We All Sleep Alone

by Calle J. Brookes

  It was enough to pull his attention from the work he’d been focused on most of the morning.

  He’d been her real estate partner and all-around assistant since he was twenty-one. It was a front at this point, but he doubted she had any idea of that.

  He could do anything he chose at this point in his life. His father had offered him position after position within his own organization. It had been tempting.

  His father was a very powerful man in Texas, after all.

  Kyle knew there was a lot to be gained by being involved with the woman who had such close connections throughout the city. She had a relationship with the deputy mayor and had a city councilman in her pocket.

  Both men had been in her bed. Off and on for years.

  Kyle and Jennifer had been sleeping together off and on since he was twenty-one as well. He didn’t know who’d seduced whom. If there was anyone on the planet that he knew well, it was Jennifer.

  She was his perfection—for all her faults. There wasn’t a more ideal woman out there. If she had one fatal flaw, it was her temper. Her anger would push her to make more mistakes than she realized.

  He’d used that against her numerous times. Part of his enjoyment of her was the way he could manipulate her for his own needs.

  “What has you so rumpled, darling?” he asked coolly. Sometimes, her temper required icy cool to diffuse. “Come on, tell me all about it.”

  “What’s got me so pissed? Like you can’t figure it out! Wallace is a total moron. He’s ruined everything.”

  “He has. Whereas he is sitting in prison right now, you are not. So what are your next steps?” He wouldn’t mention it to her, but he had followed every article that he could find on what her husband had done a few days ago. Information was power. Kyle had learned that lesson at his father’s knee. If nothing else, Wallace’s actions would allow Kyle another way to control the firestorm pacing next to him.

  He did so love to control her.

  Kyle stood and approached her. He was a tall man, thin, but strong. He placed both hands over her shoulders and turned her toward him. “Think, Jennifer. Think. What are your next steps?”

  “Make the divorce public.” She pulled in a deep breath. “Or...make it out like he’s lost his mind, stay by his side, and divorce him when the fallout is over. Which is better for my image? That’s what I need to figure out.”

  Everything was about her image. That was one reason why they’d never gone public with their own relationship—that and her marriage to that moron Wallace. It would not have looked good for her to have an extramarital affair, let alone with her son’s closest friend.

  Image...was everything. “What has Wallace said?”

  Kyle would give his left nut to know what had possessed that wimp to pick up a gun and shoot a nurse no one had ever heard of before. If the woman had died, it would have at least been interesting. They would have been able to dig into her life and find out the why. She was holding on in intensive care, he’d heard. Every source he had said the TSP was rallying around her.

  Some said she had connections with the TSP—an uncle or something. It made sense. Kyle’s sources were usually pretty accurate.

  He paid them well to be that. He paid them even better to make certain he knew pertinent information before that crude cretin city councilman who was always panting after Jennifer. Fucking with Dennis Lee’s machinations and schemes was vastly entertaining, and something Kyle had been enjoying for years.

  “Nothing. All he said is that he doesn’t want to see me, or Reggie, and wants a lawyer.” Her frustration practically had her shrieking. “I always handle the attorneys. He knows that. He can’t deal with this himself.”

  “Should you help him?” Kyle had to admit—he didn’t know what he would have done if in Jennifer’s shoes.

  Kyle had kept his own activities far from his personal life as well. It was best those things be kept private.

  She loved being in the limelight, but not like this.

  Poor Jennifer. She hated being out of control. Compassion filled him, though he wouldn’t ever consider himself a compassionate man. Whatever her flaws, she hadn’t deserved her husband of thirty-five years turning into a raving lunatic and shooting someone—on video, no less.

  “I don’t know. Public perception is hard to predict in this one. Whatever happens, my bid for mayor will have to wait. With all of this, I can’t compete with that bastard Barratt.”

  She had a real hatred for the current mayor. Kyle had never understood it. He’d known Turner Barratt for years. He didn’t think the man was that big of an issue. An idealist with more money than business sense, but not a bad guy. It hadn’t hurt either of them to cultivate relationships with Turner or his Barratt cousins.

  Barratts moved a lot of cold, hard cash in the state of Texas.

  Kyle wasn’t foolish enough to discount that.

  Everything Turner Barratt did set Jennifer off. Barratt had never fallen for the big dark eyes that got Jennifer everything she’d ever wanted. Those eyes had certainly worked on Kyle through the years.

  A few other men besides. Jennifer had definite appetites. Variety was one of them.

  Or demons. He often thought she slept with different types of men to exorcise a particular demon that rode on her back at times. “What does Dennis Lee have to say?”

  “He tells me to let things blow over. To say Wallace has been unstable for a while and I’ve been protecting him as best I could, that I was frightened of him but loved him, and while I intend to stand by him throughout this ordeal, our marriage is over. Says I need to look supportive but appalled by what Wallace did. I don’t even know who the little bitch is anyway! I can’t go find out. Not without people noticing.”

  “Well, that’s something I can do for you. I’ll swing by the hospital. See what I can find out about this woman. Can’t hurt.” He had spent ten years cultivating his own sources. He had them everywhere, the TSP, the school systems, the university, the hospitals. Every business association in the city.

  Kyle had killed to foster those cultivations.

  Kyle was a very forward-thinking man, even though his throwback self told him survival of the fittest was the way to go. He prided himself on being better than that.

  “Find out what it was she wanted from Wallace. There had to be something.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Thank you.” Jennifer pressed her lips to his to thank him. Kyle relaxed and let her do that. Jennifer knew her way around the male form. That was for certain. He’d always enjoyed letting her service him. He’d close his eyes and enjoy.

  24

  Izzie hated feeling weak like this. Hated being weak in front of the people she worked with. She’d spent years trying to build herself into a confident, capable woman. Only to have life kick her in the teeth and right back onto her ass with three bullets. Well, Izzie wasn’t about to let life win on this. Not for a moment.

  She was getting out of the bed. No matter what.

  Three feet. She’d get out of the hospital bed in the now-private room one of her closest friends had insisted she be given. Nikkie Jean pulled a lot of weight with the hospital chief of medicine and his wife. No surprise, Nikkie Jean was engaged to the COM’s identical twin brother, after all. Thank goodness for Nikkie Jean.

  She slipped from the bed as gingerly as she could. It took far more effort than she was ready to make. She was determined.

  If she could prove to the nurses that she could make it to the small restroom, take care of her business, and make it back to the bed, maybe Cherise—normally Izzie’s supervisor—would ease up some.

  Who knew Cherise could be so draconian? The older woman came off as so sweet and loving. She’d turned into a real dictator, ordering Izzie to keep her hiney in that bed for the past two days or else. Cherise reminded her that she had raised two children—Izzie didn’t want to know what the or else would be. Then Cherise had helped her change her socks. Fussing. She’d been fussin
g.

  Izzie had been touched by the older woman’s obvious concern and coddling. She’d never had that from a mother. Never had it from anyone other than Annie, really. It both touched her—and freaked her out.

  The trip to the bathroom took far longer than she wanted it to, but objectively, as a medical professional, she had to say it had gone well.

  Now, she would have to convince Cherise and Fin—her actual physician of record—to give her a bit more freedom.

  Izzie hated being confined like this. Hated it.

  She wanted her regular life back. Wanted to be working in the hospital instead of recovering in it.

  Wallace Henedy had taken that all away from her.

  It was going to be weeks before everything was back to normal again. Months.

  She’d lost an entire semester of classes thanks to that bastard.

  Izzie wanted to know why. Why her?

  Wallace Henedy owed her at least that much.

  25

  Finally. Finally, her idiot husband had let her and the attorney Jennifer had hired for him in. Jennifer leaned forward, pressing her head to the Plexiglas that separated them. This was horrifying.

  She’d been patted down like a common criminal before she’d been allowed in to see Wallace. Nothing she hadn’t expected. This was not the first time she’d ever been to this prison, though it was the first time she’d been allowed in to see Wallace.

  Her nephew, her sweet boy Ray, had spent eighteen months here. He’d gotten too rough with a girl when they’d both been too drunk to know any better. Too young. It had spiraled out of control.

  Never would she have thought she would see Wallace here. He’d been her hero for so long when she’d been a young woman. She’d adored this man.

  “I…I need something from you, Jenny.”

  Betrayal had been a real eye-opener. Now, she saw him for exactly what he was.

  Flawed. Drastically and horribly flawed. He looked horrible. He wasn’t sleeping. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild. She didn’t think he’d even combed his hair. “What?”

  “I’ve kept journals. Every day since I graduated medical school. I’ve kept a record of everything that has happened every single day. I need…I need those journals, Jennifer. They tell too many things…things we don’t want getting out. Things…things that will hurt Reggie far too much. I can’t live with myself if that happens. I can’t.”

  “Everything?” Jennifer’s mind flashed back. He didn’t even know what everything was. What everything she had done was.

  Fifteen years and three or four months give or take. To Miranda, Carrington’s personal assistant. They’d met her at the Carringtons’ dinner party.

  Miranda—Jennifer had always held a special hatred for Miranda. That bitch. That whore.

  Miranda had been what had destroyed the happiness they had in Philadelphia.

  Miranda hadn’t been his first mistress. Jennifer wasn’t foolish enough to believe that. No, he had been screwing around on her at least a decade before that.

  Miranda had been the one he’d thought he’d killed. Jennifer had found the woman still breathing on the floor of their vacation cabin. Where Wallace had left the girl. In a cabin Jennifer had bought for him to visit when he needed time to get his thoughts together occasionally. It was hard, him being a surgeon. Emotionally. He’d needed the quiet of the cabin to think.

  Bullshit. He’d been using it as his love nest for years.

  Jennifer had handled things herself. Her fingers curled, imagining the feel of the shovel still in her hand. The handle had been gnarled and old. She’d had four splinters the next morning. Plus, blisters; horrible blisters that she’d told Wallace she’d earned riding her bicycle the next day.

  Even though he should have known. She hadn’t ridden a bicycle in twenty years.

  He had believed her. He had wanted to believe her.

  She’d buried Miranda in the woods three hundred feet away from the cabin where Reggie had been conceived. The woman had still been breathing, but it had only been a matter of time. Wallace had cracked her head open and nearly strangled the bitch before running from what he had done.

  Jennifer had hastened the inevitable and protected her family while she was doing it. She’d taken care of things; the way she had for Wallace since…forever.

  Jennifer had never been back to that cabin. She’d had Kyle start it on fire ten years ago, on her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

  She had killed for this man in front of her. Now he had ruined everything. “Everything, Wallace? Oh, Wally, you always have been an idiot. What am I looking for exactly?”

  They both know she’d do it, find what he needed. Protect them all. Damn it, even underneath all of that, maybe she did still love him. Somehow.

  She always had been a fool where Wallace Reginald Henedy II was concerned.

  He’d said it was for Reggie.

  That was all it would take to have her doing his bidding.

  He shook his head. “Maroon notebooks. There are at least two dozen in the back of the filing cabinet in my offices. Both Barratt County and Finley Creek Gen. Get them. Promise me that you will not read them. You have to find them, Jenny. You have to. Find them and burn them. All.”

  “Why did you do it? Shoot that girl? Did it have something to do with Carrington’s daughter? Tell me.”

  He shook his head. “Izzie. She looks like Elizabeth would have. Did you know that? Big dark eyes.”

  “Elizabeth’s been dead for twenty-six years. That girl has nothing to do with our daughter.”

  He stared at her with torture-filled eyes.

  Her heart broke for him all over again. Like it had twenty-six years ago when he’d realized that even though he saved lives every day, he hadn’t been able to save the one that had mattered the most.

  26

  Jake MacNamara felt absolutely sick as he rushed into FCGH. They still had W4HAV blocked off. It would be for a while.

  Izzie could have died right there, and he wouldn’t have been able to get there in time to hold her. He’d learned now. Days later.

  He hadn’t been there for her when she’d needed him.

  It sickened him.

  Izzie, her friend Annie, and Annie’s three kids were his whole world. Pretty much his entire family this side of the Atlantic.

  Izzie was his daughter in every way that mattered.

  He still smelled like smoke from the house fire he’d been at when he’d learned about what had happened to Izzie. Callum had filled him in quickly, practically dragging him to the hospital.

  Right now, he needed to see Izzie. He didn’t recognize the nurse working at the desk tonight. He flashed his badge. “I’m Jake MacNamara, Izzie’s uncle. Can you tell me what room my niece is in?”

  “Are you on the list of approved visitors?” She was young and nervous and obviously a newbie. Jake studied her quickly. The nightshift ER would eat her alive before too long. Only the strongest survived in this place.

  “Of course. I’m her next of kin.” Jake bit back the impatience; the nurse was doing her job to keep her patients safe.

  “It’s okay, Felicity. Jake is Izzie’s uncle. We’ve been waiting for him to arrive,” a woman said from behind the nurse. Kevin Beck’s daughter. He’d worked with Detective Beck for a few years when he’d first signed on to the TSP. Now, she was married to Izzie’s boss. He’d seen her quite a few other times since then. She was good friends with Izzie.

  It took him a minute to remember her name though. “Jillian, how is she?”

  “She’s going to be okay. We’ve moved her up to stable. She’s been awake, and has even been out of the bed briefly,” she said as she led them down the hallway. “It’s going to take her a while to make a full recovery, but Izzie will.”

  Jake thanked her and then stepped into the room. Izzie was sound asleep.

  “She’s unhooked herself from the monitors again,” Jillian said with a slight laugh. She went to work with tubes and electr
odes and things Jake couldn’t identify. “She knows better than that. She keeps trying to fly the coop. She’s a bit restless. I caught her walking around the hallway myself a few hours ago. All a good sign, we don’t want her to rush things.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.” He settled in the chair next to the bed. He wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Not until Izzie told him exactly what had happened. When she told him she was going to be ok.

  27

  Allen was going to check on Izzie again. See her and convince himself she was going to be all right.

  The attorney prosecuting Wallace Henedy had left Allen a message an hour ago.

  He wanted to know what Allen had experienced, what he had observed in the weeks leading up to his colleague’s attacks on women who hadn’t done a damned thing to him.

  Victims.

  It pissed Allen off to think of Izzie and Nikkie Jean as victims.

  Henedy had been a good surgeon—not the best, certainly not as skilled as Finley Creek General could hire, but he’d been one of the leaders in the field.

  Replacing him was proving more difficult than Allen had anticipated.

  The stress was starting to give Allen an ulcer. They’d had three completely unsuitable candidates since Henedy’s arrest.

  The latest had propositioned Lacy and Nikkie Jean—on the same day. Either that or what he’d said was an extremely poor choice of words that slid well past the boundary of sexual harassment.

  Maybe the guy had a thing for pregnant women or something.

  It was another headache he had to deal with it. He had a lot of headaches lately—to go along with the ulcer.

  Maybe he should take Caine’s offer—leave Finley Creek Gen behind and start fresh at the smaller hospital fifty miles away. Head the Barratt County ER and lead a much calmer life. Build friendships there. Maybe get a cat.