Authors: Sandra Brown
“Hello,” he’d said. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
She had nodded. “I—I ran from Dalton Carr after I saw him kill his wife. He chased me. I stumbled and fell. My knees hurt and—” She had lifted her right hand and encountered a large bandage over her left shoulder. “He shot me!”
“The bullet went straight through and the doctors say there won’t be any permanent damage.”
“You were there, weren’t you? You’re the one who saved me.”
He had shrugged. “I found you hiding in the bushes on the lawn of a house about three blocks from the Carr home. I followed the blood trail.”
“Who are you?”
“Sorry, I should have already introduced myself. I’m Lieutenant Jed Merrill with the Florence Police Department. I’m heading up the Amber Carr murder investigation.”
Days later when she had been released from the hospital, Jed had taken her home and explained that although the Florence P.D. didn’t have the resources to assign someone to guard her 24/7, he planned to make sure she was safe.
“Dalton Carr is out on bond until the trial,” Jed had explained. “He hasn’t made any threats against you. Guess he’s too smart for that, but you need to be careful and take every precaution. I want you to know that I’ll do my level best to keep an eye on you.”
The sudden roar of a truck passing by on Court Street, a block away, brought Olivia from the past to the present. How long had it been since that day when she’d been released from the hospital and found out that her life was still in danger? It couldn’t have been that long ago, not if Dalton Carr had yet to be tried and convicted of his wife’s murder. But for some reason, it felt like years ago. That wasn’t possible. If Dalton had hired Jed to kill her that had to mean she hadn’t testified against him yet.
Shivering from the cold March breeze whipping around her damp body, she hugged herself tightly as she scanned the area in every direction. The rain had let up and was now only a misty drizzle. She needed to get up and start moving, to keep running. It was only a matter of time before Jed found her. He was good at tracking, good at figuring out what the other guy was going to do, good at his job as a police detective.
And he had been a good friend to her. Her protector. Her lover.
She loved Jed. And he loved her.
No, it was all pretense on his part. He doesn’t love me. He poisoned the champagne. Did he? Are you sure? Maybe the poison wasn’t in the champagne. But if he didn’t poison me, who did? And why is Jed chasing me?
Are you sure Jed is the man hunting you?
Yes, she was sure because she recognized his voice, the only voice she could hear out there in the wet, foggy darkness.
Olivia forced herself up and onto her feet. Simply standing was a monumental task. She swayed, dizziness spinning her head. Somewhere nearby a dog barked and then another farther away answered the first one’s howl. In the eerie silence that followed, she heard footsteps again, faint at first, and then coming closer and closer.
Struggling with every step she took, she moved away from the shadowy corner of the café and inched her way along the buildings until she reached the entrance to the alley. A streetlight shone dimly into the backstreet, giving her a semiclear view, enough to see that if she entered the narrow passage, she wouldn’t be trapped. The alley went straight through and came out on the other side. Keeping close to the wall, she crept silently along the paved path until she reached a large Dumpster blocking her way. The stench of garbage assailed her senses and once again nausea threatened. Holding her breath until she slipped past the full Dumpster, she managed not to vomit.
Winded, her sides aching, every muscle in her body rioting, Olivia paused halfway into the alley, pressed her back against the damp stone wall and listened. The sound of her labored breaths echoed inside her head. And the distinct tapping of footsteps drew nearer.
Dear God, he was in the alley behind her. What was she going to do? She couldn’t run, could barely walk. If only she had some way to protect herself.
She had taken the self-defense classes Jed had insisted on and she had kept the small handgun he had bought for her and taught her how to use. But the gun was locked away in her apartment and if he caught her, she didn’t have the strength to fight him. If she hadn’t been poisoned…
Why would Jed have signed her up for self-defense classes if he hadn’t wanted her to be able to protect herself? And why would he have bought her a pistol and given her lessons at a local firing range if he had been planning to kill her? It didn’t make any sense.
“I love your hair,” he had told her as he had lifted a strand and wound it around his finger.
“I’m not a natural blonde, you know. I was when I was a child, but underneath this expensive dye job, it’s a mousy brown.”
He had laughed and kissed her. “Anything else about you fake?” He had caressed her, skimming his hand over first one breast and then the other, running his fingers down across her belly and cupping her mound with gentle possessiveness.
“What do you think?” she had teased him.
“I think everything else is one hundred percent real, but before I make a definite decision, I believe further investigation is in order.”
That had been the first time they had made love, the night she had realized she was madly in love with her knight in shining armor. They hadn’t said I love you then. Not until months later.
Months? How many months?
“Olivia,” he called to her.
It was Jed’s voice. He was the man in the alley behind her, the man who had been chasing her.
You love him. He loves you. You trust him. You know he would never hurt you. Listen to your heart. What if the poison had been in the food? What if someone at the restaurant…? No, that doesn’t make any sense, either.
“Jed,” she cried out to him. “Help me, Jed. I’m so sick. I’ve been poisoned.”
She crumpled down onto the damp pavement, drew her legs up and bowed her head as she waited for Jed. Was he her rescuer, her true hero? Or was he her killer?
“I’m here, honey. Everything is going to be all right.”
She could make out only a man’s silhouette as he approached, but the moment he took her hand in his and she felt the tender strength of his touch, she closed her eyes and sighed. He took her in his arms, lifted her, carried her, held her close.
“Poisoned,” she repeated. “Hospital.”
“Hush, Olivia. Hush, sweetheart. Just relax and rest. You’re going to be fine. I promise.”
Jed Merrill kept his promises. Always. He was a man of honor and integrity. He would never hurt her. Why had she ever thought he had poisoned her? It was the champagne. He had brought a bottle of expensive Dom Pérignon. She remembered he had opened the bottle and poured the bubbly wine into their glasses.
“Here’s to us, to our future together.”
She’d been so happy. They had been celebrating something important. But what?
Somehow, someway, someone had poisoned her. The only person she knew who wanted her dead was Dalton Carr. Without her eyewitness testimony, the D.A.’s case wouldn’t be as strong and there was a chance Dalton would be found not guilty.
“Jed,” she managed to whisper his name.
“Don’t talk. Just rest.”
“Poison. Who?”
Jed didn’t answer her. But she could hear him talking to someone else. She couldn’t make out what they were saying. Who was he talking to?
Oh, God, she was sleepy. So sleepy. Was she dying?
I don’t want to die. I want to live. I’m young and in love. I have my whole life ahead of me. Jed and I are going to get married.
A shudder racked Olivia from head to toe. Gentle hands lifted a blanket up and over her, tucking it around her shoulders. She sighed as sleep overcame her. Her last coherent thought was the memory of Jed proposing, her accepting, him putting a ring on her finger, and then popping open the champagne.
They had been celebrating their engagement.
* * *
Olivia woke to morning sunlight winking through the partially closed blinds at the double windows. She stretched languidly, but paused midstretch when she realized just how sore her body was, from throat to rib cage to abdomen. And then she realized she was not at home, not in her own bed, and she wasn’t at Jed’s place, either. Glancing around the room, scanning the pale walls, the tiled floor, the IV bag hanging beside the bed, and the hustle and bustle of people outside her half-open door, Olivia knew she was in the hospital.
What was she doing here?
She had been sick, so very sick. Had someone really poisoned her? Had she run from her apartment? Had Jed chased her through downtown Florence? Had he saved her, brought her here to the hospital?
Olivia found the buttons on the remote that controlled her bed and lifted the head of the bed into a sitting position. Looking down at herself, she found she was wearing the ever-fashionable hospital gown and the IV was hooked up to a needle in her left hand. For the first time in hours—maybe days—her mind was clear and her memory intact.
The door swung open and Jed, carrying a foam cup filled with hot coffee, came into her room. The moment he saw that she was awake, he rushed over to her, set his coffee on the bedside table and eased down next to her.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck,” she told him.
“Not a Mack truck, just a wicked bout of food poisoning.”
“Food poisoning?”
“Apparently the takeout you picked up for our dinner took you out. Or possibly something you ate for lunch.”
“You’re okay, aren’t you?”
“I’m fine because we didn’t eat the same thing. I ate beef. You ate chicken. And I didn’t eat any dessert with the cream sauce. Honey, don’t you remember waking up around two o’clock with severe vomiting and—?”
“Yes, I remember now. I started vomiting and had diarrhea. I had chills and a fever and a horrible headache.”
“I finally managed to persuade you to let me take you to the E.R. around eight o’clock yesterday morning. We were lucky. You were only slightly dehydrated.” He glanced at the IV bag and then back at Olivia. “It was killing me to see you in so much pain.”
“Jed, I—I must have had some crazy dreams or something. I didn’t run away from you, did I?”
“You couldn’t have run away if you’d wanted to, honey. You were really out of it.” He caressed her cheek. “Hell of way to end our engagement celebration.”
“How long have I been in the hospital?”
“Almost twenty-four hours. You’ve been asleep most of that time, coming to now and then, and talking crazy.”
“You’ve been here the whole time, haven’t you?”
“Where else would I be?”
She leaned into Jed, placing her head on his chest and wrapping her arms around his waist. He embraced her carefully. “Did I accuse you of poisoning me?” She tried to laugh, but couldn’t.
Jed kissed the top of her head. “You kept saying something about poison, but then you mumbled a lot of gibberish.”
“Dalton Carr is dead, isn’t he?”
Jed cupped her chin and lifted it so that she had to look up at him. “You were having a nightmare about Dalton Carr? Oh, Olivia, I’m sorry. I thought you had moved past the horror of what happened to you back then.”
“I thought so, too.” She tried to smile, but the effort failed. “I testified, didn’t I? He was convicted of second-degree murder. That was nearly two years ago. And he committed suicide in jail before he could be transferred to prison.”
Olivia closed her eyes and clung to Jed, shivering as the memories exploded inside her. In her drug-induced sleep, her mind had combined various aspects of her life—her near-death experience the night Dalton had tried to kill her, the fear she had lived with until after the trial, her relationship with Jed that had grown slowly from friendship into passion, their engagement celebration and her battle with food poisoning.
Opening her eyes, she gazed up at Jed. “I love you. And I’m sorry that in my crazy dreams I thought you had poisoned me.”
He lowered his head and kissed her. Sweetly. Gently. “You had a difficult time trusting anyone after what happened. Even me. Maybe this was your subconscious way of working out the last of your trust issues and completely letting go of the all-too-real nightmare Dalton Carr put you through.”
Maybe Jed was right. Maybe it had taken being poisoned—even if it was food poisoning—to cleanse her mind and heart from the fear and distrust that had poisoned her life for the past few years. Now she truly was free. Free to move forward into the future with the man she loved, the man she knew she could trust completely.
* * * * *
SPEECHLESS
Robert Browne
This story, written in first person, beautifully expresses universal insecurities about love, loss and trust. Expect a twist. ~SB
The only reason I was there was because of my mother.
I had always trusted David implicitly and couldn’t quite believe that I had let myself be talked into doing what I was doing. I am, after all, a grown woman, and this was bordering on high school behavior. I’d felt silly about it from the very beginning and had hesitated more than once before finally punching the key on my computer to print out my boarding pass.
Yet there I was, six hours later, on a cool Wednesday night, sitting in a rented car several hundred miles from home, watching the entrance to the Traveler’s Inn in Los Angeles, with the keen obsessiveness of a stalker.
Maybe I didn’t trust David as much as I thought I did. Or maybe it had nothing to do with him at all.
It was my mother’s fault.
It always is.
And who could blame her? The woman had been through two nasty divorces and thought of the male species as a contaminated breed. To her mind,
no
man could be trusted. Especially if they had yet to produce a ring or even utter the word
marriage
.
They were all barely a step above animals, whose need to seduce just about anything with legs would always take precedence over a committed relationship. Even one as committed as David’s and mine.
Mother barely knew David, but that didn’t stop her from judging him, or complaining about the shiftiness of his eyes. Something I’d never noticed myself. I’d always thought he had beautiful eyes. A startling blue that was one of his main attractions.
So
why,
then, was I there?
I won’t try to explain the mother-daughter dynamic to you. I don’t think there’s a psychologist on earth who can come within a hairbreadth of unraveling its complexity. But if you’re a woman and you have a mother—and I think most of us do—it doesn’t really
need
to be explained.
You just
know,
don’t you?
Bottom line, I was there simply because I wanted to get the nosy bitch off my back. I wanted to prove to her, once and for all, that she was wrong—
dead wrong
—about the man I loved.
Unfortunately, things didn’t quite turn out the way I thought they would.
* * *
As a sales rep for a small, struggling software firm, it was part of David’s job to travel. He left town at least once a month and I wasn’t ashamed to say that I missed him like crazy. If you’ve ever watched that show about the people stranded on an island after a plane crash, you’ll remember the tall, athletic blond guy who looks like a surfer slash underwear model slash soccer player.
That’s David.
Well, not
really
—but that’s pretty much what he looks like. And because of this, I’d be lying to you if I said I never worried about other women.
When I first met David in a bar in Boise, I was so intensely attracted to him that I immediately invited him home for the night. And what a wonderful night it was. So I’d never had much trouble imagining that other women might be compelled to do exactly the same thing. And if they did, and David were to succumb, I knew they wouldn’t be disappointed. He had a way of using his hands that was quite unlike any man I’d ever been with.
Then there was his kiss…
Well. Let’s just say it didn’t take much more for this particular girl to see fireworks. After years of struggling with what I’d always thought of as sexual inadequacy, I discovered in that one night that it wasn’t
me
who had the problem. It was all the selfish, fumbling brutes I’d been with prior to that.
So while I’ll freely admit I worried about other women, what I
never
worried about was David himself. He once told me that his father, whom he loved dearly, had been an extremely strong believer in fidelity and had passed that belief on to his son. David claimed he had never in his life cheated on a woman and never would. It simply wasn’t in his DNA.
Was he protesting too much? Am I?
Maybe.
What I was about to see certainly made me wonder… .
* * *
She couldn’t have been more than twenty-three or -four, giving me a good six or so years on her. You could see those years—or lack thereof—in the firmness of her body. The kind of firmness that, once you reach a certain age, no amount of exercise in the world can achieve. You try and you try, but you just can’t get those years back. Which is why you feel so threatened by those who are still reveling in the glory of youth.
Like her.
She was what my father had always called a
humdinger
. He had said this openly and often, which no doubt contributed to my parents’ divorce. The comment was usually targeted at someone tall and high-breasted, with a waist you could almost fit a single hand around and an ass that provoked either envy or scorn in every woman it passed.
And
this
girl certainly would have made Daddy’s list.
Normally, I wouldn’t have cared. I don’t often sit around pining over my lost youth, and I like to think that I could probably hold my own on that website
Hot or Not
. But the fact that this girl was climbing out of the passenger seat of my boyfriend’s rented car gave me pause. To put it mildly. She wore a tight-fitting business skirt and a blazer that accentuated the fullness of her chest, and for all intents and purposes she might as well have had the words—if I may be so crude—FUCK BAIT stamped across that ass.
Another term of my father’s.
Needless to say, I wasn’t happy watching as David handed the keys to the hotel valet, then followed the woman inside. Something sour began to roll around in my stomach, and as a person who’s prone to throwing up at the slightest provocation, it was a miracle I didn’t hurl all over the steering wheel of my forty-dollar-a-day Hyundai.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, a single phrase kept tumbling around like socks—or maybe
rocks—
in a dryer:
Mother was right
.
Mother was right.
Mother was…
Shit.
A moment later the lobby doors slid closed, and I knew I had no choice but to follow the winsome couple as I quietly prayed that what I was witnessing was completely innocent. That I was merely victim to my parental unit’s constant and unrelenting skepticism.
The girl was probably David’s assistant, Kim—and, if so, I immediately understood why he had never introduced her to me. He’d been sparing me the heartache of knowing what a knockout he worked with every day.
Uh-huh. That was it.
Sparing me.
Unlatching my seat belt, I once more staved off the urge to vomit, then climbed out of the car and headed toward the hotel entrance. I was about to either make a fool of myself or see a relationship I cherished come crashing down around me.
* * *
Whenever he traveled, David made a habit of texting me his room number once he checked into a hotel. He carried one of those smartphones with a battery that lasted about thirty-five seconds, so he was constantly turning it off when he didn’t absolutely need it. Texting me was his way of assuring me that he was always available, via the room phone, should I need to contact him. I had received that text the moment I stepped off the plane at LAX and had the number burned into my brain.
When I got to the lobby, there was no sign of my prey. It was well past the dinner hour, but I took a quick peek into the hotel’s restaurant and lounge before heading for the elevators.
They were nowhere to be found.
The big question in my mind was whether they had gone to separate rooms or were now getting comfortable on my boyfriend’s bed. There was the possibility, of course, that they could have gone to
Kim’s
room—assuming that’s who the girl was. But if David wanted to stay available to me to avoid any suspicion—just in case I should happen to call—then it made more sense that they’d…
What the hell was wrong with me?
There I was, already assuming the worst. I had long thought that I had somehow managed to beat back my mother’s rampant misandry, yet I was quickly proving that I was just as cynical as she was.
I got off the elevator on the fourteenth floor, wondering what I’d do once I reached David’s room. I imagined myself knocking on his door and lowering the pitch of my voice, saying, “Housekeeping” or “Room service,” as if I were a character in some bad romantic comedy. But when I reached it I simply stood there, staring at it, suddenly not wanting to know the truth.
Then I heard a woman’s laughter.
I couldn’t be sure if it originated from David’s room or the one next door, or even across the hall, for that matter. My sense of direction when it came to sound had always been faulty. All I knew was that a woman had laughed and it was a playful one, and in my mind, I could see that perfect female body stripping down to the nethers as the man I loved reached up from the bed and cupped her heaving breasts in his palms.
I suddenly wanted to be anywhere but there.
Five minutes later I was back in my rented car, thinking the worst and not knowing quite what to do about it. I was tempted to call my mother, but I knew that would be a huge mistake. The last thing I needed right now was an
I told you so
from her.
I sometimes thought she would prefer that I’d never find a man worth loving. That anyone I hooked up with was some kind of threat to our relationship. That I needed to be just as miserable as she’d been all her life, so that she would always have someone to commiserate with. Someone who understood just how worthless the male species really was.
There was a kind of desperation in that need that had always unsettled me. My mother was a lonely, bitter woman, and the thought that I might one day wind up exactly like her sent chills up my spine.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Wouldn’t
let it.
And just as I had nearly convinced myself that I should trust my boyfriend, as I always had, and assume that the implications of what I’d seen and possibly heard had merely been the product of thirty years of parental indoctrination, the lobby doors slid open and David stepped outside, hurriedly handing a ticket stub to the valet.
Surprised, I checked my cell phone clock and saw that nearly an hour had passed—an hour that had seemed like minutes. I watched David intently, wondering if the lobby doors would open behind him and deposit Miss Wonderbod at his side.
But then his car came and he tipped the valet and climbed behind the driver’s wheel. He seemed to be out of sorts, as if he’d gotten sudden bad news, but I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what it would be. He had no family to speak of, and any urgent calls would most likely have come from
me
.
A moment later, he was on the road and I quickly started my engine and followed him, feeling more like a stalker than ever.
* * *
Following a car isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies. Especially at night. I could count at least three times I’d mistaken the wrong set of taillights for David’s and it was a miracle that I managed to find him again each time.
Twenty minutes into the drive, he took the turnoff toward the airport. He hadn’t taken a bag with him, and I had to wonder why he was headed this way, unless perhaps he was scheduled to pick up a colleague and was worried about arriving late.
Then he surprised me again by suddenly pulling to the side of the road. I couldn’t very well pull up behind him, so I zoomed past, craning my neck to catch a glimpse of him behind the wheel.
I could be mistaken, but I swear he had his face buried in his hands.
What the hell was going on?
I had the urge to circle back and find out, to ask what was troubling him, but that would only expose me for the jealous idiot I was. Not something I was ready to cop to.
Nearly frozen by indecision and shame for even following him in the first place, I instead kept driving on, thinking enough was enough.
I soon found myself pulling into the airport rental car facility, ready to turn in my Hyundai and catch the next flight home. As much as I wanted to comfort David, I knew I couldn’t. And if something was wrong, he would eventually tell me.
I had to believe that.
As it turned out, however, the revelation came not from the man I loved, but from the morning news.
* * *
There’s something surreal about seeing a part of your life on TV. You feel as if you’ve been launched into a dream—or nightmare, in this case—and everything around you has that gauzy, slightly out-of-focus feel.
I had always used the television in my bedroom as an alarm clock. At precisely six forty-five every morning, it popped on, whether I liked it or not, bringing my favorite cable news network into my home, my favorite morning news anchor cheerfully chirping on about some national disaster or public tragedy. Usually that meant an earthquake or a bank robbery or train crash or, more often than not, a political or celebrity scandal. But that morning the news was considerably more personal than I had expected it to be. It took me a moment to wrap my head around exactly what was being reported.
A photograph of David hammered it home. They’d lifted it from his Idaho driver’s license and it didn’t even come close to doing him justice—an insignificant observation in the scheme of things.
My favorite reporter’s voice was droning on, saying something I didn’t quite understand until I forced myself to focus.
“…after the body of his colleague was discovered in his hotel room by the night maid. The maid said she had received a call for fresh towels and was shocked to find another guest, Ms. Kim Gallagher, lying naked on Mr. Atlee’s bed, the victim of an apparent strangling. Los Angeles police aren’t talking, but a source close to the investigation claims that Ms. Gallagher’s death may have been the result of a sex game gone wrong.”
There are no words to describe how I felt at that moment.