Finding Alana by Meg Farrell Page A

train he helped me study. Kid is a genius. Anyway, there was a situation. It affected me. There wasn’t anything I could do, and I couldn’t let it go. It eats, er, ate me alive. I quit when it became too much for me.”
    “What was it?”
    He stops walking and takes both of my hands in his. “I’m not sure I’m ready to tell you,” he says quietly.
    This makes me defensive. “I told you my story. It took a piece of my soul to do that. Is it worse than what I lived through?”
    He shakes his head. “No. But I don’t think you’ll find it coincidental either.”
    Furrowing my brow, I ask, “What are you talking about?” My blood pressure is rising as my heartbeat picks up. It’s a pounding in my ears. “ Don’t panic. Hear him out. See what he means.”
    He leads me to a large rock in the clearing nearby and asks me to sit. He sighs and begins, “I’ve been debating whether or not to tell you any of this. I can see, now, you need to know. It’s a roadblock we have to hurdle. You trusted me, so I’m going to trust you. Let me finish telling you the story before you ask any questions, okay?”
    I nod.
    He starts to pace as he pulls his thoughts together. “So one night, I was off work and my buddy was having a poker night at his place. Dude was a total, cliché bachelor. He had a rundown trailer in the middle of nowhere. We played until well past midnight, and I was bit buzzed when we wrapped up. I was broke from losing all my money. I was anxious to get home, and fall in the bed. On my way home, I see a person stumble from the woods out on to the road. I have to swerve to miss them. I mean just came walking straight toward the truck with no regard for their own life. Waving one hand in the air and walking directly at me. I had to jump on brakes, and the wheels locked up, squealing as I stopped.”
    He looks at me, and studies my reaction before continuing. My heart continues to race, and despite the panic welling up in my brain as I’m piecing this together, I remain quiet.
    “I jump out of the truck, ready to rip into the guy’s ass for being so dumb. I’m in cop mode even though I’m off-duty. I went to the back of the truck, only when I do, the guy is gone. Right then I notice that the passenger door of the truck is open, and the guy has gotten inside. I run up and grab the door, only to see the person inside my truck is…”
    This is it. The blood in my veins is cold. I know what comes next, but I need him to say it.
    Justin stops pacing and squats in front of me, holding my hands. “… Is a woman. She’s bleeding a ton, and holding her stomach. Then she says ‘please help me.’ I lift the edge of her soaked shirt and see that she’s been shot. There’s a gaping wound right next to her hip.”
    Tears are pooling my eyes as he’s talking. I was that woman in his truck. He’s describing what happened to me. He’s retelling my nightmare.
    “I pulled off my flannel shirt and wadded it up under her hand to help staunch some of the bleeding. I drove like a maniac to get her to the hospital. I kept asking her who did this to her, but she was passed out cold. The only sounds she made when she would surface into consciousness were groans of pain or deep sobs. I used my cell to call a friend of mine who’s a nurse in the ER.
    “She had a team and a gurney at the ambulance drop off door when I pulled up. They scooped the woman out of my truck and rolled her away. My friend, Marcy, told me I reeked of beer and I needed to go home before my sergeant showed up to start the investigation.”
    Justin reaches up and wipes hot tears from my cheeks. I’m numb. I can barely tell I’m still sitting. My breathing is shallow as I try to fight the urge to run away from him.
    “I didn’t want to leave. I was going to come back and help investigate what happened to that woman. To me, it was clearly a domestic issue. You see, my mother died when I was a teenager. My stepfather was an abusive asshole, and she