LITMIR.BIZ

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      Translation: I think you should go upstairs to the psych ward and have a nice chat with a professional about the definition of Stockholm syndrome.

      “That’s not necessary,” she said quickly. “I’m feeling fine. Hungry, but otherwise fine.”

      “Are you sure?”

      “Don’t worry about me,” she said, summoning a smile. “I’m not confused about Fairfax, and I’m ready to do the debriefing thing. I figure I might as well get it over with.” She took a deep breath and beat back her nerves. “I promise I’ll hold it together.”

      And she did. She held it together while they returned to the BCCPD by way of a breakfast sandwich to soothe her hunger pangs. Once she was at the PD, she held it together through several more rounds of questioning. The worst of it came from Romo Sampson, a dark-haired, dark-eyed suit from the Internal Affairs Department, but she stayed strong and answered his questions fully on everything except the way her heart had bumped when she first saw Fairfax. That much she kept to herself.

      After the questioning, Chelsea also held it together—more or less—through a tearful reunion with Sara and her other coworkers, and a trip down to the morgue to say goodbye to Jerry. She held it together through a phone call to Jerry’s devastated girlfriend, and then through calls to her own parents and sister. Each person she spoke to or saw was cautioned to pretend they hadn’t heard from her if asked; her survival was being kept very quiet because the escapees—three of them, anyway—thought she was dead. The fourth was still an enigma.

      Once she was off the phone with her mother, Chelsea thought about calling her father, but didn’t. Despite her mother’s best efforts to keep the family together, her parents had divorced when she was in her early teens. Her boat-captain father, a charismatic man with a wandering heart, had called and visited a few times a year for the first few years after the divorce, but that had dwindled and eventually stopped. Last Chelsea had heard, he was living with a woman twenty years his junior, running charters off the Florida Keys. He didn’t have a TV, and if he happened to hear about the escape, he probably wouldn’t even remember she lived in Bear Claw.

      Besides, she figured he’d lost the right to worry about her, in the process teaching her a valuable lesson that had only been reinforced in the years since: men who seemed larger than life usually cared more about that life than they did the people around them.

      Chelsea, on the other hand, cared very deeply about her mother and sister, and the friends who had become her extended family in Bear Claw.

      Just because she cared, though, didn’t mean she was going to let them run her life; she stood her ground when it was time for her to go home, and each of her friends had a different theory on where she should stay, none of the answers being “at home,” which was where she wanted to be.

      Mindful that Tucker was still watching her for signs of collapse—or Stockholm syndrome—she held it together through the arguments that ensued when she insisted on going home that night, and refused to let any of her friends stay over.

      She loved them, she really did, but her self-control was starting to wear seriously thin. She just wanted some alone time, some space to fall apart. Permission to be a wimp.

      “Seriously,” Sara persisted, “I don’t mind.”

      You might not, but I do, Chelsea thought, her temper starting to fray. She just wanted to go home and cry. “I’ll be fine,” she said, pulling on her coat. “I’ll be under police protection, for heaven’s sake.” Tucker had arranged to have a patrol car watch from out front of her place, just in case. She shook her head and said, “Honestly, what can you do that the cops can’t?” Like her, Sara was an ME. They didn’t carry guns, didn’t live in the line of fire.

      Not usually, anyway.

      “I’ll listen if you want to talk,” Sara said softly, quick hurt flashing in her eyes.

      “I’m all talked out,” Chelsea said firmly. But she leaned forward and pressed her cheek to Sara’s. “I’ll call you if that changes, I promise.”

      She held her spine straight as she marched out of the ME’s office, and made herself stay strong as she drove home in her cute little VW Bug, hyperaware of the Crown Vic following close behind her, carrying the surveillance team.

      After an uneventful commute, made unusual only by the fact that she couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing some mention of the jailbreak and her own supposed death, she pulled her cherry-red Bug into her driveway.

      The small, cottagelike house faced a side road and had large-lot neighbors on either side, with a finger of Bear Claw Canyon State Park stretching across her back boundary. The rent was on the high side, but she liked the feeling of space and isolation. At least she usually liked it. Given the events of the day, she wondered whether she might’ve been better off in a hotel for the night.

      No, she decided. She wanted to be in her own space, surrounded by familiar things. Besides, she’d be safe. The cops would see to it.

      The Crown Vic pulled in behind her car and two officers got out; one stayed with her while the other went into the house first and looked around to make sure she was safe and alone.

      Wrapping her arms around herself, she waited, shivering slightly even though the car’s heater was going full blast. Then again, why shouldn’t she shiver? She’d been kidnapped and nearly killed, and had gotten away only by the grace of God and the unexpected help she’d received from the fourth escapee. Or so she thought.

      Fairfax was as much of a monster as the others he’d been caged with, Tucker had told her pointedly earlier in the day, and Chelsea knew he was right. She also knew he’d been warning her not to romanticize, as though he’d picked up on the fact that she kept thinking about the man who’d protected her, even though she knew she shouldn’t.

      Fairfax’s angular face was fixed in her mind, and the sound of his voice reverberated in her bones. She couldn’t help thinking that if they’d met under different circumstances she would’ve found him handsome. Heck, even under the current circumstances, she was having serious trouble reconciling the facts with her perception of the man.

      Then again, she’d never had very good instincts when it came to guys. Or rather, her instincts were okay; she just tended to ignore them. She’d seen what her mother had gone through with her father. And she’d been through a couple of near-miss relationships that had only reconfirmed that she needed to find herself a guy who might not be all that exciting, but was loyal and relationship-focused.

      Yet here she was, practically fantasizing about an escaped double murderer. Maybe she should be checking out the hospital’s psych ward.

      The cop who’d stood guard by her car knocked on the window, making Chelsea jump.

      “Sorry,” he said when she opened the door, “didn’t mean to startle you.”

      She shook her head. “It’s not your fault. I was spacing out.” She glanced at the front door, and saw his partner waiting there. “The house is all clear?”

      “I’ll walk you up.” He escorted her to the front door, where he and his partner turned down her offers of coffee, food or a restroom, and then left her to return to their vehicle, where they would spend the night, making regular patrols to ensure that the escapees didn’t try to contact her, or worse.

      When the cops were gone, Chelsea shut the front door, and locked and deadbolted it for good measure.

      Then she turned, leaned back against the panel, and burst into tears.

      She’d held it together like she’d promised Tucker she would. Now that she was alone, she gave herself permission to fall apart.

      Sinking down until she was sitting on the floor with her spine pressed up against the entryway wall, she cried for Jerry and his girlfriend, and for Rickey, even though he didn’t deserve her tears. She cried for the four dead guards laid out in the morgue, two of whom had been a father and son

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