They’d both lived, because of each other, survived alone yet together all these years so they could return to one another when the time was right.
They pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office and both sat staring at the building for a moment. Harper had called Agent Gallagher when they reached the highway, and he was meeting Jak there. Harper reached over, squeezing his hand. “You sure you don’t want me to come inside with you? Or wait for you out here?”
He leaned over and kissed her quickly. “No. I can do this alone.” I need to do this alone. I need to be a man. “But I can’t wait to see you at your apartment. I’ll ask Agent Gallagher to drive me when we’re done.”
She smiled, nodded. “I’ll be waiting.”
The three best words he’d ever heard from the woman he loved. I’ll be waiting. He had someone waiting for him. And he’d never leave her waiting long. He grinned, kissing her quickly and getting out of the truck.
The sheriff’s office looked different to him, but then again, he’d had different eyes the last time he’d been there.
“I’m here to see Agent Gallagher,” he said to the woman at the front desk. Her eyes got big and she dropped her pen, standing quickly.
“Oh, yes. Lucas, right?” Her forehead wrinkled. “No, Jak! I overheard Agent Gallagher . . . well in any case, I met you before, or saw you, anyway.” She laughed, and it sounded high like the bay-breasted warbler. But he had to stop thinking of everything in terms of the wilderness, had to enlarge his . . . frame of something. There was a saying, but he couldn’t think of it right then. But it meant that he finally had names for things he never had before, and he needed to start using them. He smiled, proud of the knowing he had already collected. “Right this way,” she said, looking over her shoulder and blushing for reasons unknown to him. Some things were still a mystery. He followed her, walking to a room with a table in the middle where Agent Gallagher sat, a notebook in front of him.
He stood when Jak walked in, shaking his hand. “I’m glad Harper located you.”
Jak looked down, feeling bad that he’d run away, and still uneasy that this man knew so much about him, personal things he didn’t think he’d ever share with another living soul. “I know you need to get me . . . on record, but Harper and I figured out something new too.”
“What is that?”
Jak let out a breath. “Harper was one of the children on the cliff that night. I thought she was a boy because of her hair. And . . . maybe I just thought we were all boys. But it was her.”
The agent sat back slowly. “How do you know?”
Jak told him about the pocketknife, about pushing Harper up on the ledge, about her memory of him telling her to live.
Agent Gallagher was silent for several moments, shaking his head slightly. “Wow. Okay . . .” He was quiet again. “So, Driscoll caused Harper’s parents’ car crash somehow or . . . lured them off the road maybe, and then Harper ended up with you on that cliff. She was going to be part of his study too.”
A chill went down Jak’s spine. “I don’t know.”
Agent Gallagher nodded, his eyes unfocused for a moment. “All right. I’m going to look at some different angles.” He thinned his lips, his eyes focusing on Jak again. “For now, let’s get your statement, and then I have someone I’ve asked to join us here.”
Jak frowned, but the agent didn’t look worried, and Jak trusted him. He nodded. “I’m ready.”
Agent Gallagher turned on a recorder and asked Jak every question he’d believed he would. Jak told him everything he knew, answering honestly and fully, and when it was done, when Agent Gallagher pushed stop on the small recorder, Jak felt like a boulder had been taken off his back.
The path before him had been cleared and a sense of . . . victory swept over him. His life was his. It stretched out before him. And Harper was waiting to begin it with him.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Agent Gallagher stood, opening it, and letting someone in. Jak looked more closely, standing, his mouth falling open.
It was the redheaded woman who’d told him about the