Zach was glad he’d drawn the short straw on making the thirty-minute drive to the cold case division in Rocky Hill. There was nothing short about that straw to him, because the drive included Shauna. Of course, he was happy to let Ronan think he’d taken one for the team. Never hurt to have your partner owe you, especially with the amount of paperwork and reports they were having to file on this case.

They’d spent the afternoon questioning everyone at Elmhurst Academy who could have any knowledge of Kate’s whereabouts. They’d talked to her parents, her driver, and her friends. They’d dragged Jonathan Sawyer back in for questioning, despite the fact he’d been under a police tail. The officers watching him weren’t trailing his every movement on campus. They watched him go down the drive each day, then waited out on the street for him to come back out at the end of the day.

Now, they had officers combing the campus and the woods surrounding it. Ronan was overseeing the deployment of the search and rescue team and would work on coordinating with their lead, while Shauna and Zach went to see what they could piece together by looking at the cold cases again. The cold case team had been sending reports daily, but for the most part, their work consisted of checking hundreds of possible suspects off lists of people who’d been incarcerated or hospitalized during the period between the killings.

They were quiet for the first part of the drive, but Zach didn’t want to lose the time to talk to her. They wouldn’t have much time alone, and when this case was over, he had a feeling she’d be gone.

“What happened with your ex?” He didn’t know why he opened with a question she was unlikely to answer. He was an idiot.

Rather than take back the question, he waited as she looked him over, forcing himself not to squirm.

“Answer one of my questions, first.”

He glanced over at her, before looking at the road. “I’m an open book. Ask away.”

“Why did you become a cop? When we were together, you were trying to figure out what to do after the military. You never mentioned the police academy as an option.”

Well, shit, did he say open book? He cleared his throat. “Well, it was, uh, a good living. And something I knew I could do. I mean, I thought I could do it.”

“Uh huh,” she said, letting her tone tell him she knew damned well there was more to it.

“And it fit my need for doing something with an adrenaline rush. Of course, that doesn’t come every day. There are a lot of boring days, too, but it keeps me needing to stay sharp, stay fit, hone my training. I like that.” He was stupidly telling her shit she knew all too well.

“Um hmm.” This time, her tone said she thought he was getting close, but hadn’t gone all the way yet.

He shook his head and gave it up. “I liked seeing the way you were passionate about your job. The way you cared whether you were able to make a difference. I wanted to feel that, okay?”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

She snorted. “Feel like you make a difference?”

“Most of the time.” He focused on the road for a minute, then, “Most of the time, yeah.” He thought about the times he’d lost his head in the interrogation room as a rookie detective and blown cases.

He hadn’t gotten his temper under control completely as a patrol officer. He’d quickly learned he wasn’t going to do well as a detective if he didn’t master his emotions.

“But not right now?” she prompted, drawing him back to the conversation.

“No, not enough, anyway. My gut tells me Kate Sorino doesn’t have a whole lot of time for us to find her and I don’t know what else we can do.”

Before they’d gotten in the car, they’d gotten the news that alibis for Carville and the other teachers and employees who were new to the school had all checked out.

They drove another few minutes in silence, now more than half of the way there, before Shauna spoke, answering his question about her husband.

“I thought I loved him. It wasn’t the kind of crazy, passionate, needing-to-drown-in-a-person kind of love, but it was steady and I thought it was enough.”

Zach clenched the wheel. He’d heard the guy moved away, taking a job in another part of the state a month after they split up, but the rumor mill had been surprisingly quiet where they were concerned.

“He was a cop, too, right?”

She nodded. “Patrol cop.”

“So, you didn’t love him as much as you thought you did?” Zach wondered if that was all it had been.

“No. I think I would have grown to, but he hit me.”

Zach swerved, then corrected.

“I came home one night and he was in a mood. We argued. I actually remember thinking, ‘hey, we’re having our first fight,’ and thinking it had been bound to happen. Then he hit me. Threw me against the wall. I fought back, but he was strong.”

More silence filled the car as Zach felt a hurricane build in his head. He wanted to reach out and tear this guy to pieces, spread the viscera and bone that should have made up the man all over the country. He wanted it to be painful and final. Most of all, final.

“What happened?” He managed to croak out.

“I went utterly still. Didn’t fight him and he stopped. He took off, went out to cool off, I guess. I left. I wasn’t going to stick around and tell myself it wouldn’t happen again.”

Good for her, he thought. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak just then.

“I filed for divorce right away. I didn’t tell my parents what had happened. I was embarrassed.”

Zach looked over and saw her staring straight ahead out the windshield like she needed to focus on something far away from where the two of them sat to tell the story.

“He wrote notes, sent flowers, begged me to come back. Then one night, he attacked me in the parking lot of the friend’s apartment I’d been staying in late at night after work. I saw him coming. I wasn’t an idiot.”

No, Zach knew she was well-trained. He’d seen her head swivel when they were walking or entering a building. She was aware of her surroundings. No one would take her by surprise easily.

“He had a stun gun. I didn’t see it until it was too late. He dragged me off into the bushes, pinned me and told me I’d never leave him. That he was taking me home and I would stay there if I knew what was good for me.”

Zach had the wherewithal to pull the car over to the side of the road before he got them both killed. She didn’t seem to notice they’d stopped and he wondered if she’d told this story to anyone else besides family. She seemed so far away, like she could protect herself from the memory if she rattled it off but kept her distance.

“A car of loud teenagers pulled into the lot, distracting him. I kneed him in the groin and took off. That’s when I went to my family. I knew I wouldn’t get rid of him on my own.”

She took a few deep breaths, and he found himself taking them with her, matching his breath with hers. “With my parents’ support, I went to his boss. He helped me talk to the district attorney. It was messy. It was also his word against mine and he claimed I had hit him, that I had a temper and I’d been abusive. I’m ashamed of it now, especially working on cases like the one we’re on right now, but I was too embarrassed for people to know what happened to me. I didn’t want it getting out. Between my father and brothers and a few of the cops I’d grown up with hanging around the pub, they convinced him it would be better for his health and career to give me up. The district attorney and his captain worked with him. Got him moved to a new precinct and he was put on probation there. Had to go to therapy and anger management classes.”

“And he did?” Zach held his breath, all the while the winds of the hurricane churned in his head.

She nodded. “He completed the anger management and his captain told me recently he’s been toeing the line and still in therapy four years later, just as a sort of maintenance thing.”

She shook her head. “In some ways, I guess it was weak of me not to try to prosecute. I shouldn’t want him to do this to anyone else, but honestly, the chances he would serve much time were slim and I’d be left to face the stigma of being that woman, that cop.”

Zach took a deep breath and blew it out slowly before turning to find her looking at him. There seemed to be a horrible vulnerability in her eyes, like she was waiting for judgment from him. He slowly reached his hand out, gently touching his fingers to the soft skin of her cheek before threading his fingers into her hair.

He looked her in the eyes for a long moment before saying, “you didn’t deserve that.”

Then he silently pulled the car back out onto the road and drove them the rest of the way to the state offices in silence.

She had not deserved that at all.

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