Her thick lips part, a whoosh of a gasp fleeing. She’s on her feet, leaping from the truck and into my arms, almost knocking the breath from my lungs on impact. The scent of wildflowers envelops me as small arms cling around my neck. My eyes close as I soak her in.
“Officer Adams,” she cries. Images of the girl she used to be wash through my memories, and I embrace her tighter. Weak, broken, only survivor.
“You remember me?” I find myself asking, bewildered. I was a uniform back then, and it was one of the worst crime scenes I’d ever witnessed. The trauma of what she endured still keeps me up at night.
Seeing her again, at such a disturbing scene, is cruel. That motherfucker tried to rape her. She’s already been through so much. Life can be a harsh bitch. That cunt in the alley didn’t know his prey was a survivor. Going through what she did changes a person. She can change a person.
Slipping from my grip, she sniffles and dips her brow. “Of course I do,” she says, like it’s a stupid question. Maybe it is. I met her on the worst day of her life and spent countless hours trying to track down family members, hoping she had someone who would take her in. She’s the reason I became a detective. There was something about finding her hugging her body, blood coating her skin, trauma evident on her thighs. She looks so grown up now, the willowy teenager replaced by a woman. How long has it been? Eight years? Nine? She would be twenty-four now. Damn.
Bruises mar the delicate skin of her throat. Black streaks of mascara lay thick under her eyes. She’s still breathtakingly beautiful. I want to take her back into my arms and never let go—do now what I promised then: to keep her safe.
“Sir, we need to get her to hospital.”
She reaches out, clasping my hand. “Come with me.” There’s a pregnant pause before she adds a low, “Please?” Her plea strikes out at me like a weapon, wounding, infecting, rooting within me. I tried to keep tabs on her after the incident, tried to keep her out of the foster system, but I had no power. She was put into the system, and just like she promised, she ran away the first chance she got, disappearing like smoke in the wind. I checked every homeless spot I knew of and some I didn’t. All brothels and strip joints—as fucked up as that is, a lot of runaway teens end up in those places, and like Lola, many vanish. I had images of her on a cold slab at the morgue, but here she is: grown and alive in such vivid detail, blossoming in the horrors of sin.
“I’ll follow behind.” I assure with a soft smile and nod of my head. I watch as she’s helped back inside the ambulance. The doors close, and her eyes stare out at me through the small square window. Why the fuck is my heart racing so fast?
“You know the victim?” Snow asks, joining me at the ambulance, the red lights whirling in the darkness of the night.
“Sort of.” I frown, turning to him. He has an umbrella now but still looks like a drowned rat. “She was the only survivor of a home invasion,” I bite out, livid she went through something like this again. My hands clench and teeth grind together.
“Shit, what the hell happened? Was is random?” he asks as the ambulance pulls away. I turn back to see Lola’s gaze still fixated on me. A pit opens in my stomach the farther away she gets. Heat pours into my chest. I need to get to the hospital. She needs me.
“Adams?”
“What? Oh, an intruder. We believe someone they knew. The weapon was taken from the owners—her father’s gun cabinet. The front door was open, and there was no sign of forced entry.”
Shaking his head, his brows pinch, creating lines around his eyes. He looks older every day—a hazard of the job. Every case takes a part of you, slowly stripping away your soul, your faith in humanity.
“Why kill everyone but her?” he questions, looking back in the direction of the dead guy.
A shot of rage floods my bloodstream thinking back to Lola in her ruined dress, living a nightmare.
“From what we could gather, Lola was the intended target. Her brother and parents were killed. She was raped.” My tone darkens. The doctors said she had sustained injuries from forced sexual acts, but the real gut punch was this wasn’t the first time. Doctors examined her and had said she had past trauma scars from previous sexual assaults. Lola refused to talk about it, and with nothing to go on, our hands were tied.
Brushing a hand through his hair, Snow hisses a string of cusses. “Did they catch the guy?”
The knot in my stomach that’s been dormant twists, coming alive. Every muscle coils as a hot anger sweeps through me. She didn’t recognize him. Said he wore a mask, gloves, condom. We had no evidence. He even took the murder weapon with him. It was never recovered. I’d hoped it would show up in a pawn shop somewhere—it was a rare gun, distinguishable—but it never surfaced. There was one suspect, but he had an alibi. He was a real smug cunt, joked about what he would have done if it had been him. It was him. The alibi was made up by a stupid woman he was fucking. He was a real fucking prize. Liked to drink and cause fights in bars for sport. Meeting him in a dark parking lot after a night of hell raising and puncturing his lung a couple times with a pocketknife, then leaving him there to die, slow
