Page 38 of Her Last Refuge

One of the uniformed officers near the stretcher caught Rachel’s eye. He came over, his expression slightly tired. When he spoke, it came out sounding like a long, exasperated sigh. “Still no word on Barrett,” he said. “The medics took him from the entrance earlier. The hospital hasn’t sent any status yet. He was conscious when they loaded him, though. That’s the only hopeful part so far. One of the medics did seem to think he’d pull through. Nothing major was hit, apparently.”

“Good,” Rachel said. “Thanks for the update.”

She then walked to the back of the ambulance George Tremaine would be traveling in. Just before the medics could close the ambulance doors, Tremaine lifted his head slightly and called out in a weak voice. Rachel stepped closer so he would not have to raise it further. Water still darkened the collar of the thin blanket they had placed over him. His face was pale and the skin around his eyes looked tight from the strain of what he had been through.

“Thank you,” he said. The words were thin but clear enough to carry. “You saved my life.” He paused and drew a careful breath. “The man who attacked me… he kept saying I was the reason someone named Danny was dead.” His eyes shone with fresh tears that had not yet fallen. “Was that the boy? The one who drowned all those years ago?”

Novak answered for both of them. “Yes. It was.”

Tremaine’s face folded inward. The tears that had been waiting spilled over and ran toward his temples. He turned his head away from them and spoke toward the roof of the ambulance, the words coming out uneven and wet. “I still have nightmares about it. That little body being pulled out of the water.” His voice was little more than a whisper now, his energy draining away. “I see it more than I want to admit. I have nightmares about it and I...”

The medics exchanged a look. One of them rested a hand on his shoulder and told him quietly that he needed to rest and stop talking for now. They then looked out to Rachel sternly. “If you need to speak with him, you can do it at the hospital after he’s been looked over.”

“Of course,” Rachel said. “I understand.”

The medic closed the doors with a solid double-thud. The ambulance pulled away through the tangle of cars, its lights flicking on and the siren tearing through the later afternoon. The assembled locals who had gathered to see what was going on watched it go solemnly.

“Maybe we need to get you to the hospital,” Rachel said. “That poor-man’s bandage you administered to yourself isn’t going to hold up much longer. And we don’t know what might have been on that drill bit he got you with.”

“I know. And I will.” He nodded over to their car, where Roy Alcott sat. He was still cuffed and his head was pressed gently against the window as if he might be taking a nap. “But let’s get him to the field office first.”

“And then you’ll go the hospital?”

“Sure. Besides. You think Anderson would let me not go?”

“Good point.”

As they spoke, more officers arrived in pairs and single units. Someone was photographing the trailhead while another officer joined his buddies to make sure the crowd and press stayed back. The news crew had been joined by a second van, and the two reporters were already comparing notes while their camera operators adjusted angles. Voices overlapped in a steady layer of sound—radio traffic, short orders, the low hum of engines left running.

Novak looked at the organized chaos as they walked toward their car. He gestured once, a wide motion that took in the entire clearing and the activity that filled it. “Do you ever get tired of all of this?”

Rachel didn’t answer right away because it wasn’t an easy answer. The question seemed to settle into the space the ambulance had left behind—an ambulance carrying away a life she had helped save. She thought about the long stretch of her career that had brought her to this exact kind of evening more times than she could count. She thought about Alex Lynch, the case that had nearly ended everything, her tumor and the months of recovery that followed, and the slow return to work that had never felt entirely certain even after the physical strength came back. She thought about the cancer and the way it had forced her to look directly at the possibility that her job, and her life itself, could simply stop without warning.

And then, unsurprisingly, she thought about Paige at home. She’d have homework but would, as always, put it off until the absolute last minute. Rachel assumed Paige would already be at the table or in her room with the lockbox materials open, following the same stubborn line of questions Rachel herself had followed for years. In the way Paige worked at the old case Eleanor had left them, Rachel could see a younger version of her own focus looking back at her, the same refusal to leave a question alone once it had taken hold.

She watched another officer cross the grass with a fresh roll of tape and then turned to Novak.

“No, not really,” she finally answered. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of trying to save lives.”

They walked back toward their car through the residual movement of the scene. Lights still turned on the roofs of the marked units. Radios still spoke in short bursts. A news anchor and her camera man tracked them for a few steps before an officer stepped in their way and redirected them.

Rachel reached the driver’s side of their car, opened the door, and stood for a moment with one hand on the frame, looking back in the direction of the pond and the activity that still surrounded the lot. Then, still thinking of her daughter, she took out her phone to call home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Four days later, on a slow Saturday afternoon, Paige found her mother at the dining room table after lunch. The house felt lazy and sort of stale. It had been the sort of Saturday that felt like one long, waking nap. Paige loved those Saturdays. Sunlight came through the side windows in long rectangles across the floor. The only sounds were the low hum of the refrigerator and the occasional soft shift of paper as Rachel moved something in the spread of files in front of her. Jack had left an hour earlier to play basketball with friends, but that had been the only real activity.

Paige stopped in the doorway and watched her mother at work for a moment. Eleanor’s materials were out again—the timeline, the clippings, the unsent letter, the notes Rachel had added over the past weeks. Her mother sat with one elbow on the table and the other hand resting on the edge of a page, reading with a focused stillness that sometimes freaked Paige out. When her mom got this way, it made her look almost paralyzed. And when after watching her mother battle cancer as a young girl, the thought of her being paralyzed was not ideal.

Paige walked in and pulled out the chair across from her. “You’ve been at this a while.”

Rachel looked up and smiled. “I have. I know. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry. I get it. Have you found anything new?”

Rachel was quiet for a few seconds, then she set the page down and rested both hands on the table. “I’ve been going back over Douglas Farrell. Eleanor wrote that letter ready to name someone and never sent it. For a long time I thought the someone was him. The family’s attorney, present the night before Victor died, the one who handled the estate and then disappeared from their lives almost immediately afterward.”

Paige kept her face neutral even though her pulse had picked up. Her mother was actually talking to her about the case instead of giving the usual careful version meant for a teenager. This was not just a standard answer to send her on her way, a nice way to say none of your business. She was actually sharing.