“No, I guess we didn’t.”
Drew left the bathroom first and Annie followed shortly after. She could still feel him, the remnants of his powerful thrusts pulsing inside her. She felt like a whore; dirty, gross, or at least that’s what she told herself she should be feeling. She just let him bend her over a dingy sink in a public restroom and treat her like shit. How else should she feel? Certainly not turned on, and yet that’s all she seemed to feel. Couldn’t wait to do it again, or maybe something different this time, maybe something he wanted to do. She could make his fantasies come true too. She technically already acted out his slutty teacher fantasy. That was hot too.
Annie walked out of the restaurant smiling. Lost in her thoughts she barely recognized her own friend, standing at the curb as still as a statue. “Sara?” she asked, pulling down her sunglasses to get a better look and hoping to god she didn’t just see Brax walk out only two minutes before her. “Is that you?”
Sara looked toward her and then down the street in the direction Brax would have went. She was so totally screwed. “Annie. Hi.” She shook the daze off her face and plastered on a fake smile. “What are you doing here?”
Acting out kinky role play with my mob boss boyfriend. “Not much, I was just getting breakfast,” she lied, using her fake smile as well. “I’ve been working a lot and needed to get out of the office. How about you? I rarely see you venture to Scottsdale during the daylight hours.”
“I’m meeting a client. Jimmy Row,” she pointed to a bar down the street. “They just signed with us.”
“That’s great Sara!” And it was. Jimmy Row was a popular country bar amongst the young club hoppers. She was likely getting paid a pretty penny to handle their PR. Maybe that’s how she was able to afford the new loft in downtown.
“Thanks. I’m excited.”
“You should be. I heard you moved too. Lots of excitement going on with you.”
“Yeah. It’s been a pretty eventful last few weeks.”
“Well we should hang out soon. Catch up on everything.”
“I’d like that. What are you doing right now? I’m a little early for my meeting. I know you just had breakfast, but do you want to go back in and get a cup of coffee or something?”
Annie looked back toward the door, contemplating going back in. She didn’t really want to. She wanted to go back to her office for round two with Brax, but she was also curious to find out if Sara had seen him leave; if she knew she was having an affair with him. Sara was a vindictive bitch and after New York she no longer trusted her to keep her mouth shut. “Sure. That’d be great!”
They went back in and sat at the table Annie had just left. It had not yet been bussed, her breakfast remnants and coffee cup exactly where she left them. The singular place setting making her story of just getting breakfast all the more believable. Ordering a second cup for Sara they continued their conversation. Annie, pretending to still have her job, told Sara how class was going, or how she imagined it’d be going. Sara showed Annie pictures of her new place and told her about the screaming deal on rent she received. Neither of them brought up New York and Sara never once mentioned Brax.
Fifteen minutes later they were both on their way after a vow of spending more time together. Annie didn’t plan to follow through on that vow but when a friend tells you to promise you won’t let so much time go by before seeing each other again, the nice thing to do is agree.
Annie walked in her office to find Brax pacing back and forth, cell phone clutched in his hand. He didn’t let her get one step before his arms were around her and his lips were on hers.
“Where the fuck were you?” he asked between kisses.
“I ran into Sara. She was walking past the restaurant when I left.”
The kisses stopped and he pulled back to look at her, waiting for her to say more, anxiety etched on his face.
“Don’t worry babe, she didn’t see you. I thought she might have at first, that’s why I stopped to talk, but she didn’t mention it and trust me, if Sara saw us together she’d be the first to throw it in my face.”
“I wasn’t worried. I could care less if she sees us. I just don’t like her and I don’t want you talking to her. She’s not your friend.”
“You think I don’t know that? I know she’s not really my friend. She’s a bitch who only cares about herself, but I’m not just going to walk by and act like I don’t know her. She knows too much; what happened in New York. If I piss her off she’s going to tell him.”
“So let her. He’s going to find out sooner or later.”
Keith was a sore subject for the both of them and Annie stepped out of his hold, walking away to look out the window. Brax didn’t understand why she was still playing house with her husband. Why she hadn’t left him already. She barely understood it either. Even if Brax held true to his word and let her stay after the two months were up, things would never be the same again. She’d never be able to be happy with Keith when she knew Brax was out there. Her heart and body would miss him too much, but the thought of tarnishing her reputation still held her back. If she left Keith for Brax it would be the talk of the town, or at least by those she knew. They’d make bets on it not lasting, talk behind her back about what a stupid mistake she made, she’d be called a bitch, a whore, probably worse over the mere fact that she left such a great guy as Keith. A part of her knew it was inevitable, but she was still too chicken shit to see it through. And then there was always that small, minute part of her that wondered if everybody would be right. If she left Keith and things with Brax didn’t work out, she would have given up her whole life for nothing. It was a terrifying scenario.
“It’s been a month Brax.” She crossed her arms and turned around to face him. “You promised me two.”
“It doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to change your mind every single day. Do you know how much it kills me watching you go home to him at night?”
“I know. Please. I just need a little longer.”
Brax rubbed at his temple, frustration all too evident. Annie couldn’t blame him. If the tables were turned and Brax had someone he was going home to, she would lose her shit. Couldn’t even stomach the idea.
“You’re right,” he relented. “I told you two months. I’ll keep that promise, but I want you to do something for me too, promise me something too.”
“I already promised you. Nothing is happening with me and Keith. I’m not sleeping with him. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Annie didn’t have time to see him rush forward before her back was up against a wall, the tips of his fingers digging into her shoulder blades. “You wouldn’t do that to me?” he questioned her statement with a snarl. “I don’t want to hear about the slightest idea of you sleeping with him, or anyone else for that matter. It’s not even in the realm of a possibility. If you did, if you ever fucking did…”
His muscular forearms shook with intensity. He couldn’t get the words out and Annie could only guess what he was trying to say. He’d kill her, he’d kill Keith, something along those lines, and then he surprised her.
“You would break me. I’d be done. I can’t even imagine how bad it would hurt.”
Annie stretched her arms out and pulled him close, his body still shaking from the radiating anger. He didn’t hug her back, but released his hands from her shoulders. His eyes were cold, dark and he stood still, staring out the window.
“Babe.” Reaching up she tilted his face down, his terrifying gaze now focused on her. “It’s not a possibility. It’s not something I need to promise not to do, because it would never happen and I will never mention it again. Okay?”
His breathing was going back to normal, but he didn’t answer.
“Okay?” she pushed again and this time he released a slight nod.
They stood in silence, Annie begging him with her eyes to relax. A minute later Brax breathed out a deep sigh and reciprocated her hold, pulling her close until her feet were no longer on the floor an
d she lifted her legs around him.
“I love you Annie. So damn much.”
“I love you too.”
“You’re mine.” He placed a firm kiss to her lips.
“I know.”
“And you had me wrong before. I wasn’t going to ask you to promise not to,” he clamped his jaw shut and shook his head, nonverbally showing his hatred of the idea.
“Then what were you going to ask me?”
“I wanted you to promise not to see Sara again. Not if you can help it. I don’t trust her and if she’s a bitch like you say she is, and she’s only looking out for herself, then this shouldn’t be a hard promise to make.”
It wasn’t a hard promise. Annie wanted to ask why. Wanted to know what he saw in Sara that made him so doubtful of her, but in the end, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t worth a fight or even a bicker. Brax was number one in her life. She trusted him with everything and if he felt so strongly about this as to make her promise not to see her, then she would appease him. “Okay. I won’t see her again.”
“Yeah? Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Braxton walked her over to the couch and laid down, keeping her on top of him. Their prior confrontation a thing of the past. That’s how it always was with her. He could be so incredibly angry one minute and then happy and content the next.
“So what’d you think? Sex with a stranger. Was it everything you hoped for?”
“Yeah. I liked it.”
“But…”
“But nothing. It was good.”
“You know I can tell when you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. I liked it. It was hot. I just thought I’d get off or something.”
Braxton let out a soft laugh. “Lesson one. If you’re going to fuck a stranger it’s every man, or woman, for themselves. I’m not going to slow down to make sure I take care of you. I don’t care about you that much. I only care about myself. Or at least in the stranger scenario. You know what I mean.”
Annie understood. The man beneath her loved her, the one in the bathroom did not. “So that’s how it was every time you slept with someone? Just a wham bam thank you ma’am?”
“Pretty much. Sometimes not even a thank you. Usually not.”
“You’re such an ass.”
“I never claimed to be a nice guy.”
“What made you change for me?”
“I guess I just liked your stellar personality.”
Annie laughed and rolled her eyes, but the joke wasn’t far from the truth. He did like her personality. He liked how her prissy, innocent ways were backed up by something dark. It reminded Braxton of himself. Not that he was prissy or innocent, but he too put on a facade to the world, when underneath was the exact opposite.
Keith walked down the sterol hall of the medical science center until he came to the door of Dr. Aanya Islani, Forensic Toxicologist. He’d done some research and from what he could tell she was the best in the business and it certainly seemed that way since her schedule had been booked solid for the past two weeks. She wasn’t the only toxicologist in the city, but Keith didn’t want to take any chances. He was willing to wait to get an answer he could trust.
He tapped lightly on the gray, metal, door, but there was no answer. When he knocked again the door unlatched, slowly gliding forward on the hinge. He pressed against it, opening it further. “Hello,” he said as he stepped forward.
The door swung all the way open and he found a girl, hunched over a microscope, examining a slide. She rotated the lens, zooming in to get a better look and paid no greeting to Keith, though she was clearly the one who must have reached over to unlatch the door.
Keith waited patiently, understanding her job was detail oriented and time sensitive. He was thankful just to be given the chance to meet with her. He’d already waited two weeks. What’s another couple minutes? He took a seat in the swivel chair across the desk from her and rested Jason’s file in his lap. When Dr. Islani finally glanced up he raised a brow in greeting. She was younger than he thought she’d be; mid thirties maybe, and had her dark hair tied back in a messy pony tail.
“I’m so sorry. Have I been ignoring you?” she pushed her chair away from her desk and stood to walk the specimen she’d been studying over toward a glass cabinet.
“A little, but that’s okay. I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
“No, you should have. Sometimes I just get so caught up in what I’m doing I think it’s only been a minute when in reality an hour has passed.”
“Well I definitely didn’t wait for an hour. Maybe five minutes.”
“Okay, good. Phew,” she placed a hand to her chest as she sat back down. “So what can I do for you Mr. Nichols. On the phone you said it had to do with a client’s drug test.”
“Yes. I want to know if it’s possible to misinterpret a drug scan.”
“It’s absolutely possible. Do you think your client’s test was misinterpreted?”
“I do. I have a report here,” he placed the folder on the desk and pushed it toward her, “that says my client tested positive for heroin, but according to him he’s never done drugs in his life. If he’s telling the truth, which I believe he is, it seems rather odd. The only thing I can think of is the test was misinterpreted.”
Dr. Aanya Islani opened the folder and began reading over the diagnosis. Keith let her concentrate, crossing his fingers she was able to find something. She flipped through the pages, going two deep and then returned back a page.
“When was this test taken in relation to your client taking drugs?”
“Probably ten to twelve hours later.”
The doctor nodded and began scanning through the papers again until she reached the end of the stack. “Well, your client was definitely intoxicated, that’s for sure. Alcohol yes and an opiate as well, but possibly not heroin. The levels of morphine are through the roof, but there’s no trace of 6-MAM.”
“What does that mean?”
Dr. Islani took a deep breath. “It could mean nothing. It could mean the test was just administered too late.” She reached for a blank piece of paper from her desktop printer and laid it out horizontally in front of Keith before drawing a line from one end to another. “Imagine this line as the life of heroin in your system. This first notch,” she drew a short intersecting line, “is when your body first starts to metabolize the drug and if it’s heroin, it is turned into a hormone called 6-MAM. This happens relatively quick.” The doctor wrote one hour above the first notch and then continued. “An hour later here,” she drew another notch, “6-MAM has lost half it’s life. Half it’s detectability. Every hour after that it continues to lose more life until approximately twelve hours later when it is no longer detectable. Now the drug is still in the system, still being metabolized, but that first hormone is gone and heroin is the only drug to produce this hormone. If it’s found on a test it’s an unequivocal positive.”
“Was it not listed on Jason’s test?”
“No, it wasn’t. Now that could just mean he was tested longer after taking the drug than you thought, or it means it wasn’t heroin in his system.”
“My time table is accurate. I have several witnesses that place Jason at the party a little after eleven. He arrived sober. His toxicology screen was time stamped at ten oh eight the following morning, less than twelve hours later.”
“Then I’d venture to guess the drug in his system was likely codeine. Both codeine and heroin metabolize as morphine, the only difference is heroin metabolizes first as 6-MAM and then as morphine.”
“Is codeine something you could drug someone with unknowingly?”
“Absolutely. Get some pills, crush them up. There’s a liquid form of codeine. You could get creative if you wanted to. And it’s a drug prescribed by doctors. In theory it’s easily accessible.”
Dr. Islani placed the papers back in the folder and handed it to Keith. He was still trying to figure out what it all meant. If he had codeine in his s
ystem instead of heroin, it could prove his theory that he was drugged, or it could prove nothing. He was on drugs. That’s non-debatable.
“What are the effects of codeine?”
“Drowsiness, euphoria, lightheadedness, vomiting.”
“In your medical opinion, if you were involved in a struggle while high on codeine, how would a person handle that?”
“I don’t think they would. They wouldn’t have the strength to move. Have you ever needed pain killers Dr. Nichols?”
Keith thought back to his elbow surgery and nodded.
“When you’re on them you can’t move. Wouldn’t want to. It’s too much effort. You are in a daze with no care in the world. Someone could attack you and you might try to fight them off, but it’d be a losing battle.”
Keith stood from his chair. The fifteen minutes he scheduled with her were up and he already had more than enough information. He felt like a kid on Christmas. She basically just told him if Jason was high on those drugs that he physically wouldn’t have been able to kill his girlfriend and that just left the same old question; who did?
“Thanks so much for your time Dr. Islani. Can I call on you to testify on this if needed?”
“Absolutely.”
“Great. Then I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.”
She smiled and started toward her cabinet of slides, but then called for him. Keith had already rounded the doorway, but turned back in.
“This was a college party, correct?”
“Yes. It was.”
“If I were you, I would check with the med school on campus. Find out if any codeine went missing and if any of the party goers had access to it. When I was in school I knew more than a few people who smuggled drugs from the facilities.”
Keith’s heart raced at the suggestion and his stomach managed to flip over. She was brilliant. Fucking brilliant. He ran down the hall, phone in hand, dialing Carter over and over again, each time getting his voicemail. “Damn it Carter. Answer your phone.” He told Keith he’d be busy and needed to skip the meeting, but it wasn’t like him not to answer. He always answered. “We were right,” he yelled at his voicemail. “He did it. He drugged Jason.”
Caged Page 51
