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“Mr. Madison. Thank you for volunteering to talk with us. You know why we’re here. Tell us about your friend Roger.”
The man—no, he was just a boy, really—had wide blue eyes. He smoked the cigarette as if he’d just learned, not inhaling, but pulling the smoke into his mouth, holding it and blowing a stream that dissipated the moment it hit the chilled prison air.
“You have to promise me that I’ll get out of here. I don’t belong here. All I did was steal some oranges from the take-away. There’s people in here done much worse.”
“We will make a recommendation. You have our word. Now, tell us about Roger Waterstone.”
“Not Roger. Urq. He’s batshit. He seems all fine, but once you’re in, he drops the mask. But by then, you’re on the pipe, and it’s too hard to walk away. Nothing’s free, you know. Nothing’s ever free. I wanted to get straight, so he kicked me out.”
Puff. Blow. Puff. Blow.
“Kicked you out of the church?”
“Out of the house, i
Memphis’s cell phone rang. He cursed. He wasn’t supposed to have it in here. Pen shot him a look. He jumped up, apologizing, and stepped out of the room.
The phone number was instantly recognizable. It was the house phone at Dulsie.
Ignoring the guard’s steely glare, he answered. It was Trixie.
“I think you’d best come back, my lord. Something is terrible wrong with Miss Jackson.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Taylor paced the sitting room, back and forth, back and forth. She couldn’t get his face out of her head. His eyes, empty and unseeing, looking right into her soul.
Taylor didn’t know what else to do. She called Sam’s cell phone, not caring that she was interrupting her work.
Sam answered on the fourth ring.
“Sorry, I was gloved. What’s wrong?”
“How did you know something was wrong?”
“You’ve got your voice back. Sounds like it hurts to talk, but that’s wonderful!”
“He’s coming for me, Sam.”
“Who is?”
“The Pretender. He’s here. He’s been following me around the castle.”
“Taylor, honey, you’re imagining things. You’re just over-tired. Overwrought. You need rest. You need sleep. Drink your tea and go to bed. Maybe back off the Percocets. They can make you a little goofy.”
“I’m not being goofy, Sam. I know it can’t be real. But it’s happening all the time now. It’s getting worse.”
There was a brief pause.
“What’s happening all the time? What are you talking about, Taylor?”
“It was my fault, Sam. It was all my fault. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be pregnant.”
“Taylor, honey, stop saying that.”
She did a lap around the room, stopping at the fireplace. She pulled her notebook from her back pocket and threw it in. The evidence needed to be destroyed. She had to destroy it all before it was too late.
“No, really. Maddee made me see, Sam. If I’d come straight to you, if I hadn’t waited, I could have stopped him. I could have saved you.”
Tears started down her face. She needed to confess. To be shriven. To have Sam chase all the ghosts away.
There was silence, then Sam sighed.
“Taylor. You need to listen to me. The very first thing he did was stab me. It happened hours before you knew I was missing. There’s nothing you could have done. Did you hear me? He stabbed me. Not you. You are not to blame for this. He was a sick man who chose to do what he did. Do you understand me?”
Taylor heard the words but they didn’t sink in. She couldn’t get her feet under her. She couldn’t erase the image of Sam, her eyes brimming with tears, the pool of blood at her feet.
“Taylor, I’ve got open bodies. I have to go back to work now. But listen to me. You have to stop internalizing all this. You have to let it go. You aren’t the only one having problems. The sooner you see that, the sooner you’ll be back to normal.”
The phone was a snake with bared fangs. She shut her eyes then opened them. It became a phone again.
Sam was right. This wasn’t all about her. She just needed to find a way to make everyone else understand that.
Sam hung up the phone, worried. Taylor had been drinking, without a doubt. She always got paranoid when she had too much to drink.
It was my fault.
Oh, God. A wave of despair crashed over Sam. In her darker moments, she’d said the very same thing about her girl, her best friend.
But she knew, in her heart, that she couldn’t blame Taylor. The Pretender was the one who’d made the choice. He’d kidnapped her. He’d knifed her in the abdomen. He was responsible. Not Taylor.
But something felt wrong about this. She’d sounded…scared, for lack of a better term. And that wasn’t something Sam ever saw in Taylor. Fear wasn’t an option for her.
She picked up the phone and let it dangle between her fingers. Taylor would kill her if she went behind her back.
Some things couldn’t be helped.
Sam dialed Baldwin’s cell. The voice mail kicked in immediately. She debated, then hung up without leaving a message.
She was being irrational. This was Taylor. Probably on a bender. And off on her own, with no support system to tell her things were fine and to put down the bottle.
Sam wrote her a note, encouraging her to lay off the alcohol and pills for a couple of days, see if her headache wasn’t some sort of rebound from the opiates, and went back to work.
She couldn’t face it anymore. Not now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Taylor couldn’t sleep.
She’d taken all the meds, dutifully, one by one. Laid in bed, fretting. Worried she shouldn’t have called Sam. Knowing she’d just dragged all the bad stuff back to the surface.
Her unique gift—shitting on the parade.
What was wrong with her? She was supposed to be getting better. Yes, she had her voice back, but Maddee’s words rang through her head over and over until they became mantra.
They don’t trust you.
They don’t trust you.
They don’t trust you.
She got out of the bed. The snow fell in graceful piles outside her window. The fresh green landscape was gone, covered in a blanket of white.
She knew that feeling. She was being smothered.
There was nothing else to do.
She closed the drapes and sat on the chair by the bookcase. The only light came from the fire.
She invited the ghost, and let the memories take her.
When it came for her, she didn’t even flinch.
Four in the afternoon. She had no idea what day it was. She was freezing cold in the chair, the fire gutted. Her head was splitting. The detritus of her pity party lay scattered around the room. Yikes. It looked like a rock star’s hotel room, minus the furniture damage. She’d had a little too much to drink.
Chagrined, Taylor straightened up, then showered and dressed. She was sick of sitting in her room, sick of letting things happen to her. She’d never get it together like this.
She decided to go for a prowl around the castle. If she couldn’t go outside, at least she could stretch her legs inside.
When she reached her door, she saw a piece of paper had been shoved under it. It must have been delivered while she slept. The note was handwritten, and Taylor didn’t recognize the handwriting. She sca