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However, unlike the terror-filled dreams she’d suffered in the past, she hadn’t weathered this one alone. She stilled, recalling her shock when Hayes had slipped into bed with her last night. The weight of his arm around her waist. The seal of heat at her back. The low, soothing timbre of his voice, reassuring in the shadows. That tone had hurtled her back to the moment his team had thundered into the cramped cellar.
She’d been enveloped in agony, still in the grips of the horror that had transpired there.
Her vision in one eye had been compromised, but when the music had abruptly stopped, she’d heard Hayes’s voice slipping through her screams and the background commotion. She’d clung to it as desperately as a drowning victim gripped a lifeline. It’d become her focus, carried her through the horror of the moment, and many more throughout her recovery.
Reese quickly got dressed, her mind mired in the past. Once the immediate health concerns were behind her, Julia had been desperate to get her into therapy. Reese’s primary concern had been a self-defense course. Part of the trauma had been her absolute helplessness at the hands of a monster. She’d been desperate to right that, to prove to herself that she’d never be that vulnerable again.
But she’d underestimated her ability to tolerate a stranger’s hands on her, even when the instructors were female. The first time one of them had demonstrated a move to battle through a choke hold from behind, she’d panicked, freaking out her fellow students and humiliating herself.
Tai Chi had been the answer. Learning to center herself required a focus point to ease her muscles to relaxation. Find her inner qi.
Although she hadn’t known Hayes’s name at the time, it was his voice she’d seized upon. Whenever she reached for that internal tranquility so necessary to the martial art, it was the memory of his lulling, comforting tones that grounded her. They’d worked the same magic last night.
Attracting a man with whom to share a few intimate hours had always been simple. They’d been easy to find, just as easy to discard. She’d never slept through the night with one. Had never trusted anyone enough to completely lower her defenses with them.
And that, far more than the physical attraction zinging between them, was what made Hayes unique. Passion was readily attained. Tenderness, however… She swallowed hard. That was far more dangerous.
And viscerally irresistible.
“Jennings wantsyou to drop by the station and look over the report from your interview yesterday. We can swing by after your appointment.”
“Okay.” Reese was only half listening. While Hayes drove to the Tranquility Lakes Mental Health Institute, she’d opened her laptop and brought up a desktop folder containing the research she’d been doing on her brother’s doctor. “How far did you get on those medical reports last night?”
His brief hesitation had concern flickering. “Finished the ones in the pile you gave me.”
Something in his careful wording alerted her. Instantly wary, she said, “And?”
“I’d like to read more. Make comparisons between initial and current diagnoses and meds. I did get far enough to realize that his long hospital stay seven years ago seems to have been the catalyst for the steadily increasing expenses you and Julia noted.”
Reese’s fingers paused on her keyboard. “Hospital stay?”
She felt, rather than saw the look he sent her. “You didn’t know?”
Shaking her head mutely, she mentally sifted through her memory. After Ben had gone to residential treatment, her parents had spoken about him as little as possible within her hearing. Reese had always believed they’d done it to protect her. But now she wondered if they hadn’t done the same for her brother and withheld any mention of her to avoid triggering his paranoia.
The first few years he’d been gone, there’d be ongoing attempts to reunify him with the family. That was the purpose of treatment, after all. His first home visit had been an epic failure, ending with the police being called when he’d tried to assault Reese. After that, she’d always been removed from the home when he visited. She’d stayed with Julia or a school friend. As an adult, she had a better understanding of the delicate balance her parents had had to navigate when the best interests of their children were at odds with each other.
“My mom and dad didn’t speak of his care or progress in front of me.” Her voice sounded husky, so she cleared her throat. “Neither did Julia. Why was he hospitalized?”
“He had neuroleptic malignant syndrome, which can be a very serious reaction to some antipsychotic medications. He was in the ICU for two weeks, and then developed rhabdomyolysis, and later contracted sepsis. When he was able to continue hisrecovery at the psychiatric facility, it was with round-the-clock one-on-one nursing care until he was fully recovered. All told, about four months.”
Reese absorbed this in silence. He could have been talking about a stranger. That was precisely what she and Ben were to each other. She’d worked through her childhood trauma by constructing an emotional moat between her and any thoughts of Ben. Her parents had encouraged it. But she still felt a stab of pain at the thought of her brother traversing that ordeal without family at his side. She’d been a child when he had abused her, but he’d been in the grips of a severe mental illness. They’d both been victims.
“NMS requires medication and-or dosage changes and careful long-term monitoring. My guess is, given the number of things Sedgewick has tried in the intervening time, they’re having trouble stabilizing his moods and behaviors.”
“Did the therapies and meds seem reasonable to you?”
He slowed and moved over to the other lane, allowing a CHP cruiser to speed by them, its light bar strobing. “I had placements in a clinical setting for my doctorate but never worked in one. That said, most of them appear to be, although the ongoing alterations indicate the doctor may not be getting the results she’s looking for. The majority fall under the umbrella of cognitive behavioral treatment and creative therapies which include the arts. Others are new, relatively under-researched treatments that show promise, like transcranial magnetic stimulation and virtual reality therapy.” Hayes lifted a shoulder. “It’s hard to form an opinion without doctor notes of his psychotherapy progress. But I’d like to continue reading some of the older reports.”
Her pulse jittered at the thought. Deliberately avoiding his words, she said, “I’d wondered if the doctor was padding the expense reports. But ultimately, Rivers was the one who longhad most of the control over approving them.” Reese closed her laptop for a moment and dug in her purse for some pain reliever to dull the throb in her head. She swallowed the pills with a sip from the coffee she’d brought along in a covered tumbler. “He also had to accept the riskier investment strategies with Greenley.”
“Do you suspect him of incompetence or corruption?”
Broodingly, she considered Hayes’s question. “Corruption would indicate that Rivers benefited somehow. That would require Greenley to be unscrupulous, too. There are numerous regulations surrounding how financial advisors operate, but how many of their clients truly understand the risks of various investment strategies? I wasn’t bluffing when I told Greenley about the story I wrote that eventually was used against a firm in the state engaging in fraudulent practices. That could include getting kickbacks for steering clients toward certain investments, misusing assets for personal gain, misleading clients about investment performance, underestimating risks…” She lifted a shoulder. “It does happen.”
“So the first thing you should do as conservator is to demand to have a forensic accountant to examine the trust assets.”
Wryly, Reese said, “Well, there’s a little thing called court proceedings to get through first. And my name arising in connection to a homicide doesn’t exactly tip the scales in my favor.”