Disappointment washed over her face as she sat up, her voice softer than he’d ever heard it before. The bruises on her face—where the son of a bitch who’d taken her dared put his hands on her—had darkened into a mottled black-and-blue Rorschach pattern he’d never be able to unsee. It hadn’t been his hands that’d hurt her, but it was all too easy for his brain to conjure images just like this down the line. Not happening. Ever. Because he would leave. He’d put as much distance between them as possible if that was what would keep her and the baby safe, but the portion of his soul that’d found a sliver of calm in this apartment protested leaving her like this.
“What are you doing, Harvey?”
“I have a shift in the park.” He didn’t, but he needed to check in with Ranger Simpson. See if anything was found at the bottom of the upper emerald pool that could help identify their victim or tell them who might’ve killed her. He also wanted to know if a name had been attached to that gun. In revealing the victim’s pregnancy, Dr. Yarrow had provided them with a possible motive behind her death, but it wasn’t enough. Without an ID, they had no suspect unless the samples taken from Drennan came back with DNA evidence. And considering she’d been knocked unconscious and fallen into the pool, he wasn’t hanging all of his hopes on forensics.
“Oh. Okay. In that case, I guess I should check in with Dr. Yarrow.” Running one hand down her face, she grabbed for her phone on the nightstand. “See if anything more has come through from the autopsy or if he needs me to go back to the scene.”
“You’re not going anywhere near the scene. You should ask Dr. Yarrow to give you a few days off. He called with an update last night.” Harvey searched for his jacket. He didn’t remember taking it off in the living room, but it wasn’t in here, and Drennan’s scent was starting to drive him crazy, urging him to get back into that bed and breathe it in until it became part of him. “Let him take point on the autopsy and the investigation for now. You shouldn’t have to do anything but recover.”
Her gaze snapped to his, her thumb hovering over the screen of her phone. “Why would you even think to say that?”
Harvey straightened. “Because you were knocked unconscious, nearly drowned, abducted and tied to a tree yesterday. Not to mention you’ve been throwing up everything you eat and passed out from dehydration the day before. You’re not in a position to go back to work.”
“And you’re not in a position to make those kinds of decisions for me. I can still do my job.” A hardness slipped over herface. Drennan became unnaturally still, and for the first time since they’d met, he thought he might be looking at the woman who’d learned to endure years of mental and emotional abuse by shutting herself down. Becoming nothing and no one to survive. “I…need to see this through.”
“Not happening.” He took a step toward her. “Not when you’re barely able to stand and not when the man who abducted you is still out there.”
Her phone pinged with an incoming message, tearing her attention from him, and a release swept through his chest. As though he’d been holding his breath, waiting for the woman he knew to come back to him. “The dental records I requested for the woman found in Emerald Pools came back positive.” She lifted the phone before tossing it on the bed, that hard layer of emotionless armor still in place. “We have an ID.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Ellender Garza.
The dark-haired woman Drennan had collected from the Emerald Pools trail finally had a name. It would take more than that to discern who could’ve ended her life, but it was a start. The background check the law enforcement rangers had run told her the victim was only in her early thirties. Never married, employed by Springdale’s very own mayor as an assistant for the past several years. She didn’t have any large debts or a mortgage that might’ve gotten her in trouble, and a quick review of her social media accounts hadn’t pinpointed any kind of boyfriend who might’ve been the father of her child. Her parents had passed years before, leaving their victim everything, including her childhood home and two vehicles, one of which was recovered in the visitor’s center parking lot once they had the license and registration info. The rangers were searching the vehicle and had brought Springdale PD in to search her home, but as far as Drennan could tell, Ellender Garza was very much an average woman who probably hadn’t meant to get pregnant.
Like her.
Hot water coasted down her body as she rinsed shampoo from her hair. Stinging needles pricked at her scalp as the soap made contact with the sensitive skin around the stitches. It didn’t matter how many times she’d scrubbed herself from head to toe, she could still feel her abductor’s grip around her arms, feel him tightening the rope at her wrists. Taste the scummy water of the pond. She’d fought back, but it hadn’t been enough.He’d left bruises on more than her skin. They were etched onto her soul now.
But she thought they might not have ached as much when she’d fallen asleep with Harvey’s fingers drawing circles around her navel last night and his hand in her hair. Or when she’d woken in his arms this morning. Having him in bed with her—just holding her—had eased the pressure in her chest and fought back the nightmares that usually came. Dreams her brain conjured showing her exactly what she’d never have. Her parents, happy, healthy and alive, doing random, everyday things like getting into arguments about where to eat for dinner or visiting her long-since-passed grandmother. Most people would consider images like that as anything but a nightmare, but every time they came, her heart broke a little more. What else would she call them?
But she remembered her dream from last night. She’d woken up to it this morning. Real and warm and within arm’s reach. Literally. Except something had changed. Regret had infiltrated Harvey’s voice, his expression and his body language. He hadn’t said it in as many words, but it’d been there. In the way he’d extracted himself from her bed, how he’d rushed to leave. He’d made a mistake. That much she could see of the few minutes they’d had together, and she’d known it’d been coming. She just hadn’t expected to be so…hollow. But she wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t try to convince him to see her worthy of the risk of getting close to someone. She’d spent far too many years asking people to love her, and not a single one had ended in her favor. She wouldn’t put herself through that again, no matter how much she wished Harvey could see himself as she saw him.
As devoted and aware, to the point he understood exactly what was needed in any given moment. As intriguing and discerning of who he allowed into his life, as she’d failed to be so many times in hers. Curious and impressive in every way thatcounted. Kind, brave, responsible. He’d told her she was strong, that she was important, but didn’t he see the same attributes in himself?
Another slap of pain arched across her scalp, and Drennan turned off the water. Her skin had pinkened just under blistering from the temperature of the water and the amount of times she’d scrubbed herself clean, and already she wanted to climb back into the shower. She wouldn’t. She didn’t care what Harvey thought she should tell Dr. Yarrow. She needed to get to the office to help the ME finish out the autopsy and provide law enforcement as many details about Ellender Garza as possible. She needed to see this investigation through. Drennan grabbed for the towel she’d left on the toilet seat and stepped in front of the fogged mirror while drying.
Her lower belly looked as it always did as she dragged the terry cloth across her midsection. No signs of showing yet, but within the next few of weeks, her pants would fit tighter and she’d have no choice but to shop for maternity clothes. Had Ellender Garza started showing? According to Harvey, she’d been a few weeks ahead of Drennan’s pregnancy, but it’d been hard to tell with the amount of bloat given off by the bacteria in her body breaking down upon death.
The on call ob-gyn had been rerouted for an emergency delivery during the ultrasound to check on the baby. Drennan and Harvey had left the hospital with assurances everything was okay with the pregnancy, and she’d been too tired and beaten to let the anxiety win. But what if the doctor had been wrong? What if something had been missed? Now she’d had at least eight hours of sleep, a shower and soon an entire plate of breakfast food. Her head was clear, and the spiraling thoughts were at full force. The friends from her previous life—including Cassidy—had all been career-focused women putting off having families until their practices were established. She didn’t have experiencewith what was normal or abnormal in a pregnancy, and the one person who might be able to help her through wasn’t in a position to do anything for anyone but herself. Ellender Garza might’ve seen an ob-gyn once she found out she was pregnant. Maybe even the same doctor Cassidy had recommended to Drennan. She would’ve gotten to hear the heartbeat of her baby and see the sonograms of the little gray-and-white outline growing week by week. She would’ve had questions and gotten answers and wondered if eating sushi really wasn’t allowed.
But someone had taken that from her.
Cut her life short, her baby’s life short.
And Drennan had come so close to the same end. That was why she had to see this through, why she’d run herself into the ground if it meant getting justice for those two souls. Ellender Garza hadn’t deserved her death. So Drennan would make sure her killer paid the price.
“We’re going to be okay, right?” Turning to one side, she slipped her hand over the spot where the baby would round out. Harvey was right. She was skin and bones, the impressions of her ribs peeking through her skin. She’d have to move to a high-fat diet full of peanut butter and avocados if she couldn’t keep anything down soon.
Securing the towel beneath her arms, she wrenched the bathroom door open. And saw Harvey. She sucked in a lungful of air as he stood on the other side of the bed, his phone in hand. “Oh. I… I didn’t think you were still here.”
Her skin flushed with the awareness that all that separated them was a bath towel and her queen-size bed. Honestly, she wasn’t sure how they’d fit together so well last night with his broad chest and ability to take up an entire room with his intensity. Drennan clutched the towel harder at the memory of his body pressed against hers, his knee wedged between her legs, how he’d held on to her hip and dragged her closer. Hisagreement to stay with her might not have sounded like much, but it was everything to her.
“What are these?” His cheeks seemed to sink in, carving out deeper shadows running the length of his jaw and under his eyes. “All these messages from an unknown number.”
“Wait. Is that my phone?” Fury replaced the tendrils of appreciation and desire. She took a step forward to grab it from him from over the bed, but Harvey easily dodged her attempt. “You had no right to read through my private messages. Give it to me.”
She felt like a five-year-old whining for her favorite toy.
