Doranna Durgin - Survival Instinct

She hadn’t wanted to take care of them at all. Not like that.

“Dewey took care of them,” she said shortly, bending to give the dog another tight hug. His tail thumped. “And they’ll be back. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go think about that.”

“You’re kidding,” he said, blunt in his surprise. “You can’t stay here and wait for them.”

But she had nowhere else to go, not unless she abandoned what Ellen had died to give her. Rumsey would still have all his feelers out for her, for years he’d have his feelers out for her. Let him figure out that she lived, and he’d rat her out in an instant.

And that meant she couldn’t simply leave. In fact, she couldn’t do anything out of the ordinary for Ellen.

Dave shifted his weight, hip-shot and out of place on her lawn. He looked like a model who’d been torn from a catalog, not someone who should be in her life. Not before her escape from Rumsey, not after. “Look,” he said. “You’re right. I brought them. I’m here to save a child, and I’ll never be sorry for that. But I’m sorry they followed. I can find you a safe house until this is over.”

She’d had a safe house until he’d gotten here. “You don’t get it,” she told him, only then realizing that she’d totally lost her Ellen-ness. Too late to go back now; maybe he’d rightly chalk the change up to the shock of it all. But it rattled her; she couldn’t remember losing character before. “This is over. I can’t help you. I don’t have the memories you need.” Literally.

“You haven’t even tried.”

She stood, letting her hand trail off the dog’s ear. She couldn’t help but sound tired. It was a chance to ease back into character. “It’s been a year. What I’ve lost…I’ve lost.”

Too true. Just not in the way he thought.

In fact, his expression glinted with stubborn refusal to believe her. She forestalled the impending argument. “Who is this guy, anyway? Barret? What’s he got to do with me?” And then as something changed in his face, she added, “Or maybe I don’t want to know.”

But she did.

His face still stung from her slap. He relaxed only with effort, with his body still pounding at him to finish a fight he’d never really started. She was right enough; he’d left her to it. Not by design, but it hardly mattered. The most he’d done was release the dog. Also not really by design; he’d been headed for his car. So she’d been left alone, and first she’d softened into the woman he’d met a year before, and then she’d-

Wow. Boy, had she.

Ellen Sommers. Who’d have thought it?

They said sometimes head injuries caused a change in personality.

She dropped her chin, looking at him from beneath those expressive brows in a way that deepened the gray of her eyes. He recognized an ultimatum when he saw it. “Barret Longsford,” he said, “is the son of a senior senator, being groomed to take his mother’s place. He’s also a player. He likes money, he likes power…he likes to get his own way.”

“And he likes little boys? I dated a man who likes little boys?”

“Likes them and hates them,” Dave said, unable to help a flinch-there, at the corner of his eye where it always seemed to come out-at the thought of Terry Williams. He did his damnedest to make sure his cases didn’t end like that. “The FBI profiler thinks the perp is killing himself.”

She looked a little baffled, and the ultimatum turned to a faint knitting between her brows. “That just doesn’t seem-I mean, I just can’t imagine myself dating a man like that.”

Dave shook his head. “He’s fooling a lot of people, and he’s doing it every day.”

“And you’re sure I-?”

“I’m sorry. Yes.”

“Doesn’t sound like my type,” she muttered, and gave him a deliberate glance. An up-and-down glance.

Good God. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

It came only as a second thought that she’d done it on purpose. Manipulating him.

Oh, yeah, Ellen Sommers had changed all right.

She moved on before he could call her on it. “I still don’t remember any of it. And why haven’t the Feds grabbed him?”

He grimaced, a fleeting expression. “You think it’s easy to close in on someone with his influence?”

The dog decided Dave wasn’t part of the problem and ambled over to the shade cast by the porch, flopping down to maintain his alert watch from there. Ellen let him go; her narrowed gaze stayed pinned to Dave-and then she lifted her head with dawning understanding. “No one else believes you.”

He did little to hide his annoyance, both because she was right, and because she’d figured it out at all. “They can’t afford to believe me. Not with the little evidence we’ve got.”

“But you know better,” she said flatly.

He did. He was the only one who’d received a phone call from Barret Longsford, a condolence call for Dave’s failure to find Terry Williams in time. On the surface, a perfectly normal call, made by a man with political aspirations who’d been questioned simply because, like Ellen, he’d been in the park the day Terry disappeared. But his voice…

Something in his voice had chilled Dave on the spot. He’d made the required polite small talk, all the while his mind racing, trying to make connections…

He couldn’t. Not then, not now. Not the solid connections necessary to push an investigation, not when the feebs had already been warned to tread lightly-and when they were just putting up with him after his failure.

Good health insurance, good retirement benefits, a chance to keep jobs about which they were otherwise passionate…Dave didn’t blame them for their caution.

But Dave paid for his own bennies. He had nothing to lose.

Nothing but an already damaged reputation.

Ellen waited, more patiently than before, and he nodded. “I know better. And you’re my chance to prove it. You were with Barret the day Terry was taken from Melton Run Park. You know his habits, his emotional buttons, his private hangouts. You might well not remember, but somewhere in your head are all the details I need. Because Barret Longsford has Rashawn Little.”

Ellen stirred uneasily-and then she winced, looking down at her bruised arm in surprise. The man who’d grabbed her hadn’t been gentle. When she looked at Dave again, she left her eyes in shadow. But her voice was resolute. “Then you’d better get back to the city and find him,” she said. “Because I can’t do anything to help you.”

Karin Sommers’s Journal, March 13, part II

I remember my funeral. Closed casket, of course.

It should have been about you, Ellen. Your name being spoken, your life honored. Instead it was all about me. The platitudes, the niceties…the tears. And a few people who couldn’t see past the bruises the accident left on me to notice it wasn’t you at all. Of course, I told them I’d broken facial bones. No point in taking chances.

The cop was about me, too.

I was so caught up in it all. Losing you hurt. More than grief…guilt and an unbearable sense of wrongness. It was wrong that you died, helping me run from Rumsey. It was wrong that you didn’t even have your own funeral, your own headstone. God, yes, it hurt. The cop noticed, though I didn’t see him until he stepped up and took my elbow. I suppose he thought I was going to faint. Maybe I was.

He was nice enough. He asked me about the accident. He asked if I’d known you were wanted.

(That would be me, again. The wanted one.)

I couldn’t believe it. Since when? Rumsey knows how to cover his tracks. I mean, sure, the locals knew we were active, just not how active. But he knew how to play them, tossing just enough dirt their way to keep himself useful and harmless.