Caroline
PS: Take care of Helena. Try to talk her into the rape kit. The police need all the evidence they can get. Then bring her back to Forever. And when you get there, tell Noah I said thank you, but this time I needed to break free from my past on my own.
Josh stared at the note and read it through a second time, then a third. And the silence in the room, the lack of laughter and of Caroline’s wry humor, the too-serious tone of the letter—it all added up to one sad truth. She was really gone.
He’d let a woman walk out of his life once before. Sure, he’d been a kid then. But he’d never tried to find his mom. He’d given up, accepted the hit, and moved on.
Not this time.
“When did she leave?” he demanded, turning to Helena.
“One bottle of wine before you returned?” Helena held up the empty minibar bottle that he’d spotted on the desk.
Shit.
“Can you stay here?” he asked. “Will you stay right here and wait for me to go get her?”
She nodded. “I might pass out.”
“The bed’s all yours. Just whatever you do, don’t run.” After this, after he found Caroline, he was done chasing women.
JOSH PULLED INTO the police station parking lot. He’d tried the one closest to the hotel first, but she wasn’t there. He’d run into Officer Peters, the lead detective from their earlier adventure at Helena’s house. He’d lied to the man earlier, but he didn’t stop to explain that now. He’d begged the officer, who looked a helluva lot like Josie’s dad, to find out if an AWOL Marine had turned herself in tonight.
The minutes had ticked by, but Officer Peters had made a few calls and learned that another station had contacted the military police. A fugitive was being transferred from civilian to military custody tonight.
Josh hugged the man and bolted from the station. He’d sped across town, hanging on his phone’s every instruction, and hoping like hell he got there in time. The one-story station house had a small, mostly empty parking lot. A black, unmarked sedan idled out front, but he didn’t see signs of a Humvee. And that’s what the military drove, not unmarked black cars sent out in the middle of the night . . .
But as he climbed down from his truck, the door to the station swung open. Two men in uniform—one short, maybe five-six in his boots, and another tall and built like a tank that refueled on fried food and sugar—marched through the door. They each had one hand on a petite woman with long dark hair. Even with her hands behind her back and her head down, she looked like she had that first night in the Oregon woods—a little wild and very fierce.
“Caroline,” he called. He spotted a third driver now, ready and waiting to take her away. He broke into an all-out run. “Caroline, please!”
“Let me go, Josh,” she called as the soldiers flanking her sides hustled her down to the waiting car. “I’m sorry, but I need to do this. I can’t keep hiding.”
“I’m going to find a way out,” he said as he moved closer. “Trust me, Caroline.”
The man on her right, the smaller of the two, opened the door to the backseat. And for that second, while she stood still, her gaze met his. And he saw her uncertainty. She trusted him in the bedroom. Now he needed her to have faith that he wouldn’t let her go without a fight.
The shorter soldier held the car door open. “Let’s go,” he said.
Josh saw a flash of metal as they turned her and guided her into the vehicle. Handcuffs. After everything she’d been through and endured while serving her country, they had the woman he loved, the woman he wanted to build a life with, in cuffs.
The injustice ripped at him.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the larger of the two men said as he closed the car door to the backseat of the sedan and turned to face Josh. “We’re only doing our jobs. And we don’t want trouble.”
Between the man’s broad shoulders, square jaw, and military buzz cut, he looked like the poster boy for the Marines. Josh drew back a fist, ready to take a hit at the only target he had. But the Marine’s poster boy simply raised his hands in a sign of surrender.
“Just doing our jobs,” he repeated.
“She was raped,” Josh bit out, letting his rage fill his words. “Did she tell you that? And the officer who attacked her, the asshole who drove her into hiding, the one who sent her running from her life so that she wouldn’t have to deploy alongside the men who’d taken his side, her rapist’s side, he’s free. And you’re taking her away in handcuffs.”
The poster boy’s lips parted and for a second he thought the Marine would pull open the door and set her free. But he just shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir.”
The soldier took a step back and opened the passenger side door. And Josh felt his stomach turn over. They were taking her away. And hell, she was going with them. She wasn’t fighting back or demanding release. She’d handed herself over.
For him.
So he wouldn’t have to lie for her.