Her Savior

She was struggling to stay conscious, she needed to stay awake. But the stress and the lack of food finally catch up to her. She could feel herself drifting away when her eyes slowly close as it was becoming too hard for her to stay awake.

Not realizing that she had fainted, she was surprised when she woke up in a clean comfy bed. The grey sheets and the fluffy comforter were spoiling her, but she was quickly alert of her surrounding. She tried to get up and abruptly felt the hurt on the left arm from the grip of the cop.

Oh.. oh… please.. please… let this be a nightmare…

She rubbed her eyes trying to get rid of her tiredness and failed to know that it was real. As real as her life has been since the last dreadful couple of days, but then sighed when she saw her bag by the end of the bed. The room was empty and quiet, she slowly got up and silently get her bag, and put on her jacket. She was squirming and squinting her eyes as the pain hit her senses.

Years of living with her husband had made her an expert in swallowing her pain, hiding them to the deepest corner of her mind. She was tiptoeing, walking across the posh manly master bedroom. She didn’t even want to think, about how she got there.

She was focusing her mind on getting out of the house, back onto the street, and blending into the surroundings while keeping herself safe. Then to once again be on the run from the law, from killing her abusive husband.

But she wasn’t expecting a man waiting across the bedroom door, sitting quietly on the grey couch. His long legs crossed outwards, while his fingers were typing silently on his phone. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” his deep smooth voice reached her ear, making her tense as she realized that it was the voice of the cop who had grabbed her hand forcefully earlier.

“Leaving, why am I here?” she asked looking at him trying to sound brave. Though her heart was beating so fast, that it numbed her from the pain when the weight of the bag was hurting her shoulder.

He must’ve sprained my shoulder when he grabbed my arm earlier. Damn him…

The realization made her curse on the inside.

“Who hurt you?”

His words were straight and authoritative, making her wince instinctively. It reminded her of Benjamin’s when he would demand her to answer him, just seconds before he would hit her.

The cop studied her behavior, he had searched her belongings carefully and couldn’t find any ID on her. He only saw nice clothes and a Gucci leather wallet which looked authentic, it only contains a couple of dollars on the inside. Not even a disposable phone.

He was a hundred percent sure that she was a runaway, not sure from where but she was definitely abused. He had been racking his brain, thinking that if he turned her in she could be picked up by whoever was abusing her, and she might go back with her abuser.

“I fell.” She answered automatically, just like each time a nurse or a social worker at the hospital asked about her injuries.

He nodded thinking he was right that she would protect her abuser, or she just simply didn’t want to be found. And the last possibility was better, but his mind kept on thinking and wondering if she could pull it off. He was thinking that he needs to help her, there was just something about her that made him want to do things for her.

It was weird, he had never wanted to care about anyone else before. He always feels the need to detach himself from his work, from the victims, knowing that it would hit close to home with his childhood experience of losing his birth mother to his abusive father.

“Right. Sit down.”

“No.” She surprised herself when she answered him with a no, but deep down she knew that he wouldn’t hurt her. And she needed to hurry and find herself a job, seeing out the window and noticing that the day was almost dark already.

“You’re not going anywhere. You still need to rest.”

“And you’re acting as my guardian angel? don’t you have work to do?”

Again, she was trying to be a rebel as she spites him off with her words, trying to annoy him to get him to just let her go. But he was not budging and dangled her the key to the front door while smirking and arching his eyebrow then telling her silently to sit.

She sighed and put her bag down, wincing a bit as her shoulder felt the sudden pain. He looked at her and shook his head, then swiftly got up and get a bottle of ibuprofen and a glass of water and gave it to her.

“When was the last time you had your arm cast check?”

He asked again knowing that she would probably ignore his question. But he had looked at it, the cast still looked clean probably less than a week old. So, he assumed that she was probably from another state. He had reminded himself that he would look into a missing person database once he was back in the office.

He had called in earlier stating that he had an emergency, his captain asked him if he was okay. To that he answered fine, knowing he had never called in for any emergency before. Not even once, in his years of service with the department.

“Do you live here alone?”

He smirked again, liking her attitude already. At least she was not one of those fragile women who trembled under pressure. She has spunk, and the will to push through.

Maybe she could pull through. He thought as he waited for her to swallow the pills.

“Drink then maybe we can have a real conversation, where I ask and you answer them.”

“Why am I being detained here?”

She asked again, but drink the pill with the glass of water then drank the rest of it when she realized that she was parched.

“I’m detective Ian Taylor, and you are?”

“Thank you, detective, you can call me Jane.” She answered smirking at him while putting the glass down on the coffee table.

“I resisted myself from taking you to the station, looking at your bruises. I don’t usually do this…”

He was right, she looked tense when he mentioned that he intended to bring her to the station.

“But I… look, I’ll pay for the girl’s stuff.” She realized that she would spend her last dollars on her, but she would do anything to avoid being taken down to the station.

“So, she’s not with you?”

“No… I didn’t know her, and she looked hungry.”

“And you’re not?! you practically fainted I’d guess you haven’t had lunch? when was your last meal?”

She was starting to annoy him, he was upset that she would use her last dollars for some juvenile delinquency. He had looked into her wallet and counted her last dollars. If she was running away, today would be her last meal day. And tomorrow she would be digging out of the restaurant dumpsters for food.

Looking at her, he doubted that she had ever looked at a real dumpster before. Whoever abused her, must’ve been someone she really loved. She appeared to be smart enough to handle herself on the street, but like most of the nice upper-class people, she tends to feel sorry for the poor and fall for the juvenile act.

His expert eyes looked at her and studied her carefully, she was playing with her fingers when he decided to pause with the questions and let the situation sink into her mind.

“What am I doing here again? I’m confused…”Content from NôvelDr(a)ma.Org.

“So am I…”

“Do you do this often? I mean picking up strangers bringing them to your home? I could be one of those stranger danger people.” She said casually, but in a fraction of a second, he could see right through her. That her question for him was not without a reason.

What did she get herself into?

His mind wandered, still trying to arrange the puzzle, and figured her out. She had intrigued him, and he hadn’t had anyone piqued his interest in years. Aside from her beauty and slender figure and apparently her resistance to pain, he knew that there was something more about her, something bigger that she was hiding.

And the detective side in him was craving to know and was willing to risk his job, his career that he had meticulously built without a scratch of red marks on his report.