It wasn’t working.
“I don’t care to talk to you,” she told him for what must have been the tenth time. A sharp edge had crept into her voice, and she sounded older. Harder. Anderson had given her a cup of coffee, too, but she hadn’t touched it.
The chief looked up at Ethan like he needed backup.
Ethan gently touched AnnieLee’s shoulder and straightened the collar of his shirt underneath her tangled hair. He still couldn’t really think of her as Rose. It was such a beautiful name, but it sounded so soft. “He’s trying to help,” Ethan said.
AnnieLee gave him a sharp look. “You don’t know him,” she said.
“No, but he’s an officer of the law. He’s sworn to protect and—”
“This officer,” AnnieLee interrupted, “has never protected me. In fact, he did the opposite.”
Ethan dropped into the metal folding chair beside her. This wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” AnnieLee said, “when I used to call the cops on Clayton for hitting me, they said I was a troubled teen. They said that I was a liar and I just wanted attention. You’d think the bruises on my arms would be proof, wouldn’t you? Well, they weren’t.” She folded her arms over her chest. “The chief grew up here, just like Clayton did. They rode their damn Schwinns around town when they were little, and they got drunk in the same Boone County bars when they grew up. They were friendly. Which meant that when I called on Anderson, he took Clayton’s side.”
Ethan turned to look at the police chief. As a soldier, Ethan respected rank, and he wanted this man to tell him that this wasn’t true, that it had all been some kind of terrible misunderstanding. But Anderson wouldn’t meet his eye.
The police chief cleared his throat. “Domestic disputes can often be exaggerated by—”
“See what I mean?” AnnieLee practically hissed. “Three times I ran away, and three times they sent me right back to the man who was hurting me. That doesn’t sound like protecting and serving to me. Does it to you?”
Ethan crushed his empty coffee cup in his hands. Though AnnieLee had never been as open and honest with him as he wanted her to be, he knew she was telling the truth right now. “AnnieLee, would you be able to talk to someone else?”
Slumped in her chair, she seemed to nod.
“We need to speak to another officer,” Ethan said to Chief Anderson.
Anderson hesitated for a moment, but then he got up. When he returned a few minutes later, it was with a young, round-faced woman with coppery hair. “This is Officer Danvers,” he said. “She can take your statement.” He didn’t meet AnnieLee’s glaring eyes, but he gave Ethan a curt nod of farewell and walked out.
With Anderson gone, AnnieLee visibly relaxed.
Officer Danvers sat down behind the chief’s desk. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said. “And I’m sorry you had to go through what you did. Do you want a warm-up on the coffee? No. Well, then, let’s dive in, okay? I wonder if you can tell me what happened with Gus Hobbs.”
“I came here to kill him. I still might,” AnnieLee said fiercely.
Officer Danvers looked taken aback. “Let’s focus on the crime that was committed against you, Ms. Keyes. What concerns me now is how and why you came to be tied up in Hobbs’s root cellar. How did that happen?”
“I don’t know. I just woke up down there,” she said.
Ethan turned to Officer Danvers. “She was hurt. Some kid found her and took her to Hobbs.”
“I was going there anyway,” AnnieLee said.
“Well, I doubt you were aiming for the cellar,” Ethan said.
“No, sir, I was not,” AnnieLee said. “I was aiming to blow his head off, but it didn’t work out that way.”
“I’m not sure you should—” Officer Danvers began.
“Please, AnnieLee, start at the beginning,” Ethan interrupted. He knew the story began a long time ago, and he wanted to hear it all.
AnnieLee drew a long, deep breath. “I’ve known Gus Hobbs since I was twenty years old and still getting beat on by my stepdad, Clayton Dunning. I thought Gus was going to rescue me from all that,” she said. “And I guess he did for a little while.”
She stopped and stared down at her hands. Neither Ethan nor the police officer said anything. They just waited. Ethan watched as AnnieLee rubbed at a raw place on her wrist.