Page 5 of Cold Silence
She picked up speed. Kicking it into the highest gear her fatigue allowed.
Closer and closer to the road. Closer to help. To the faint hint of traffic sounding in the distance.
You can make it. You can make it,her mind chanted with every step until she believed it.
She ran every day. She was fast. She could outrun this creep and flag down help before he caught her. She really could. She had to.
She was racing for her life.
2
Travis turned the corner to the institute and spotted an ambulance and three police cars blocking the entrance flanked with tall palm trees. He couldn’t see far enough ahead to figure out what was going on, but his gut said Claire was in trouble.
He offered a quick prayer on her behalf and pulled to the side of the road. Slapping on his beret, he got out and jogged down the street. The intense Orlando humidity and heat hit him in the face, making it hard to breathe. He’d once joined Claire in her daily run when he’d worked with her, but she was accustomed to this weather. He might live in North Carolina, but he still struggled with the intense humidity.
A burly male police officer manning a barricade near the entrance flipped up a beefy hand and pulled back his shoulders, straining the seams on his uniform. “No one goes in.”
Travis swallowed his anxiety and forced out a smile. “Can’t you make an exception? I’m late for an appointment.”
“Like I said, man. No one goes in.”
The urge to ignore his command and push on had Travis taking a step, but he couldn’t help Claire if he was arrested. “My CO will have my hide if I don’t make my meeting. You know what happens when you fail to complete orders, right? Couldn’t you ask whoever’s in charge if I can slip through?”
The cop waffled for a moment then nodded. “Wait here.”
After he moved out of view, Travis jumped the barricade. He rounded the ambulance with lights twisting into the bright sunshine and stuttered to a stop as he sought to make sense of what he was seeing.
Claire sat on the sidewalk, her head lowered. She was dressed in running gear, with most of her ponytail ripped free, leaving honey-blond strands jutting out like porcupine quills. Raw, ugly sores marred her knees, and she rubbed her hands over her arms as if trying to rid herself of something horrible. Perhaps she heard his approach, because she suddenly raised her head.
Emotions flashed around them as bright as a detonated charge in the black of a Saharan desert night while the nearby chaos faded into the background. Travis knew returning to the institute again would be hard. But this? Seeing Claire wounded and afraid ripped a hole in his gut. The vague sound of footsteps sounded behind him—the cop coming to haul him away—and somehow, he got his feet moving toward Claire again. He took off his beret and tucked it into his belt.
“Hello, Claire,” he said, making sure to keep a level tone when a vise clamped down on his gut.
She squinted at him, her gaze sharpening. “Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any more difficult, they send you.”
Under normal circumstances, he knew she wouldn’t say such a thing. She wasn’t mean, far from it, but shock must be pulling her uncensored feelings to the surface.
And the words lacerated him, proving she could still inflict serious pain. The only woman in his thirty-three years on this earth who could do such damage.
“Do you want me to haul him away?” the cop asked.
Travis braced himself for Claire’s affirmative response, but she shook her head.
“Suit yourself.” The cop’s footsteps receded, but Travis wasn’t alone with Claire for long.
A woman dressed in khakis and a blue polo shirt came to stand behind Claire. Travis blocked out the twenty-something woman and squatted in front of Claire.
“She was attacked,” the other woman said, obviously reading his questioning expression.
“Attacked? How? Where?” he asked, barely able to stop himself from sweeping the only woman he’d ever loved into his arms.
“On her run,” the woman answered. “She got away and managed to crawl back here.”
Claire gestured at the woman. “Meet my new assistant, Dr. Julie Dickson.”
“And you are?” Julie’s narrow-eyed gaze ran over Travis.
“This is Captain Travis Chapman.” Claire might as well have tossed a bucket of ice water over his head for as cool and disapproving as her tone came out.
