“No, thank you. We’re fully fueled up already, ma’am,” he said, sitting in one of the chairs in front of her desk.
Rebecca slipped back into her spot behind her desk, and Detective Flores set a big, yellow envelope on top of Rebecca’s calendar. “We’re sorry to interrupt your morning, but we were able to get security footage off one of the cameras from a business a few doors down from where you were attacked. It’s a challenging angle and the distance didn’t give us sharp photos, so we wanted you to take a look.”
“Sure,” Rebecca said, her voice steadier than she felt.
She wanted to find out who had done this to her and to Knight, but she also was terrified of thinking about the mugging again and having that trigger something. Her memories felt like a minefield these days. One wrong move and boom, the flashbacks and panic would overtake her.
Montgomery opened the envelope and pulled out a few black-and-white photos enlarged to the point of graininess. He turned the first one toward Rebecca. The shot was a front view of her on the sidewalk. She was mid-stride, takeout bag still in her hand, a bland look on her face. But a few steps behind and off to the side there was a hunching figure just out of the pool of light thrown by a street lamp. She couldn’t see a face, but the baseball cap was visible. She pointed to him. “That was the other guy, not the one who had the gun. This one ran off when the dog attacked.”
“Okay, we figured that. We recovered the hat on the scene,” Montgomery said and pulled another picture from the pile and spun it toward her.
Rebecca sucked in a breath, and her heart picked up speed. The other attacker was behind her now, the one in the hoodie. He had the gun pressed to her temple, and her bag was on the ground. Wine from the broken bottle pooled like blood by their feet. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Even without the fine details, just seeing the fear on her face was enough to make her stomach roil. But she tried to focus
on the sliver of face between the edge of the hood and where her body blocked him.
Young. White. A strand of dark hair hanging out in full view.
She swallowed past the sudden tightness in her throat. It could be Trevor. If he were still alive. But she knew that wasn’t what was making acid burn the back of her throat.
The guy—no, boy—with the gun could easily be Steven. Wes’s student. The kid who was excited to make waffle chicken.
“Do you recognize him?” Flores asked, her gaze probably keen enough to catch Rebecca’s flinch.
Rebecca knew what would happen if she said yes. She could see the cops rolling up to the after-school program, pulling Steven out of class, singling him out, calling his police officer father. If Steven was the one who’d done this, he needed to be brought in. But on the chance he wasn’t, she would cause him all kinds of trouble he hadn’t earned. Plus, if the kids found out she was the one who’d called, she’d ruin any chance at building trust with any of them while working on the project.
Steven hadn’t shown any kind of recognition when he’d seen her that day in class. He probably wasn’t the one. Plus, she’d seen the effect false accusations could have on people. After the Long Acre shooting, so many accusations had been flying around—who had been friends with the shooters, who had known something was up, who had angered them. No fingers had been pointed her way because she’d been lying in a hospital bed. She’d gotten an undeserved free pass. But sometimes it didn’t matter if someone had actually done something, anyway. The suspicion alone was enough to ruin lives and relationships.
She needed to show these photos to Wes first. Make sure she wasn’t seeing things that weren’t there. Wes saw Steven every weekday. He’d be able to pick up subtle differences or similarities she couldn’t. She flattened her hands along her desk. “I’m sorry. I can’t really see much from this shot.”
“You haven’t remembered anything else from that night?” Montgomery asked with a frown.
Rebecca shook her head. “I wish I could. I panicked and had tunnel vision. All I could focus on was the dog.”
He let out a breath. “All right. If anything else comes back to you, Ms. Lindt, please give us a call. We’ve had a string of armed robberies in that area, and I want to catch these guys before someone else gets hurt or worse.”
Anxiety crawled over her skin like an army of ants. “I understand.”
Flores reached for the photos.
“Can I keep these?” Rebecca asked. “Maybe if I keep looking at them, something will click. Plus, I’m seeing the man who intervened this afternoon. I can run these by him for you.”
Flores perked up. “You think he saw something? That night, he told us that he ran up too late, that the guys were already running off and he’d been focused on you.”
Focused on her. Her heart gave a little kick. “It can’t hurt to ask him. If anything rings a bell, I’ll tell him to call you.”
“That’d be great.” Flores slid a business card Rebecca’s way. “Call us if he has any new information or if anything comes back to you.”
“Will do. Thank you.” Rebecca stood and led the detectives out, shaking their hands and exchanging the necessary pleasantries, but unease had crept into every cell of her body.
She went back to her desk and stared at the photos, trying to will her brain to see anything she might be missing before she sprung these on Wes. But the minute the guy with the gun started to look more and more like Trevor, she flipped them over and put her head in her hands, her heart racing and her skin breaking out in a sweat.
No. Enough.
When she caught her breath again, she picked up her cell phone and did what she should’ve done months ago.
Taryn answered on the first ring. A clicking keyboard sounded in the background. “Dr. Landry.”
“Hey, it’s Rebecca.”