Something isn’t adding up here. After I showed the chief the video, he barely flinched. And now, instead of worrying about the safety of a poor woman, he’s talking to me about how her kidnapping could affect people’s wallets?
“What the fuck aren’t you telling us?” I ask him pointblank.
“I don’t have anything to tell you,” he says too quickly.
“Bullshit! Tessa isn’t the first, is she?”
“What do you mean?” Charlotte asks me and then turns to the chief as understanding dawns. “You’re not saying…have there been other women who have gone missing?”
The chief’s silence is answer enough.
“You son of a bitch!” I exclaim when I shoot to my feet and reach across the desk to grab him up by the front of his shirt. “How many?”
“I’m not aware of any true instances of kidnapping…”
I pull on his shirt until the collar tightens around his neck. “How. Many?”
“Three, but none have been confirmed kidnappings. They just went missing! They could be anywhere!”
“You’re gonna write down their names and give me the contact information for their people. Then, you’re going to give a press conference notifying the entire fucking world that while you’ve been sitting on your thumbs not one, not two, but four fucking women have gone missing right under your nose!”
“They were whores! No one cares about them!” he exclaims, and then Charlotte is right beside me, leaning across the desk and slapping the chief of police across the face.
“Tessa isn’t a whore, not that it should matter to you or anyone else if she was! She’s my best friend, and she was taken by four men in a rapist van. So, if you don’t help us find her and the other women, I’m going to have Roman hold your pudgy ass down while I shove a dick in it until you find some fucking empathy for them!”
Jesus Christ. I knew the woman was tough, but now I think I’m a little terrified of her.
“What she said,” I agree.
“Fine. Fine!” Chief Bailey says in a rush, so I finally let his shirt go. “Get out of my office so I can get to work.”
“Nah, I think we’ll stay until you follow through,” I tell him. “What do you say?” I ask Charlotte.
“Oh, I’m not leaving,” she replies when she plops right back down in the visitor chair.
“Suit yourselves. I need to find the city attorney,” the chief says before he pushes his chair back with a sigh and flees the room.
“Think he’ll actually do it?” Charlotte asks when he’s gone.
“Oh yeah. I do believe your threat did the trick,” I tell her when I retake my seat next to her.
“We make a pretty good team,” she replies. “Who would’ve thought? I just hope we’re doing enough…”
Reaching over, I grab her hand and give it a squeeze. “Just give me until tomorrow morning. I have a good feeling that we’re gonna catch a break soon and your best friend will be back with you safe and sound in Raleigh.”
“You really think so?” she asks, her eyes glistening with tears.
“I do.”
“You think she’ll ever forgive me?”
“That’s nothing to forgive,” I tell her. “She’ll be so happy to see you. You can tell her you did everything you could to find her, including threatening and assaulting a law enforcement officer.”
With her free hand, Charlotte covers her face and mutters, “I can’t believe I did that. He could’ve arrested me!”
“Like I would let that happen.”
“I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but,” she starts with a heavy exhale. “The tough guy act is really working for me.”
“Is it?” I say in surprise.
“Yes.” Lowering her eyes to our hands, Charlotte rotates her palm so that she can intertwine her fingers with mine. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without your help today. And I’m not really sure what I did to deserve you coming to the rescue.”
“You’ve been through enough heartache for one lifetime. I don’t want you to have to go through losing someone else you love,” I tell her. “But I would be doing the same thing for anyone else in your position too. What happened to Tessa…I’m still in fucking shock from that video.”
“Yeah. Me too,” she agrees with a sniffle. “It feels like it’s all my fault…”
“I told you it’s not your fault!”
“I was jealous.”
“What?” I ask in confusion.
“I was jealous of Tessa and Paul and their wedding because they remind me of everything I lost. I tried to be happy for them on the outside because they deserve to have a forever kind of love with their soulmates. But on the inside, I could barely stand to listen to Tessa talk about the wedding plans without missing Adam. I can’t help but think this happened because I didn’t want to be the only woman sad and alone.”
“You don’t have to be sad or alone, Charlotte. Adam would have wanted you to move on and spend your life with someone else.”
“You’re right, he would’ve wanted that. And that’s not what holds me back.”
“Then what is it?”
“I just don’t think I can ever have the connection we had with someone else.”
“Is that really what you think, or are you just scared of falling in love again and losing them like you lost Adam?” I ask.
“Maybe that’s a part of it too,” she admits. “I can’t go through that kind of loss again. It would kill me.”
While I want to shake her and tell her everything, all the secrets about the man she married, I promised Adam I would keep them. Besides, I don’t want to be the one to hurt Charlotte by slapping her in the face with the truth. While I have no clue how hard it must be to lose someone you love, I also know that Charlotte can’t handle something happening to her best friend, especially not if she continues blaming herself for what happened to Tessa.
“All right,” Chief Bailey says when he waddles back into the room and tosses a single typed piece of paper down in front of us. “There’s our press release.”
I read it silently as Charlotte does the same. The chief is going to release the video along with a number for Crime Stoppers for people to call with information. He’s also increasing patrols on high foot traffic areas of the town, like the strip on Ocean Boulevard, and asked women to try to only go out in groups at night rather than alone until the suspects are apprehended. When we both finish reading, Charlotte looks to me, her eyes asking my approval before she gives hers.
“If that’s the best you can do, then get on with it,” I tell the fat man when I pick it up and hand it to him. “Why are you still standing here with us wasting time when you should be in front of the cameras?”
His brown eyes underneath his bushy eyebrows narrow, but he plucks the paper from my fingers and says, “We’re going on in fifteen. So, if you’ll excuse me, I need to put on a suit.”
“We’ll be watching,” I tell him as Charlotte and I get up from our seats and walk out of his office.