Any vague thoughts she’d had about feigning shock or amnesia or both were drowned out by the fearsome roaring water. “I thought people kayaked or rafted down these things.”
“A long way downstream from here, and not while the water’s this high. We had record-setting snowfall last winter.”
Her teeth were chattering and she couldn’t feel her feet. The water in Mexico had been bathtub-warm, its current like a water-park wave pool. And unlike the rescue in Mexico, there was no Karl on a jet ski to pluck her out of the roiling rapids.
“I don’t want to die,” she said.
“I don’t want you to die, either.”
It sounded like he meant it. The headlamp beam shifted, and she got a quick glimpse of a stocky man, not unhandsome, about her age. She had expected him to be wearing a sheriff’s cowboy hat, like Dudley Do-Right, but apparently it didn’t accessorize well with the headlamp.
“But you’ll shoot me if you have to,” she said.
“Not if you come peaceably into custody.”
“So you can send me back to prison to die. Maybe I should get it over with. Everyone else in that accident is dead.”
“Not everyone. LaDonna’s doing just fine.”
She must not have gotten very far. Cara felt sad, thinking she wouldn’t see her kids.
“And Bree...” The sheriff’s voice cracked. “Is clinging to life.”
“If I had known that, I would have stayed with her.”
He lowered the shotgun and reached out with his left hand. “Come on, Cara, let me help you.”
If she went back with Sheriff Do-Right, how could he help her? By testifying to the judge that she should get natural life, instead of life plus additional years for attempted escape?
Shaking from cold, she took one step into the current, gasping in shock as the water reached her waist.
He raised his gun again and stepped toward her. “Don’t do it, Cara! Out of the water,now!”
TWENTY
JORDAN
I will forever be searching for Karl’s killer.
—@carasloveisgold
Cara Campbell would not obey Jordan’s order. Bringing her under control without backup, in the dark, would be a challenge. He sure as hell wasn’t going to shoot her, but he wasn’t going to allow her to stand in the water until she froze to death, either.
Handling noncompliant subjects was a gray area. Law enforcement officers were supposed to keep themselves safe while preventing physical harm to prisoners, which was often easier said than done. Again and again, Jordan had reminded all of his deputies that his number one rule was to never lay hands on a suspect without complete control of the situation.
On the other hand, Cara Campbell couldn’t weigh more than a buck-thirty, despite being somewhat tall for a woman.
He switched on his shotgun’s safety and set it down in the rocks. Behind his back, he unsnapped the handcuff pouch on his belt. Then, with his hands open and empty, he stepped into the water and started edging toward Cara.
The water that filled his boots and soaked his socks was so frigid, he didn’t know how she’d stood it as long as she had.
“Come out of the water, and I can take you back to my vehicle,” he coaxed her. “I can run the heater, and I’ve got a warm blanket. I can get you a cup of hot chocolate ten minutes down the road.”
“Tea,” she whispered.
He stopped three yards away, encouraged.
“Chai with unsweetened oat milk,” she clarified. “At least that’s what I used to like. Before all of this.”
