Chapter 21
Greer
The world around me is a blur, the sound muted by my rapidly thumping heart, the people moving in slow motion as I watch Koen be carted off in a blacked-out squad car.
Logically, I can’t figure out how they found him.
Allison is good, but she's not this good.
"Ma'am!" the officer standing in front of me screams, as if he's been shouting at me for some time. "Tell me your name."
Tell him my name? Were they not here for me?
"G-greer Allen,” I stutter out.
He takes a hand off me and keys a walkie on his shoulder. "Yeah, Cap, we've got her."
"Good, bring her in."
"Were you here of your own volition?" he asks me.
"W-what?" Tears blanket my cheeks, and I can barely reason out why I'm crying.
I'm saved.
I got exactly what I wanted, but now it's feeling like I damned a man to prison—one that deserves to be there, but I can't help the tightness in my chest.
It's too much.
He and I were just... We just... I sob again, and the man rolls his eyes.
“Did Mr. Grady kidnap you, or did you come willingly?" the man questions again.
Feeling uncomfortable, I do the thing Allison has ingrained in my brain. "I'm not talking without my lawyer present."
He sighs heavily. "Fair enough. She's at the station waiting for you. We'll talk there."
A breeze from the thin opening at the front of my blanket spreads across my skin beneath it. "Can I get dressed?" I ask.
He seems to contemplate something. "Sure. But no showering. There's evidence all over you, and I presume inside of you. We'll need to get a rape kit before you can shower."
That hits me dead center.
A rape kit?
Was I raped?
Before this, of course. I didn't give consent, nor was I lucid, but this time... this time was a horse of a different color.
Even so, I nod.
Once I'm dressed and in the back of a similar SUV, like the one Koen was taken in, I'm staring out the window, Bear's head in my lap as the cabin fades away, becoming a distant memory, a story I'll tell someday.
I survived.
So why does it feel like I'm dying inside?
The ride to the police station is weighted with anxiety. The officers in the front two seats keep glancing back, as if they think I’ll break and tell them everything if they keep making me uncomfortable.
All I can think about is what I'm going to say to Allison.
The truth will always be acceptable to her, but the lengths she went to for my rescue are unfathomable. This bell can't be unrung.
"Ma'am?" A voice breaks into my spiral, and I turn to find my door open, an officer holding it wide as he eyes me in concern.
"If you'll follow me, we'll go inside and wait for the doctor to arrive."
The doctor.
The one who'll test me for rape.
"My lawyer?" I ask, sliding out of the back seat, tugging on Bear's leash.
"She's inside."
"Greer!” Allison's voice filters out of the station’s front doors as they slide open.
She's in a full-out run toward me, tears streaming down her face.
When she and I collide, Bear starts barking up at us.
She holds me tight. "When they called, I thought they were calling to tell me they found your body. Thank fuck you're alive."
"I'm fine." I sob into her hair, breathing in her coconut shampoo, relishing the comforting scent of home.
Because she's part of my normal.
"I missed you so much. I'm so sorry I couldn't keep you safe."
"This isn't your fault," I tell her.
She holds me tighter, whispering, "I was the one who told you to drive. It's all my fault."
"No. It's not."
She opens her mouth to argue, but I clear my throat and flick my eyes to the two officers watching us to our left. "Not the place."
"So, I'm your lawyer today, then?" She straightens, wiping tears away. "They said you asked for me."
"I did."
"Do you want to make a statement? Get a rape kit done? They're going to want to speak to you about everything."
"No. I want to go home. I want a shower, and… I just want to go home.” I breathe out shakily.
She licks her lips, giving me a curt nod. "Got it. Give me a few minutes."
Standing by the SUV, I hear a few legal terms get tossed about, and one of the men gets loud with Allison, which doesn't go well for him.
"My client has rights!" she screams, stamping her foot. "If she doesn't want to give a statement, she doesn't have to. She's been through literal hell. I'm taking her home."
One of them gives pushback.
"Is she being arrested?"
"Well... no," one of them answers.
"Then we’ll be going. When she's rested and feels inclined, we'll come back for questions."
"Here's my card," the taller of the two says, handing over his business card. "My cell is on there. Let me know when she's ready."
"Will do, Officer Harold.”
Allison herds Bear and me into her car, driving out of the police station depot like a bat out of hell.
"You found me," I say finally when she pulls into my drive thirty minutes later.
"I didn't. I exhausted my connections a few days ago."
“My AirTag?”
“Blocked somehow. It’s like you fell off the side of the planet.”
Allison had given me an AirTag when I came to stay with her, told me to hide it in my duffel just in case something happened, and she needed to find me.
I’d hoped it would be the thing that brought her and the cops to me, but the more time passed, the more I thought maybe AirTags don’t have a reasonable accuracy rate.
"Well, then, how did they know where I was?"
"I don't think it's you they came for, G."
I swallow. "They came for him, and found me."
She nods. "They told me you were a happy accident."
I scrub my hands over my face.
"What happened?" she asks.
I sit back in the chair, sighing. "I don't know if I'm ready yet."
"They said they found you in bed with him, naked. Did he...?" Her question trails off.
"I can't. Not yet. I need to be home, and I need to process."
"Well, if you think I'm leaving you at home alone, you've lost your fucking mind."
"I'll be fine, Allison. After all, my boogeyman is locked up."
She looks at me oddly. "Sounds like you're sad about it."
I don't know that I'm not.
"Give me a few days?" I eye her as I get out.
Bear leaps over the middle into the passenger seat, bounding out of the door as my gaze lingers on Allison.
"You got it, G. If you need me... Do you have your phone?"
I shake my head. "My iPad's inside, I'll use it until I get a new one."
She nods. "Just keep me posted. Let me know you're safe."
"Will do. And, Ali?"
She locks eyes with me again. "I was driving that car. You might have told me to ‘drive,’ but I'm the one who hit the gas. We're both complicit."
Sadness bleeds into her eyes, but she doesn't argue.
"Love you, G."
"Love you, too."
I snap the door shut and watch her drive away.
After finding my hide-a-key and letting myself in, I breathe in my home before getting into the hottest shower ever and letting all the emotions from today flood out of me.
I struggle to reconcile my feelings with how I think I should feel.
I should be relieved to be home.
But I'm not.
I'm worried about Koen.
I'm worried about myself.
And I don't see a way forward through the muck.
Days pass, and while Allison has done a great job of holding off the cops thus far, it’s time for me to speak to them.
I haven’t even been able to tell Allison what happened, so speaking to them with her present feels daunting.
I’m still not sure what I’m going to say to them when I walk in beside Allison hours after getting ready to go downtown.
Our ride here was silent. Other than the random lawyery question she’d ask me, we let the radio fill the awkward silence.
Once inside, Allison does all the speaking until we’re sitting in a small room, a tape recorder in the middle of a drab, gray table, with a camera pointed at us.
Memories of what happened only days ago, before one of Koen’s cameras, rush through my mind. A wave of sadness I can’t comprehend yet follows, and I swallow thickly, my throat sliding.
The officer across from me narrows in on my every reaction, so I stiffen in my chair.
It feels as though I’m the one on trial when I’m the one who was kidnapped.
“State your name for the record,” the officer across from me says.
There’s one in the corner, lurking in the shadows of the room as if observing.
“Greer Allen,” I say after Allison’s foot slides over and prods me to answer.
“Thank you, Ms. Allen. I’m Detective Harold, and this is Agent Lasko from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You’ve been missing for two weeks, correct?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. The FBI is involved? “I don’t honestly know how much time I was gone. He had my phone and belongings.”
Agent Lasko shifts, but remains steadfast, staring me down. His wool sweater over his collared shirt has to be itching the shit out of him, but he remains stoic.
“Tell me, Ms. Allen, did you go willingly with Mr. Grady?”
I do as Allison told me on the way in and think carefully about my answer. “I did.”
There are cameras inside Allison’s house that she put there. It hadn’t been hard for Koen to tap the feeds.
Thinking of him as someone with a name, when for so long I knew him as Stalker, is odd. I didn’t have any time at all to get used to his name before I was thrust into the middle of a shitstorm.
“Can you explain why you went willingly?” Detective Harold asks, his hand fidgeting on a pen over a yellow legal pad.
“He threatened to harm Ms. Cheney if I didn’t comply.” This truth comes out easily, as I don’t think it’ll affect Koen’s case at all.
Not that I care.
Fuck, I don’t want to care.
He nods and scribbles something down.
“Then it stands to reason that Ms. Cheney is more than your lawyer, is that correct?”
I flick a look over to Allison, who already has her hand raised. “That’s not important to this case. Our relationship doesn’t interfere with my representation of Ms. Allen,” she snaps back.
Officer Harold sits straighter, gripping his pen tightly. “I’m sure it doesn’t. I was only asking.”
“I’m sure you were,” Allison grinds out.
Typically, I’d love to watch her go toe-to-toe with a man like Officer Harold, who exudes a pompous air, from his shined shoes to his tie that looks like it cuts off the oxygen to his brain. But now, after Koen, I’m confused and… preoccupied.
“Stick to things pertinent to your case,” Allison adds, crossing her arms and sitting back in her chair.
The pink silk shirt beneath her suit jacket is nearly as blinding as her grandmother’s pearls around her throat. She dressed to kill today.
She only does that when she thinks her client needs a distraction.
Today, I’m that client.
“Alright then,” Officer Harold says, but the man in the corner steps out of the shadows.
“How much do you know about what Mr. Grady does for a living, Ms. Greer?”
My heart stutters through its next beat. “I don’t know anything.”
The agent pulls a look of disbelief. “Funny because I have evidence that you were on his last job with him.”
“What?!” I squeak as the door flies open.
A man steps in, one who has both men standing at attention. Someone important, then.
“Lasko, a word?”
Lasko narrows his eyes at me before turning and leaving the room.
Harold follows.
The door shuts behind them, and I exhale a shaky breath.
Allison turns in her chair, placing her finger to her lips.
Getting up, she rounds the table and shuts off the camera, its blinking light dies as I hear a beep. Hands on her hips, she says, “Spill. Now!”