When I first saw the news broadcasts, my heart had ached for her. I knew her deepest fear was being taken and held for ransom. And I had told her that if anything like that ever happened to her, I wouldn’t quit until I found her.
“The next thing I knew, the cops were banging down my door and I was arrested in suspicion of her abduction.”
Lauren presses her hand over her mouth. “They arrested you?”
“Everything pointed to me. She had kept texts. Photos. Ones I didn’t even know she had. Same with the CCTV footage of us together in her apartment. It was all proof that I was more than her bodyguard. But they were all out of context. She had deleted messages that put things in perspective, and kept ones that were damning.”
“She set you up?”
“She knew if I was a suspect, I would be taken off my new assignment until I was cleared of having any involvement in her disappearance. She knew it would motivate me to find her.”
“Did you find her?”
“She found me. Sent me a message telling me to meet her at her apartment. When I arrived, she was waiting for me, barely dressed and acting… strange. I knew something was wrong. She was full of frenetic energy. She told me we could disappear together. That she’d give it all up to be with me. But I wasn’t in love with her. I didn’t want her to do any of that. I wanted her to be happy with a man who wanted to be in her world. A man who would love her. And that wasn’t me.”
“And you told her?”
“I did and she didn’t take it well.” For years, I’ve blocked out what happened next. But now, I can see it as clearly as if it happened only yesterday.
Anastasia disappearing into the bathroom and reappearing completely naked.
Her desperate cries as she frantically tries to kiss me.
Her attempts to get me to touch her.
Her sobbing when I tell her it’s over.
The final act of desperation as she plunges the knife into her neck.
“She killed herself and I couldn’t stop it.” An all-too-familiar pain snakes its way through me. “I tried to stop the bleeding. Tried to keep her alive. But by the time the police came, she was already dead.”
My remorse is a cold lump in my throat and I struggle to swallow. What I would give to go back and hide every goddamn knife in that house. And get Anastasia the help she desperately needed.
Lauren’s beautiful face is full of empathy. “Oh my God, that poor woman.”
I nod. Why hadn’t I seen it coming?
It’s a guilt I carry around with me every day.
It’s in every breath.
Every heartbeat.
Lauren takes my hand. “What happened next?”
I shake off the memory of her face disappearing as they zipped up the body bag.
“They arrested me,” I say calmly, although my insides are tight and aching. “They said it was a ransom kidnapping gone wrong … some crazy bullshit like that. I had a great defense team, but her family was angry. Even if I didn’t kill her, they still blamed me for her death, and they were determined to make me pay for it however they could. The trial was biased. The family name had influence, and the fact that I’d broken code and had an affair with my client painted me in a very poor light in the court of public opinion. I was found guilty and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Anastasia Crawford.”
Lauren gasps. “Oh, Axel…”
“My defense team immediately appealed. But it was going to take a lot to overturn. I even remember my attorney pointing to a stranger walking past and saying, ‘He has more chance of winning the lottery than you do in overturning this conviction.’”
The feeling of hopelessness I’d felt then was still as raw today.
“What happened next?”
“I was being transferred to a prison just outside Jacksonville, Florida, when a deer ran out in front of the bus, and we veered off the road and down an embankment into a pond. There were seven of us onboard. The driver and three other prisoners were killed in the crash. Two others and I survived and escaped. One got caught, one got killed on some train tracks. But me, somehow, I got out of there and I ran. I ran because I knew I would never win that appeal, and I didn’t want to die for a crime I never committed. I saw my chance and I took it.”
Some days I wonder if that makes me a coward.
Other days, when I’m freeing a deer from a snare trap or tending to an injured bird, I figure I am doing more good on the outside than I ever would on the inside.
The way I see it, God gave me a second chance and I took it. And as long as I live well, then I’m respecting the opportunity to live my life as I should.
“I’ve been on the run for almost ten years,” I say and Lauren’s eyes widen.
“How have you managed to stay hidden all that time?”
“It’s easy to create a new identity if you know the right people. I was fortunate. I had a few trusted contacts. And after a few years of moving across the country, I found Mirror Lake and knew it was home.”
“And you’ve been here ever since.”
I nod. “Everybody on the mountain has a story. It’s a good place to live. No one asks questions and no one cares about your business. Anyway, as far as the world is concerned, Calder Christofferson was eaten by a gator after the prison bus he was traveling in crashed. They found parts of his prison-issued jumpsuit bloodied and ripped to shreds on the banks of that pond.”
I saw the report in a Florida newspaper a few days later.
The blood had come from a nasty gash to my shoulder where I’d been impaled on the metal handrail of a broken bus seat. There was a decent amount of blood, enough to suggest I had been eaten.
And a few years later, I saw a TV report about some remains they’d found in a lake near the crash site, and they were questioning if they were mine or not. It was weird to watch. But it was also proof that there were some real questions about whether or not I had survived. I stopped watching news bulletins after that, and never bothered with the Internet or newspapers since because I didn’t want to know about the world that had turned its back on me.
After leaving the crash site behind me, I’d hid out until nightfall in an abandoned house. Thankfully, I was able to steal clothing from a clothesline, and some basic medical supplies from a closed veterinary office to dress the wound to my shoulder. I spent three days in that old house before slipping into the shadows and disappearing from society forever.
Lauren squeezes my hand. “You’re innocent.”
I raise an eyebrow in her direction. “Turns out that’s subjective. If you ask Anastasia’s family, I’m sure they’d disagree with you.”
“But it’s fact, you didn’t murder her. Or kidnap her. Or hold her for ransom.”
“No. But she died because I didn’t want to be with her.”
“That’s not true. She was unwell. It wasn’t your fault.”
I lean forward. “Regardless, I’m ready to clear my name.”
Again, her eyes go round like saucers. “How do you plan to do that?”
“I’m going to hand myself in.”
She looks alarmed.
“If you do that, you’ll go to prison,” she whispers.
I cup her jaw in the palm of my hand. “I didn’t care about clearing my name when it was just me. But now I have you, and the only thing I have to offer you is the very thing that is tarnished.”