7. -
CHAPTER SEVEN
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Ryan grabs my hand as we’re about to head into the police station. I called ahead to let them know that we were coming in this morning and they urged for us to come sooner rather than later.
“You ready?” he asks, squeezing my hand tighter.
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” I sigh.
As soon as we get inside and give our names, an officer comes out of the back and introduces himself as Detective Westmore.
“Is there anything I can get for you two before we head into the back for questioning?” he asks, shooting us a friendly but sympathetic smile.
“I think we’re good,” I reply quietly.
He nods and leads us into a small room, motioning for us to take a seat across from the tiny desk in the middle of the room.
“We sent officers out to the location as soon as we got your call,” he begins to say. “I wish I could say that this is the first run in like this that we’ve had, but I’m afraid it’s not.”
“This has happened before?” Ryan asks.
“Last year, around this time, we got reports of a missing person. We found her body not far from where you two were staying. Seems like these guys target that area.”
“They never got caught?” I question.
Detective Westmore shakes his head. “I’m afraid not.”
Suddenly, his cell phone starts to ring and he dismisses himself, walking out of the room for a few minutes.
“You okay?” Ryan asks.
I take a deep breath and exhale slowly, trying not to allow the tears to fall from my eyes. “I think so. I’m scared that we’ll get into some sort of trouble…”
“It was self-defense, Lyla. There’s no fucking way anyone would think otherwise.” He reaches over and places his hand on my thigh. “Besides…by the sounds of it, they’ve been looking for these men for a while.”
“The woman—could that have been the one they were talking about?”
“Probably. Let’s just hope that this brings some closure to her family.”
Moments later, the detective comes back into the room and sets a thin blue binder down on the table in front of him. “That was the officers I sent out to the cabin this morning. Two of the suspects were found dead inside and one isn’t accounted for at the moment.”
I nearly forgot about the fact that Kyle was still alive. We just wanted out of there.
“Obviously, no charges will be filed against either of you regarding their deaths. It’s clear that it was self-defense.
I have officers scouring the area for the third suspect, but I need to know…
is this who we’re looking for?” He opens the binder and points to a picture of Kyle standing with the other two men in a hunting photo.
I close my eyes and nod. “That’s him.”
“Would you prefer to write out a statement right now, or come back in later? I want to give you two time to process everything but I want this man behind bars.”
We decide that now would be the best time, so we can get back to the city and figure out how to go on with our lives, since neither of us are the same person we were just yesterday.
Once I finish writing mine out, the detective takes me into a separate room so I can give my verbal statement. I’m assuming he did the same with Ryan, because I had to wait in that room for a while before the detective came back in.
“You two are free to go. We have an officer waiting outside to take you to your truck. He’ll stay with you until you gather your things.”
“Our phones were in the cabin, along with the overnight bags we had,” Ryan informs him.
“The officer on scene grabbed your phones already. As for the overnight bags, those will be given back to you as soon as the crime scene is processed.”
Ryan grabs my hand again and we head out of the building, thanking the detective on the way out.
We hop into the back of the squad car and head off towards the back roads, approaching the campsite in a matter of twenty minutes.
Oddly enough, Ryan’s truck is parked right next to the tent, which means one of the officers must have driven it back here.
“I’m not sure that you’ll get the tent pegs out of the ground just yet…” the officer escorting us says as he gets out of the car.
“Can we just leave it here?” I ask.
“That’s up to you. I just wouldn’t waste my time trying to clear the snow away from the tent. Maybe grab what you need from inside and call it a loss?”
“You’re right,” Ryan says, looking over at me with hurt in his eyes. “I don’t want the fucking reminder anyway.”
Ryan heads over to the truck and starts it, leaving it running while we both start hauling our belongings out of the tent. It seems to take us way less time loading it all back into the truck than it did to unload it. Maybe because neither of us want to be here any longer than we have to be.
As soon as the last bag is tossed into the back of the truck, Ryan asks the officer if we’re good to head back home. Once we get the go ahead, we thank him and hop into the truck, spinning out of there so fast that we nearly slide into a tree on the side of the roadway.
A few minutes of silence pass by as we take off down the road, until Ryan finally speaks.
“I didn’t get the chance to tell you how sorry I am…” he says.
“Sorry? For what?” I ask.
“For making you come out here in the first place. I should have listened to you, Lyla.”
“Ryan…we had no way of knowing that any of this would happen. We were just…in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I know…I just hate that I couldn’t protect you.”
“But you did. If it wasn’t for you, who knows what would have happened.”
“I should have killed Kyle too…”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference. They’ll find him.”
“I wonder if they found Doug? Clearly those men did something to him.”
“I’m sure they’ll find him, if they didn’t already. Poor guy. He seemed like such a good person.”
Before long, we arrive back in the city, well aware that nobody has a single clue about what happened to us. It’ll be painful to explain to our friends and especially Ryan’s parents, but we’ll push through it together.
I’m stronger than I ever gave myself credit for and without a single doubt, Ryan has made me realize it.
He could just walk away from all of this, devastated by the things he had to do to me to get us out of there alive.
I don’t think it’s something we’ll ever get over, but together—we can move on with our lives and rise above it all.
Trauma has a funny way of bringing people together.