Don't Trust Me

by Jessica Lynch

  For the first time since she walked into his office, Lucas seemed at ease. “Good answer, Tessa. And I have only one thing to say to that.” He blinked slowly, his thick lashes shuttering the icy depths of his gaze before he locked eyes with her one last time. His lips quirked. “Until we meet again.”

  “That’s so much nicer than goodbye,” Tessa told him.

  And nicer still because she knew he meant it.

  24

  Six weeks later

  Lucas had just ended another radio conversation with the new sheriff of Hamlet when he heard the irritating chime of the front doorbell ring out in his office. Slapping his communicator down on his desk, he bit out a curse.

  Jesus Christ. He’d kill for five minutes peace.

  Not that he blamed the other man for finding excuses to buzz. Like his predecessor before him, Collins clearly wanted to have a good working relationship with the town doctor. Lucas just wished Collins’ deep voice didn’t rub him the wrong way, like the grate of sandpaper against his nerves.

  It always had, ever since the first time they met, when the newly hired deputy came to Maria’s rescue the night Turner attacked her. Sure, he’d be forever grateful that Collins had been there for his sister when she needed someone. Didn’t mean he had to like the guy.

  Even if he should—and, albeit grudgingly, did—show respect to the new sheriff of Hamlet. At least he tried.

  The emergency election had been unanimous—Sylvester Collins was sworn in two weeks after they buried Caity. Lucas had to admit the former Marine was a good man, one who actually seemed to believe in the drivel Maria painted every year on the Hamlet sign. Plus Collins was good to Maria. He’d answer the sheriff’s buzzes for that reason alone.

  Rubbing his temples, he debated if he should do the same for his door.

  His head felt heavy on his neck. Dropping his hands to his side, he rolled his head back and forth, trying to relieve some of the pressure.

  It wasn’t getting any better.

  He was tired. So fucking tired.

  Time dragged. The calendar said only a month and a half passed since Caitlin’s murder and Walsh’s arrest. It lied. Lucas barely remembered what life was like before a pair of outsiders found their way to Hamlet, leaving nothing but a maelstrom of loss and confusion in their wake.

  As if he couldn’t stop himself—or didn’t want to—his mind lingered for a heartbeat on Tessa Sullivan before he angrily shoved it away. Then, raising his fingers to his forehead, he exhaled a rough breath as he brushed the strands of his hair, ensuring it was perfectly in place.

  There were patients to be seen, and he’d put off re-opening his practice long enough.

  With the exception of stitching up a gash in Liam Johnson’s forehead last Sunday, Lucas had managed to avoid most of Hamlet. His neighbors were allowing him to grieve and he found himself taking full advantage of that.

  It was one of the reasons why he tended to spend most of his time in his office instead of at his house. Too many people thought it would be just fine and dandy to check up on Lucas when he was at home. They were way more hesitant to crowd Doctor De Angelis. And the mountainside of town was quiet and content, the perfect setting for his unsettled mood.

  But the bell had rung, once again cutting into his imposed solitude. If someone was at his door, it might just be an emergency. He had to check. The doc had responsibilities that his—

  Lucas paused. His stomach wavered, his hands folded into fists. Six weeks and he couldn’t keep pretending he didn’t know what had him so fouled up. He never thought he’d miss her so much but hell if this wasn’t loneliness—

  Flexing his fists again, he forced himself to push past that, too. He had goddamn responsibilities that this loneliness wouldn’t stop him from seeing to.

  With a quick massage to his tightened neck muscles, Lucas fought to erase the scowl that etched its way on his face. Leaving his office, he couldn’t stop his thoughts from returning to Tessa once more.

  To Tessa and the flippant advice he had given her right when she was trying to process the shock of her husband’s murder. He told her that it had to be worse before it didn’t hurt so bad; only with pain could she finally heal. Wasn’t that the truth?

  The bell didn’t ring out a second time. No surprise then, when he opened the door, that nobody was standing out on the porch.

  But someone had been by, he saw. Because, placed neatly on the ledge outside the nearest window, was a manila envelope addressed to Dr. L. De Angelis.

  They didn’t have a real post office in Hamlet—just Phil Granger who accepted all the mail from the next town over and spent his afternoons driving around Hamlet in his repurposed golf cart, delivering letters and packages to the townspeople.

  For most of the townspeople, he would’ve held onto the mail until it could be delivered in person. But Lucas was the very busy, very respected town doctor. Even before the events of the last few weeks, no one in Hamlet bothered him if they didn’t have a very good reason to. So that meant ringing the doorbell and dropping the manila envelope off on the ledge in case he didn’t get an answer.

  With a jolt, Lucas recognized the return address. He blinked, narrowing his gaze at the type as if that would explain why this envelope was waiting for him.

  It was sent from the outside lab he partnered with whenever he wanted a second opinion on his findings, or when he needed more advanced equipment than what he had at hand in his office in Hamlet. The lab did good work, even if they were usually too bogged down for a quick turnaround, and they insisted on mailing out a hard copy of their findings so that they couldn’t be tampered with.

  Except what findings did they have for him? He couldn’t remember having contracted them anytime recently.

  It hit him a second later: Sullivan’s samples.

  He’d forgotten all about taking samples from Jack Sullivan and sending them out. It was routine, something he did whenever he was acting as the medical examiner. It was so incredibly obvious how the outsider died—ligature strangulation performed by an unknown assailant—that Lucas never really thought about it again once Sullivan was gone from his morgue. Then Rodriguez arrested Walsh for the crime and Lucas accepted that his part was over. It was now up to the lawyers and the judges and the shrinks to figure out why the hell the deputy did what he did.

  They already knew how. Rodriguez and his team carted off the rope and the guns before they took Walsh down. The samples wouldn’t change anything. He should just file them away, wash his hands clean of the whole thing. The case was over. The outsider detective solved it.

  Slapping the manila envelope against his palm, Lucas lasted about three seconds before he shook his head and reached for the metal clasp on the back. He slid the thin stack of papers out of the envelope, quickly shuffling through them as everything the lab found in the samples reaffirmed his initial findings.

  Until one word jumped out at him. Lucas blinked. His fingers crumpled the edge of the report. He scanned it again, just to make sure it said what he thought it did.

  It did. And he still couldn’t believe it.

  Fucking hell.

  Knock, knock.

  Tess was scrolling through her cellphone, an absent gesture because she was far too restless to do anything else. The soft rapping at her front door stole her attention away from another series of addictive cat memes that barely even merited a second glance, let alone a giggle.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she laughed. Back in Hamlet, she decided. That small town took so much away from her, kept so much from her. Her laughter too, it seemed.

  Knock, knock.

  Her grip tightened on the edge of her phone. Her heart sped up, though she willed it calm. By now, she should’ve been used to random visitors. Ever since she arrived back home and started to make the arrangements to live in a world without her husband—letting those who knew him learn what happened to him—she’d had more than enough people come by.

  And to think, when th
ey first drove into Hamlet, she actually thought no one would miss them if they were gone. It was a big world out there. Just not big enough.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

  Nibbling on her bottom lip, she hesitated. Someone wanted her to open up pretty badly. They weren’t going away. Even if she thought she should pretend she wasn’t home, her car was parked in front of the apartment. All it would take was a nosy neighbor to point it out. And since her visitor was still knocking, eventually someone would poke their head out into the hall.

  Might as well see who was out there.

  The well-wishers and guests coming to offer her condolences had trickled away after her second week back. And though she had enough casseroles in her freezer to last her a year, she prayed that it was a salesperson or something like that lurking on her doorstep. Jesus, if one more person told her that they were sorry for her loss, she was going to lose it.

  In another life, Tess would’ve tossed her phone to the couch, then peeked through the peephole to see who was out there. That was the old Tess. The new Tess, the one who fled from Hamlet with the ghost of her husband as her passenger, she realized she no longer liked the idea of being without the safety net of her phone for any longer than she had to.

  Without loosening her grip, she slowly approached the door. She stood on her tiptoes, the angle of the peephole distorting the features of the dark-haired man on the other side.

  Tess recognized him anyway. There was no way she could ever mistake those icy blue eyes.

  The door was locked. The deadbolt she had installed the night she returned home was tricky and it took her a second to remember how to undo it. She knew how easy it was for someone to get in to do harm. She refused to make it even easier for anyone to get close enough to hurt her again.

  He was still standing there when she finally managed to get the door open. His hair parted precisely, that sly dimple that appeared in his right cheek as he offered her a friendly smile that didn’t quite meet those guarded, icy cold eyes.

  Her heart thumped wildly.

  “Doctor De Angelis. What are you doing here?”

  Lucas was dressed in civilian clothes. Freshly pressed khaki slacks and a blue button-down shirt without a single wrinkle in it despite the fact that Tess’s home was at least a seven-hour drive from Hamlet—five, she considered, if he sped like a demon in that Mustang of his.

  If she didn’t know he was a doctor, she never would’ve been able to tell. He was too pretty. A model, maybe. An actor. She’d had that same thought the first time she ever saw him. He had had the face of a movie star, the hands of a healer and a determination that forever unnerved her.

  Standing outside of her apartment, Lucas deliberately adopted a pose to put her at ease. One hand in the front pocket of his pants, the other relaxed at his side as he idly twirled the ring of his car keys around his index finger.

  She remembered him telling her once how his patients complained about his bedside manner. Tess called bullshit. Lucas was a pro at projecting a carefree air. And he could read body language like no one she’d ever known.

  Too late, she realized she was gnawing anxiously on her thumbnail. She stopped, dropping her hand to her side. The barely there quirk of his eyebrow told her she’d been caught.

  Damn doctor was like a mind reader. She should’ve known she’d never fool him. She never had before.

  He smiled. “It was a long drive, Mrs. Sullivan. Maybe you should invite me inside.”

  As if she had a choice. “Of course. Come on in.”

  The apartment was in a state of disarray. He could almost forgive her for not inviting him in right away. Half-filled moving boxes were scattered around the living room. Haphazard stacks of sloppily taped boxes filled the corner by the brown leather couch. The matching recliner was buried under an avalanche of clothes.

  On second look, he noticed that most of the walls were bare. They hadn’t always been. He could see countless nails still studded in the walls, the only sign that photos and frames had once hung there.

  Either she was trying to remove any reminders of the life she had shared with Jack Sullivan or she was in the middle of getting the hell out of the apartment. After a second, Lucas decided it was probably both.

  “Almost done packing?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she nodded at the couch. “Please, take a seat. Can I get you anything to drink? Water? I might still have a beer or two in the fridge.”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  Shrugging, Tess disappeared into the kitchen. She returned with a bottle of water. As Lucas relaxed into the couch, his arms spread across the back, his leg folded so that his ankle rested on top of his knee, she drank him in with her eyes before guzzling half of her water. Suddenly, her mouth was so dry. The plastic crinkled as she took deep pulls.

  “Why don’t you come join me?” Lucas patted the empty seat next to him.

  She recapped her half-empty water bottle and tossed it on top of the massive laundry pile. As tempting as his offer was, she knew better. She could sense the tension in the air. Something big was about to happen.

  Keeping her tone light—and staying right where she was—Tess said, “Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”

  “Somehow I doubt that very much.” His pleasantness sent chills coursing down her spine. “You had to know that this was coming.”

  “I… I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Before you left, you said something that stuck with me. Do you remember?” When she shook her head, he told her, “You asked me if I really wanted to do this now. I didn’t ask you what you meant by that because I knew. And, trust me, I’m more than ready.

  “Hamlet is a very small community,” he continued as she stayed silent. “We weren’t prepared for what followed you into town. A man dies anywhere else, there’s an entire police force to look into the crime.” Lucas ticked them off on his fingers. “Cops, CSI’s, lab techs, DA’s.” He let out a soft snort. “An ME who isn’t making it up as he goes along. But not in Hamlet. Caitlin didn’t trust outsiders. Most of us don’t, but she took her paranoia to a whole other level. We had the five of us.” He raised his hand again, folding his fingers down as he named them. “Me. Caity. Wilhelmina. Sylvester. Walsh. We had to figure it out all on our own. Well, most of it.”

  Tess was following along. “The phone records,” she guessed. “She couldn’t get those on her own.”

  “Right. But the thing is, the sheriff wasn’t the only one who sent out to the outside for help.” He let his words hang there for a beat. “Your husband’s toxicology reports came in this morning. It was routine for me, sending out samples to the lab after I performed his autopsy. I knew how he died. I just wanted to make sure that everything backed up my initial report.” A quirk of his lips, a meaningless smile that didn’t quite meet the ice in his gaze. “Imagine my surprise when something came back flagged.”

  “Oh.”

  “Tox reports indicate that he ingested a liberal amount of Nembutal. Are you familiar with it?”

  Her legs folded beneath her and she dropped down on the edge of the recliner. The water bottle slipped from her hand. The peak of the clothes mountain tumbled onto the carpet.

  “It’s a sedative,” Lucas told her, as if she didn't already know. “A very strong one, too. Mixed with the alcohol in his stomach, he had enough in his system to knock him out cold for hours.

  “Seeing that he took it the night he died, I have to ask myself why he would do such a thing.” Lucas’s shrug was casual. Easy. “And I don’t think he did. I mean, he could’ve administered it to himself, yes, but it doesn’t make sense to me. So next question. Who was close enough to Sullivan to give it to him? No sign of a fight, so he took it willingly. Who would he trust enough that he would accept a drugged drink without thinking twice?”

  Tess slumped forward. A pair of panties fluttered to join the pile of spilled clothes on the floor.

  She closed her eyes. “Me. It
was me.”

  “I know,” he agreed, so readily that her eyelids fluttered open again. “And I’ve driven all this way for one last question. Why, Tessa? Why drug him?”

  Tess’s bottom lip trembled. Her eyes turned glossy with the sheen of sudden tears. Dashing them away with a shaky hand, she looking imploringly over at the doctor.

  “It’s all my fault, Luc,” she admitted. “I know I was supposed to stick to the plan and that was it, but I had to. When you did it, when you… I didn’t want Jack to feel any pain. You’ve gotta understand. It was one last thing I could do for him.”

  That’s exactly what he thought. In the hours it took to drive to Tessa, he already worked it all out. She’d never once shied away from what he told her she had to do. After reading the tox report, he kicked himself for not thinking she would do something like this.

  It always bothered him that Sullivan hadn’t struggled at all, not even as he tightened the rope. Sedatives crossed his mind when he first began the autopsy but he hadn’t used them so he didn't look for them. It never occurred to him that Tessa, with her conscience and the feelings she once held for the man, might have strayed from the plan.

  When the results came in and he realized she’d disobeyed him, he hopped right in his car. It might have been hypocritical but Lucas threw the rest of the plan out of the window. He’d been thinking rationally, clinically when he first decided that they had to wait at least three months before they could chance seeing each other again. Tessa would move from her apartment and he would leave Hamlet behind and they could just start over together.

  And then the report came in. One detail, one small thing had the power of ruining everything he worked so hard for. Her soft heart could’ve cost them both. He had to see her because this was one discussion they couldn’t have on a disposable phone or in coded e-mail messages. Lucas had to assure himself that Tessa was still as devoted to him as he was her.