Her intracranial felt pretty darned injured at the moment. No mild about it.
She couldn’t remember the woman’s. Izzie didn’t care. Izzie dozed off in the wheelchair, vaguely aware of Nikkie Jean with a wet wipe patting the blood away from her face and busted lip.
When she tuned back in for a moment, Nikkie Jean was arguing with someone. It looked like Caine. But it wasn’t. The distinctive dragon tattoo was missing.
Rafe, then. It was Rafe. Man, her brain felt like crud. They’d given her something—a sedative. She’d discussed that with Rafe, too. Before they’d fixed her arm. She’d always been so reactive to sedatives—usually with drowsiness. Of course…it could be the concussion.
Drowsiness was a symptom of that, too.
Izzie was too tired to figure it out.
It was hard to focus on what was going on around her at the moment.
“It’ll work,” Rafe said quietly. Izzie tried to listen. “She can’t go home with you this time, Nikkie Jean. You have three kids and Henry to think about. Same with Annie. Hell, I’d take her home with me and Jillian if I thought it would be the safest option. Allen’s right. He can get her out of town the quickest, knows what signs to look for in case of postconcussion complications. No one even knows he’s here with her now. Hell, just the simple fact that he can actually lift her makes a difference, and you know it. The first place someone would look for Izzie is with you or Annie or Fin. Then Jillian, Lacy, Wanda, or Cherise. Everyone knows that.”
She forced herself to focus for a moment.
Something in her gut told her what they were talking about was probably important. And it had to do with her life.
Not a word of what they were saying made any sense. Izzie didn’t care. Nikkie Jean had covered her with a blanket. Izzie was finally warm. She was going to stay right where she was for a while.
Next thing she knew, she had a baseball cap on her head, and Rafe was wheeling her back down the long hallway that led to the rear exit, Nikkie Jean at his side.
She couldn’t focus in at the moment.
Allen was there, too.
She listened as the two men spoke about something. Rafe’s voice was slightly deeper.
Allen’s was smoother. More cultured.
She’d made a promise to herself to stop being such a witch to him at work. He didn’t deserve that, after all. She closed her eyes again and listened to him.
He was far easier to listen to, really. He had a good voice. Not as gravelly as Rafe.
As she dozed off a bit, she decided she’d stay right where she was and listen to Allen talk as long as she could.
She might as well.
He always seems to be around lately.
53
Reggie was going to face an uphill battle. Determination that only a mother could understand flooded her.
Jennifer’s mind ran over all she’d have to do to get the house ready for her son’s return. He wasn’t staying in that damned hospital where his father had ruined their lives even a moment longer than he had to. Not with that bitch there.
All of those bitches. Darla Carrington’s daughter, that slut of Wallace’s, that nurse that Dennis Lee had tried to kill—all of them were there. She’d seen Carrington’s daughter next to a teenager riding in a wheelchair in the hallway. It had been all that Jennifer could do to keep herself in check.
They’d ruined everything for her family.
Taken almost everything away from her.
Even the mayor had gotten a piece of the action. Damn him, that cocky, arrogant, spoiled little prick.
He’d destroyed her hopes of winning an election the instant he’d put out a press conference that Dennis Lee had been responsible for robbing the citizens of his beloved Finley Creek. Barratt had vowed that he would personally see to it that the entire city council was thoroughly investigated for possible corruption. That damned pretty little nurse fiancée had been at his side, a beautiful toddler on her hip, and two more boys playing at their feet. She’d still had bruises on her face that her concealer hadn’t fully hid.
The media had loved her. Loved them all. Damn them. Pretty little Miss Finley Creek now. Talk about having the key to the city.
Everyone had fallen for the spiel hook, line, and sinker. Hell, Turner Barratt was almost as well-loved as that prick Governor Marcus Deane and his own wife and picture-perfect children.
Even they were connected to those little bitches from the hospital and that W4HAV. Caine Alvaro was the governor’s brother-in-law, after all. That damned Nikkie Jean Netorre was making no secret of her new connection to the governor and his wife.
Jennifer couldn’t compete against that. No one mere mortal could.
Barratts and Deanes and Carringtons—the connections were inbred in the people she was competing against. She had her own uphill battle now.
That was nothing compared to what her son was going to have to deal with it. Jennifer exhaled again. She had to gain control of herself. Anger wasn’t productive. No matter what, she had to focus on Reggie’s needs now.
She had nothing of value to bring against those of that kind of privilege. Nothing had ever been given to her.
Not like them.
Everything she had, she had earned and built herself. Old inadequacies were about to rear their ugly heads and she knew it.
Jennifer had been plagued with them her entire adult life.
Yes, her marriage had helped, but if Jennifer hadn’t taken over, Wallace would have remained a no-name doctor practicing in the poorest hospital in Philly. They’d probably still be in the small, two-room apartment they’d shared when they’d first had Reggie.
Medical school had been expensive for her husband; scholarships hadn’t covered everything. Wallace had had to pay his way.
Nothing to show for all their hard work at all. Her hard work, at that. All those times she had had to push him just to get him even one step up the ladder. She’d manipulated and traded favors for years to get him hired on at the best hospital in the state. She’d banked on it paying off for him in the long run.
It had. Until the day Wallace had ruined everything.
Not that she had much now; not with Wallace rotting in jail.
Anger at what he’d done warred with primal fear for him.
She would always love him. Always. He…she had been able to count on him through everything. Except for his affairs. They were his fatal weakness and she knew that. All those women tempting him—he was so weak when it came to his dick.
She’d led him around by it for decades.
They’d created a life together. Thirty-five years. It would be thirty-five years next Thursday. Without him, she wouldn’t be where she was today, be as successful as she was.
She’d used him for that, and Jennifer knew it.
Other than the infidelity, he’d been the perfect husband. Kind and attentive to her every need, almost before she needed them.
That wasn’t anything to sneeze at.
Many women would have loved to have a man attuned to her that strongly.
Thirty of those years had been nothing but a lie.
Wallace had screwed around with a blond nurse not even five years after their wedding. Maybe earlier.
She wasn’t absolutely certain that damned Nikkie Jean Netorre wasn’t Wallace’s daughter, either. Wallace had always been so almost enthralled by Jordan Carrington’s family back then.
A child would be rather hard to forgive.
Especially a daughter. Affairs were bad enough, but an illegitimate child was something else she wouldn’t be able to handle.
She’d not gotten a close look at Dr. Netorre, but she didn’t look much like Darla or Jordan. The girl was a bit unremarkable and didn’t truly favor either parent over the other. There were common features with both her supposed parents. Enough to make Jennifer doubt.
The hair color was a dead-on match to Jennifer’s son. The same color as Wallace’s in his youth.
It was pos
sible. Jennifer supposed that little bitch could be Wallace’s daughter.
If she was, and she’d lived while Jennifer’s daughter hadn’t…a rage like no other threatened to erupt.
It was hard to determine how many babies Wallace had made on his collection of whores through the years.
Or even when he’d started.
Or how many of them had survived the condition that had killed their Elizabeth. It had taken her a long time to get over blaming him for the genes he hadn’t known he’d possessed back then. She hoped to high heaven the man had used condoms with each of his whores. She suspected he hadn’t.
It probably would be in her best interest to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases again. She’d done so anonymously a few times before, just to be on the safe side. Using protection might not have ever occurred to him.
Jennifer wasn’t blind; the only thing Wallace had had going for him the last decade or so had been cold, hard cash. It certainly hadn’t been his brains.
Wallace was only moderately good looking. Mostly because she’d pushed him to take care of himself and had always made certain that his clothing was high-end and appropriate for their station in life.
Most of their money, she had made with her real estate.
She understood—she knew what it was like to be dirt poor, to wonder where the money for the water bill was going to come from. Worse. Not having running water at all. Having to use a damned bucket in a closet for the basic nastiness of life.
She’d vowed the moment she’d first held Reggie—her son would never know that hell.
She would never forget how that felt. Never again would she live like that.
Or how it had felt when Wallace had first looked at her. He’d been handsome and strong and working at the hospital when she’d taken her younger brother there after Joey had OD’d.
Wallace had rescued her that day. He hadn’t called the cops and had driven her and her twelve-year-old brother back to their neighborhood in a car that was only two years old.
She’d never been in a car that new in her entire twenty years.
Jennifer had felt so out of place in a car.
He’d come by daily to check on her brother, to keep him from making the same mistake twice. He’d saved Joey that day.
Wallace had rescued her from the life of poverty she had been a captive of.
Now he had ruined everything. It was hard for her to get past that.
All because of that little fucking whore Izadora MacNamara.
If he was going to kill some bitch, he should have done it quietly. Strangled her and drop her in the reservoir or something else, like that woman who’d recently been floating in the Value Reservoir.
Not shoot her on damned video.
Izadora MacNamara must have done something to cause Wallace to go off the deep end like that.
Jennifer suspected she knew what it was.
Blackmail. It was the only answer.
There was only one thing in Wallace’s past that she could think of that would warrant what he had done.
Jennifer had to find the answers. Sitting next to Reggie’s bed while he recovered gave her time to think of how to do that.
As the storms outside the hospital built, she worked on her laptop. She had a lot of messes to clean up before the TSP started digging too deeply.
She sent another text to those idiots who Dennis Lee had sworn by. To see if they’d been successful on what she’d told them to do. They knew who was the boss now that Dennis Lee was gone.
She’d used them for side jobs, such as leaning on reluctant buyers, since long before what had happened with Dennis Lee and Carl.
Someone had to pay their checks now that their source of funds was dead. She’d made it very clear that it was going to be her.
Or she’d spill everything.
She’d hacked his passwords and duplicated the keys to his hidden offices more than a half-dozen years ago.
Dennis Lee had taught her well, after all.
They surely had been able to do a simple job on her orders.
Get rid of that nurse. Period. Kill her, drop her body down one of the old mines that populated the area, and send her uncle a note where to find what was left of her. Along with a warning to keep his nose out of things he had no business digging in. Or else it would be the pretty fiancée of Turner Barratt’s he buried next.
Jennifer needed Dennis Lee’s lackeys to buy her time so she could make absolutely certain everything that had happened with Miranda was well hidden.
Damn it. Everything wrong in her life boiled back down to having to deal with Wallace’s little whores.
Jennifer snapped her laptop shut. She needed to find Wallace’s journals before the TSP learned about what had happened fifteen years ago in Philadelphia. Find them, read them herself, and then burn the damned things.
She needed to think before this situation got any more complicated.
She dropped a loving kiss on her son’s forehead, as a redheaded nurse came in to check on him. He would rest well tonight.
Jennifer had things to take care of, to make certain his future was everything he deserved.
54
Allen felt like he’d abducted the woman, instead of rescuing her. Izzie hadn’t had much to say about what was happening to her and he’d known it. With the sedation, it was obvious she hadn’t been truly able to make informed decisions.
He winced at that. Not something he was proud of being a part of, but the end greatly outweighed the means.
They had ganged up on her. It didn’t matter that her friend had been the mastermind with the plan or that the regional head of the TSP had thought it was the only idea that would work at all.
No one had been able to find her uncle. Apparently, every other relative she had was on a totally different continent.
Allen still felt like he’d scooped her up and run off with her.
Which was exactly what he had done.
He pulled his car into the garage of the house his sister had inherited from Logan and killed the engine. The only ones who knew the plan he’d concocted had been Elliot and Rafe—and Nikkie Jean.
No one had dared consider keeping her in the dark.
Izzie dozed next to him, her cheek scraped up and her hair still a little damp and curling over the steri-strip Nikkie Jean had put in her eyebrow.
Allen’s plan was to keep her at Logan’s place until after the worst of the storms.
They’d leave first thing in the morning. Early.
All he had to do was get some supplies together and find the keys to the luxury van that Logan’s parents had bought three years before his father had died from a heart attack and his mother from complications from diabetes a handful of months later. Linda and Barry had had plans to travel the country and enjoy time with each other after retirement. That hadn’t happened.
They hadn’t seen what had happened to their only living son. It would have broken their hearts. Then again, if they’d been alive when Logan had been injured, maybe they would have been able to see that he’d needed more help than Allen had given him.
Maybe they would have saved him and prevented what had happened. Unlike Allen.
He’d always have the guilt for giving Logan those damned Solpalmitraln pills.
Well, he wasn’t going to have someone else’s death on his conscience. Allen made a snap decision.
Every moment they delayed leaving Finley Creek, the more risk she was in. Storm or not.
He’d rather face Mother Nature again than risk her being attacked.
He had the keys to that van right there. He’d been there the day they’d bought that van; had toured it with Logan, making good-natured jokes the whole time at Barry’s expense.
Everything they would need was either in that van—or they could get quickly. What more did they need than that?
Nikkie Jean would be the one to spread the rumors that he was filling in for Rafe at a teaching conference at the largest m
edical school in Brazil for however long he needed to keep Izzie safe. It wasn’t too far-fetched—Rafe had received offers to do that before. As had Allen. He’d even done one conference in Mexico City shortly before Rafe had returned to Finley Creek.
Izzie’s disappearance so soon after the shooting was going to be a lot harder to explain away.
They’d come up with saying she’d been in a car accident. Elliot was going to see that a minor injury-causing accident was reported in the police reports, no names. With enough details to make it believable.
Allen grabbed a high-end drill from the tool bench—Logan’s father had designed engines for NASA—and removed the license plate from his car. It was just a way to delay anyone identifying the car if they broke in. Which he didn’t think would happen. His name wasn’t on this property anywhere.
His sister’s was, and that gave him some serious concern.
A moment of regret for how he was leaving Shelby struck him. Shelby would worry. He had no doubt about that. He’d call Elliot when he could, and ask the other man to personally see to it that Shelby was told Allen was ok. That he was helping…a friend in a bad situation and that Shelby shouldn’t worry.
Allen unlocked the van and did a quick inventory. He was not someone who camped, by any means, but he had cold hard cash in his bank account. If he’d known Barry Lanning well at all…
Allen opened the glove box and found exactly what he’d expected to find under the registration. There was an envelope with five thousand dollars in cash right there.
Logan’s father had been a bit paranoid at times—he’d always had cash on hand. It was a testament to how bad Logan had gotten after his parents’ deaths that the cash hadn’t been found.
Barry’s paranoia was going to pay off for Allen now.
Allen would stop off at a bank and pull what he could from an ATM before they left the county. An indoor ATM. He didn’t want the van spotted.
Allen wasn’t into subterfuge and maneuvering. That wasn’t his thing and never had been. He wasn’t going to do anything that would risk her. He checked on her quickly.
We All Sleep Alone (Finley Creek Book 11) Page 14
