by B. J Daniels
She hit the kitchen level button. The elevator closed and began to climb. She did the same thing, reaching the kitchen level just moments before the elevator. As the door opened, she pulled out the box and carried it over to the table. She left it to make herself a cup of tea. She hadn’t eaten all day. No wonder she felt so tired. Spotting a leftover sweet roll, she devoured it even before the water had boiled for her tea.
Drey felt a little better. When the teakettle whistled, she made her tea and then took a knife from the block by the sink and walked back to the table and her package.
It took a few minutes to cut through all the tape, all the time making her even more curious what someone had sent her. Another wedding gift? She was grateful for a diversion from her thoughts for the moment.
Could it be from Ethan? She realized how much she needed to hear from him and be reassured. Let him really be in Mexico City on business. But even as she thought it and wished he really would be coming back so she didn’t have to face all this alone, she feared it wasn’t going to happen.
Jet knew his brother was gone. Was that why he’d been trying to get her out of this house? Why else would he want her to think she was losing her mind? But what was in the house that he wanted that badly?
She cut the tape on the package, taking her time. She couldn’t help but think about all their wedding gifts downstairs in the storage area. She had wondered what had happened to them. It bothered her that she had no interest in opening any of the packages. Worse, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they would never be opened.
Never had she felt so down. She’d been so sure that Jet had been drugging her. How else could she explain the way she’d been feeling? But what if there was more going on with her? Normally she woke up each morning delighted to see the sun and ready to face the day. But that was back when she had a job to go to, something to do that brought joy to her life. Ethan didn’t want her to work. But if he was going to be gone all the time...
With the tape cut, she put the knife aside, peeled back the two flaps and stepped back with a gasp. What in the world?
The box was filled with hundred-dollar bills. Stacks of bound hundreds. Dozens of them. She stared at the bills in horror. Where had it come from? Who had sent it? Ethan? Some business associate? She looked on the top for a note, but saw nothing but money.
She was afraid to touch it, feeling as if even opening the box had somehow incriminated her. Whoever had mailed it had sent it to her personally. It had to be Ethan. Why would he send this much money by a deliveryman?
Because he’s being investigated and he’s trying to hide this money.
Or... She had another thought, this one even more disturbing. Or it was intended to incriminate her, to draw her into whatever mess Ethan was in, to make it look as if she was involved and had been since the beginning.
She pushed the box away, wondering what to do with it. Hide the money? Burn it? Burn at least the box that it came in? Whatever this was about, she didn’t want anything to do with it. What kind of business was her husband involved in? Worse, was this an attempt to make it look as if she was a part of it?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BLESSEDLY HAWK HAD spent the day stringing barbed wire so he didn’t hear about all the sheriff’s patrol cars that had been called to Mountain Crest until this evening when he returned home. He hurried inside and called his brother.
“What’s going on?” he demanded the moment Flint answered.
“Dinner.”
“I heard you and several deputies were at Drey’s today.” He could hear his brother chewing. “I’m sorry if I interrupted your dinner. Tell Maggie hello. But I need to know. Has something happened?”
“Drey’s okay. Let me finish dinner and I’ll stop over,” his brother said and disconnected.
Mind racing, Hawk walked the floor, waiting for Flint to arrive. He desperately wanted to call Drey and ask her, but common sense told him to wait until he talked to his brother. He and Drey hadn’t left things well. She’d pleaded with him to leave her alone.
He knew he should. She was married. Then again, it wasn’t much of a marriage since, as far as he knew, it hadn’t even been consummated. Not that that was the point. Unless he had something more to offer Drey than concern...
With relief, he heard his brother drive up. He raked a hand through his hair and waited. “Well?” he said the moment Flint walked through the door.
“Yes, I would love a beer, since you’re offering,” his brother said and pulled up a stool at the breakfast bar.
Hawk went to the refrigerator, opened it and pulled out a bottle of beer. “Can you twist off the top? Or would you like me to?” he said as he handed it to his brother.
The sheriff didn’t seem to appreciate his sarcasm. Hawk took a bottle of beer for himself, irritably twisted off the cap and threw it into the sink. “Are you going to tell me?” he demanded without taking a drink.
“It was a false alarm,” Flint said and took a long swallow of his beer.
“A false alarm. What does that mean?”
His brother put down his bottle carefully before meeting his gaze. “Look, let me say I’m worried about Drey, too. Okay? She called this morning to report that she’d seen Jet Baxter killed on the pond dock outside her balcony window. She’d heard three shots. She saw him take the last one and fall into the pond.”
Hawk let out a surprised curse. “Was he dead?”
“When we got there we couldn’t find a body or any sign of a murder.”
He stared at his brother. “What are you saying? That she made it up? Imagined the whole thing?”
“We contacted Jet at his hotel. He had come straight from bed—and not alone. There was a woman with him. He swore that he hadn’t left his room all morning and the woman backed up his story. The hotel valet said Jet’s car was right where it had been last night and hadn’t been moved.”
Hawk came around the end of the breakfast bar, pulled out a stool and sat. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Flint said. “Seems there are two options. Jet somehow staged it, used the woman in his bed as an alibi, had someone take him to the Baxter property so he didn’t have to use his own car. Seems pretty elaborate and to what end?”
“And the second option?” Hawk asked, knowing he wasn’t going to like it.
“That Drey imagined the whole thing.”
Hawk scoffed. “You know her. She isn’t one to take flights of fancy.” Even as he said it, he remembered what she’d been like the night he’d broken the window to get to her.
“You said you thought she was out of it the night you saw her.” Flint toyed with the label on his beer bottle for a moment. “Jet told us that it isn’t the first time she’s...imagined something that never happened. He blames whatever prescription drug she’s taking.”
“Drugs? Drey?” He couldn’t believe this. “There is no way. Not Drey.”
His brother said nothing for a moment as he took another drink of his beer. “He said he saw her take them but didn’t get a look at the prescription bottle. But he said they really seemed to knock her out and leave her...confused when she was awake. He said that they apparently gave her nightmares.”
Hawk thought of the woman he’d found in that huge master bedroom the other night. She’d been screaming, terrified, looking around the room as if she expected to find... That was just it, he had no idea. He’d thought it was just a bad dream—like she’d said. But he had to admit that night she was nothing like the Drey he’d known and loved.
“If he’s telling the truth, which I doubt, then she’s in trouble and needs help.”
“Not from you, Hawk.” Flint finished his beer and rose to leave. “She’s not your responsibility anymore. You need to back off, especially with the feds watching her.”
“Wait a minute. If the feds are really watching the ho
use, then they would have seen Jet—”
“Give me some credit. Don’t you think I thought of that? I called the agent in charge right away hoping I could verify what Drey thought she’d seen.”
“And?”
“The agent watching the house had been called away on a possible lead on Ethan Baxter’s whereabouts.”
“A possible lead? Let me guess. This lead, was it an anonymous call? It was, wasn’t it? How perfect.”
Flint shook his head. “Sometimes, my brother, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is just a duck. Isn’t the simpler explanation that Drey is on drugs and imagined the whole thing?”
“Or someone is setting her up.” And now she was in that house alone.
“I can only guess what you’re thinking of doing right now,” the sheriff said as he headed for the door. “Don’t do it. If she wanted your help, she would ask for it.”
Not likely, he thought, as his brother left. So what was he going to do? He couldn’t just stand back and let... Hell, let what happen? Drey self-destruct? Even if he believed for a moment that Drey was on drugs...
Hawk swore, hating that Flint was right. He couldn’t go storming up to that house again. It wasn’t the feds he was worried about. It was Drey. She’d begged him to leave her alone. But how could he do that? He loved her, and to hell with the past, he was going to get her back.
That thought was an ice-filled bucket of water poured over his head.
* * *
IT WAS STILL dark out when Drey woke, disoriented. Her mouth felt dry as ash. She tried to swallow. Since the sparkling-water dream, she’d gone to water from the tap.
Now, barely opening her eyes, she reached for her glass and started to take a sip. Through her veiled gaze, she saw the container of prescription pills and automatically reached for it, suddenly aching for that wonderful calm that she knew would be coming once she’d downed them.
Still half-asleep, she popped the cap and shook two pills into her hand. But as she started to lift them to her mouth and chase them down with the water, she froze.
Breath coming fast now, she carefully put the glass on the nightstand and reached over and snapped on the lamp. The sudden bright glare instead of the moonlight coming through the windows made her blink.
She stared down at the pills in her hand. So familiar. The memory of their effect even more familiar and enticing. How easy it would be to lift them to her lips again. To swallow them with the rest of her water. To lie back and wait for the wonderful oblivion.
Her chest ached with a need so strong... Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she got up and hurried to the bathroom. She felt confused, scared and, worse, tempted.
She dropped the two pills into the toilet, flushed and watched them disappear. But there were still more back by her bed. A container full of them. It would have been so easy to take them to make herself feel better.
Turning, she walked slowly back to the bedroom, picked up her phone and hesitated as she looked at the clock. Three twenty in the morning. She couldn’t call Lillie and wake up not only her and Trask, but also the baby. There was no one she could call. Not with this.
A whimper escaped her lips as she realized there was only one person. When Hawk answered, she said, “You told me that if I ever needed—”
He’d sounded as if he’d been sound asleep when he answered, but now was wide-awake. “What is it, Drey?”
She almost hung up. She really was losing her mind. Worse, she was in serious trouble. And even if Hawk took satisfaction in this, she needed his help.
“I’m scared. I need help.”
“I’ll be right there,” he said.
“You’ll need the code for the gate.” She rattled it off before he disconnected.
A short time later she let him in the front door. She’d turned on all the lights as she’d gone from the master suite down the levels to wait for him.
As she did, she thought she saw a dark figure move at the edge of the pines. But when she looked again, it was gone as if she’d only imagined it.
* * *
THE MOMENT HAWK saw her looking disheveled and scared, he drew Drey to him, holding her tightly. She hadn’t bothered to dress after her call to him. She wore a robe over what appeared to be pajamas. She was sobbing hysterically and shaking like a leaf in a gale. He’d never seen her like this. He wanted to demand to know what was wrong, but he held his tongue, giving her time.
The fact that she’d called him asking for help told him that she was desperate. He’d been terrified and still was. What kind of trouble was she in? He was half-afraid of what she was going to tell him for fear Flint was right and he didn’t know this Drey at all.
He didn’t say anything until she quit sobbing and trembling. “Coffee?” he asked as she stepped from his arms.
She nodded and he followed her up to the kitchen level. He watched her put on a pot of coffee, seeing how nervous she was. Was she regretting calling him? It wasn’t until she’d poured them both a cup that she seemed to have gained the control he’d always known she possessed.
Drey wasn’t the kind of woman who was easily rattled. She was the one who didn’t fall apart in a crisis. Look how well she had taken everything that had happened to them. She’d gone on to Spain and finished her degree as if putting what he’d never been able to get over behind her without a second thought.
Or at least that’s what he’d believed she’d done. He’d been shocked when she’d told him how hard she’d taken the miscarriage. He’d always thought that she’d been happy about it. He wanted to kick himself for thinking the worst of her.
As he studied her now, he wondered how different things might have been if he’d known that like him, she hadn’t gotten over them easily, had suffered over what had happened to them...
“Talk to me,” he said as she handed him his coffee cup and the two of them took seats at the table. “I know you wouldn’t have called me and asked for my help in the middle of the night if something wasn’t horribly wrong. I’ve known you all my life.” And a good portion of it intimately. But he’d never seen her in such a state as when she’d opened the door. “Drey, what’s going on?”
She looked up, her lower lip trembling, but couldn’t seem to speak. The sight of her like this made his heart race. What kind of trouble was she in?
“You’re scared,” he said. “I can see that. The thing is, you don’t scare easily. You’re strong. Let me help you.”
She shook her head and took a breath that came out on a sob, but she didn’t break down again. “I’m either going crazy or someone wants me to think I am. I woke up and found these on my bedside table,” she said as she reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a prescription drug container.
Oh shit, he thought as she handed it to him. Was it possible Jet was telling the truth?
He glanced at the label before his gaze shot back up to her. “Have you been taking these?”
“No. At least not for years.”
Hawk knew that couldn’t be true because there was a recent date on the label along with her name. “Drey, these are a powerful antianxiety medication. Why would you have ever been taking them?”
Her fingers trembled as she hugged the hot cup of coffee to her. She seemed to be getting up her courage. “After I lost the baby,” she looked away as if ashamed. “I couldn’t eat or sleep. I went to a doctor who prescribed them. Once I started taking them, I...”
He couldn’t believe this. “You got hooked. Was this in Spain?”
“Right before. I lost the baby two weeks before I left for Spain and school.”
Hawk rubbed a hand over his face. When he looked at her again it was with true concern. “But you got off them?”
She nodded quickly. “I went to a doctor in Spain but he refused to give them to me. A friend got me some, but I only took a few o
f them. I knew I had to stop. I did. Cold turkey. It was horrible.”
“So where did these pills come from?”
Drey met his gaze. “That’s just it, I have no idea. I swear I didn’t buy them, but...”
“Your name is on them. It appears they were refilled recently,” he said. “Is it possible you just don’t remember getting them? You said you’ve been under a lot of stress.”
She shook her head adamantly. “I wouldn’t have purchased them. I know how dangerous they are. I don’t want to go back there, believe me.”
“Drey, this drug has side effects—extreme tiredness, problems with awareness and impaired thoughts and judgments. The other night I thought you were drunk, but now I’m wondering if you weren’t on these pills.”
“I think I’ve drugged me, but I swear, I didn’t purposely take them.”
“What about your husband? Did he know that you—”
“No, I never told Ethan. I never told anyone.”
“Someone knew. If you didn’t refill this prescription, then someone did under your name, left them beside your bed, knowing you were once addicted to them.”
“Or I did it and don’t remember.” She began to cry again. “It would explain everything that’s been happening to me. The hallucinations...”
“When you found these next to your bed, did you take any of them?”
“No. But I started to. It was like muscle memory. I saw them, shook out two and almost swallowed them. But I didn’t. I dumped the two down the toilet.”
“But you didn’t dump the rest of them,” he said.
She nodded. “I wanted to take them so badly, to not feel... I was so scared that I called you.”
The implication was clear. He was the last person she had wanted to call because he was one of the reasons she’d gotten addicted to them before—and still was. But also she’d said she didn’t want to feel. He realized that what his sister had told him must be true. Drey wasn’t just scared, she was so unhappy she’d almost taken drugs to relieve the pain.
