I know it’s true, that she has to go, and I can’t go with her. But I don’t want to let her out of my sight again. I kiss her once more, and I taste the salt in her tears. Or maybe they’re my own.
When Dex comes back, I’ve come to terms with how it has to be. She changes clothes in the car, then I change mine, and we clean the blood off my seat.
When it’s all done, I give Dex a brotherly hug. “Thanks for your help, man. Listen, I need to ask you one more favor.”
“No more favors,” he teases.
“This one’s not that big. Just . . .” I pull my keys out of my pocket, take a small one off the key chain. “I need to give you this key to a safe deposit box at Regions Bank.”
Dex takes it. “What is it for?”
“I have some of our evidence in that safe. We plan to send it to the media, but just in case that never happens . . . I want someone to have what I have.”
“So if the earth opens and swallows you or you’re beheaded by a lumber truck . . . you want me to take what’s inside and give it to the press?”
“Yes. I want you to do it before you shed a tear over me or go to the funeral home or anything.”
“Will do, man.”
“So . . . she’s leaving in the car. I have to get back to Dallas to get mine.”
Dex looks at her over my shoulder. “You really letting her go? I was thinking she’s a keeper.”
“Just temporarily,” I assure him. “When this is all over . . .”
He knows where I’m going with that, and he nods but doesn’t make a joke out of it. He knows this is serious.
Dex says he’ll drive me back to Dallas to get my car. I’ll say I’ve been looking for her if anyone catches me. Casey can drive her car northeast and be out of the state in hours.
I tell her I’ll ride with her up the gravel driveway. Casey thanks Dex and hugs him, then we drive toward the road.
“That seemed like the most peaceful place on earth,” she whispers as we leave.
“There are lots of peaceful places,” I tell her. “We’ll find them together when all this is over.”
She wipes tears as she stops the car at the end of the gravel road. I lean over and kiss her again, holding her soft face, knowing it might be the last time. A big part of me feels like I’ll never see her again.
“What are you gonna do?” she asks.
“Keep playing the part,” I say.
“But Keegan knows . . .”
“I’ve got a story. He may suspect, but he won’t be sure, and I’ll convince him that I’m still looking.” I kiss her again. “It won’t be long, Casey. We’re going to nail him, and you’ll come back and be with your family, and you and I—”
She touches my lips with her fingertips, stopping me. “Don’t say it.”
“Why?” I whisper.
“Because. It’ll hurt more when it all blows up.”
“We will,” I assure her, but I’m not sure that’s a promise I can keep.
I open my door and get out, go around to her side. She rolls the window down. “Thank you for everything, Dylan. I mean it. God . . . life . . . truth . . . everything.”
“Call me,” I say, and before the words are out of my mouth, she’s driving away.
I want to run after her. I want to go with her. I want to scream at the world that she’s innocent, that she’s a victim of a group of killers who masquerade as our protectors. I want to end this right now.
But instead I walk back to where Dex is waiting.
62
CASEY
As I drive away from him, I wipe my tears on my sleeve. The future looks bleak, but I push that to the back of my mind and try instead to see God. He was there—in that house in Dallas, in the bathroom where I bled, at a deer camp where an amputee did surgery on me.
He was there when I fell in love.
I try to revise the vision I have of my future, to see it with Dylan, when all of this is behind us. It’s faint, but it’s there. I will cling to it. Wherever I go, if I can talk to him, I can make it through.
I want to call my mom and rest her fears, tell her that I’m going to prove my case, that I need her to hang on and not fall apart.
But I don’t want to turn on the TV tonight and see her in a perp walk.
I turn on the radio, find a Dallas station that’s giving a news update.
. . . Cole Whittington death. Police found the truck that allegedly ran Whittington off the road to his death. It was owned by Nate Trendall, the father of the little girl Whittington was accused of molesting. Child Protective Services has removed the seven-year-old from her home after an examination concluded that she was abused by Fred Mardeaux, a known drug dealer. Previous reports that fugitive Casey Cox was involved in Whittington’s death were false. We’ll have more on this story tonight at ten p.m.
My mouth stretches as relief overwhelms me. Ava’s safe. Her abuser is in jail, and so is her father. Maybe her mother will be next.
I whisper a prayer for that little girl to be okay, and for Cole’s wife and kids. I pray that everyone will know their father didn’t leave them on purpose.
Fresh sorrow overcomes me—making it hard to see the road. I fling both my phone and the battery into a field. My new one is still in the Walmart bag Dex brought me.
A few miles up the road, I pull over and blow my nose, wipe my face, and check my wig, finger-combing the bangs. I look in all directions, trying to figure out which way to go. Finally, I take a right and head for Oklahoma or Arkansas, or farther north.
I try to think like a new woman. One I don’t even know yet.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Any of you who have read my books know that I often have characters who are experiencing terrible crises, and sometimes they’re in danger, or some horrible event has changed their lives. I think that’s partially because I have so many challenges in my own life. But there are times when I look back on years I complained my way through and realize those were really good years. I just wasn’t paying attention. Have you ever spent years thinking you were fat, then twenty years later you see a picture of yourself and think, “I didn’t look so bad then. What was I complaining about?” It’s kind of that way for me when I think about all the grumbling I did years ago, when in fact, things were pretty good.
I was recently complaining to some friends about some stresses in my life, and one of them wrote me an email that I will never forget.
The friend who wrote this is another writer—Athol Dickson, author of books like The Cure and River Rising. Athol suffered intense grief after his mother had a long, terrible struggle with cancer. He had trouble praying or reading the Bible or even thinking about God because he was so crushed. His wife took him on a road trip across the country, hoping to shake him out of his lethargy, and several days in, he says he remembers looking out through the windshield and seeing the most beautiful sunset he’s ever seen, and he began to weep. He says he was filled with gratitude at that sunset, and it flipped something in him. From that point on, he looked for God in everything, finding reasons to be thankful.
He told me, “Starting immediately, thank God for every gift He gives, from those as small as a whiff of honeysuckle or jasmine in your backyard, to the realization that you just had a few moments without back pain, to really big things like the fact that [people you love] are in the next room safe and sound.
“I’m talking about the practice of intentional gratitude. ‘Intentional,’ because it involves an aggressive effort to remain aware of God’s gifts as you move through your day, and to actively acknowledge each gift with a simple ‘Thank You.’
“. . . In a life filled with the practice of intentional gratitude, there can be no ‘Yes, but . . .’ or ‘It’s not fair,’ or ‘Why me?’ downward spiraling kinds of thinking. The two attitudes simply do not mix. Also, to focus on life’s gifts you must live in the moment. With the practice of intentional gratitude, there is no time for regrets about the past, or worries about the
future. There is only thankfulness for the here and now.
“This is the secret to contentment in any circumstance that Paul mentioned. It’s also the secret to Paul’s apparently impossible commands to pray without ceasing, because every expression of gratitude is a prayer, which means the practice of intentional gratitude leads directly to a life lived in continual worship.”
He went on to say that a default setting in life is to take details for granted, when in fact almost every part of every day is a direct gift from God. He admonished me to work at giving thanks for things throughout the day. “It’s not easy,” he said, “but it’s simple and actionable, and if you do take this seriously and work at it until it becomes a routine part of life, I promise unconditionally that you will regain your joy.”
I’d love to tell you I knew this already and practiced it hourly, but I didn’t. I decided to take his advice and try spinning my thoughts around. Instead of being upset that some crisis in my life has cost me a lot of money, I think, “God provided every penny of what we needed for that.” Instead of whining that I had to do something I didn’t want to do, I say, “God gave me the strength to get through that.”
But it’s a real effort for me. The problem is that sometimes I don’t want to do it. Sometimes I’d rather cry or yell or complain, because I think I deserve to. But that only hurts me. When I started this, I realized I was going through most of my life ignoring those things that God deserved thanks for. I wasn’t looking for God, so I kept missing Him.
Once I reviewed times when God quietly worked in my life at times when I was distracted and discouraged, and sometimes when I didn’t even notice until years later, I began to see Him in the little things around me. It changed my brain. Dread became anticipation. Complaining turned into praise. As my friend instructed me so eloquently, practicing intentional gratitude for every little thing truly makes those that were unbearable before seem not only tolerable, but sometimes even blessings. But they’re not always immediately obvious.
I’m hoping that God will use this lesson He’s taken me through in my life to work in my readers’ lives, too, and as Casey begins to see God in everyday things in her life—big and little—that my readers will begin looking for Him too.
Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
I can’t say it any better than that.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1.Did Casey do the right thing by getting involved in Cole Whittington’s life after finding his suicide note?
2.What motivates Casey into risking exposure to help others?
3.If you knew a child was being abused, what would you do to help?
4.What does Casey learn about prayer in this book? Did you learn anything new about prayer?
5.How does Casey’s understanding of God move to another level in this book? How does Dylan help with her understanding?
6.Did any scenes shed light on the condition of PTSD?
7.Why do you think suicide is so prevalent among veterans?
8.What is the key thing about this book that will stay with you?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Last year I celebrated my twentieth anniversary writing for Zondervan, which is part of HarperCollins. I’ve had the opportunity to go elsewhere, but I’m of the school of thought that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I enjoyed having my books published by such a professional group of people who loved books and had a common cause.
But several years ago, I got the news that HarperCollins had also purchased Thomas Nelson, another Christian publisher for whom I had written a Women of Faith book and some novellas. It didn’t occur to me how drastically that purchase would impact my comfortable situation. Within a few weeks, I was told that Zondervan and Thomas Nelson would be merging under HarperCollins and would become HarperCollins Christian Publishing. All of the fiction would be moved to Thomas Nelson, though it would still have the Zondervan imprint.
That meant that the entire team who had become like family to me at Zondervan in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was now changing to a team I hadn’t worked with before at the Thomas Nelson headquarters in Nashville. As someone who doesn’t like change, I was skeptical. I feared that my world was about to change, and I didn’t know if I would stay once I fulfilled my contracts.
What happened instead was that the new team, under fiction publisher Daisy Hutton, gave me such a seamless transition that I’ve returned to my former level of comfort. I know I’ve thanked them before in other books, but I wanted to take a moment now to thank them again, with the added context I’ve given you above. My life would be much more stressful without the constant encouragement and can-do attitudes of all of those on my new publishing team. Daisy Hutton (Publisher) has been a true blessing in my life, along with Amanda Bostic (Associate Publisher), Paul Fisher (Senior Marketing Director), Kristen Golden (Marketing Manager), and Kayleigh Hines (Administrative Assistant). I don’t know the names of all the sales reps who get my books into stores, but my gratitude for their work is boundless.
I also thank editors David Lambert and Ellen Tarver, who don’t work for HCCP but who are still contracted to edit each of my books. HCCP has been wise enough to allow these relationships to continue so that my process is uninterrupted. For that I am very grateful. And special thanks to my agent, Natasha Kern, who took me on when there wasn’t much in it for her for several more years.
Here’s to another twenty years with HarperCollins and all of the pros who help me get my books to you!
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What’s going to happen to Casey?
Find out in the final installment of the If I Run Series.
AVAILABLE MARCH 2018!
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Terri Blackstock loves to hear from readers! Contact her via social media or snail mail and be sure to sign up for her newsletter!
www.TerriBlackstock.com
https://www.facebook.com/tblackstock.
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THE MOONLIGHTERS SERIES
BY TERRI BLACKSTOCK
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Can three sisters—a blogger, a cab driver, and a stay-at-home mom—with only a little courage and no experience, moonlight as private investigators to save the ones they love?
Available in print and e-book
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THE RESTORATION SERIES
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In the face of a crisis that sweeps an entire high-tech planet back to the age before electricity, the Brannings face a choice. Will they hoard their possessions to survive–or trust God to provide as they offer their resources to others? Terri Blackstock weaves a masterful what-if series in which global catastrophe reveals the darkness in human hearts—and lights the way to restoration for a self-centered world.
Available in print and e-book
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THE CAPE REFUGE SERIES
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In the midst of an unfathomable tragedy, a family finds refuge off the quiet coast of Savannah, Georgia.
Available in print and e-book
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The Intervention Series
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Available in print and e-book
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Deryll Stegall
Terri Blackstock has sold over seven million books worldwide and is a New York Times bestselling author. She is the award-winning author of Intervention, Vicious Cycle, and Downfall, as well as the Moonlighters, Cape Refuge, Newpointe 911, SunCoast Chronicles, and Restoration series.
www.terriblackstock.com
Facebook: tblackstock
Twitter: @terriblackstock
Terri Blackstock, If I'm Found
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