The voice had my knees buckling.
“Jay,” I choked out. “I’m here. It’s me.”
His car door slammed and his footsteps pounded across the gravel.
And then he was there.
I reached for him at the same time he reached for me.
The second his arms wrapped around me, I collapsed against him.
I sobbed violently into his chest.
“What happened to you?” he breathed into my hair, clutching me tightly against him. “Hope, what happened?”
“He—” I tried to speak but my voice broke. “He followed me to my car… —”
I couldn’t finish.
“Who?” Jay pulled back just enough to brush my wet hair from my face.
His navy eyes were now filled with a dangerous fury.
“Who did this to you, Hope?”
“Dr. Pike.”
CHAPTER 69
Isat on the back of the ambulance, one of those space-looking silver blankets draped over my shoulders. As the early morning sun began to rise over the mountains, I finally started to feel something close to my normal body temperature again.
I was speaking to a police officer, and my voice shook a little as I recounted the terrifying events of the night.
“…and then I managed to break free and ran until I found this gas station. And then Jay found me,” I explained, my eyes still wide from the lingering shock.
Jay stood beside me while I told the story, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. When I hadn’t come home after being at the Velvet Anchor for a few hours, he’d tried calling. When I didn’t answer, he started to worry. He called Macey, and when she told him I’d left hours earlier, he went looking for me.
He’d checked my location after that, even though I had no idea my iPhone still had us connected to each other’s location. Thank goodness I never tried to turn that off, or Idon’t know what would’ve happened to me. When he saw that I was somewhere in the San Bernardino forests, he really panicked. He started driving up the mountain to where my phone said I was. He just wanted to make sure I was okay.
It was a miracle he’d seen me at the gas station.
The officer nodded after I finished. “You did well, ma’am. Breaking a car window isn’t easy. We’ll make sure he’s brought to justice.”
They’d found his car a few miles down the road, half-buried in the snowbank. They arrested him immediately and took him into custody. Somehow one of the officers was able to find my phone in the snow, and it miraculously was working fine too.
There would definitely be a trial now.
But for the first time, I felt certain we would win. That Pike would go away for a long time now.
“Thank you, officers. I appreciate your help,” I said.
Jay stepped forward and shook one of their hands. “Yes, thank you—especially for getting here so quickly.”
“Of course.”
The officers walked back to their cruisers, red and blue lights still flashing, before finally dispersing.
An EMT approached me again for one last check.
