read through my private messages. Give it to me.”
She felt like a five-year-old whining for her favorite toy.
His gaze locked on her. Hard and cold and a little bit terrifying.
“First of all, you left it unlocked on the bed so I could read the dental results. Our victim’s name is Ellender Garza.
I sent that information on to the law enforcement rangers so they can start pulling a victim profile together.
Second, I didn’t mean to read through your messages.
A new message came through while I was reading the results that started with the words, ‘You’ve always been a selfish brat.
’ So yeah, I clicked on it to make sure it was coming from a wrong number, and I didn’t have to pay someone a visit. ”
Her body locked up on her. Her mind went blank.
No. No, no, no. This wasn’t part of the deal.
Reality wasn’t supposed to breach the bubble they’d created in this room.
In here, they were just two people who cared about each other and happened to be having a baby together.
No talk of the past or the future or the threat outside these walls.
Drennan closed her eyes against the shame charging through her.
Those messages… She’d kept them and all the voicemails as a reminder not to trust the upward arc of the cycle where her mother said what Drennan wanted to hear and pretended to give a damn.
To force herself to see the truth. No one was ever supposed to see them, least of all him.
Harvey tossed the phone on the bed, face up.
Full of messages just like that one from her mother.
He pointed down at the phone. “Except there are countless others just like that one from that specific number, spanning months. Who the hell has been messaging you that vile crap, and where can I find them, Drennan?”
She didn’t know what to say, couldn’t remember how to breathe.
“Is this the person you won’t tell me about?
” He was right there, suddenly standing in front of her.
She hadn’t heard him move, or maybe she’d been too wrapped up in her own thoughts to track him rounding the end of the bed and coming to stand in front of her.
His thumb traced the bottom edge of her lip, so light she could’ve imagined it. “The one who hurt you? Who is it?”
Tears burned in her eyes. She’d tried. She’d tried to hide it, to not blame herself for all the accusations and disappointment thrown her way, but abuse—in any form—liked to be kept a secret.
That was where it did the most damage, isolated its victims and crushed all sources of hope.
It’d built until she couldn’t handle the pressure anymore, and the control she’d convinced herself was enough broke.
Her mouth wobbled the harder she attempted to hold it in.
“My dad died when I was eight. It was a car accident. The kind most people don’t walk away from, but I did. ”
Harvey pulled back slightly, but not out of reach. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. He was my best friend. No matter how tired he was at the end of a long workday at the hospital or what else needed to be done, he went out of his way to spend time with me every day.” A smile tugged at her mouth, but even she could feel it didn’t last long as the grief rolled in.
Not as strong as it used to but still there.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever stop feeling it.
“We did everything together as a family. Just him, me and my mom. They were the perfect couple. Teasing each other while they made dinner together, laughing at inside jokes, sneaking kisses when they thought I couldn’t see, but after he died, my mom changed.
It was like a switch had been flipped. There weren’t any more trips to the nearest gas station for a treat or sitting down to dinner together.
Her smiles were gone, and I couldn’t figure out why she would get this look on her face anytime she saw me. Like I was a stranger.”
Straightening to his full height, Harvey gave her a glimpse of the soldier she knew him to be. Alert, ready. “Your dad was a doctor?”
Her heart squeezed too hard in her chest. She nodded. “I thought I could make her proud by following in his footsteps, but she didn’t see it that way.”
“She took her grief out on you, a child who was grieving her father as much as she was grieving her husband.” He lost that hardness as he stepped into her, his knuckles grazing her cheek.
The touch elicited a whole new sensation in her chest, as though she suddenly had room to feel something more than the armor she’d built against the people in her life. “And she still is, isn’t she?”
“No. Because I won’t let her. She sends me messages and leaves voicemails, but I never respond back.
I don’t answer her calls.” She’d never spoken about any of this.
Cassidy had been witness to her mother’s confrontations in the middle of the ER when she felt she wasn’t getting enough attention, but right now, Drennan wanted this to last longer.
This…unloading. Where she peeled back another layer of the empty, compliant outlet she’d been nearly her whole life and exposed the woman she knew herself to be underneath.
She wanted him to be part of that. She wanted to delay the inevitable moment Harvey realized he’d started caring about her more than he set out to, about what happened to her and the baby.
That moment was coming, and there was nothing she could do to stop it, but she could push it off a little while longer.
With moments like this. “I took away her power over me, and she’s desperate to get it back. ”
The notches between his eyebrows deepened. Did he know he was still touching her as though he needed that connection between them? “So then why keep them?”
“To remind myself I am not the abuse I endured.” Another invisible layer peeled back, revealing a spark of something she’d felt the night they’d met. “I’m the hope that refused to surrender.”