Kelly Jamieson - How to Save A Life

She raised her face to look at him. She was a pretty woman, but right now her face was blotchy pink and puffy and she looked more miserable and distraught than he'd ever seen her.

"Are you really four months pregnant?"

She shook her head.

Fuck. No wonder she still wasn't showing.

"No," he choked out. "No." He turned around sharply, unable to look at her, afraid he actually might physically harm her, his rage was so great. He clenched his hands, eyes squeezed shut while his heart pounded painfully in his chest. "Son of a bitch!" He drove his fist into the wall, shattering the drywall and leaving him with bleeding, throbbing knuckles.

Lisa gave a startled whimper behind him. He flattened his hands on the wall and lowered his head, sucking in air.

He'd already packed his things. He had nothing left to say.

He worked incessantly. There was nothing else left in his life. His wife and unborn child--ha! What a joke. His wife, his unborn nephew , his brother were all dead to him. He couldn't face his sister or his parents and their own feelings of betrayal and pity for him. Just could not face it.

He moved into a furnished studio apartment not far from the bureau and buried himself in the Sheldon Barnes case. He studied and restudied every detail until his head swam. Still, people were reporting sightings of Barnes, although he seemed to be lying low. Which was unusual for him. It did seem to indicate he was still in the area, though.

Cops had staked out Sheldon's family home in Brawley, thinking he might return there, but he hadn't. At least, not yet.

When Trey wasn't working, he was drinking. Too much, he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He made strict rules about not drinking on the job, only permitting himself to drink himself into oblivion after he'd left work.

One night he stopped at a bar instead of going home, unable to face one more lonely night in that cold, bare apartment. He needed some noise, some people around him, even though he had no desire whatsoever to talk to anyone.

He sat at the bar at the Pinto Club, chugging back beer after beer. Happy couples twirled on the dance floor, laughing, and he watched them with detached interest. A burst of laughter from a nearby group drew his eyes for a moment. A group of women at a table were laughing about something apparently hilarious and having a great time.

Trey ordered another beer and sighed. The empties lined up in front of him told him it was time to go home. Only problem was, which he hadn't thought of earlier, he was probably too drunk to drive. Not that he felt drunk. He felt stone-cold sober. Nah, that wasn't true either. The room had taken on a bit of a fuzzy glow.

He could easily walk the few blocks to his apartment. With that thought, he tossed back the remainder of the beer and lifted a hand to signal the bartender for another. What the hell. If he had to walk home, might as well have a really good reason. And the alcohol was finally starting to make him feel pleasantly numbed to the pain that was constantly with him.

The laughing group of women caught his eye again. One of them was getting up to dance. A man led her onto the dance floor, a good-looking guy with shaggy blond hair. The woman, too, was blonde, a long sheet of platinum hanging down her back. They danced well together, a snappy two-step, and when the song ended, they returned smiling and breathless to the table. The man pulled out a wallet and tossed bills onto the table, then wrapped his arm around the woman.

Apparently, they were leaving, waving goodbye to her friends, weaving their way across the bar to the exit. As they passed by Trey, he got a look at the man's face.

Trey's reflexes were slow due to his excessive alcohol consumption and it took a minute before he realized Sheldon Barnes had just walked past him. Escorting a woman out of the bar.

Trey jumped unsteadily to his feet. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He started after them, knocking a chair over in his inebriated haste. People were looking at him, but he didn't care. Adrenaline kicked in. He stumbled out of the bar into the dark parking lot and saw a brown Ford leaving.

"Shit!" he yelled, and ran for his own vehicle.

His heart was going to explode out of his chest. He grabbed the cell phone clipped to his belt and made the urgent call for back-up. Even as he stabbed the key into the ignition, he knew this wasn't a good idea, but desperation and determination to stop that psycho killer, to save that woman from God knew what, overrode his common sense.

He squealed out of the parking lot, trying to keep the Ford in sight. They turned left at the first lights and he followed, narrowly missing an oncoming vehicle that blared its horn at him as it swerved. Fuck. He pressed on the gas pedal, trying to catch up to them, trying to talk on the cell phone, trying to focus on the road ahead of him.

"I'm on Market Street," he yelled. "Coming up to Park Boulevard. He's about two blocks ahead of me."

There was too much traffic. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, and pulled out to pass the vehicle in front of him that was impeding him. He pulled into the oncoming lane just as a Jeep Liberty turned from a side street right in front of him. The lights blinded him and with wrenching metal, exploding air bags and squealing tires, the collision was head-on.

The words came out a lot easier than he'd expected. "I wasn't sure if I was ready to have kids, but, hey, it'd happened, so I was kind of getting used to the idea. Actually"--he gave a mirthless little laugh--"I'd started to look forward to it. It was kind of cool."

Marli was still studying his face, and he pushed her head down against his chest, unable to bear the pity he knew he'd see in her eyes. "It was pretty tough," he said, in outrageous understatement. "My marriage was destroyed, I was no longer going to be a father, and my brother had betrayed me. That was almost the worst thing. It was humiliating, even at work. People felt sorry for me. My family was devastated. They were pissed at Travis, which they should have been, and they felt sorry for me and it was brutal."

"It must've been." Her fingers moved on his shoulder in warm, comforting circles.

"I was hurt, angry, sad. I was so furious, I was mad at the whole world, not just Lisa and Travis."

"Oh, Trey. How do you possibly get through something like that?"

"Not very well. I was stupid. I didn't give a shit about much, except for catching Sheldon Barnes. I worked all the time and like I told you, if I wasn't working, I was drinking." He paused. "I could almost numb the pain with enough booze."

"Did he...kill her? The woman in the bar that night?"

"No. Lucky for her, she got away. But..." He couldn't say it.

"What about the people in the other car? Were they okay?"

"Yeah, lucky for them, too. But I got suspended from my job, lost my license for six months, went through torturous rehab. When my suspension was up, I could drive again, so I bought a new vehicle I couldn't really afford and decided to take one more month and go see Kent in San Francisco. 'Course, I never made it there."

"Oh, Trey, you've been through hell." She was silent, stroking his shoulder softly. "Is this the first time you've talked about it?"

"Basically, yeah. The bureau sent me for counseling, but it was too raw to talk about it back then. I had no one else to talk to. I couldn't face my family. I wasn't going to work, and that was fine because it was humiliating just to see the look of pity on everyone's face."

His marriage was over, but there really had been no closure. He'd never spoken to Lisa again since that night, even though she had now given birth to his brother's child. Lisa was irrevocably a part of their family, whether married to him or not, whether he liked it or not.