Too Far Gone

by Allison Brennan

  Sean stumbled away.

  “Medic!” Lucy called as she ran over to Sean.

  “Jess—”

  “Nate has him.”

  “I thought I sent him to his death. I thought my plan wasn’t going to work. I was so scared.”

  “You’ve been shot.”

  “I’m okay.” Sean grabbed her and held on. “Madison is dead. I couldn’t protect them, Luce. I promised they would be safe, and they weren’t. I couldn’t protect anyone.”

  “You did, Sean. Jesse is safe.”

  But he wasn’t listening to her. He just held her tight, his entire body shaking uncontrollably as he silently sobbed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Jesse insisted on staying with Sean while he went to the hospital to get stitches in his arm. Lucy recognized that Jesse was partly in shock and feared that he was going to lose another parent. He hadn’t completely wrapped his head around his grief, and there was no way she was going to let him—or Sean—out of her sight.

  Nate drove them home at dawn. While Sean had been in the hospital, Nate took Bandit to a vet, who cleaned his raw paws and stitched up a cut on his leg. Other than that, Bandit was in good shape. He sat in the backseat of Nate’s truck between Jesse and Sean. Jesse had his head down on the pup and Sean had his arm around his son.

  They were going to be okay, Lucy thought. Time. Time and love, which she had in spades.

  The house was a mess, but Kane told Lucy he was taking care of it. She and Sean took Jesse upstairs to his room. He practically collapsed in exhaustion. They sat with him in silence for several minutes before leaving him, with the door open.

  Lucy and Sean went to their room and Sean sat on the end of the bed. “You need to sleep,” Lucy said.

  “Madison is dead.”

  “Shh. We’ll talk about this later when you’ve rested and eaten. Sean, you can’t put this on your shoulders. You did everything humanly possible. Sometimes we can’t plan for every possible scenario.”

  “I promised to protect them. He’s never going to forgive me.”

  “Sean, Jesse does not blame you for any of this. There is nothing to forgive. You saved him, and if he had been in that room when Leo’s team came in, you don’t know that he wouldn’t have been the one with a gun to his head.”

  She held Sean tight until he finally drifted to sleep. She lay there with him, dozed for a bit, but was never truly asleep. Noises downstairs drifted up, and she made sure Sean was still sleeping, then left, closing the door so he could have quiet.

  She checked on Jesse down the hall. He was sound asleep, Bandit with him. It was as if the dog sensed that Jesse needed him more, because Sean had her. She walked over and gave Bandit a hug and a scratch. “Good dog,” she whispered. She closed Jesse’s door and went downstairs.

  Kane was directing a work crew who were cleaning up the broken glass and boarding up the windows. “I ordered glass already. They came, measured, and promised to install by Thursday. They’re rushing it.”

  “Thank you, Kane. Is Jack sleeping?”

  “Finally. Why aren’t you?”

  “I did for a bit.”

  Nate walked out of Sean’s office. “I didn’t know you were still here,” she said.

  “I was ordered to take the morning off.”

  “Doesn’t seem like you’re resting.”

  “I was on the phone with AD Stockton. Jeremy Robertson was taken into custody as he tried to board a plane to Mexico. SAPD arrested Bart Vasquez as he was shredding files. They searched his house and found the plans for your house and how they intended to raid the place. He won’t be getting out of prison—there are state and federal charges, and everyone involved is going to get a Murder One charge for Madison. Stockton is on top of it. I swear, that man doesn’t sleep.”

  “Dean Hooper called me when I was at the hospital with Sean,” Lucy said. “He arrested Carson Spade. He’ll be arraigned sometime today on all the charges he got a pass on because of his plea deal—one of the agreements was that if he knowingly lied, he would be held accountable for everything he confessed to. Plus, there are additional charges, including hiring a hit man.” She glanced upstairs. It could have been so much worse. Sean could be dead.

  “How is my brother?” Kane asked.

  “He has this deep guilt that he couldn’t protect Jesse and Madison. I don’t know how he’s going to get through this. He’s not listening to me.”

  “He always listens to you, Luce. It’ll just take him a couple days to absorb everything. Um, is it okay that Siobhan comes up tomorrow? When I talked to her this morning, she wanted to see you and Sean, make sure everyone is fine. She’s a mother hen, I swear.”

  “I can’t wait to see her.” Siobhan had become a good friend, and she was the best thing to happen to Kane. Sometimes, Lucy thought that Kane was still in awe of his relationship with the photojournalist.

  Lucy went to her kitchen. Someone had already cleaned up, and all remnants of the tainted pizza were gone. She took a deep breath. Then another. She hoped Sean could get past this, because she was torn up inside. The man she loved was in pain, and she didn’t know how to fix it.

  She drank a bottle of water, then brought another up for Sean when he woke. She climbed into bed next to him and fell asleep.

  * * *

  An hour later, at one that afternoon, Lucy’s phone vibrated and woke her up.

  “Hey,” she said quietly. It was Leo.

  “We have a development. Are you up for meeting me down at SAPD as soon as possible? I’m leaving my house now, it’ll take me about thirty minutes to get there.” Like Nate, Leo had been ordered to go home and sleep after filing his report early this morning on the SWAT action.

  “I’ll be there.”

  She turned to Sean, who was now awake. “Go,” Sean said.

  “Are you sure? Leo will understand.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I’m not. I nearly lost you. Again.”

  He kissed her, then rested his forehead on hers. “I don’t know how to help Jesse.”

  “Yes, you do. Love him.”

  Lucy took a quick shower. When she went downstairs, the windows were completely boarded up and all the glass was gone. Jack was dozing on the couch, and she tried not to wake him. “Where are you going?” he said without opening his eyes.

  “Work.”

  “You get time off.”

  “It’s the case I’ve been working. We have a break. Leo wouldn’t have called unless it was important.”

  Jack sat up and stretched. “How’s Sean?”

  “Feeling guilty.”

  “He has nothing to feel guilty about.”

  Lucy glanced around. No one was about. “I told him that. He told Jesse and Madison that they were safe here, and then his house—the place he feels the safest—was attacked.”

  “He couldn’t have known what would happen.”

  “He thinks he should have known and protected against it.”

  “He did. He brought me and Kane to help because he knew he needed help. Sean is a guy who hates asking for help, but will do it when it matters. We fucked up.”

  “Jack—don’t. None of this is your fault or Kane’s. It’s the fault of the men who planned an assault against our home. Really—it took twelve men to take you all out and you were drugged. Still, Kane got one.” She sat next to her brother and hugged him. “I’m glad you are okay. I was so terrified when I came in. They could have killed you all. Twelve against three—Madison and Jesse wouldn’t have been able to defend themselves.”

  “Megan’s not really happy with me right now—I didn’t quite tell her exactly what happened, but Hooper has a big fucking mouth and I’m not going to be talking to him for a while. I’m flying back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “Same here, kid. But Siobhan is replacing me.”

  “Kane told me.”

  “I eavesdropped on Kane’s Skype call with her this morning and she forbade h
im to fly down and get her tomorrow. She’s coming back with a church group or something, and she wants to be here for all of you. She’s a good woman. Kane sure did nothing to deserve her.”

  He was joking, of course; Jack had a lot of respect for his partner.

  “I’m glad. She’ll bring joy back to the house.”

  “What’s Sean doing about Madison?”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I suspect her father will take over the arrangements.”

  “And Jesse?”

  “Sean’s not letting him go. He’ll fight his grandfather if he has to. He hasn’t said anything about it, but I know him. We’re in for the long haul.”

  “Good.”

  “I have to go. Keep an eye on them for me?”

  “You don’t even have to ask.”

  By the time Lucy got to the lab, she was surprised to see Tia Mancini, Julie Peters, and Dr. Moreno there with Leo, along with a young man who looked extremely nervous talking to Ash Dominguez off to the side.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late,” Lucy said.

  Leo waved it off. “We have more news since I got off the phone with you—I asked Julie and Dr. Moreno to come down to compare notes with Ash. And this is Adam Hornbeck. He’s at the university as well. In fact, he works under Dr. Moreno.”

  “Adam—you mean the friend of Cassidy’s?”

  “Um,” Adam said, obviously nervous, “are you looking for her? I’m worried.”

  “Yes,” Leo said, “we have a BOLO out for her, but explain what you found. In layman’s terms, because I didn’t know what the hell you were talking about ten minutes ago.”

  “Cassidy was really worried about her boss—well, former boss—Mr. McMahon. And when he took those hostages—she brought me his hair samples to test because she was positive he had been drugged with something that affected his memory.”

  Dr. Moreno said, “After the evidence went missing, Julie insisted that I add an extra layer of security to my lab. That’s how I learned that Adam had come in during the middle of the night to run specialized tests.”

  Adam looked nervous. “I’m really sorry about that, Dr. Moreno.”

  “We’ll discuss it later. Your findings were rather amazing.” The doctor sounded impressed. “Adam’s friend Cassidy had given him hair samples from the deceased, and he ran all the standard tests to no avail, but developed a rather ingenious methodology to help him narrow the testing. As you know, a lab is only as good as what it can test for. But what if you don’t know what to test for? With limited equipment and resources, most labs can’t run every conceivable test on a limited sample. With a little help and refinement, Adam, I think your system can be adapted for all labs.”

  “You showed me what I was doing wrong,” Adam said, sounding more starstruck than guilty now. “Instead of focusing on a more broad spectrum, I researched a bit and found drugs that could affect the acetylcholine level in the brain.”

  “Which is?” Lucy asked.

  “Acetylcholine is the primary neurotransmitter for memory, and necessary for learning and retaining new information. The lack of it has been linked to Alzheimer’s.”

  “Which is what McMahon was researching,” Moreno said.

  “Exactly, which I knew, and because in research we often look at the causes of what we’re trying to cure, it made sense that CHR would be researching drugs that inhibited acetylcholine in order to find a combination of drugs that would prevent its breakdown.”

  Dr. Moreno said, “Once I started working with Adam, we were able to cover far more ground, and we determined that McMahon had been drugged with an anticholinergic. We weren’t able to narrow down the exact drug, but we did break it apart into its components and would thus be able to compare it with a source. About four months ago—at the end of March—McMahon was given a large dose of the anticholinergic. Common side effects are confusion and light-headedness, among others, but not generally headaches—which we know that he experienced. There was another compound that I have yet to identify that I think created the headaches so that he would continue to dose himself with the anticholinergic.”

  “You lost me again, Doc,” Leo said.

  “When I inspected Mr. McMahon’s brain again and ran additional tests on the compounds, I realized that the initial dose had—essentially—zapped him. I know that’s not a scientific term, but it is the closest I can come to how he felt. The nerves that transmitted information from one part of his brain to the other stopped transmitting information in a coherent way. He could function, but the recent memories—whatever happened to him in March—were inaccessible. But as that other gentleman—Mr. Paine—indicated, he felt as if he perpetually was unable to think of the right word. For Mr. McMahon, it was worse because with the continued small dosing, any hope that those nerves would regain their strength diminished. That’s why he continued to spiral down over the months, and no doubt that he would have died from this. The effects of several minor strokes showed up when I enlarged his scans, but he may not have noticed them because of his other symptoms.”

  “And the pills did it,” Ash said. “The aspirin. We lost two boxes of evidence, but we had his clothing, and in his clothing were several aspirin. Reports from witnesses at Java Antonio indicated that he had been eating aspirin.”

  “Which I confirmed in his autopsy,” Julie said. “The stomach contents were lost—or stolen—in transit, but I still had blood samples in my lab, which I hand-delivered this morning to Ash.”

  “Long story short,” Ash said, “the aspirin were tainted with the anticholinergic. The one large dose he got would have had long-term effects, but probably wouldn’t have killed him. The continual dosing would have.”

  “How did the poison get into his pills?” Tia asked.

  “Someone he trusted,” Lucy said.

  They turned to her.

  “Paul Grey. It’s why he killed himself.”

  “That’s a leap,” Tia said.

  “Not really,” Ash said. “The single pill found in Mr. Grey’s car is a concentrated dose of the three that I tested from Mr. McMahon’s pocket. Maybe he wanted someone to find it.”

  “He should have left a damn suicide note,” Tia muttered.

  “I think he did,” Lucy said, “and Cassidy took it. Or she might have taken something else that would lead us to the same conclusion.”

  “Another leap,” Tia said, “but I might be with you on this one.”

  Lucy continued. “She’s been helping Charlie try to figure out what was going on with him, and up until Monday she’d been working at CHR. Maybe trying to get into the records, see if she could find anything to turn whistleblower. We know that Paul Grey planned on meeting her at five thirty Monday evening. I think they met and something she said had him wanting to help. But then what? He backtracks? He gets cold feet? He pays off Charlie’s debt to the bartender, apologizes for him, then goes to wherever he’s supposed to meet Cassidy and kills himself. According to Vince Paine, she searched the car but left him there. Paine didn’t think she found what she was looking for, but she could have found something.”

  Ash spoke up. “With Jackson’s help from the FBI, I was able to identify the prints on the passenger door and glove box as belonging to Cassidy Roth. So it does reason that she searched the car. But I have no way of knowing if she took anything.”

  “So her prints are in the car, which confirms what Paine said.”

  “Why kill himself?” Leo asked. “He could have turned whistleblower if he had any evidence that pointed us here—which he did, with that pill. Even his testimony would help. He could have been granted immunity.”

  “Guilt?” Lucy suggested. “Because he knew whatever they did to Charlie would result in his death? Blackmail? Maybe he helped, and didn’t think he would get a pass—or didn’t deserve a pass. Maybe CHR had something on him that he didn’t want getting out. We may never know, but he intentionally taped that pill under his steering column either for the police to find, or because he
planned on giving it to Cassidy, but changed his mind.”

  “Okay, I’m with you. But then who moved his body? Who parked his car near McMahon’s apartment?” Tia asked.

  “Someone who wanted to frame McMahon so that we wouldn’t look into Grey’s death,” Lucy said. “Divert attention or muddy the waters.”

  “We need to find Cassidy because she very well could have the answers,” Leo said.

  Lucy snapped her fingers. “Franklin Clarke. He spoke to Charlie at Java Antonio. What did he say that might have set him off?”

  Dr. Moreno said, “Whoever drugged Mr. McMahon turned his memories to mush. It was cruel and painful.”

  “Why didn’t Cassidy tell McMahon that his friend was dead?” Tia asked. “If she saw Paul commit suicide as her friend indicated, why didn’t she tell McMahon?”

  “Maybe she didn’t know how he would react to the information,” Lucy suggested.

  “Why would Cassidy do all this on her own?” Adam said. “Why didn’t she go to the police with all this information?”

  “We’ll have to ask her when we find her,” Leo said.

  “I’ve been trying to call her since early this morning when Dr. Moreno and I figured it out, and her phone is going straight to voice mail.”

  “Did you talk to Franklin Clarke this morning?” Lucy asked Leo.

  “I attempted to. He wasn’t at CHR. I spoke to Dr. Harrison, and he called a full staff meeting. Franklin Clarke and his sister are both in the wind—and Grey’s assistant, Nina Okala.”

  “The lawyer?”

  “Claims he doesn’t know anything.”

  “You believe him?”

  “No. That’s why he’s sitting down the hall in an interrogation room, and Dr. Harrison has waived attorney–client privilege. Since Mr. Robert White works for the company, he has no individual that he ostensibly protects. Let’s go shake him up.”

  * * *

  It took Leo and Lucy fifteen minutes watching White posture and pontificate before he realized that he had no leg to stand on.

  Lucy was surprised he didn’t ask for a lawyer. Even if she had done nothing wrong, she would have asked for a lawyer to protect her rights.