If I Live

by Terri Blackstock

  “Dylan, you’re going to get arrested if they know you have me.”

  “I can’t turn you over to the police.”

  “I told them everything. They listened, took notes, videotaped it. But then when he came, they just handed me over. They didn’t believe a word.” She looks at me. “What if everyone is like that? What if no one ever believes us?”

  “Someone will.”

  “But I don’t want you to be charged because of me.”

  “I can live with jail,” I say.

  She starts to cry, and I want to pull over and comfort her, but I have to keep driving. I have to get her out of here.

  31

  CASEY

  They may not have found my car when they arrested me,” she says. “I left it down the street from my hotel and walked there. You could take me to it.”

  “No, we’re not going anywhere near it.”

  I’m quiet and look at Dylan. His eyes are intense, and I can see the wheels turning as he puzzles through what to do with me. I hate this. I don’t want to cause him to be arrested.

  “Dylan, if we do get caught . . . if the police stop us somehow . . . tell them that you caught me. That you were taking me in.”

  “We’re not going to get caught.”

  “We can’t just drive all night.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Keegan will find out what you’re driving. He’ll suspect I got in touch with you. He probably has a BOLO out for you already.”

  “He already knows what I’m driving. Trust me.”

  “Maybe you could call Chief Gates. Tell him what happened, all of it. Take a chance on the truth.”

  “I’m not taking any chances with you, Casey. If he’s involved, it could blow up in our faces.” He takes an exit off the interstate, and I see a Super 8 motel looming ahead.

  “I’m going to check in,” he says. “Get down on the floorboard. Don’t let anyone see you.”

  I unhook my seat belt and get on the floor. He pulls into the parking lot. I can’t see where we are, but he’s not near the entry or any overhead lights, because there’s no light shining down on us. He must have parked in a darker part of the parking lot.

  “Be careful,” I whisper.

  “It’s not me they’re looking for,” he says. “It’s you. Stay down.” He gets out and goes inside.

  I stay hunkered on the floor, my head down. Despair knots in my throat, stinging my eyes. But then I force my thoughts to do a U-turn.

  I look where God is working, as Dylan told me to do weeks ago. And when I do, I see him.

  “You helped me get word to someone in authority,” I whisper. “You helped me think of planting the blood evidence in Keegan’s car. You helped me escape from him and kept me hidden. You left enough charge on my phone to call Dylan for help. You had Dylan in Memphis when I needed him.”

  Now the tears flow, but instead of despair, I weep over the miracle of it. God was in on all of this. He’s still in on it now.

  This is all so tangled and so impossible, but God did the impossible tonight. He does it all the time. I’m so overcome by it that I can’t formulate an elaborate prayer. I simply whisper, “Thank you.”

  Dylan comes back to the car after a few minutes, and he doesn’t look at me. He starts it up and backs out of the parking spot. “We have a room on the back side of the building. First floor. I’ll park near the door.”

  I wipe my face, not wanting him to see that I’ve been crying while he was gone. I wipe my eyes and my nose on my sleeve.

  He pulls the car around, and I feel it stopping again. “There’s no one out here,” he says. “I’ll unlock the door, then come back to the trunk to get my bag out. You head in while I’m doing that.”

  He gets out and I hear him unlocking the motel room door. Then, as he opens the lift gate of the SUV, the light comes on. I open the door and slip out, then hurry inside.

  In the bathroom, I look at myself in the mirror. My face is dirty. I wash it with soap, rinse it off, and pat it dry. I hear the outside door closing, so I step out.

  He’s standing at the window, looking out the curtains.

  “Are we okay?” I ask.

  “Looks like it. There were only a couple of cars parked on this side. I don’t think anybody saw us, and I don’t think the cameras could have gotten a good view of you.”

  He turns from the window and looks at me now, his hands at his sides. His face twists, and he crosses the room and pulls me into his arms. He holds me for a long time, and I cling to him. I don’t want to let him go.

  Finally, he steps back, and I see that his eyes are wet. He takes my hands gently, looks down at my swollen wrists and the scrapes. “I’ll get you some ice.”

  “No,” I say. “Don’t leave this room.”

  He pulls me to the small couch against the wall, and I drop down, suddenly aware of how exhausted I am. He sits next to me and pulls me against him.

  His kiss is salty, desperate, and I feel the urgency in it. I touch the stubble on his face, tears rolling down my own, and slide my fingers through his hair.

  Suddenly, he pulls back, lets me go, and gets up. I catch my breath and watch him walk across the room, putting distance between us.

  He turns back to me, his eyes so full of things I can’t name that my heart almost breaks.

  “The thing is, I’m in love with you,” he says.

  My hand goes to my heart, then to my mouth.

  “I have been . . . I don’t even know how long,” he says. “I want you . . . but more than tonight. I just . . . can’t picture tomorrow without you.”

  I’m sobbing now, unable to hold it back. I whisper, “Me too.”

  He takes a step toward me, but doesn’t come much closer. “God is looking out for us. I don’t know if you see it.”

  “I do,” I whisper.

  “I don’t want to dishonor him by following my impulses. I’m in this for the long game.”

  I know exactly what he means, and I nod my agreement.

  “So . . . I’m going to keep my distance tonight. You sleep in the bed, and I’ll take the couch.”

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  Our gazes lock for a long moment, and I want to get up and go to him, touch him again, taste his lips . . .

  A soft grin pulls at his lips, and suddenly I’m smiling too. He said he loves me. He wants a future with me. He’s willing to wait.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he says.

  “So are you.”

  A lifetime of words and emotions passes through our gaze. My heart aches with gratitude.

  “Your bandage needs changing,” he says, stepping toward me and touching my shoulder. “You may have opened some stitches.”

  I pull up his pant leg and see the bandages on his calves. “You don’t look so great either.”

  “Mine’s fine. I have bandages in my bag,” he says.

  “I’m fine, Dylan.”

  “You will be.” He digs through his small duffel and pulls out a box of gauze pads and medical tape. He sits on the couch sideways and carefully peels my bandage off.

  I try not to wince.

  “Okay,” he whispers. “Good. You didn’t break the stitches. You just pulled them.”

  “I told you I was fine.”

  He cleans the wound with hydrogen peroxide, then carefully fashions a new bandage. When he’s done, our eyes lock again. He kisses me, then gets up and moves away from me again.

  I smile. “You’re killing me.”

  “We’ll have time. This can’t go on forever.”

  It isn’t forever I’m worried about, but I don’t say that.

  I get up and look at the bed. “Do you think it’s okay if I take a bath?”

  “Sure,” he says. “I’ll check out the news, see if your disappearance has been reported yet.”

  I go back into the bathroom and start the bathwater, but before I get in, I say another prayer thanking God for tonight. If I wind up in prison tomorrow—or in
a grave—at least I will have had these moments.

  32

  CASEY

  I hear Dylan in the shower before dawn, and I get up and turn on the light, check myself in the mirror. I look like someone who slept in a ditch, and I don’t have makeup or anything to make me look better. Bruises from branches as I ran through the woods have browned on my face and my arms. My wrists are still sore and swollen, and my knee aches.

  I make a pot of coffee, then turn on the TV and wait for the news. I don’t know if Keegan has reported my escape yet, or if he’s killed someone and tried to set me up . . . At least he didn’t have any of my possessions to leave at the scene, so maybe he didn’t. He could have gotten my blood off the seat, but that would take too long for them to identify forensically, so it might not be an immediate way to frame me.

  Dylan comes out of the shower as I pour a cup of coffee. “Hey,” he says with a smile.

  I hand him the cup. “Did you sleep at all?”

  “A little. But I did a lot of thinking. I’ve got a plan.”

  “What?”

  “We should leave now, before it’s daylight, while we still have cover of darkness. Then we need to call your attorney.”

  “Barbero?”

  “Yes. I called him last night, but when I found you, I forgot to circle back to him. He was going to try to get you out of Keegan’s hands.”

  “Too late.”

  “How’d you choose that guy? He’s not even a criminal attorney.”

  “I work for him as Liana Winters.” I tell him about my slightly unethical job. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “Well, maybe he can help us until we can get somewhere else.”

  We get back into the car, and he has me get into the back seat instead of the front, so I can hide more easily. He drives us to an all-night drugstore. When he comes out, he tosses me a bag. Inside is one burner phone.

  “I thought you were getting three,” I say.

  “Not all in one place.”

  While I stay hidden in the back seat, he goes into two more stores and gets more burner phones. We activate them with the minutes he’s bought with them.

  With one of them, he calls Dex. “Hey, buddy. Sorry to wake you.”

  I hear Dex’s sleepy bass voice, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.

  “Listen, I need to find a safe place. A house or deer camp or something off the beaten path.”

  Dex has come through for us before. He’s the one who stitched up my shoulder after my gunshot wound and took Dylan in after he was burned in the apartment fire.

  I hear him telling Dylan something, and Dylan writes it down. “You sure the key is there? Nobody’s staying there right now?”

  Dylan thanks him profusely and hangs up. He glances at me in the back seat. “His in-laws have a lake house in Little Rock.”

  “Arkansas?”

  “Yeah. It’s not that far from here. Sounds perfect. I can get you there in a couple of hours, then I’ll go down to Shreveport and pay a visit to the DA. I’ll explain the whole case. I’ll leave you this car and get a flight down to Shreveport.”

  “Dylan, I’m scared for you.”

  “It’ll be fine. By the time you turn yourself in, I want to make sure we’ve gotten the story out there.”

  He disposes of the phone he used for Dex, then heads west.

  33

  DYLAN

  I’ve hired a flight instructor at the Little Rock airport to fly me in his Piper Cub down to Shreveport. We can be there in about an hour.

  Now that I know Casey’s safe, I get ready to do what I should have done weeks ago. During the flight, I update the evidence on my thumb drive. I add the information about Keegan taking Casey to kill her, the blood she left in his car, her escape, and his vow to frame her for another murder. And I include the videotape I got from Monnogan’s bar, with Keegan following us out of the parking lot the night Sy Rollins was murdered. Then I copy all of that onto two more flash drives I picked up with the phones.

  From the Shreveport airport, I take an Uber back to where my car is. On the radio as I drive, I hear the alert about the manhunt going on in Memphis for the fugitive who broke free of her transporter, and I stew that the media is so clueless. They clearly haven’t been informed that she warned Memphis PD that Keegan would try to kill her.

  They will know soon.

  I put one of the thumb drives into a padded envelope and address it to Macy Weatherow, the reporter who has defended Casey. I take it by the TV station. Shoving on sunglasses and a baseball cap—a pretty pitiful disguise—I go in and ask the receptionist to get this package to Macy.

  Then I slide another flash drive into my pocket and head to the DA’s office.

  I think it through. If he’s not there, do I want to talk to an assistant DA? I decide that I have to speak to the district attorney himself, otherwise word might leak out and ruin everything. I can’t take the chance of having anyone give Keegan a heads-up.

  It’s late afternoon—almost closing time—when I get to the DA’s office and park, and my hands begin to sweat as I get out of my car and walk up to the building. Inside, I go to the receptionist, who looks up with a smile as I walk toward her.

  “Hi, my name is Dylan Roberts.” I explain my connection to the police department. “I need to speak to the district attorney about a matter of great importance, having to do with the Casey Cox case.”

  She calls up to his office, then instructs me to get on the elevator and head up to the fourth floor. The building has twenty floors, and I doubt seriously that his office is on a lower floor, but I go there anyway. I get off and look both ways, trying to figure out where to go next.

  A man approaches me. “Mr. Roberts?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was sent to see what it is you need.”

  “And who are you?” I ask.

  “John Appinet. I’m assistant to the district attorney.”

  “Are you an AD?”

  “No, sir, a paralegal. Could we go in here and you can go over what you have?”

  I clear my throat. “No, actually. I need to see the DA. I have information about Casey Cox that I need to give to him personally. It will impact her case going forward.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  I cross my arms, unyielding. “Get the DA for me. It’s highly sensitive, and very urgent. Believe me, it’s something he’ll want to know before the press gets wind of it.”

  That raises his eyebrows. He looks up the hall. “Okay, just go into the waiting area and have a seat. I’ll be right back.”

  There’s another receptionist or administrative assistant behind a desk in the waiting area, and she doesn’t look up as I sit down. I check my watch and look out the glass, wondering if Appinet is making it clear that this is urgent.

  Several minutes later, he comes back. “This way, Mr. Roberts. I’m going to take you to DA Phillips. He’s on a different floor.”

  I follow him back onto the elevator. As I walk, I reach into my pocket and fold my fingers around the thumb drive. I can’t wait to give it to him.

  The DA’s office isn’t as elaborate as I would have thought. It’s probably bigger than the other offices here, but it isn’t a corner office and probably pales in comparison to the kind of office he would have if he worked in the private sector.

  The man I’ve seen often on TV looks distracted and disinterested as he gets to his feet and shakes my hand. “What can I do for you, Mr. Roberts? It sounded important.”

  “If we could have some privacy . . .”

  Phillips nods to Appinet, and the paralegal leaves. When the door is closed, I sit down and pull out the thumb drive, slide it across his desk. “As you know, I’ve been hired by Brent Pace’s family to find and bring back Casey Cox. Yesterday, Chief Gates swore me in with the police department. But in the course of this investigation, I’ve discovered some things about key police detectives on the force who, I believe, are responsible for Brent’s m
urder themselves. Casey Cox is innocent, and I have evidence here that Gordon Keegan and Sy Rollins, among some others, murdered Brent and a number of others. And that a few days ago, Keegan murdered Sy Rollins.”

  Phillips sits up straighter, his face blanching, and takes the thumb drive. He frowns as he assesses me again, and he shoves the drive into his computer port. “Before I look at this, you have to tell me. Do you know where she is?”

  “We’ll talk about that after you see the evidence. Her attorney will negotiate her surrender after you see this, but Ms. Cox fears that Keegan is going to kill her to shut her up. She told this story to the Memphis police, and they blew it off and handed her over to him. Very stupid move. I have evidence that he tried to kill her and she escaped during the attempt.”

  He gapes at me. “What evidence?”

  “Keegan wasn’t taking her to Shreveport. He took her to a remote, wooded area with every intention of killing her. Her blood is in his rental car, and she can direct you to where he took her. You’ll find her prints in the dirt there and possibly more blood since she had scratches.”

  “You’ve seen her, then?”

  I evade. “I’ve spoken to her. She told me the story, and based on the evidence that I’ve collected throughout this case, I believe her. Gordon Keegan is an extortionist and a serial killer. He’s a cancer on the Shreveport Police Department, and it’s about to metastasize. Casey’s attorney will make sure that her story gets to the press, and you can imagine how they’ll latch onto this. You need to know all this before that happens.”

  “Have you talked to anyone at the Shreveport police department about this?”

  “No. I don’t know who’s involved, and these people are deadly. I decided to come to you instead.”

  “Not even Chief Gates?”

  “No.”

  He sighs. “Okay.” Not surprisingly, he seems a little rattled, and he shakes his head and tries to refocus. “Which file should I open first?”

  I direct him to the overview of all the information, and I walk through it with him. He listens earnestly, asking questions and making sure he understands. It takes over an hour for us to go over it all, and he tells his assistant to hold all his calls. When we’re finally done, he’s sweating. He gets up and paces across the room, his eyes studying the beige carpet as he thinks.