by K. L Randis
Laced
The Second Book of the PILLBILLIES Series
K.L. Randis
FOR Q. & A.
You can never be lost if you know where you’ve been.
Copyright 2014 by K.L. Randis
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission,
Cover Design Copyright 2014 by K.L. Randis
All Rights Reserved
Characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Author’s Note:
Thank you to the paramedics, police officers, recovering addicts, family members and friends whose invaluable input, personalities and stories are embedded in the crux of this novel.
ALSO BY K.L. RANDIS:
#1 Bestselling Novel
Spilled Milk: Based On a True Story
Pillbillies
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY K.L RANDIS
Did you love the PILLBILLIES SERIES?
PROLOGUE
It was wrong of Jared to test Hailey’s memory after the assault but he had to know how much she remembered of his drug-filled past. If there were any parts of his life that he wished he could erase from her memory it would be any recollection of his involvement in Lacey’s death, the drugs and his stints in rehab. She was the only person who ever saw the good in him, and as deceitful as it may have been, he desperately hoped that the good was all she would remember when she finally regained consciousness.
Still, he couldn’t just outright ask her about the nature and extent of her memories; it felt unfair to pressure her like that. The trauma had already erased years from her early childhood and her time spent as a teenager. From the way she’d described it, it were as though entire pages of her life were simply blank.
Missing.
Jared watched her cry in frustration as different doctors interrogated and prodded her about what she could recall. It seemed that Hailey remembered Jared, but not moving to Florida. It meant she only had more recent memories of him from when she moved back to Pennsylvania, and knew little about when they dated as teenagers.
When he told her stories about how they met she took his word for truth, even telling him how much she loved him a few days after sorting through the fog saturating her memory. The sheer idea that she could speak was profound enough; her ability to remember that they were a couple and that she loved him was more than he ever could have hoped for.
“Hey beautiful,” Jared said as Hailey suddenly stirred from her sleep. The doctors were sure she would be released within the next week or two and they took pride in calling her their miracle patient. She had already undergone three corrective surgeries to her face. It had been a long few months and the bills were stacked in a neat pile next to the refrigerator, their balances threatening to drain Jared of all he had. He didn’t care though, and he intended on funding the most skilled plastic surgeons that money could buy.
Her lips parted weakly and she motioned for him to move closer to her. He rested his hands on the mattress, contemplating his next move. It was selfish—he realized that—but he needed to know.
“Remember when I told you my sister died in a drowning accident?” Jared asked, treading lightly.
Hailey shook her head. “I’m so sorry Jared, I can’t remember her.”
“I know,” he whispered, caressing her hand.
He thought that maybe if she saw a picture of Lacey the memories would come flooding back. It wasn’t that he wanted her to remember that he had been solely responsible for Lacey’s death. In fact, the exact opposite was true. But he had to know for certain if that memory was gone. If it was, then maybe he had a real chance at starting over with her. If Hailey had no knowledge of how Lacey died, maybe Jared would no longer feel the need to keep proving himself to her. Maybe then they could just live happily together without the ever-present shadow of his past casting over them like a dark, suffocating veil.
Jared pulled the same photo from his wallet that he had shown her at the cemetery when they visited Lacey’s grave. His mom and dad were beaming at Lacey in a soft pink, cotton dress while she sat on the floor hugging a white teddy bear. Their picture perfect happiness was a distant memory.
“I wanted to show you what she looked like. I think you would have loved her,” Jared said, holding the photo up while he held his breath.
Hailey nodded, mindlessly gripping the edge of the tattered photo and pulling it closer to her face. Her eyesight betrayed her at times, often resulting in nausea or migraines when she tried to focus on reading or tedious tasks.
A soft smile spread across her lips as she cooed at Lacey’s innocence and beauty. “Oh Jared, she’s just so perfect. What a beautiful smile she had,” Hailey said.
She lingered over the iconic dress his mom would put on her when they had special occasions, touching the photograph in an attempt to remember. “I wish I could remember,” she mumbled sadly as she lowered the picture to study the faces of his parents.
“It’s okay baby, I’m sure—”
“OH MY GOD!” Hailey screamed, flicking the photo as if it were on fire. It hit the wall next to her bed with a THWACK and fell to the floor. “Who is that?! Who is that man!?” Hailey squealed, sitting upright in her bed and pulling at her hair.
“Who’s who baby? Hailey who are you talking about?”
“The man! The man in the picture Jared! Why is that man with Lacey, who is he?”
Confused, Jared crossed the room and picked up the picture, staring down at it. “The man?”
“That man in the picture, the one standing there.” Hailey’s sobs were uncontrollable, the monitor next to her bed started to heighten in speed and Jared knew a nurse would be storming through the door any second. “That man is the one who did this to me. He’s the one who attacked me, I’d know his face anywhere. Oh my God, who is he Jared? Who is that?”
Jared’s mouth was sucked dry as he fought for words, “Are you sure? Hailey your memory—”
“I know that’s the man who attacked me. You don’t believe me do you? I could never forget that face! I know that’s who did it, I know Jared!”
He held the photo at the edges; entranced by the two-dimensional eyes staring back at him. They were the same eyes that had judged him, belittled him and worried for him for so many years.
“It’s my dad,” Jared whispered, letting the picture fall to the floor as a nurse came rushing in.
CHAPTER ONE
Jared pulled the outdated flip phone from his pocket as he positioned himself in the far right corner of the hospital cafeteria. Weak coffee was all he could manage to keep down after witnessing Hailey’s episode. Once the nurses had rushed in to subdue her he’d snuck away from her bedside and made his way down the maze of elevators, hallways and beeping monitors to find solace within a Styrofoam cup.
Nothing made sense.
Hailey was so certain that his dad was her attacker. The thought of him pummeling her face into a masquerade of bruises and broken flesh seemed unlikely, but the look of terror as she recognized the face in the picture was undeniable. Why would his dad seek her out, was he looking to get back at him for Lacey’s death? Why not come
after Tina while he was with her instead? His supposed motives just weren’t adding up.
In fact, the only thing that seemed to be adding up—at an alarming rate—were Hailey’s medical bills. Her insurance proved to be useless since the majority of her facial reconstructive surgeries were considered to be cosmetic instead of medically necessary. It left Jared with a stack of bills, thicker than a loaf of bread, on their apartment countertop.
He finished picking apart the white brittle skin of the coffee cup and gathered the remnants into a pile in front of him, pushing it into a mound of pretend snow. The wall of windows to his right reminded him that the idea was not too far-fetched. Vibrant hues of orange and red drenched the leaves of the oak trees sitting outside, and within two weeks they would all be in a heap at the roots. Fall was always a bittersweet season in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. The change was breathtaking but it also meant that a winter season dragging longer than six months was about to start.
The double doors that were propped open towards the exit of the cafeteria let Jared witness a stretcher speed past the EMERGENCY ROOM signs; three nurses and a doctor hunched over the patient as they navigated through the hall.
“It’s a shame us nurses can never enjoy the fall season,” Hailey’s nurse had mentioned to Jared a few days earlier.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“You know we have more people coming in through those emergency room doors because of car accidents in the fall than we do in the winter with all that ice and snow around?”
“Sure,” Jared nodded. “I’m sure people don’t realize how slippery wet leaves can be. It’s like black ice if you skid on them the wrong way.”
“Wet leaves?” the nurse chuckled. “I wish it were that simple. People aren’t skidding on the wet leaves, they’re looking at them.”
Jared arched his eyebrows at the nurse. “People are crashing because they’re too busy looking at the leaves?”
“Ridiculous right? They come from all around to look at the foliage, the beauty of our area,” she said, her hands outstretched at her sides. “And while they’re daydreaming about the creamsicle swirl of colors outside their cars…BAM.” She smashed a closed fist into her opposite hand. “Not so pretty anymore when you’re rushed through the E.R. with glass stuck through your forehead, huh?”
Fall was also the time Lacey had loved most. Jared would spend hours outside with her, pushing her on the tire swing in the back of his parents’ property or raking an Eiffel tower of crispy leaves for her to hide in.
Jared had made a call to Flick before sitting down with his coffee to see if she could use her resources to look into his dad’s whereabouts on the night of Hailey’s attack. Since so much time had passed he wasn’t sure she’d be able to dig anything up, but he was feeling cautiously optimistic when the vibration of his cell phone rattled the table next to him.
“Yeah?” Jared asked.
“It’s been a while, so we couldn’t find much on where he was that night. There were no credit card transactions or cell phone calls that we could see.”
“No calls at all that day?” Jared asked. Surely he would have called his mom going to and from work, he had done it for years. He would even find the time to call from the firehouse throughout the day sometimes, depending on how hectic his day was. For there to be no calls coming or going from his cell phone seemed unusual.
“Nothing. But there’s something we did find. Were your parents planning on moving?”
“Moving?” It was highly unlikely that his mom would leave the house where Lacey grew up. His dad had struggled getting her to go to the grocery store or even the mailbox in the months following her death. The thought of his mom packing up Lacey’s bedroom seemed inconceivable. “No way. My mom would never leave that house,” Jared asserted.
“They sold it,” Flick said matter-of-factly. “Exactly one week before Hailey was attacked. Took a huge hit too, and sold under market value. They probably had to sell it fast and the buyer paid cash according to any records we could find. Other than that, we’ve come up with nothing.”
Jared’s head was spinning. They sold the house? “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive. Had one of my guys drive to the house. No one answered the door, shades were drawn. It looked like the property was taken care of but there was no sign of anyone actually living there. No cars or anything in the driveway, no newspapers or mail piled up anywhere. Made a call to where your mom and dad worked too, apparently they both put in their resignations around the same time the house sold. No one has heard from them since.”
“This is unreal,” Jared whispered, mostly to himself.
“Do you have any family in the area? They have friends or someone they’d be staying with?”
“No one. They were both only children, no other close family nearby. All they had was us,” Jared said.
He flinched considering that, in reality, both of their children were dead to them. He sucked in a breath and changed the subject. “And the police still have no leads on who did this to Hailey? Besides her identifying my dad they haven’t found anything new since then?”
“Nothing,” Flick said. “Whoever did it was clean and quick.”
“All right, thanks. Let me know if you find anything else.”
“No game plan?” Flick asked. Jared could hear a hint of surprise in her voice.
“Not for now, Flick. I need to get Hailey home and find Dex. They’re my main concerns. We’re not even sure how my dad’s involved in this, if at all. Hailey could just be confused. Let’s keep looking into it, see what we can find. Keep me updated.”
“Of course. I’ll continue to keep all of this info between us so we can look into it privately, I know how personal this is for you,” Flick responded.
“Thanks.”
Jared slid the phone into his pocket, rubbing his temple and letting the swarm of information soak in. His parents had long ago made it clear that they wanted no contact with him after Lacey died, so he didn’t know what would have made them move or quit their jobs. His dad was only a few short years away from retirement and his mom was perfectly content working part time where she was. Why throw it all away? Everything just seemed too sudden and calculated. Could his parents really want revenge on him by harming the only person he loved? He could see his dad acting out of emotion and anger…but his mom? She barely punished him or Lacey growing up, she couldn’t possibly be responsible for maliciously mauling his girlfriend’s face for retribution. Or could she?
Jared tapped a finger on the table next to the bits of Styrofoam. Lacey was dead. They were no closer to finding Hailey’s attacker and his parents were MIA. While Flick never said anything about him getting back to work, the pressure of running a chaotic empire of pill pushers was beginning to swell. Local news stations were bombarded, covering a sudden surge of robberies and break-ins at pharmacies.
A cluster of emotions boiled over into his extremities and he dragged his arm across the table, throwing the bits of Styrofoam into the air where they fluttered and danced angrily to the floor.
* * *
Flick used two manicured fingers to raise the chin of the barely conscious man in front of her. His cheeks were patched with weeks of unshaven hair and the clothes he was in had long ago expired in smell and cleanliness. She didn’t care though. She brought her face close to his ear, seething as she spoke.
“Seems as though we went through an awful lot of trouble to find you and keep you here, sir. How sad that you may wind up being useless to me.” She pushed his face away, letting the faint ray of light from an adjoining room highlight the bruises and dried blood that bathed his eyelids.
“I don’t care what I am to you,” the man mumbled. “Who the hell do you think you are anyway? Keeping me here like a dog.”
“That’s exactly what you are to me at the moment,” Flick hissed back. “You were supposed to be my insurance policy on Jared. Your capture was supposed to keep him in this area searching for y
ou and keeping him in the game. I need him in the game, don’t you get that?”
“I don’t care what you need,” the man said, spitting the remnants of a tooth to the floor. “You’re a coward, using me against him like a pawn because you can’t get your shit together on your own.”
Flick smiled sweetly and sat down on the metal folding chair across from him, inching herself closer. She squeezed his knees together between her thighs like a vice.
His hands and ankles were bound and secured to a chair that had been cemented to the floor. He was only unbound three times a day to relieve himself. At night, the guards she had stationed at various places throughout the warehouse were instructed to lay him on the cold floor next to the chair and cuff him. His imprisonment was vital to Flick’s triumph and there was no room for careless error or any chance of escape.
“I don’t think you get it,” Flick said, cocking her head to the side and lowering her voice to just above a whisper. “If keeping you here as a prisoner doesn’t motivate Jared to fully submerge himself into the Pillbillie way of life then you will be utterly useless to me. Get it? You’re expendable then. I’ll have to find a much stronger insurance policy. Someone who would really—”
Flick stopped herself, letting the smile that crept over her lips haunt the man’s vision a few moments before she spoke. “That’s it,” she said slowly, nodding her head. “Maybe I don’t need you after all, old man. Maybe I need the girl instead. Hailey would certainly serve as a much better motivator than you. That was my mistake. I misjudged the relationship you had with your son. I thought he cared about you. Apparently not the way I had hoped.”
The hunting knife was pulled from her side and in a seamless motion inserted into the meaty part of the man’s upper thigh just above the kneecap. Blood saturated his jeans before he even had a chance to cry out in pain but the wails forced a guard to peek his head from around the corner as Flick stood up to leave, the man calling after her.
