Category: Flash Fiction

It began to storm.

Connor thought the howling wind, pouring rain, rolling thunder and flashes of lightening were appropriate for the story Lacey was about to tell him.

She held his hand and clung to it, so instead of sitting on the coffee table facing her as he had intended he sat beside her. “Tell me about him, Lacey, what’s his name?” Maybe he would get more out of her if he asked her questions, let her tell him one thing at a time.

“TJ,” she whispered, her hand tightening around his until it hurt.

“How did you meet him?”

“I’m a dancer, a ballerina, I moved to the city as soon as I graduated high school. Callie and I moved together, we shared an apartment, worked nights as as waitresses to pay the bills and went to auditions during the day. We met TJ at the restaurant, he took a liking to me. He was a lawyer, he was wealthy and good looking and charming, and I fell for it,” she said, tears brimming in her beautiful blue eyes.

“How much older than you was he?” Connor asked, knowing that there was probably at least a ten year age gap, the man had taken advantage of the fact that Lacey was young and innocent.

“I was nineteen when I met him, he was twenty-nine. When he proposed he said he wanted to take care of me so I could pursue my dreams, but once we were married he changed. He expected me to wait on him hand and foot, to cook and clean, and be available whenever he wanted me for …” she trailed off and her cheeks turned bright red.

“He hit you?” Connor asked, forcing his voice to remain even despite the anger bubbling inside him.

Lacey nodded.

“How long were you married?”

“Nearly four years,” she replied.

“How did you get out?” he asked, but before she could answer he saw shadows moving at the bottom of his door.

Someone was out there.

“Lacey, shh,” he whispered, his hand moving for his gun. He stood and walked to the window, carefully pulling back the curtain so he could see out. The street below was mostly empty but he saw a woman standing at the bottom of the apartment building steps.

She looked familiar.

Connor tried to place her, then all of a sudden it clicked. She was the woman who he had thought was Lacey when he first arrived home.

“You were followed,” he said, letting the curtain fall closed.

“Followed?” Lacey echoed, her eyes going wide with fear.

“A woman, and now they’re outside the apartment.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” she asked, voice squeaky with barely suppressed terror.

That was a very good question.

Connor stared at the photo of Lacey he held in his hands. It was only her drivers license photo, and her unsmiling face stared back at him, but he still thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Those sky blue eyes, and hair like spin gold, he could have stared at her for hours except he had more important things to be doing.

Like finding out where she had gone.

He’d had her photo printed up and handed out to every cop in the city because he wanted her found.

What was she thinking running off on her own when she knew such a violent man was after her?

Didn’t she know that he would do whatever it took to keep her safe?

No, of course she didn’t, why would she? They didn’t know each other and she had no reason to trust him.

Connor crossed the street and nearly bumped into a blonde woman on the steps to his apartment. For a second he thought it was Lacey, who had somehow managed to track him down and come to him for help, but then she turned around and he saw it was a stranger.

“Excuse me, miss,” he said as he walked past her. How long was he going to fantasise about seeing Lacey? Unfortunately he suspected he knew the answer to that.

Bypassing the elevator he took the stairs, hoping running up six flights would work out some of his nervous anxiety so he could focus and find Lacey before anything happened to her.

He was just opening the front door when he noticed the stack of picture books he’d left by the front door ready to take to his sister’s house for his nephew and niece had been knocked over. He was kind of anal when it came to the tidiness of his home and it had been in a neat pile when he had left earlier.

Someone was in here.

Puling out his gun he began to search his apartment.

Her leg hurt.

Really hurt, a kind of pain she had never hurt before. But as excruciating as it was it couldn’t compare with the pain in her heart.

Callie was dead.

Because of her.

Because Todd had come after her.

She should have known that he would never let her leave, that sooner or later he would come back to get her. He thought that she was his possession and he would never leave her alone as long as she was alive. Or as long as he was.

Which didn’t give her many options.

Trying to hide her limp as best as she could so no one noticed that she was a patient and not a nurse. She had thrown on a set of scrubs a nurse had left for her since her clothes were evidence for the cops, and she hoped that no one would spare her a second glance as she snuck out of the hospital.

“He’s sick,” a woman cried out, carrying her small son into the emergency room as Lacey hurried through the doors.

The only problem in her plan to disappear was Detective Zaal.

Connor Zaal.

He had saved her life, and she knew that he would do anything within his power to help her remain alive until her ex-husband was found and arrested. But trusting him was out of the question. It was trusting a man that had gotten her into this mess to begin with and she wasn’t ready to take that leap of faith again.

Even for someone like him.

So for now she was on her own.

Connor couldn’t stop thinking about the woman, who’s name he had finally learned was Lacey. Lacey Bentley, aged twenty-three, parents deceased, no siblings, and a recent divorce. That was what he had managed to learn about her while he was sitting in the hospital corridor waiting to speak with her.

After admitting that it might have been her husband who sent someone to kill her and bursting into tears she had kind of drifted off into a trance.

He’d bundled her into an ambulance, waited at the scene to give a statement to his colleagues about what had gone down, then driven to the hospital as quickly as he could. Connor had spoken to her doctor and learned that her leg hadn’t needed surgery but that they were keeping her overnight to treat her for shock.

He wanted to see her again. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to . . .

“Detective Zaal?”

“Yes?” he asked the doctor who had walked down the corridor towards him. “How is Ms. Bentley?”

“She’ll be alright, physically at least, psychologically, well thats going to take time.”

“Can I go in and speak with her? She is a witness in a shooting that lead to seven deaths,” he added when the doctor looked to be wavering.

“Okay, but I don’t know how much you’ll get out of her.”

“Thank you,” he said. Standing he walked towards Lacey’s hospital room a little brisker than was strictly necessary but he really wanted to see her again. Back at the crime scene she’d wanted to kiss him, he had been able to read it written all over her face.

What was worse was that he had wanted to kiss her too.

That was completely inappropriate. He was a cop, she was the victim of a crime, one who was probably still in danger. He had to shut down this attraction he felt for her before he did something stupid that they would both regret.

“Lacey, its Detective Zaal,” he said as he opened the door and stepped into her room.

Which was empty.

She’d run.

No doubt afraid that her ex-husband would track her to the hospital she had decided that she was safer on the run.

On her own.

“Lacey,” he groaned. How could he keep her safe when he didn’t know where she was. She’d just made his job a whole lot harder.

But he would find her, and he would protect her from her ex. And then for once in his life he might throw caution to the wind and win the girl.