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Home / Romance / Cruel Love Back in His Hands / Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

All Chapters of Cruel Love Back in His Hands : Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

199 Chapters

Chapter 162

Not to the station. To a coffee shop two blocks from the Caldwell building, which was his version of a secure location — public enough that no one was watching specifically, familiar enough that the conversation wouldn't be interrupted by the procedural machinery of a police building.He had updates. All of them moved in the same direction.Claire had broken out of the Oregon facility three nights ago with the assistance of another patient — a man she had been cultivating for weeks according to the facility's review, a person with his own history of institutional manipulation who had ultimately decided that Claire's version of their shared interests was compelling enough to act on. They had left through a staff exit during a shift change. Forty-seven minutes before anyone noticed.She had been spotted in Eugene the first day. Portland the second. She was moving north. Moving with the purposeful efficiency of someone who had known exactly where they were going before they left and had

Chapter 163

A practical errand — Walsh had recommended they keep some visible routine rather than disappear completely, on the grounds that a person who appears to be hiding is a person who can be waited for, and that visible movement with an escort was safer than total withdrawal. They had gone to the grocery store with an officer nearby and then to Kristine's office briefly to collect files she needed and then back.Four hours.The building manager met them at the elevator.He said: I need to tell you something. He said: someone was in the building. He said it with the expression of a man who knew he had failed a professional responsibility and was managing the shame of it at the same time as the information.He said: a woman. She came in through the basement access — there's a utility entrance that connects to the next building. We didn't know it was accessible from outside. We do now.She looked at George.He said: how long ago.The manager said: approximately two hours. She was seen on the i

Chapter 164

Walsh had chosen it for three reasons. Claire knew it — she had been there during the investigation period and Walsh had her on the building's exterior camera from that time. It had the sight lines she preferred, which meant she would feel comfortable enough to approach. And it had six plainclothes officers available through Walsh's weekend network who could be positioned without making the room look like a police operation.The information had been planted forty-eight hours before the night.Walsh's contact had done it correctly — a casual mention in a context where it would travel, the kind of thing that sounds like gossip because it is structured like gossip, the kind of thing that reaches a person who is watching for exactly that kind of thing.They spent the day before in the hotel. George worked. She worked. Max occupied the space between them.She was making notes on a Caldwell project when George's phone rang.She looked up.He looked at the screen.She said: who is it.He sai

Chapter 165

Walsh had been watching since six. His team was in position before seven. The restaurant had been briefed and cooperating — the manager had been told what to expect and had cleared the section near the back exit and had confirmed that the staff would stay in the kitchen unless instructed otherwise.George and Kristine were in a police van one block away.Not inside the restaurant — Walsh had been clear about that. The trap required the appearance of their presence, not the fact of it. A contact inside had told the right person that they would be there at eight. The contact had done it correctly. The information had moved the way information moves when it's designed to.Walsh had his earpiece in and his phone on the seat between them and he was very still in the way he was very still when something was about to resolve.At seven forty-one he said: she's coming.She came from the south end of the block. Walking at a steady pace that was not fast enough to attract attention and not slow

Chapter 166

Claire's hearing was in a courtroom Kristine recognised — the same building, different floor from Nathan's proceedings. The familiar neutrality of it. Beige walls and institutional light and the machinery of consequence moving at its own pace.The charges were read. Escape from a secured psychiatric facility. Attempted assault with a deadly weapon. Conspiracy to commit harassment. Three counts of harassment by proxy during the escape period — the dress shop card, the bachelorette delivery, the payment to Rachel.Claire's lawyer presented the psychiatric evaluation and argued that his client required treatment rather than extended punishment.The judge said: she has been receiving treatment for eighteen months and used that treatment setting to plan and execute an escape and a continued harassment campaign. He said it plainly. He said: the court does not find that the current treatment programme is adequate to address the risk presented.He sentenced her to a maximum-security psychiatr

Chapter 167

They were not dramatic. No violence, no explicit threat, no Claire appearing with a knife in a restaurant doorway. They were the other kind — the kind that arrive as dread and formlessness, the feeling of something wrong that cannot be located, the specific anxiety of someone who has been under threat for long enough that the threat has become structural and does not simply disappear when its source is removed.She woke from the first one at three in the morning and lay in the dark trying to slow her breathing and told herself it was fine, she was fine, everything was fine, and believed none of it.George woke at three-fifteen. Not because she woke him — she was very quiet. Because he was attuned to her in the way he was attuned to things he cared about, and some part of him registered that she was awake and had been awake and had not told him.He said: how long.She said: the nightmare or the being awake.He said: both.She said: the nightmare was forty-five minutes ago. The being aw

Chapter 168

She had not tracked them deliberately — she was not a person who marked periods of normality the way she had learned, during the investigation, to mark periods of threat. But she knew six months had passed since Claire's sentencing because the anniversary trip was booked for the same week and the anniversary was one year from the wedding and the wedding had been six months after Claire, and the arithmetic was simple even if the living of it had not always been.The San Juan Islands were her idea.George had offered three options — Portland, Vancouver again, or the islands — and she had chosen the islands because they had been on the earlier list of plans that had not happened and she wanted to arrive at something they had intended rather than something chosen in its place.They took the ferry from Anacortes on a Friday morning with Max, who had been on ferries before and had opinions about them that he expressed through careful investigation of every railing.The island was quieter in

Chapter 169

She had not planned it. George had planned it, which was how she knew he had been thinking about it for weeks — the planning-in-advance quality that was completely his, the careful attention to what a moment needed before the moment arrived.He had arranged an officiant. A woman from the island community who had done ceremonies on this beach before and who arrived at four o'clock with a simple folder and the specific warmth of someone who understood that what was required of her was presence and sincerity and brevity, in that order.They stood at the water's edge.Max sat behind them with the dignified attention of a dog who had attended the original ceremony and understood his role as witness.The officiant said: I understand you want to renew your vows. She said: and I understand you've written new ones.They had. In the house, separately, that morning. She had sat at the kitchen table while George was on the porch and she had thought about what she wanted to say that she had not sa

Chapter 170

A standard letter, procedural in tone, informing them that an inmate — Nathan James Caldwell — had been entered into the early parole consideration process following a satisfactory period of institutional conduct and participation in mandatory treatment programmes.She read it twice.She put it down.She picked it up and read it again.Then she called George.He was at the hospital. He answered on the second ring and she could hear the background of his working day — a corridor, voices, the sound of institutional movement.She said: Nathan's parole review has been initiated.A silence.He said: how early.She said: he's served fourteen months of a three-year sentence. She paused. The letter says early consideration. It doesn't say it will be granted. But they are reviewing him.He said: I'll be home at six.She sat with the letter for the rest of the afternoon.She thought about Nathan in a courtroom saying I'll wait for you. I'll always wait. She thought about the restraining order s

Chapter 171

They had been preparing for six weeks. The statements were written — hers and George's and Walsh's and Richard's and Diana's and Daniel's — seven documents that between them constituted a comprehensive account of what Nathan Caldwell had done and what it had cost and why fourteen months was not a sufficient distance from it.She had read George's statement once when it was finished.She had not commented on it directly. She had put it down on the kitchen table and looked at the window for a moment and then said: it's good. It's everything it should be. He had said: yes. Neither of them said anything else because the statement had been difficult to write and was difficult to read and some things were better honoured with silence than with analysis.Her own statement had taken four attempts.The first two had been too controlled — accurate but sealed, the version of events presented through the professional register she used when she was managing how something landed. The third had been

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