Enigma

by Laramie Briscoe

  I frown, because he’s got me there. He knows me probably better than I know myself when it comes to what I will do for him. Not giving him exactly what he wants, I raise an eyebrow. “I might cook it for you, but I’ll burn it to hell.”

  A laugh works its way past his throat and a smile spreads across his face. “I’d expect nothing less from you, Syn.”

  “Don’t call me that cute nickname and think that’s gonna change things, Tuck.”

  “Touché,” he chuckles again.

  Neither one of us talk. He drinks his coffee, I drink my orange juice. We’re eyeing each other over our respective cups. Reaching over, he takes mine out of my hands, before standing up and coming to where I sit. When he does, he pulls me up to him. I have to stand on my tiptoes to be able to put my arms around his neck, but I manage.

  “What are you doing, Officer Williams?”

  He smirks when I call him Officer.

  “Trying to send my girl off with a smile to work, but you’re making it difficult.”

  “Am I?” I unhook my arms, putting my palms on the sides of his neck.

  “Slightly.” He raises an eyebrow. “But whatever, I’ll still send you off with a smile.”

  “Oh, will you?”

  “You can bet your ass.” His arms around my waist move down to my ass, where he palms them, pulling me in closer.

  Before I can open my mouth, he’s claimed it, grabbing my flesh in his hands, squeezing tightly. It’s almost as if he’s directing my mouth by the way he’s gripping my skin, then letting it go.

  When he pulls his mouth from mine, the world spins slightly and it takes me a moment to get my equilibrium back. He holds me, grinning. “You okay?”

  “You literally made the room spin for me. That should send you off with a smile on your face.”

  “It does.”

  Glancing over to the clock above the sink, I feel a rush to my system. “Is that clock right?” I point to it.

  “Yeah, it’s actually five minutes slow.”

  “Oh shit.” I immediately disentangle myself from him. “I have to be at work in twenty minutes, and it’ll take me at least thirty to get there.”

  “If I were you, I’d suggest not speeding. I’d hate to see you get a ticket.”

  “Oh my God, you’re such an asshole.” I throw a muffin at his head. “I can’t believe you’d bring that up right now.”

  He ducks with a shit-eating grin on his face. “It’s what brought you to me. To this day you’re still my favorite traffic stop.”

  “I damn well better be.”

  Racing to his bedroom, I finish dressing, putting my earrings in as I run back into the kitchen.

  “I made you something.” He holds out a brown paper bag to me. “It’s not much.”

  My heart warms, knowing he’s taken a few moments out of his super busy morning to do something nice for me. “Is this lunch?”

  “Whenever you wanna eat it.” He shrugs. “It’s just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with some chips and cookies.”

  “What kind of peanut butter and jelly?”

  “Crunchy peanut butter, strawberry jelly on white.”

  “And the chips?”

  “Funyuns. I put a breath mint in there too, because I know you’re self-conscious about it.”

  I’m feeling lucky to know he’s remembered all of this about me. For some reason I need to know he remembers the rest. “What about the cookies?”

  “Oreo. Duh? Is there any other kind?”

  I throw my arms around him, hugging tightly. “I never realized you knew this much about me.”

  He seems to want to act like this isn’t that big of a deal, but it is. It’s a huge deal. A year ago, we wouldn’t be doing this. A year ago I wouldn’t even be here at his house, much less spending the night. “I spend a lot of time with you,” he says like it’s not a big thing. “I’ve learned stuff about you because you’re a creature of habit. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “No there’s not,” I agree.

  I became a creature of habit because change gave me and still gives me anxiety. I like to know where I’m going, what I’m doing and who will be there with me. It obviously even extends into the foods I eat and the drinks I drink.

  “I gotta go.” I stand on my tiptoes, kissing him softly.

  “Have a good day.” He puts his forehead to mine. “I love you.”

  The side of my mouth hitches up, I never thought I’d hear him say those words so easily. Much less with so much conviction. “I love you too. Be safe out there today.”

  “We will be.”

  Major barks from where he sits at my feet. “Don’t think I forgot you.” I lean down, rubbing his face and neck. He reaches up, giving me doggy kisses. “You be good too,” I tell him. “Catch a whole bunch of bad guys.” He barks like he knows what I’ve told him to do.

  Before I walk out the door, I turn back to wave at them.

  If anyone told me to describe my perfect morning, it would have been this one, I think as I drive to work. It’s true that I never thought I would be able to have this kind of morning with Tucker, but he’s surprising me at every turn.

  I’m late as I pull into the parking lot, but there aren’t many cars here yet, which means we don’t have many patients. I hope this day is an easy one. All I want to do is get back home to my boys. Maybe tonight I’ll pretend we’re like a real married couple or something, and make him dinner.

  Walking into the building, I’m surprised when I see everybody crowded around the television.

  “What’s going on?”

  Immediately I’m concerned there’s been another mass shooting or something of that nature. I’m totally unprepared for what I see.

  * * *

  “Breaking News. Clarence Night who is serving a forty-five-year sentence for kidnapping, among other things, has escaped from the Birmingham Federal Corrections Complex. All we know so far is he had a medical emergency and was supposed to be transferred to a medical facility. The ambulance picked him up with no issue, but between the drive from Birmingham Federal Corrections and the hospital, there was an altercation. During the altercation, Clarence Night escaped.”

  * * *

  In my head I can hear them saying what he looks like, repeating his previous crimes, and telling the public to consider him armed and dangerous. My phone rings, and when I look down I see Shelby’s name.

  “Hello,” I answer it without a thought.

  “I take it you’ve seen the news, given the tone of your voice.” She doesn’t even say who she is.

  “I saw it.”

  “The prison called me, to get in touch with you. They don’t know if he’ll come for you again, Karsyn, but it’s a possibility. You did put him away, and you kept him in jail. None of us know where his head is right now.”

  “What should I do?”

  Immediately I’m taken back to that young girl I was. I’m shaking as I listen to her give me instructions. I’m to go to the police station, and I can’t even begin to comprehend how happy I am to go there. There I’ll not only have my person, but my dog too.

  “Okay,” I answer. “I’m gonna head that way right now.”

  “I really wish you’d let me get you an escort, Karsyn,” she argues.

  For some reason this is the thing that breaks the camel’s back. Maybe because I’ve been living my life without anyone telling me what to do for a while now, maybe it’s because I’ve gotten used to not looking over my shoulder. Whatever it is, I don’t appreciate her wanting me to have an escort.

  “I can do this on my own,” I bite into the phone. “I don’t need an escort to get to the police station.”

  “At least let us follow you,” Kels is saying, wringing her hands in front of her.

  “Yes, at least let them follow you. I know you care so much for your independence, Karsyn, but this is a matter of public safety.”

  Sighing, I consent before hanging up. Honestly what they’re saying is
true. I shouldn’t be arguing with them. If I get hurt, it doesn’t do anything for anyone. It takes away precious resources that can be used to find him.

  Getting into my car, I do my best to push the tears back. How did such a happy ride a few minutes ago turn into this? I hate this with everything in me, and as I pull into the police station lot, I can’t help but let some of those tears fall.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Tucker

  “Does anyone have any idea why we were called in for this meeting?”

  Ransom, Caleb, and Nick sit in the front row of our common meeting room. There’d been no information given to me, just an emergency response to get to this space at a certain time.

  “Negative, Ghostrider,” Ransom answers.

  “Do you really have to quote Top Gun?” I grimace. “It’s not my favorite.”

  “Nobody asked you, Tucker.” He folds his arms over his chest.

  Just as I’m about to tell him what I think about him asking me, Mason walks into the room.

  It doesn’t take long for us to realize something serious has happened. He immediately goes to the front and waits for the room to settle. All I have to do is look at this face and I snap to attention.

  When some of the room keeps on talking, he gets irritated. He whistles before yelling. “Settle down.”

  The group of us who’ve gathered know that tone. It’s one that means he’s not playing around. Looking around the room, he makes sure to meet every single one of our eyes. He’s good about that. Letting us know the severity of the situation before he even begins.

  Papers are shuffled before he begins speaking.

  “An hour ago Clarence Night,” I shiver when I hear that name, “told prison officials he thought he was having a heart attack. They treated him at the prison but knew he’d have to be transferred to a hospital. The facility doesn’t have the proper equipment to accurately assess if a patient is indeed having a cardiac event. The one thing they did know was his heart-rate was slow.”

  My stomach drops, something about this doesn’t sit well with me, even before we know what it is.

  “In transport, there was an altercation in the ambulance, and Clarence escaped.”

  Son of a bitch.

  “Care to explain to me what the fuck altercation means?” I ask before I can convince myself it’s not the right question to ask. My tone is this side of disrespectful, but I can’t help it.

  “First, you can take the attitude down a notch. Second, there were two EMT’s in there with him. Male and female. The male was driving and the female was administering treatment. She was stabbed with a shank in the stomach, he had his throat slit with the same shank.”

  I tilt my head back, doing my best to take a deep breath. “Are they alive?” I realize as soon as I ask the question, I don’t really want to know the answer, but now that I’ve opened this can of worms, there’s no putting it back.

  Mason looks like he doesn’t want to tell us what the outcome is, which is unusual because he’s always been honest with us.

  “Neither one of them made it.”

  Now I want to rage. Every single part of my body wants to go into the workout room and beat the fuck out of a bag. I want to rapidly lift weight and run a mile in five minutes, empty my clip into some fucker who doesn’t deserve to live. None of this makes sense.

  “How did he get out of the ambulance?” Caleb asks the other question I had, but couldn’t seem to form.

  “They ran into extremely heavy traffic. They were forced to stop because of construction. He had time to put the EMT uniform on. He parked the ambulance and made like he was going in to let them know they had arrived. When the back of the ambulance was opened, what they found were the two deceased EMT’s.”

  Such a fucking waste. All of this is. People like this always find a way to circumvent the rules, and now I’m even angrier than I started out being.

  “Do we have any idea where he’s going?” Nick asks.

  “No.” Mason crosses his arms over his chest. “We’ve contacted the FBI and the Tennessee Highway Patrol. They were the ones who headed up the original investigation. Right now we’re waiting.”

  “I can’t wait.” I stand up. “We’ve got to get out there and start looking. They have to have something with his scent on it. Major and me, along with Ransom and Rambo could start tracking. Maybe we could find him before he hurts someone else.”

  “That’s what I was going to suggest.” He flips through his notes. “Goes without saying overtime is approved for everyone. We’re not leaving until we get this guy.”

  He looks at me, motioning me over. “Karsyn’s here and we need to talk to her,” he says the words quietly. “Do you want to be in on this or not? Obviously she’s not in trouble, but maybe she can give us something to work with. She’s the only one who knows what happened the last time he was running from the cops.”

  I don’t want to do this, no part of me wants to do it, but I know I need to be there for her. If I’m not here for her right now, I’ll never forgive myself and neither will she.

  She looks so small sitting in the interrogation room. They’ve at least not made it like a freezer in here for her.

  “Hey, babe,” I grab her up in my arms when she stands.

  “Hey.” She wraps her arms tightly around me. “Is it true?”

  “Yeah, looks like it.”

  Mason sits down, motioning for both of us to do the same. “I hate to be the person asking you these questions, Karsyn, but it’s important.”

  “I know.” She grabs hold of my hand. “I don’t know what I can do to help, but I know I want to.”

  “Tell me.” Mason scoots in, making a note on his piece of paper. “What was his plan after he took you? Did he have one?”

  She’s slow to answer, like she’s doing her best to think back to that time in her life. Truth is, if someone were coming at me like this, I’d be slow to answer too, but probably out of fucking spite.

  “There are a lot of stupid things I remember about those couple of days.” She swallows loudly. “But there’s a few things that stick out. He had a map. It wasn’t like a GPS, or a phone. It was a paper map, and he had a route drawn on it, along with different ways he could take if one wasn’t available to him.”

  So the fucker had planned it down to his route. This pisses me off more than it probably should.

  “When he took you, did he stop to get the clothes for you to change into? Or maybe the dye to dye your hair?”

  She thinks back, that far-off look is on her face again. “No.” She shakes her head. “He had like a go bag in the trunk with most of what he would need. I don’t recall us ever stopping for anything other than gas and food.”

  Mason makes a note, looking at me. “He’s got to have someone on the outside, he’s got to have stashed something either with someone or someone has stashed it somewhere.”

  “I agree, we need to get a perimeter, like how far could he have gone from where the hospital in the amount of time it took them to get patrol cars in there. We also need to see if there’ve been any reports of any other crimes that he could be responsible for. That’ll help us.”

  “Anything else you can give us that might help?” I ask Karsyn, rubbing her neck.

  “I’m trying to think.” Her tone is pleading. “There were so many things he did I thought were weird.” She runs her hands through her hair.

  “But is there one thing? One thing that separates him from other people besides that damn tattoo he has?”

  She looks me dead in the eyes. “He likes girls, Tucker. There’s gonna be another one. He’s been in jail for how long? There’s gonna be another one and I have a feeling she’s going to look like me when I was young.”

  I know she’s right, but I don’t want to believe it. More than anything I want to believe we can protect everyone in our jurisdiction.

  “He’s gonna go where he can get a girl,” I tell Mason. “Where he can get one easily.”

&
nbsp; The group of us move to the meeting room we were in earlier. He’s gotten everyone together, along with a few of our IT guys. “I want a map of the area around the hospital. Is there a school? What about a playground?”

  “There’s both,” he tells us.

  “We need to lock that school down, and get the kids off the playground,” I speak the obvious.

  “Let’s just hope we’ve gotten to it fast enough,” Ace says from where he stands.

  “What should we do?” Caleb asks. “Get down there?”

  Mason looks at his son. “We haul ass and start tracking. The dogs are going to be the only thing that’ll be able to track him, because once he changed those clothes, we’re already behind him.”

  I’m in my SUV traveling at over one hundred miles per hour toward Birmingham when the Amber Alert comes over the radio. We aren’t in time. As they were taking head-count at the elementary school they realized a little girl went to recess and didn’t come back.

  Clarence Night has kidnapped his second child. Right under our noses, and I don’t know about anybody else, but I have a feeling blood will be shed this time, and it won’t be mine.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Karsyn

  I’m still sitting in the police station when I hear the Amber Alert come out. My stomach drops to my knees, because I know what’s coming for this girl. They say her name is Leah, and when they show her picture, I start shaking. She could be my twin when I was a little girl.

  Immediately I want to help. There’s no way I can sit here in this room and not do anything. It goes so far against everything I’ve learned about myself, the person I’ve become. Getting up, I walk over to where Holden is sitting at the information desk. Even though he’s officially retired, he volunteers a few hours a week here. He can’t stand to do nothing from what I’ve heard.