120 Mph (19 page)

Christian wrenched himself free of his
vehicle, but he was stopped by an officer before the other squad car door
closed and locked Sara inside. My God! She looked as if she needed an
ambulance, not arrest.

What in the world was happening here?

“Reverend Mohr, I presume?” the man
holding him back asked.

Christian nodded, as the mute horror
shamed him into silence.

How—why did she get so badly beaten?

“Chief Berken said you’d be joining us
soon enough,” the officer added.

“Soon enough?” Christian squeaked out,
daring a glance at the officer.

“Chief Berken had you tracked, Reverend,”
the officer admitted. “The minute you called him he set out the coordinates to
where you were and where Sara Ruby might be. We never thought we would find
what we had upon getting here. I’ll be quite frank. We’d thought you’d be here with
her.”

“Find?”

Lord, why was only a one-word answer
coming out of his mouth?

Christian knew the answer to this as two
other officers dragged out in handcuffs a strange man from Sara’s motel room;
the guy looking dazed and with a huge gash across his face of which was
bleeding profusely.

Christian’s gut tightened so strongly
that nothing was going to release the pain. The guy was saying she asked for
it.

“The manager heard the screams, but he
thought it was like all the others. The one and only time we didn’t get the
call. Thank God a passerby wasn’t as convinced her screams weren’t real and
called 911. This could have been much worse.”

Christian’s eyes darted to the squad car
containing Sara. Her head was bowed to her chin and the tears were streaming
down her face. She wouldn’t look up. In fact, she seemed dazed, disoriented,
not sure where she was.

“What happened here?”

He’d almost admitted to his being in the
room only hours before; bit hard on his tongue to hold the confession back.

The officer sent him a shrug. “Same as what
always happens here. Guy barged in looking to rob the room’s occupant, he found
Ms. Ruby still inside, and thinking he’d won the jackpot he tried to rape her
instead, but was stopped just in the nick of time by a resourceful woman using
a chair over the creeps’ skull. Thank God she was still coherent enough else
this would have been a real mess. We’re still waiting for the ambulance.”

Christian tried to pull out of the officer’s
grasp. “I need to go to her. I need . . .”

“What you need to do is come with me,
Reverend Mohr. Chief Berken says he wants to see you, pronto, and unless I want
to lose my job, I’m not to let you go.”

Christian was then hauled to the officers’
vehicle none too gently and shoved onto the back seat, locked in as a criminal
would be as the door closed.

His eyes searched for Sara. She tipped
her head up and looked his way. That briefest of contact ripped out the rest of
his heart.

It didn’t take a brilliant man to see
she thought this as his fault—his . . . and God’s.

Oh, if he’d only stayed . . .

Chapter
Twenty-one

Two days later, Sara Ruby arrested for
vehicular manslaughter, hit and run, she was carted off to the county jail
awaiting sentencing. Of course, with faked ID in her possession, all they’d
needed was her fingerprints.

Five months later, her life fell apart
again. She was sentenced to seven years penance in the Women’s Eastern
Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Missouri. Christian hadn’t
shown his face at the arraignment or sentencing.

Did she really think he would?

Then again, Sara truly hadn’t wanted to
look upon his face, witness the hurt in his eyes, knowing he could have easily
made love to her again if she hadn’t told him to ‘go to hell’.

She wouldn’t have been so badly beaten and
nearly raped had he stayed with her, and for one lousy second had left his precious
protective God behind.

Sara could barely look at her reflection
in any mirror, knowing she’d destroyed a man’s values and beliefs.

Whatever happened to forgiveness of one’s
sins? Whatever happened to caring about the fellow human down on his or her
luck?

Four defense lawyers tried their best to
prove it an accident, as well that during the accident the conditions were unpreventable.
But they all failed her; more than likely, due to the nature and length of time
that passed between Beale’s death and Sara’s arrest, and the nature in which
she’d tried to hide her crime by sinking her car into a lake.

The State had a solid case against her,
Sara could not slip from their grasp, and all she’d ever wanted was for Christian
to say he’d made love to her . . . that it wasn’t just sex, and that the horror
just hours later hadn’t occurred.

He didn’t do that for her. Christian didn’t
show Sara any act of kindness at all.

It was bad enough she’d been seconds
away from being . . . well, worse, it was Christian who spilled her secret to
the police.

Why else would have come back upon the
very second she put into the back of a squad car instead of an ambulance?

****

My dearest Sara,

Sara read on, but she knew her heart was
not in any of the words penned onto paper. She closed her eyes to the pain,
reopened them quickly, and started reading once again.

I know it has been quite some time since
my last letter was written . . .

This too she did not want to read.

Of course, it had been quite some time.
He wrote her only two lousy letters. One came to her when she was first sent to
this place. The next was the one in her hand. Each letter separated by nearly
six years of incredible heartache.

Time hadn’t stood still between his
letters.

I simply wanted to let you know I
forgave you, and I look forward to your release . . .

Was he fucking kidding? Forgave
her?
When
she had yet to find any forgiveness for him?

Sara’s release was in three days. The
Parole board agreed to her reduction of sentence if incorporated with two
hundred hours of community service. Every day, for one full year, holidays
excluded, she would be serving an hour to those who were in need. First up was
the local soup kitchen. Although, how the justice system felt a reduction of
only six months as reasonable, was beyond thought. But it was six months she
did not have to be locked in a cage and her feet could finally touch the silky
caress of green grass.

Her first endeavor would be to lie upon
the ground and sink as far into the earth as she could get.

I will be sending a car to pick you up .
. .

Oh, Hell no! Sara was going to make a
huge stink about that, if he so much as dared.

No way in bloody hell was she going to
get inside any car that man sends here, simply for him to be able to appease
his conscience. She would rather walk two thousand miles through the white hot
flames of Hell, than come to within ten feet of such an unkind jerk. He’d made
his point crystal six years ago. She was nothing to him, and he was nothing to
her—as it should be.

Reverend Mohr could just take his good
deed, his bloody damn letters, and his bloody damn car and shove them right up
his bloody damn . . .

“Sara?”

Her name called by an unknown voice had
her setting down the letter onto her cot.

“Sara Ruby?”

Sara turned her head toward the woman
asking this of her.

“Who wants to know?” She wasn’t
scheduled for any visits out of visiting hours since her release due in so few
days.

“Well, it would seem I do,” the woman
supplied.

Staring at her through steel bars  the
woman looked oddly out of place inside gray prison walls. Where gray the norm
around here, she had on a smart, navy blue business suit. Her auburn hair was
piled neatly into a huge bun atop her head. And the heels on her feet were six
inches high, if not more.

Of course, this could be due to the fact
the woman looked about only about five feet tall and needed the advantage high
heels gave her in life.

Sara could not place the face.

The woman had in her right hand a
leather briefcase. In her left was a large manila envelope.

“The guard told me I could find you in the
fourth cell down.”

“Who the hell are you?” Sara demanded.
She’d lost her respect for niceties the moment they’d carted her off to prison.

She could have said
‘who the fuck are
you?’
but her heart wasn’t in cursing today. ‘Hell’ was good enough. She’d
gotten used to the word Hell while stuck in it.

“I’m sorry. Where are my manners?” the
woman offered.

Up your pinched ass?

Sara didn’t say as much, but she
certainly thought this to be the rightful place. She’d regrettably turned into a
hardened individual in six short years. She no longer thought kind thoughts
toward others—for a damn good reason.

“Are you another state appointed lawyer
they want to stick me with, or my parole officer who I am going to have so much
fun with?”

The woman shook her head. “My name is
Tina. Tina Mohr.”

Sara flinched back.
Holy Mother of .
. . !

What the hell! Was this for real?

Sara was on her feet within seconds and
closing the huge gap between her and the well-dressed Tina Mohr. She placed her
hands onto the steel and clamped her fingers tightly to the cold metal. “And I
care why?”

The woman looked startled by her brittle
attitude.

“Um, yes, he said you might feel this
way.” She’d even taken a step back as if Sara could come through the bars and
hurt her.

Sara dropped her hands to her sides,
turned, and stormed back to her cot. With shaking hands, she picked up
Christian’s letter, carried it over to Mrs. Mohr, slid the paper through the
bars, and told the woman exactly what was eating away at her insides.

“Take this back to him. I don’t want it
here. I don’t want it near me. I would have flushed it—” Her voice rose. “—if
not completely frowned upon within this dreaded establishment.”

Sara and the hall guards weren’t exactly
on friendly terms after her last attempt to flush wads of paper and get the
hall on lockdown for a few hours.

The woman staring at her wouldn’t take the
letter. She instead smiled at Sara.

“In fact, he said you would specifically
react in this way. He also said that I was to wait it out.”

Sara’s brows rose. “Oh? And did he say,
as well, that I would inform you I really don’t give a shit to what he has to
say? Or what you’re supposed to do about it, for that matter?”

Another smile came her way.

“Yes. He did.”

Sara glared at Tina Mohr’s face. “What
do you want from me, Mrs. Mohr?” She was guessing at his married to the woman,
since there was a rather significant diamond ring on the woman’s left
finger—and she did seem his type. The
full-of-it
was a dead giveaway.

“I don’t want anything from you. I came here
only to give this to you.”

She wanted to hand Sara the manila
envelope through the bars, but Sara wouldn’t cooperate. Instead, she childishly
placed her hands behind her back and glared through the cold steel. This seemed
to unsettle the well-dressed Mrs. Mohr.

“Yes. Well then.” Mrs. Mohr cleared her
throat, searching for composure. “I would guess I just leave all of this with
the guards then.”

Mrs. Mohr made to turn away and do just
that.

“Wait.”

She turned back, another smile set to
her lips. “But you just said  . . .”

Sara held out her hand grudgingly. Mrs.
Mohr then set the envelope onto her palm. She told Sara she had more, and that
she was to read what was inside all before her release.

If what was inside the large envelope
came from Christian, Sara had no desire to read any of it; the urge to flush so
overwhelming, a sudden smile filled her face.

“And it is Mrs. Mohr . . . though not
what you think.”

Sara startled, she watched Mrs. Mohr
open her briefcase, pull out two manila envelopes from inside that case, then
hand them over to the lowly paid guard directly behind her back.

The block guard checked each envelope out,
gave Mrs. Mohr a nod of the head, and as the guard handed them to Sara, Sara
watched the woman walk away—head held high.

“Is she for real?” she asked the man.

He wouldn’t answer.

Two days later, Sara started upon the
letters. By her third letter, she was crying so hard the woman next to her cell
had shared her box of tissues. Such a thing was unheard of when stuck in prison
for six years. The tissues hadn’t come without payment. It wasn’t her time of
the month, and she surely could stink for the few remaining hours she had
inside this hell hole just to blow her nose properly.

Sara gave the woman her deodorant and
full box of feminine products for a lousy box of tissues.

The date on the first letter was one
week after her arrival at the gates of Hell.

My Dearest Sara,

How do I begin to tell you what I should
have while I still had you in my arms? While I could still kiss your lips, and
know life was good and kind? How can I keep living this lie, without you here to
share my life?

I quit the Church. Perhaps I have quit
God as well. I thought you should know this, before someone else tells you.

With love in my heart,

Christian

They were all in order. In fact, there
was a letter for every month she’d been incarcerated. Not a single one of them
had been mailed, though put into envelope and a stamp attached. Still, he kept
writing them. He just never mailed any of them.

By the fifth letter, Sara understood why
they were never mailed. He could not forgive himself for what he did to her.
Christian had been the one to turn her in, well before that man entered her
motel room.

Letter twelve explained how a year
without her was too much to bear. Letter twenty-four was read three times over,
just to make sense of all she’d lost.

Letter thirty-six, he asked her to marry
her. Of course, never having received any such letter, how was she to know he’d
felt this way.

Everything in his heart and head had
been penned onto paper. Every secret and lie a man could ever hold was openly
confessed. The letters seemed as if Christian had kept a journal he’d wanted no
one to actually see. He may well have wrote them all, signed them
With Love
,
even placed the stamped to the upper corner, but if not sending them, how the
devil could she have known the truth?

Letter forty-eight he asked her to marry
him—again.

Once a year, every twelve letters,
Christian wrote this request onto paper.

She’d made it through all his letters
before the day of her release. There were six shy of a full seven years.

By the morn, Sara would be a free woman.
She lay on her cot contemplating this fact. Freedom was going to be hard on
her. She left the outside world without possessions. She had nowhere to go. She
had no money saved. The only clothes she would now have would be those she’d
placed into a paper bag and then handed over to prison guards six years prior.

Freedom was quite terrifying to Sara.
She rolled over and started rereading the last letter he wrote her as the tears
struggled for continual release.

My dearest Sara,

By now, you’ll have received all of my initial
requests for your hand in marriage. I wonder, and wait for your answer. I
wonder, and I wait for you.

God left me for a brief while. I have
found him again, and hope only that you can say the same, gaining peace in the
heart.