The Last Night (The Last Series Book 2)

by Harvey Church

  “No,” he said, shaking his head and jumping out of bed. He backed away from her.

  “Ethan,” she said, sitting up. “Please come back to bed.”

  “No.” Still shaking his head, he kept backing up until he was safely inside the master bathroom. And then he slammed the door shut, locked it, and walked to the sinks to splash water—cold water, the coldest it could be—onto his face in an effort to avoid doing to Raleigh what he’d done to Thomas Braun. “You need to leave,” he kept saying.

  “Ethan, let me in!” Raleigh demanded on the other side of that door. He heard her try the doorknob before her tiny fists began pounding on the wood surface itself.

  “Go, Raleigh. Go, before I hurt you.”

  She chuckled. “You won’t hurt me, now open the damn door before I break it down.”

  She’s back, the post-coital, hot-tempered Raleigh from the past.

  Still splashing water on his face, Ethan wondered whether he was regaining control of his emotions. Or was he just making matters worse—?

  The sound of splintering wood startled him out of his thoughts as the door crashed open and banged against the bathroom counter. Snapping his attention to the mess, Ethan watched Raleigh’s naked form move toward him. She was older than the last time he’d really seen her naked under the bathroom’s bright lighting, and her body showed signs of that aging, but she was also far more beautiful than any memory he possessed, any fantasy he’d ever entertained of the years. Age suited her well.

  “Ethan!” She took his face with her hands, and that was when he realized she’d been trying to talk sense into him, but it was only now that he was finally hearing it. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “But—”

  She kissed him briefly. “Come back to bed, mi todo. I’ll tell you everything.”

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  The way Raleigh told her story, she was something of a hero. Through her work at ParkerPharma, she’d come up with a way to help opioid addicts to not only recover from their addiction, but to permanently kick it. And with opioid addiction on the rise, the country was truly facing an epidemic. The trade magazine downstairs on the kitchen counter, the one with Lawrence Parker and his three sons on the cover, had said just as much over seven and a half years ago, but with quite a bit more diplomacy than Raleigh.

  Of course, Ethan had already known about her work in that area, and while its scientific merits didn’t confuse him, it sounded like a foreign language. The bottom line, he gathered, was that Raleigh had figured out a way to not only mass-produce and commercialize her remedy, but convince the most desperate communities in the country to use it in their health centers.

  “Paul, Tom, and Travis saved my life that night. And in doing so, they also kept you safe,” she explained in the dark, her hand brushing through his hair, moving from the front of his head to the back. “I always knew I’d come back for you, but then, somehow, they found Paul. They killed him. Soon after that, Tom came to the surface—”

  “He asked for money,” Ethan said, realizing that Raleigh’s tale was starting to sound a lot like crazy talk, crazier than the tales he’d been telling Agent Klein all of these years about his wife being alive. Shaking his head and pushing her hand gently away from his head, he gave her an incredulous stare. “And I paid it, Raleigh.”

  She was nodding. “I know. You paid it to Damien Parker’s bank account in the Barbados. When we saw that you’d accessed my old phone. The Pry-Jack application alerted us. And that was when Tom surfaced, so we told him to get you to send that money. Damien wanted to see if they were really onto us, or if Paul’s ‘accident’ was just a sad coincidence. If something happened to Tom, we’d know. And if nothing happened, then we’d pay him to go away, let him use some of that money to start a new life for himself and his son. We had to use him that way, had to see if they were monitoring the bank account.” She wiped at her eyes in the dark. “They obviously were.”

  “You were going to let him walk away with a quarter million dollars?” he nearly spat. Like she’d been collecting baseball cards or building a Lego village in the basement. “Jeez, Raleigh, he’s dead now. You let him die. And his son . . . People are getting hurt. Hell, am I even safe?”

  “Ethan—” she said before he cut her off, her eyes wide and pleading.

  “Why couldn’t you just call me up and ask for the money?” He felt his temper boiling.

  “Because it’s obviously not safe, Ethan. We all knew the risks, we all knew bad things, even death could happen. My just being here puts everything, the whole operation, my own life, all of it at risk.”

  “The authorities have images of you, Raleigh.” He could barely breathe, barely survive the rapid pounding of his heart. And Klein thought I was a crazy conspiracy theorist? “Beaten, bruised, and signed police reports of spousal abuse.”

  Raleigh’s hand reached for his, but Ethan snapped it back. “No, you’re not understanding,” she said, her voice soft and slightly timid now. “All of this was to protect you. I know it’s hard to believe, but please hear me out, Ethan. I couldn’t have you looking for me, or they’d get to you. I couldn’t have a phone record asking for some of the money my mom left you, because they’d know. And then they’d get to you like they got to Paul, Tom, and now Travis.”

  “But you’re the one that led them to Maltby,” Ethan said. “I felt your hand push my phone back into my pocket, Raleigh. I know you called them—”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I checked your phone to see whether your location service was on.”

  “My what?”

  “The FBI was tracking you, Ethan. They knew you were in Michigan. They knew where to find you, where to find me. Why do you think Travis was so angry with you? Why he wanted to kill you, Ethan?”

  He swallowed the lump in his throat.

  “That’s why I left my phone behind,” she went on. “When you activated it, the Pry-Jack notified me, just like your location service allowed the FBI to keep tabs on your.”

  “Pry-Jack redirected my call from nine-one-one to one of those dead guys,” he said. “Why would do that?”

  “The toll-free number at PowerTelecom?” She chuckled. “Pry-Jack is a phone monitoring application. It monitored my phone. And once I knew it was you that reactivated the phone, Ethan, not the FBI or CIA or some other government agency that got into it, I knew I had to find you before you led them to me.” She was nodding now, her eyes so wide they caught a glimpse of moonlight in them. “Do you remember seeing me that day? On Clark? When I honked?”

  She’s not bullshitting me. This is real.

  “I went to jail, Raleigh.” It was all he could think of saying.

  She shook her head. “No, the authorities had nothing on you. Just enough to hold you for a night or two, enough to let me get away.”

  “They had those reports.”

  “And mug shots of a man they arrested with a fake ID with your name on it? Ethan, all of that was by design, don’t you understand?” She sighed and rubbed her hand against his bare ass. “You weren’t going to jail.”

  “I wish I had known that at the time,” he half-mumbled, realizing if she wasn’t certifiably insane—more insane than I am with her outrageous conspiracy theories—her story was the scariest thing he’d ever heard.

  Klein had said kidnapping someone like Raleigh wouldn’t require such complications. He was wrong.

  They stared at each other for a long time, blinking at their shadows on the bed. Although Raleigh’s confession was a lot to digest, he didn’t want to close his eyes. He was too afraid that once he did, he might never see her again.

  “Ethan, I’m doing some really consequential work out there. Do you know how bad things are in places like Berkley County?”

  “California?”

  “No,” she said, reaching out and stroking his arm now. “It’s in West Virginia, Ethan, the last place you’d expect opioid addiction to cripple a town, and yet—”

  �
�Moe,” he said, cutting her off. “From Boyle Mills.”

  She nodded. “Another crippled town. Once the mills closed down—”

  “Braun thought he’d incinerated you.”

  This time, she shook her head. “A deer. It was an animal incinerator, not a cremulator, Ethan.” She shuddered. “And it served us well, letting Braun and Hyatt think they were discarding my body—”

  “But your mother, Raleigh.”

  She sighed. “I know you have a lot of questions, but just think it through, Ethan.”

  She’d never been hurt? She’d gone willingly that night, leaving him to question the meaning of his own life without her. “Raleigh, you could have told me . . .”

  “And if I had? I’d have put everyone’s life at risk.” She shook her head, the smell of her shampoo—the same fragrance from seven and a half years ago—wafting across his face. “I have to stay missing, Ethan. If we want to save our country from this epidemic, I have to stay missing.”

  Even in the darkness, he saw that her face twisted with regret and worry. His heart dropped at the sight, let alone the thought of her disappearing again. Stay missing implied she wasn’t sticking around, didn’t it?

  “Please, Ethan, please stop hating me for just one minute, and think it through. The FDA wouldn’t approve my drug while I was at ParkerPharma. You know what that implies, right?”

  “Raleigh . . .” Was the 9/11 conspiracy next?

  “And,” she said with a disappointed sigh, “have you ever stopped to question why the FBI still seems interested in an adult missing person case, even after seven and a half years, even after that person has been declared dead?”

  “Except Agent Klein isn’t interested, Raleigh. He never listens to me, doesn’t believe a thing I tell him.”

  He noticed how she raised an eyebrow. “If that were true, why was he the first to arrive in Boyle Mills yesterday?”

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Slowly, Ethan blinked away his confusion. His head was spinning. Catching his wife staring back at him in the dark, he began to wonder why, during all of this time, he’d thought he was the one who’d lost his mind in all of this?

  On the other side of the mattress, Raleigh sighed, and Ethan wondered if she thought the incredulity in his gaze was more that he didn’t believe her than it was about him questioning her sanity.

  Paranoia is as much a mental disorder as psychosis.

  “Someone wants me dead, Ethan. And the reason they killed Paul, Tom, and Travis is that they were all part of this. You weren’t.”

  Rather than tell her that this was the craziest thing he’d ever heard, Ethan licked his lips and asked, “Who, Raleigh? If what you’ve created is such a great cure, you’d think they’d be working with you to bring it to market.”

  Shaking her head, Raleigh told him he didn’t understand how corrupt the system really was. “Governments kill scientists like me. Last year, it’s said that the Israeli government was behind the deaths of a biotech firm’s founder and his wife. Why? Because they refused to merge with an influential Israeli company.”

  She really believes this.

  As if sensing his doubts, she swallowed and nodded. “I know how it sounds, Ethan. But I’m not crazy.”

  All crazy people say the same thing.

  “Listen, the FDA won’t approve my drug. It’s too late now, anyway. Even if the Parker family convinced the New York Times to run this story, opioid overdose would decimate our population without my drug.”

  “Why won’t they approve it, Raleigh? I’m lost.” When she reached for his arm, he drew it back, just out of her reach. But that didn’t stop her from continuing with her conspiracy theories.

  “I don’t know, Ethan. Maybe because it cures people, makes them productive taxpayers, turns them into potential votes for fairness, democracy, and prosperity.” She chuckled, sounding crazier than ever before.

  “And you’re suggesting that our government doesn’t want that?”

  “Apparently not!” She smacked the mattress. Frustrated or crazy, Ethan couldn’t tell, and he didn’t want to think about it too much, either.

  “Um, so what, they want to maintain population levels to keep healthcare affordable, maintain levels of compliance across the lower-middle class? What’s the motive for burying this drug that does so much good?”

  She really believes this insanity, doesn’t she? Ethan gulped.

  Another sigh, and when Raleigh spoke next, her voice cracked. “I know you don’t believe me, Ethan. But the entire Parker family has witnessed, first-hand, the kind of pressure the authorities have put on the company. Damien knows, just like everyone else at ParkerPharma, that my drug cures—hell, everyone knows it, even the FDA has seen it first-hand. But Damien and his family also know that ParkerPharma can’t mass-manufacture it. The FDA would shut them down so fast.”

  “And that’s why you’re faking being dead. Why you had this fake ambulance take you away, why you made me look like I was insane, a wife-beater, why you’re hiding out in northern Michigan?” He wasn’t sure whether the fear in his voice was a product of the story he’d just heard, or the fact that Raleigh was starting to scare him with her crazy talk.

  Raleigh hesitated, but even in the darkness of the bedroom, Ethan could sense the honesty. “Yeah, Ethan. It’s also why Damien Parker is spearheading this top-secret project.”

  “Is that’s why you were having lunch that day at the Signature Room? So you could spearhead this together? In Barbados?” Like it all made sense.

  “It took a lot of planning to pull off what we’re doing at ParkerPharma, Ethan. And Damien, he’s perfect for this. Nobody wants to believe that the black sheep of the Parker family can do any good, but he’s the one who masterminded every little detail.”

  “And you’re in love with him?”

  Raleigh said nothing. Her hard stare felt like the worst possible news, but just when Ethan started to look away, Raleigh burst into laughter. “Damien Parker?” she asked once she could breathe again. “Never in a million years!”

  Ethan ran a hand through his hair, noticing the moisture of perspiration at his hairline. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Let’s just say, I’m not his type, either.”

  Wanting to move on, Ethan asked, “Is ParkerPharma completely fine with this?”

  Now it was Raleigh’s turn to looked away. “They’ll deny it, but who do you think is funding all of this? Who do you think makes it all possible?” She pointed at him. “You know I haven’t touched the money in the bank account, so where do you think my pay comes from?”

  He didn’t know what to believe.

  “Paul Hyatt’s connections at the big firms sure helped. Not just for funding, but with proper delivery.”

  Who has Raleigh become? “Raleigh, this is all so . . .” He had no words to describe it.

  She sighed again, but this time it was out of defeat. “Come with me, Ethan. Come with me, and see it for yourself. Witness how we’re getting this life-changing drug into the hands of the most desperate communities in the country, and see how it restores humankind. It keeps people alive. It cures them from the incurable. I’m telling you that with the same certainty you’ve always had about me coming back.”

  My certainty that you’d come back? How would she know that? “I remodeled the house, I retired from my job, I was trying to move on—”

  Still shaking her head, Raleigh allowed a confident, “No, Ethan.”

  “Yes.” Because he had tried, hadn’t he? Or, at the very least, he’d wanted to try.

  She edged across the mattress, bringing herself closer to him. “The formal room’s renovations, the free hooks downstairs in the basement, the space in the closet, even this side of the bed that you’ve never slept on . . .”

  How did she know?

  “The way you kept vising my mom. Ethan, we both know you were waiting for me to come back. If you weren’t, you would’ve found someone else long ago—”

  “Because
I only ever loved you,” he said, as if the raw honesty of his admission explained everything.

  She smiled. “And I only ever loved you, too.”

  This is too much craziness in a single sitting . . .

  “You knew I was still out there.” She pointed at the wall, toward the front of the house. “I’d drive by, Ethan. And sometimes, I’d sit across the street and watch. If I was lucky, I’d get a glimpse of a shadow. Or I’d see you drive by in that old Toyota, rushing to work a few minutes late. I know what you’re trying to do with that room downstairs, but I loved the house and everything you’ve done with it over the years. Yes, if it was safe, I’d get out of the car and sneak through the backyard and peek inside. Or use my old key, just like I did today.”

  She could have come back at any moment, could have put my pain to an end, but she didn’t.

  “Even I knew I was coming back, Ethan. But I never knew when, never knew whether I could survive the torture of watching you fall apart like that. A million times—no, a hundred million times, I’d decided that I’d come back. Even if they wanted me dead, one final night with you and putting your mind at ease was worth it.” She pointed to the other wall, in the direction of the dog park that replaced the crack house. “But then I remembered why I started this. Why it mattered so much. And I knew that someday, you could join me when the time was right. And, right now, Ethan, the time is right. Come with me.”

  “Raleigh—”

  “Leave with me, Ethan.” She’d become desperate, her voice and wide eyes pleading with him.

  She could have come back a hundred million times, she’d just said as much. Ethan swallowed the lump of uncertainty in his mouth. Maybe it’s not what she’d just said, maybe it’s more about what she isn’t saying.

  “Ethan, please. Come and help me finish what I started.”

  He wasn’t sure what to make of it all.