Dare You to Lie

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  After my car was backed into the driveway, I got an invoice from the driver and he pulled back out onto the street and drove off. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was petrified that I’d have to pay him right then and there. And that just wasn’t going to happen.

  With that bullet dodged, I grabbed my book bag out of the front seat and headed for the house. I’d almost made it through the door when a bad omen arrived. Agent Dawson rolled up and parked out front. He started in on me from the second his car door opened.

  “I’m not finished talking to you, Ms. Danners.”

  “Conversation is a two-way street, hotshot. And this lane is closed.”

  I slammed the front door in his face—just as he stepped onto the porch. Most people would have taken the hint, but not Dawson. He was a dog after a bone.

  He pounded on the door repeatedly. I stood just on the other side of it, smiling. I knew he was probably turning red with anger.

  I peeked through the peephole. Yep. Red as a beet.

  The banging ceased for a minute and he leaned closer to the door.

  “I know you’re standing right there, Ms. Danners. I’m going to give you about five seconds before I whip out my badge and start yelling loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear: ‘FBI; I have a warrant.’ Would you prefer that?”

  My smirk turned to a frown. I knew he wasn’t bluffing. Something about Agent Dawson told me he never bluffed. Ever. Just as he began counting down, I opened the door. Apparently, I was a toddler in his eyes.

  “So you can see reason. That’s good to know,” he said as he pushed his way past me into the house. “Is anyone else here?”

  “Nope. It’s just you and me. Want me to pop some popcorn and throw on a movie? It’ll be super cozy. I promise.”

  My tone was so laced with sarcasm that I nearly choked on it. Dawson seemed unamused. In truth, he seemed unamused by most everything.

  “What happened to your arm?”

  “Why didn’t you flash your badge at Donovan to make him go away?”

  He looked at me for a moment, then answered.

  “I wanted to see how violent he was. See if your claims about him were true.”

  “And? What’s the verdict?”

  “Not until you tell me what happened to your arm.”

  His no-nonsense stance and arms folded across his chest told me he wasn’t messing around. He would withhold his answer until I gave him mine.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Why don’t I?”

  “Because it would make you wrong about me. And something tells me you don’t like being wrong very much.”

  “You’re right. I hate it.”

  “Then allow me to spare you your self-hatred. Nothing happened. The door’s that way,” I said, indicating the one he’d just entered.

  Instead of leaving, he stepped closer to me, once again taking my hurt wrist gently in his hand to inspect it.

  “Donovan did this to you, didn’t he?” With a clenched jaw and anger blazing in my eyes, I nodded. His expression devolved further to one of rage. Agent Dawson appeared to be about as much a fan of women beaters as I was. “You should have told me.”

  “So you could do what? Arrest him? You have no jurisdiction for that, and it was my word against his. I know how well that pans out. Trust me.” With a quirk of his brow, I could see him lining up his interrogation in his mind. “Let me stop you before you get going, hotshot. You don’t get to know my story. You haven’t earned that kind of trust, and I highly doubt you ever could. So don’t bother asking.”

  His features hardened. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Well, now you got what you came for.… Door’s still that way.”

  He hesitated for a second, staring at me like I was a puzzle he just couldn’t quite figure out but was determined to. Then, just as he turned to leave, his phone rang. He picked it up and walked toward the front door, answering it as he grabbed the knob.

  “Agent Dawson.” He was silent for a moment before he turned back to look at me, his eyes wide with disbelief. “I see. Not sure how that involves me.…” More silence. “Really? Okay. Where is he now? Yeah. Keep me posted.”

  He hung up the phone without another word and walked toward me.

  “You really don’t need to say goodbye. You can just go.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, shocking the pants off me. “I was wrong about Donovan. I let my prejudice about your family cloud my judgment.”

  I couldn’t even put a sentence together. Instead, I just stared at him, my mouth slightly ajar. When I said nothing, he continued talking. “So that was a buddy of mine from the DEA. Any idea why he might have been calling?”

  “Drugs…?”

  “Apparently he was called in to aid with an investigation at a local pharmacy here in town.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. It seems there was an anonymous call from some high school newspaper regarding fraudulent prescriptions being filled at this particular place. Prescriptions found to be written by a single physician.” He eyed me tightly, waiting for a reaction from me.

  “Dr. Carle?” He nodded. “And did they find anything?”

  “Seems that way. You wouldn’t know anything about that phone call, would you?” I just stared at him in silence. “That’s what I thought.”

  I clasped my hands together behind my back to prevent him from seeing them shake. He slowly walked toward me, and I started to wonder if somehow I was in trouble. Big trouble. The kind that might involve bail money.

  He came to a stop right in front of me, looking down at me with a harsh, assessing gaze. I tried to steady my breath and calm the tension in my face, but that was hard with Agent Dawson breathing down my neck. Every fiber of my being wanted to bolt out of that room. Instead, I stood there and waited.

  “I have to follow up on something one of the guys they brought in said,” he told me, his voice serious and low. “My buddy at the DEA seems to think this guy has information related to the case I’m currently investigating. Information that might break it wide open.” I stared up at him with bated breath. He paused for a beat. “All because of you.…”

  I swallowed hard. “Just doing my civic duty.”

  He said nothing but continued to scrutinize my reaction. It was clear that he saw something in it that fascinated him. I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that was.

  “You’re a loose cannon, Kylene Danners. Loose cannons are dangerous.”

  “Danger’s my middle name…?”

  His hard hazel eyes brightened for a split second as a wry smile turned up the corners of his mouth.

  “I’m sure it is.” With that, he turned and walked toward the front door. But before he exited Gramps’ house, he looked back at me one last time. “Try to stay out of trouble while I’m gone.”

  Then he closed the door behind him.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding for far too long and collapsed forward, propping myself up with my hands on my knees.

  “Holy shit…”

  While I wanted to celebrate, a part of me—the paranoid one—was freaking out. Donovan suspected it was me that got the DEA involved. Even if he couldn’t prove it, that wouldn’t matter. I would get the blame. My only hope was that his stash would quickly dwindle and he’d become a quasi-reasonable human being again. Not a solid plan, but the only one I had at the moment.

  Suddenly, being home alone seemed like a terrible idea.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I awoke the next morning to the sound of my phone vibrating violently on the bookshelf next to my head. My eyes were still heavy with sleep as I tried to reach for it, my hand fumbling along the wood surface until I located the phone. I blinked my eyes repeatedly, trying my best to focus them enough to find the talk button. When I finally did, I pressed it and put the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?” The word came out in a sleepy slur.

  “Guess where I am at the moment,” a curt voice replied. />
  “Who is this?”

  “Agent Dawson. Striker gave me your number. Why are you still asleep? It’s ten—”

  “Because it’s Saturday. That’s what you do on Saturdays. Apparently you’ve forgotten.” I thought I heard him laugh on the other end, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe I was still sleep-drunk. “What do you want, hotshot?”

  “I thought you might be interested to know that Dr. Carle is in with my DEA friend now.”

  “Holy shit! I so wish I could see how that goes down.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not how it works. I just wanted to let you know that—” He cut off and started talking to someone in the background. I could hear two muffled voices. A couple of minutes later, he came back to our call. “I have to go. Carle just gave up a lead in my case.”

  He hung up without another word.

  I sat there for a minute, my mind still waking up to the reality that this was really happening. That I’d brought down an illegal prescription drug ring in town. And I wouldn’t get to see the man behind it all squirm.

  Or would I?

  I scrambled out of bed and rifled through my room, grabbing the clothes I’d worn the day before off the floor. After I threw them on, I ran to the bathroom and brushed my teeth while I peed. I barely had time to do either, so I figured multitasking—however gross it might have been—was required. I ran to the kitchen, pulled my hair into a low ponytail, and grabbed a bagel out of the fridge. I was out the door exactly two minutes after I’d hung up the phone, ready to drive to the sheriff’s department.

  Then I realized I didn’t have a car.

  I ran back in and grabbed Gramps’ keys from the hook by the door and jumped into his truck. I knew he wouldn’t need to be at work until two, so I had time. I hoped he didn’t need it for anything else before that. But this was just too important to miss.

  I took the stance that the speed limit was more of a suggestion rather than an absolute, and really applied that theory on my way to the sheriff’s office. I arrived there in seven minutes, hoping Dawson hadn’t already started his interrogation.

  Then I nearly ran him over in the lobby.

  He eyed me curiously when I walked in, looking me up and down. He’d undoubtedly put together that he’d seen me in those clothes the day before. I simply shrugged and walked up to him, unconcerned.

  “Did I miss the part of the conversation when I told you to come down here?” Dawson said, sounding incredibly formal.

  “You didn’t directly tell me not to.…”

  “You need to go,” he said, ushering me toward the door.

  “Come on! You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me and my genius!”

  As annoyed as he looked, he couldn’t deny that truth.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Did he admit to writing bogus scripts?”

  “He did. He essentially admitted that, for the right price, he could diagnose you with whatever you needed to obtain a script for otherwise highly controlled substances.” I couldn’t help but smile in response.

  “I knew it!”

  “Not bad, Ms. Danners. Not bad at all. Now, it’s time for you to go.”

  “But I want the gory details!”

  “I don’t have them, and even if I did, I couldn’t share them with you.” I stared at him with wide eyes and prayed they’d work on him. I didn’t want to blow his case, but man did I want to know how Dr. Carle sweated it out. How he tried to argue his way out of what the DEA already knew. Dawson looked at me, then let out a put-upon sigh. “Sit over there and wait,” he said, pointing to a chair in the waiting room. “I don’t think this will take too long. Dr. Carle is pretty worn out.”

  “Want to bet on that?”

  He looked over his shoulder at me and I wiggled my brows.

  “What’s the bet?” he replied.

  “Um … no clue.”

  “Fine,” he said, sounding put out by having to set the terms. “If you lose, you wash my car.”

  “Deal,” I agreed. “And if you lose?”

  He flashed me a devious smile. “Then Alex Cedrics gets to dance with you at your stupid homecoming.”

  “How is that a win for me? That sounds way more like a threat … or punishment.”

  He laughed at my horror.

  “It is. That’s why I suggested it.”

  “Bet’s off. Now, get in there and do your job.”

  “Afraid I might embarrass you?” he asked, quirking a brow. Before I could come up with a retort, he walked away.

  I watched him disappear down the hall to where the only interrogation room in the building was. I’d spent more time in there than I’d ever hoped to two and a half years earlier. Shaking that thought from my mind, I sneaked down the hall to the bathroom and ducked in when one of the deputies walked by. Once he was gone, I peeked up and down the corridor to make sure the coast was clear and then ran to the room adjacent to the interrogation room, the one I really hoped no one was waiting in to observe the interrogation. One calming breath later, I grabbed the doorknob and opened the door.

  Nobody was in sight.

  I let out a sigh of relief as I quietly closed the door behind me and tiptoed over to the one-way mirror. Dawson was standing, leaning forward with his hands braced against the table that separated him and Dr. Carle. The elderly doctor looked scared and exhausted, and I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t lawyered up yet, especially given the severity of his crimes. I hoped his arresting officer hadn’t forgotten to read him his rights. We didn’t need another criminal in Jasperville being let off due to police incompetence.

  “I’m going to level with you, Doc, for two reasons. One, I’m not in the mood to play games. And two, because you already admitted to having information for me. I don’t like being jerked around. For your sake, I hope that’s not what you’re doing.” He paused for a second and rolled up his shirt sleeves in a methodical manner. For whatever reason, he made the act look intimidating—menacing even. “So here’s the one-time deal I’m willing to make with you: tell me what you know, and the DEA and the FBI will go easy on you. It’s really that simple. We’re not after you—we’re after the guy behind the curtain. The only downside is that my offer expires in exactly sixty seconds. So what will it be, Doc? Multiple felony charges or leniency?”

  I could practically see him weighing out his options. Dawson had strong-armed him, and it was impressive, to say the least. The factor I couldn’t quite account for was whether or not he was completely bullshitting the good doctor, or if he’d meant what he’d said.

  Or maybe some gray area in between.

  “Thirty seconds left,” Dawson said, checking the clock on the wall.

  “I … I need proof that you’re not pulling one over on me,” Dr. Carle said, trying his best to sound like he had the upper hand in the situation, even though he clearly didn’t.

  “I’ll show you the paperwork now if you need to see it,” he said, handing it over to the doctor. He scanned it quickly before asking for a pen.

  Once he finished signing, he slid it over to Dawson, and leaned back into his chair with a sigh.

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “Based on the statement your pharmacist buddy made to the DEA, it seems you were blackmailed into doing this. What I want to know is the specifics as to how.” The doctor adjusted himself around in the chair. “Give me something I don’t already know, or I’ll burn that signed piece of paper and you’ll be doing time for multiple counts of prescription fraud. So if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in a penitentiary, I suggest you start earning your keep.”

  That rattled Dr. Carle’s cage.

  “I don’t know who the blackmailer is. But before you start threatening me, let me explain.” I could see the tension in Dawson’s back through his shirt. He was coiled for another outburst. Restraint was not his strong suit.

  We had that in common.

  “I’m listening.…”

 
“All our correspondence was done on paper. No phones. No computers. Just hand delivered, typewritten letters.”

  “When did you start receiving them?”

  “About a year ago. I found a letter waiting for me on my desk at work. Nobody seemed to know who had dropped it off. When I opened it, I was horrified by what it said. In it was a detailed account of something I had done. Something I didn’t want anyone to know about.

  “I had no idea how this individual came to know about … that event, but he did and was more than happy to expose me. It would have been the end of my career, my marriage.…

  “Then a few months ago, I received another note, outlining that he wanted me to creatively prescribe certain medications for certain patients.”

  “He wanted you to commit fraud?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me why you didn’t go to the authorities with the letters.”

  The doctor gave Dawson an incredulous look.

  “I think you and I both know why. To do that would have meant confessing to crimes. So I rolled the dice. And it was a moot point anyway. I burnt the letters as per instructions. I wasn’t about to tempt fate and keep one.” The doctor fidgeted again in his seat.

  “At the bottom of every letter, it was always addressed the same way: ‘Advocatus Diaboli.’”

  My hair stood on end at those words. Something about them was so familiar. My brain raced to try to place them to no avail, leaving me irritated, but I knew that phrase had meaning to me.

  “The Devil’s Advocate,” Dawson said from the other side of the glass divide. I could see the strain in Dawson’s profile. He didn’t like this information for some reason or another. Or maybe he just didn’t like what it implied. Serial killers and psychopaths loved to hide behind cryptic aliases.

  Any way I sliced it, it wasn’t a good omen.

  Dawson started to pace the room. He came to stand before the mirror—right in front of where I stood on the other side. He stared at it like he could see me. Then he abruptly turned back to Dr. Carle.

  “Tell me about the prostitute, Dr. Carle. That’s the information I’m here for.”

  The old man looked like he was about to keel over right there.