You Can't Run Hope Davis (free ebook reader .txt) 📖

morning because Naya didn’t show up to the office. I went to their house to look for her, and instead I found Vance and he was uh…” He trailed off and the phone line was silent for a moment.

When he spoke again, his voice was much more somber.

“So, are you out looking for Naya, do you think she was depressed enough to hurt herself?”

Kevin thought back to the night when Naya and Vance had said their goodbyes. This was not what this was about, and he knew it. She had been at peace that night. Sad, but at peace. “No sir. I’m at the police station right now, you see, Naya’s car was at the house, and the rug was messed up. They think she may have been taken.”

“Jesus.” Kevin could tell Mr. Largusa was having trouble dealing with the double blow that he may just be losing both his children at once. “I’m going to have someone drive us up there at once. We will meet you at the police station.”

“Yes. See you soon.” Kevin hung up the phone, the sound of Mrs. Largusa’s sobs still echoing in his ears. He laid his head back down on the table.

Atlas came back in at that moment, his face grim. “We have a problem.”

“What?” Kevin sat back up.

“There is no Trevor Carlson who owns a truck like you described in the entire state. Not only that, but when we ran the numbers from the driver’s license your office had on file for him, they came back as fake. Trevor probably printed that license himself.”

Kevin’s jaw dropped. “You mean his name isn’t Trevor?”

Atlas shook his head and took a seat once again, his notepad and pen ready to go. “I need you to tell me everything you know about this man, right now. Where he came from whatever you can think of.”

Kevin thought for a moment, and the more he thought the more he realized he didn’t know all that much about Trevor. The guy really hadn’t talked much when they hung out. And at work they had talked about trivial things.

“Wait, he mentioned once that he was divorced.” That was how they had connected. Kevin had mentioned the end of his recent relationship and Trevor had said his divorce had been finalized recently as well. Now where had he said that it had happened? “I think he moved here from Chicago; he had insinuated his divorce was recent when I met him.”

“Okay good. Anything else? Did he mention what he did before? Anything about his family?”

Kevin shook his head. “As weird as it is, I’m suddenly realizing just how, well, little, I know about the guy. We connected over our recently failed relationships when we met, but I think I mostly talked about mine and he would say things like ‘the same thing happened when my divorce was final’ and so on.”

“Hm.” Atlas stood from the table. “I’m going to go to my computer and do a few searches. If you think of anything else, can you come tell me right away?”

“Sure.” Kevin put his head in his hands, trying to think of all the conversations he had with Trevor over the past six months. They had all just been so one-sided. And then recently he had begun asking about Naya.

The guilt came crashing down on him at that. Maybe he had made Naya his target.

Why had he ignored her the last few days? This was such a mess.

Wait! He remembered something. He rose from his chair and walked towards Atlas’ desk. “Atlas, I remembered something, his wife, he said her name was Katie.”

Atlas didn’t look up from his computer. “Of course, the most generic name ever. But thanks Kevin.”

“No problem.” Kevin turned and went to grab his coffee from the table where it had long gone cold. He took a long sip from the paper cup. He had never felt so ineffective in his life.

CHAPTER 31

NAYA

She walked quietly alongside Trevor for a few yards. He kept her arm twisted behind her back in a painful position which she was sure had dislocated her shoulder, or elbow, or both.

She saw a dot come into her field view and she quickly realized that it was Trevor’s truck. Time was up. It was fight now or die.

Before he could tell what was coming, she lifted her leg and kicked him as hard as she could in the groin. She was pretty sure she had missed her mark, but it was enough for him to release the powerful grip on her arm. While he staggered in place, she quickly used a trick she had learned in college to relocate her elbow. It fell back into place with a painful pop. She rolled her shoulder, it seemed to be in place. Good enough.

Trevor stood up straight, clearly baffled by why she hadn’t run again.

Using his confusion as a distraction, she quickly rammed the heel of her hand into his nose, hearing a sickening crack as the bone broke. She still had her edge.

As he grabbed his nose she used her knee to hit him in the groin again, and this time, she hit her target and he doubled over in pain. Naya could tell immediately that he wasn’t used to dealing with women that could fight back.

She stepped closer to try a move to get him on his stomach so she could try and get the car keys from his pocket, but he was too quick. He knocked her off her legs the minute she was in range of his long arms.

She caught herself this time though, as she hadn’t exhausted all her energy running and her will to live keeping her going The minute she propelled herself into a standing position she kicked his stomach as hard as she could, a little