Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Standing over Hadley with her kidnapper staring me down, I felt more alive and more at ease than I had for the past two months. This man wasn’t going to get away with what he had done if I had anything to say about it.
Finally, justice would be served.
I may not have had a badge or gun, but neither did he.
As I lifted Hadley out of the back seat he lunged forward through the vehicle and grabbed her by her hair.
I winced, thinking back to the moment I’d found that corpse in the water, the hair that had come away so easily after years of decomposition.
Not just a corpse, though, but a person.
Someone who had cared deeply for the child in my arms.
“Let her go,” I said, not wanting to harm even a hair on Hadley’s head. I would, if I had to, but I was trained in deescalation tactics and my instincts told me this man may be desperate, but he wasn’t an idiot. “You still have time to run before the police arrive. Let her go.”
I watched as his eyes widened, realization dawning on him. I wasn’t some good Samaritan who happened to pass by and notice a kidnapping in action. I was merely the advance party, and the full force of the law was about to come crashing down on him.
He let go of Hadley’s hair and I quickly pulled her out of the back seat, wrapping her in my arms and struggling with the weight of her as her head listed to the side, completely lax in unconsciousness.
The sound of the driver’s side door slamming shut alerted me and I looked up to find Lombardi behind the wheel, starting the car and putting it in reverse.
The back passenger door was still open, and I only had a split second to realize what he was about to do before that door was headed straight for us as he recklessly backed out of the parking space.
I dropped to the ground, taking Hadley with me, and felt as the bottom edge of the door faintly glanced over the top of my head, ruffling my hair but otherwise leaving me unscathed. The sound of metal hitting metal filled my ears as the back door caught on the car parked beside me.
“Hadley!” Gracie’s scream reached me, and I looked up to find both her and Kenna running towards us. “No!”
“She’s okay,” I told her as she reached us and crashed to her knees, her arms going out to gather her daughter in her arms. “He used chloroform on her but otherwise she’s okay.”
“Thank you,” Gracie murmured into Hadley’s hair. “Sweet Jesus, thank you for saving my girl.”
I didn’t reply, wasn’t entirely sure if she was talking to me or praying to a higher power. Disentangling myself from the two of them, I stood and rubbed the top of my head where it had nearly been taken off by the door of that SUV. Then I brushed the dust off the knees of my jeans.
“Come on,” Kenna said, jerking her head back towards the entrance to the fair.
I furrowed my eyebrows and she raised hers, glancing over my shoulder.
I turned to find the all-too-familiar red and blue flashing lights of the police as half a dozen cars blocked the path of the SUV.
Lombardi was being pulled from the driver’s seat and presumably read his rights.
I nodded, getting the point. If I didn’t want to be wrapped up in giving a witness statement and risk my name being involved with the case, then I had to go and I had to go now.
But as I looked down at the mother and daughter still sitting in the dust at my feet, I found myself reluctant to leave them on their own.
“Someone should tell Detective Shepherd—” I started to say, but Kenna shook her head and gestured to one of the officers headed our way.
“We’ve got to go,” she said, more urgency in her voice now.
I nodded and, with a twinge of regret that I couldn’t stick around and see things through to the end, I followed Kenna’s lead as we headed back to the entrance.
Just as we reached the ticket booth, Lachlan appeared, looking frantic as he held his phone to his ear.
Kenna met his gaze with a calm, cool demeanor that seemed to ease his worries and he lowered the phone and looked in the direction she was pointing.
“She’s okay, Gracie has her. The police have Lombardi in custody. Go see your girls.”
Shepherd didn’t say anything, just gave Kenna a sharp nod and moved in the direction she indicated.
“Oh, and Shep?” she called, causing him to turn back just as he reached the first row of cars. “Hale and I? We were never here.”
He stared at the two of us for a long moment, as if deciding.
Then, he gave another nod and turned back to the task of tracking down his daughter and ex-wife.
A wave of relief flooded through me as we walked back through the fairgrounds, the sounds of children laughing and games being won or lost filled my ears.
No one here knew that a little girl had almost been abducted or that a killer was finally being put away after seven years of unanswered questions and heartbreak.
“Hey,” Kenna said as we reached the front of the fairgrounds to find my car exactly where I left it, still idling. All in all, it had only been there for ten minutes, maybe fifteen. I grunted in reply and Kenna reached a hand out to stop me as I moved to get in the driver’s seat. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, furrowing my eyebrows as I met her concerned gaze. I’d stopped a kidnapping and I hadn’t even been injured while doing so. My adrenaline was still high from the rush of it all, but otherwise I was perfectly fine.
“You seem, I don’t know, off?” Kenna said. “Why don’t you let me drive, at least. It would make me feel better.”
“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t opposed to being the passenger when there was no emergency.
I rounded the car and climbed into the passenger seat, turning off the hazard lights I hadn’t even realized were on.
Maybe she was right about me being off. I pressed my hand to the top of my head where the door had lightly brushed over my hair in Lombardi’s desperate bid for escape.
There was no injury there, though, not even a little bruise.
“It must be hard, to walk away from an investigation after getting that close to it,” Kenna said a few minutes later as she pulled onto the freeway.
And oh, that made a lot of sense. I wasn’t physically injured, but the cloud of thoughts and emotions whirling in my mind were making it hard to think, because every part of me was screaming that I needed to go back and see things through to the end.
I needed to know that the evidence against Lombardi was handled properly, needed to hear his confession and know that I’d gotten the right guy.
Never mind that my leap of logic connecting Lombardi to Lexi’s death had directly resulted in Hadley’s rescue.
“It is,” I replied after a long moment of silence.
“It’s a shame that you can’t work in law enforcement,” Kenna continued, and I realized there was a leading tone in her voice, like she was suggesting I do exactly that.
“You’re an incredible detective. You figured out a case that I’ve been working on for years and stopped the guy from doing worse than he already had. ”
“It’s like I said, most cold case closures are pure luck,” I told her, picking at the edge of my seat belt where a small fray had begun. “If I hadn’t overheard that one conversation in that hair salon, I never would have realized that the motive was related to golden blood.”
“Right, but people knew about Lombardi’s sister’s blood issues and Lexi’s unique blood.
It never occurred to any of them that he might have been the one to kill Lexi,” Kenna pointed out.
Which was true, but it wasn’t other people’s job to make that connection.
They didn’t have the training I did, or the motivation, to solve cases that had long gone cold.
“Are you getting at something here or just making conversation?” I asked, turning to look at Kenna directly. She kept her eyes on the road but there was a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
“Just…making conversation,” she replied, but her tone indicated otherwise and the next words out of her mouth did too. “You know, I think you would make an incredible P.I.”
“Do you now?” I held back a scoff only because I knew that Kenna meant well. She thought she understood my situation, and probably figured that becoming a P.I. was the perfect solution to the complicated circumstances I’d found myself in.
“Well, maybe not a P.I.,” Kenna conceded, sending a quick glance my way before returning her focus to the road.
She pulled off the freeway and came to a stop at a red light before turning to look at me with a piercing gaze.
“But maybe you would enjoy being a P.I.’s apprentice.
Someone who does all the investigative legwork and gets none of the credit. ”
“I’m sorry?” I said, blinking as I realized exactly what she was suggesting. This wasn’t her trying to pull me into the world of becoming a private investigator. This was her offering me a job as her assistant.
“Don’t be,” Kenna said with a wink. “Seriously, Hale, think about it. You were clearly born to be a detective and it’s unfair that that was taken from you the way it was.
But if you become my apprentice then I can run interference, keep your name out of the police reports and such, and you can do what you do best.”
“And what’s in it for you?” I asked as the light turned green and Kenna took a left turn. Her face remained blank for a long moment before she answered, her voice much softer than before.
“There’s a lot of expectation that comes with being who I am and the family I come from,” she said.
“I’m expected to flit from one hobby to the next, to take interest in charities through organizing auctions rather than organizing a soup kitchen.
Taking on the occasional affair scandal is acceptable in my family’s estimation but treating it like a serious career would be a scandal.
Giving you a cover as my assistant wouldn’t just be for you, because it would give me cover too. ”
“You’ve really thought about this,” I said, taken by surprise by the earnestness of her voice. She pulled into the driveway of her home and turned off the car before fully turning in her seat to look at me.
“I have,” she said, hazel eyes bright with passion. “I really think that this will work. And you don’t have to leave your job at Mug+Shots. In fact, I think that could be an advantage. It gives you access to the locals and all the gossip they have to share.”
“And where would our clients come from?” I asked, not fully on board but not ready to dismiss the idea outright.
She had a point. It had taken less than two months for me to become completely wrapped up in a case I had no business investigating and if it weren’t for Detective Shepherd being so willing to ignore my involvement I would likely be sitting in an interrogation room right now, waiting for the FBI to come pick me up.
“Oh, that’s the best part,” she replied, the excitement bubbling up in every word.
“We won’t be taking clients at all. Instead, we’ll do what you suggested and focus on cold cases; missing persons and murders that no one else could solve.
But you and me? I think we can solve them and finally give those people some peace.
I already have a few picked out that I think you’ll like. What do you think?”
“I think this is something I need to take some time to think about,” I replied, trying not to let her exuberance wrap me up in something I wasn’t sure I was able to commit to.
“Absolutely,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt and sending me another wink. “You just let me know when you’re ready.”
When, she said, not if. Like it was a forgone conclusion that I would agree to her clever little plan.
And the worst part was, I knew she was right.