Page 19

When Jess woke up again, her head hurt considerably less, which was great. But everything around her head was really fucking bright, which wasn’t.

Jess was lying in a hospital bed with multiple IV bags hanging over her. Dean was sitting on her right, slumped against the side of her bed, clutching her hand like it was his lifeline. She was surrounded by flowers of every color and scent. With the curtain closed to cut her off from the other side of the tiny room, it was almost overwhelming.

She threaded her fingers through Dean’s hair as her eyes trailed over the different bouquets in every color but Cameo Coral. She supposed she had Jonquil and Beth to thank for them—because each one of them had a tiny card that said “Get Well Soon, Love, Owen and Poppy” or “You lit her ass up. (Get it? Because of the flashlight?)—Sis.” Jess sincerely hoped whoever was in the other hospital bed didn’t have hay fever.

Dean had apparently smuggled a silver service cloche into her room and left it on a little rolling table poised over her bed. Jess picked up the lid and saw a perfectly golden grilled brioche bun. Dean stirred beneath her fingers, raising his head to blink blearily at her.

“Hi,” she rasped, her throat throbbing with the effort to speak. “Did you make me a cheeseburger?”

“It’s probably cold,” he told her, kissing her fingers. “I’ve been here a few hours. Owen said you’re going to be here for a bit longer, but you’re looking pretty good for someone who’s been concussed and dosed with hard-core synthetic psychotropics.”

“Am I allowed to eat this?”

“Probably not,” he said. “But I hear the food policies at two-bed rural clinics are way less stringent than at big metro-area hospitals.”

She tore into it. “I don’t care. I’ve told you what cheeseburgers mean to me.”

“I am willing to discuss long-term sandwich-based commitments as soon as your pupils are the same size again,” he said. “Otherwise, I don’t think it counts, legally speaking. We’d have to ask Beth.”

Jess nodded. “OK, that makes sense. My decision-making impairment could be the drugs or the head injury, dealer’s choice.”

“That is just the worst, in terms of things your special lady friend could say in response to commitment discussions,” he replied against her free hand.

“I have seen worse,” she told him. “One day, I’ll explain the origins of the no-Jumbotron policy.”

There was a light knocking at the door. Blister was standing there, campaign hat in hand and a scraggly bunch of yellow daisies he’d probably bought at a gas station.

“Well, I can see I’m outmatched here,” he said, looking around at her floral wealth—particularly the almost funereal spray with the card that said “We really, really love you—Beth and Jonquil.” Blister rubbed a hand at the back of his head. “But I felt like I owed you an apology, since I sort of accused you of murder and all.”

“It’s very sweet of you, Blister, thank you,” Jess said. “I appreciate it. Wait, did you accuse me of murder or just imply I was a murderer? I only remember you implying.”

“Well, I said some things behind your back. And now I feel bad, having missed all the signs that Kiki was, you know…”

“A stark raving looney-pants poisoner?” she suggested. “Don’t feel bad, Blister. I was with her all week, and I’m not sure there were any signs.”

Blister bit his lip and waggled his head. Jess liked to think it was to keep from laughing in an unprofessional manner. “Miss Kiki said she wanted to ‘control her own narrative,’ so she gave a full confession, even while Sev Hardcastle and Beth begged her not to.”

“Et tu, Beth?” Jess gasped.

“Beth just wanted to make sure Kiki got a fair, final trial,” Dean explained. “No mistrials or barred evidence or any of that bullshit, but Kiki could not be contained.”

“Kiki said she appreciated being able to talk about it. Being a murderer has been lonely for her,” Jess told them. “Kind of sad, really. Maybe she can make some friends in prison. Dean, my throat is killing me. Can I have something warm to drink? Something that Owen can be sure hasn’t been drugged?”

“I’ll go talk to him,” Dean said, squeezing her hand.

“Miss Kiki’s confession is going to save us a lot of time and trouble,” Blister said after Dean left the room. “But I’m still going to need to take your statement.”

“I’m more than happy to give one,” Jess agreed. “And then we can talk about what else was happening in the woods.”

“Great,” Blister said, nodding as he took his pen out of his pocket. “Wait, what?”

***

Hours later, Jess was sipping water, which Owen had guaranteed was poison-free, and reading Jonquil’s copy of Fascinating Fungi from around the World . Owen had been in communication with Helix BioResearch Lab, which claimed to have no idea what Kiki had been working on. But her coworkers had some helpful suggestions on how to flush the drugs from Jess’s system. Poppy and the girls had shown up to see Jess with their own eyes and then drag Dean back to “a place where he could shower and sleep.”

Jess still had a lot of things to figure out, like how she and Dean were going to build something together, where they were going to build it, and whether she had a chance in hell of buying her bakery building. But she wanted that life. She would find a way to make that happen, be it commute, telecommute, or teleport.

Jess’s TV was playing a game show in the background that she wasn’t paying attention to. She was glad the other bed in the room was unoccupied because she hadn’t watched anything in a week and found the cheerful noise comforting.

Sev appeared in the doorway, offering her that shy smile of his. He held up a box of fudge—not purchased from a gas station.

“I thought your inner chocoholic could use this,” he said, setting the box on her bed table. “And I heard you were overrun with flowers.”

“Thanks,” she said, squeezing his hand as he kissed her cheek. “You’re a very thoughtful person.” Sev had closed her door when he’d walked in, Jess noted. But she was willing to write it off as unintentional. She was just grateful that he’d decided to visit when Dean wasn’t around.

He sat in the chair next to the right side of her bed, continuing to hold her hand. He leveled her with a sad, pensive look. “It’s the least I could do for the person who got justice for Chad.”

“Oh, Sev, don’t,” she said, shaking her head. He squeezed her hand again, and she curved her fingers around his. And it seemed to relax him. “All I did was get drugged and dragged into the woods. By my feet.”

“No, really,” Sev said. “I didn’t know that was something I would even want or need. But you’ve given my family a lot of peace. It certainly doesn’t make Trenton’s situation with Diana any easier, but that’s her problem, not mine.”

“Still haven’t talked to her about that prenup, huh?”

“You know, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue,” he said, the corners of his mouth pulling back. “Trenton seems to have lost the urge to merge.”

“Ew,” she laughed.

“That was awful,” he admitted. “Sorry. You seem to bring the dad jokes out in me.”

“It’s completely unintentional,” she said, the corner of her mouth lifting. “Well, I guess that means my part in this whole fiasco is over. There was no ‘it’s OK not to deliver a proposal if there’s a murder’ clause in my contract. Got to remember to add that to the next one.”

“We can talk about that later, Jess. None of this has been your fault,” he told her. “And it’s been good, having someone normal to talk to this week. I want to make sure you’re protected.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she teased him. “A normal person would probably be thrilled that a handsome, charming, professional gentleman came to call while she convalesced.”

“And you’re not?” he asked, his smiled faltering.

“It just leaves me with a lot of questions, Sev. And keep in mind,” she paused and pointed at her head. “Drugged and concussed, so my brain isn’t really firing on all the levels it should, or maybe it expanded my mind and it’s firing on more, I don’t know—but I would have thought that as part of the Tillard Pecans legal team, you would have wanted to stick around the spa, to be close to Trenton in this latest crisis, or even wait for your family to arrive. Or hell, I would think you’d visit the police station to discuss the most recent developments in Chad’s case,” she said carefully. “But instead, you came here, to make sure that your narrative stuck.”

Sev scoffed. “What narrative? What are you talking about, Jess? Do I need to go get the doctor? Maybe Kiki hit your head harder than we thought.”

Jess swallowed heavily, seriously rethinking the wisdom in sending Dean home. She just couldn’t bear to tell him about her suspicions, and not because he’d already been through the emotional wringer over the last few days. He might insist on being out here in the hospital room with them. And that could be dangerous, considering what she was about to say to Sev.

“After Chad died, you said he was sneaking around in the woods, taking pictures for his stupid project. That was a lie and an obvious one. Chad was at least partially drunk from the moment he got here,” she said, noting that he hadn’t moved his hand from hers. At his wrist, his pulse was jumping. And she wasn’t an expert in these things, but that didn’t seem to be a good sign. “He was chugging vodka like there was no tomorrow, which, it turns out, was poisoned by Kiki. He wouldn’t have been stumbling around the woods in that state. He knew what kind of risks there were out there, heights and bears and stuff. Plus, Chad wasn’t stupid, but he was pretty lazy.

“And I couldn’t figure out why you would make up such a weird lie,” she said. “And you had mentioned the moonshine tasting at the Flannel Days Festival, which also didn’t make any sense. The organizers just added that event recently. And the picture that popped up on your phone from your Memories album? You accidentally selfied a photo while handling your phone at this year’s Flannel Days parade.”

She could almost see Sev processing each possible response—denial, realization, cost-benefit analysis of lying further, resignation. “OK. I drove through town during the festival and saw it, big deal. I think I need to call the doctor. I think you’re really sick, Jess.”

“It’s the little details that get you. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been planning a wedding or a proposal and something that seems so insignificant comes back and bites you on the ass when you least expect it,” she sighed. “I’ve seen it happen so many times when I was planning weddings—food allergies, scent allergies, pollen allergies. It’s a lot of allergies. But you? I feel bad for you. How were you supposed to keep track of the timeline? When you were actually here in town, when you were supposed to be in town—at least the last three weeks hiding out at Hardcastle Pines, by my guess—what you knew, what you were supposed to know. It’s a lot to juggle, and you were under so much stress . It had to be stressful, being back here, where it all began.”

His pulse jumped against her fingers. When he saw her glancing down at their joined hands, he shook off her grip. “I’m gonna go,” he insisted. “You’ve been drugged. You’ve been hit over the head. You’re not making any sense. I’ll come back when you’re feeling better.”

He moved toward the door, his shoulders hunched in a way she’d never seen in Sev. She plunged ahead.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m probably confused. That would be really stupid , for you to slip up like that when you spent so much time weaving this story for me. And you’re not stupid , are you? I mean, you’re the pride of the Hardcastles, the best of the lot. Poor Chad never even stood a chance against you.”

Sev’s hand hovered over the doorknob, poised on the edge of leaving her in his wake. Sev was clever. He’d spent his entire life proving how smart he was, how much better he was than Chad. Poking at that particular soft spot was probably cruel, and part of Jess wondered whether it would be smarter just to let him walk out. But she figured she wasn’t going to get this chance again, and she wanted this for Emma Lee, for Dean, for peace in her own head.

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, I like to think you were just trying to get to know me this week, but most of the things you’ve said to me were calculated attempts to control how I saw people,” she said, shaking her head—which hurt, so she stopped immediately. “Trying to make Dean and Emma Lee sound like the teenage Sid and Nancy. Telling me the Osbournes hold grudges. Telling me to be so careful. You were trying to keep me from trusting the family, spending time with them. You wanted me to take your word over theirs, so when I started to wonder what I was really seeing out in the woods, I would believe you. And now, you’re here to make sure that if I told Blister about the lights in the woods, I’d mention Chad was probably the one behind it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Jess. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sev cried from the foot of her bed. “This is crazy.”

“It is crazy,” she agreed. “It doesn’t mean I’m wrong. You’re the only person, besides the Osbournes, to bring up Emma Lee to me, and you did it without me saying a word about her. Must mean she’s been on your mind.”

Sev glared, but it felt like a helpless gesture.

“I think you’ve been holding on to something for a long time, Sev. Kiki told me that it helped to talk to me about what happened with Jeremy and Chad. Maybe you’d feel better if you talked to me, too.”

His eyes darted toward the door. If Sev ran out of the room, she would have been fine with that. She didn’t know what she was doing . And she’d trusted her safety to a man named Blister . And yet here she was.

“It was just an argument,” Sev whispered, sagging against her bed. He sat at her feet, staring down at her, like he was looking for absolution. She smiled softly, even as her stomach curdled.

“It was just kid stuff ,” he insisted, his voice hoarse as the pink drained from his cheeks. “It was right before my senior year of college. I just had so much going on at school. I was taking these extra summer courses online because my dad loved telling people how his son was doing a double major, taking on extra work, becoming a real Hardcastle. But I was just so far behind. I spent the whole summer locked up doing history courses, chemistry, literature, biology. Emma Lee offered to help, like…tutoring. Everybody knew how smart she was, and she was nice like that. I mean, she was tough, but nice. And pretty soon, tutoring became her just doing the assignments for me because I was so far behind, I couldn’t catch up even with her help. She wrote essays for me and emailed them to my professors and took some online tests. I felt terrible about it, but she needed the money. It made everything so much easier…I didn’t stress out about it anymore because she was getting paid, right? It was just like having an assistant or something. My dad had assistants who did almost everything for him.”

He swallowed heavily. “But at the end of the summer, Emma Lee’s tuition bill was due. She came to me, telling me that she’d been robbed. Something about her trashy parents and her bank account. I don’t know. She needed me to replace everything I’d paid her over the summer, and she needed it now or she was going to go to my dad, to the school, and tell them she’d been doing my coursework all along. She had proof of all those emails! She could show that the IP addresses matched her internet service, not mine. But I couldn’t pay her! It was thousands of dollars. My dad set limits on my accounts or he would get these alerts. And I couldn’t have her telling him or telling the school. It wasn’t my fault her dad stole the money! I’d done my part!”

He was yelling now, breathing hard, a blank expression spreading over his face. “At the party that last night with the Osbournes, she said, ‘You have a few days to think about it, but then I’m calling your daddy.’ The way she said it, with this sneer, like I was some stupid loser who needed his family to bail him out.”

“Did she?” Jess blew out a shaky breath. His eyes darted up to hers, like he’d forgotten she was there. “Call your dad?”

“No. She was going to go home by that shortcut of hers, like she always did. I pretended to drive home, but I followed her to her secret path. I tried to explain I just needed some more time before I could get the money, and she laughed at me, told me to cry her a river. Poor little rich boy. She tried to walk past me, and I grabbed her arm. She yelled and slapped me, right across my face. And she didn’t hit like a girl, either. She ran off and I chased her. I lost track of how long she ran or where we were, but when I caught up to her, she shoved me and I shoved her back and…and I picked up a rock. I just wanted her to stop so I could talk to her.”

Jess gaped at him. “And the rock was going to shut her up?”

Sev shook his head. “She fell and she was just gone. I didn’t know what to do, so I just left her there, covered up with branches.”

Jess couldn’t help but notice the passive, helpless language Sev was using. He didn’t kill Emma Lee. She fell. She didn’t die. She was gone . Even after all these years, he couldn’t take any responsibility for what he’d done.

What an asshole.

Fortunately, he was an asshole who was still talking. “It was dark. I didn’t realize how far off the path we’d wandered. I went back to school and all year, I thought for sure someone would find her, but I guess we were so far off the path that they didn’t…After a while, it got to the point where I didn’t think about it every day. And then, it was like it never happened.”

“And when you heard that Trenton was coming here for Diana’s girls’ trip,” she prompted him.

“My stupid fucking nephew and his stupid fucking sports complex,” Sev growled. “He told me about it weeks ago, bragging that he was going to get my dad to build his stupid douche-playground because he knew my dad misses the family spending time up here together. And that meant people and machines, digging around where Emma Lee died. It was only a matter of time before they found her. I watch the true-crime stuff. You see those documentaries where they track down murderers from DNA evidence that’s decades old. I don’t know what kind of evidence I could have left on her body, what they could find that could tie me to her. I can’t leave her out there, like a bomb waiting to blow up my life.”

“So, it was you, out in the woods with the flashlight, trying to find Emma Lee’s body,” Jess said. “You’re the will-o’-the-wisp.”

“Chad and Trenton didn’t pay that much attention to how I spent my evenings.” He nodded. “I would have settled for the secret path. I think I could have found her if I could have found the path as a starting point.”

Sev sat back in his chair, breathing deeply.

“You feel better?” Jess asked.

“Yeah.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, smiling weakly. “You know, in a way, Kiki did me a favor, taking care of Chad for me. But I just don’t know if I can take a chance, leaving Emma Lee out there. I wouldn’t let her ruin my life then. I’m not going to let it happen now. And I’m sorry about this, Jess, but that applies to you, too.”

Sev rose, rubbing his hands on his jeans. He pulled a capped syringe out of his pocket.

“It’s just air, I promise. It’ll be quick and it won’t hurt. But I can’t take the chance of you leaving this hospital room,” Sev said. “Kiki pushed so much shit into your system. Nobody really knows what she gave you, and this tiny clinic wasn’t prepared to deal with such a complicated pharmacological disaster happening in your body. Nobody is going to be surprised when you slip away.”

“Sure.” She waved off his apologies as much as she could, considering the tubes attached to her arm. “I get it. This is really my own fault for not just letting you walk out of here.”

Jess’s Big Book of Life Plans: Find a safer way to extract confessions from murderers.

“I like you, Jess. It hurts me to do this, but you know, loose ends.” He tapped at her biggest IV bag, preparing to inject the air in the syringe into her line. Jess was mentally cataloging everything in the room that a person with diminished physical capacity could use as an anti-IV-tampering weapon when a small, sun-freckled hand reached through the curtain and clapped a handcuff around Sev’s wrist.

“Cutting it a little close, Blister, shit!” Jess exclaimed as Blister grabbed Sev’s other hand.

“Language,” Blister warned her.

“What the fuck!” Sev shouted, jerking away from the tiny lawman. The uncapped hypodermic needle swung dangerously close to Jess’s face. Sev looked down at her and, for reasons Jess couldn’t fathom, looked hurt. “Jess!”

“Not my fault you didn’t check behind the curtain before you started whining all over me,” she told him. “Not my fault that everybody in this weird wedding party circle seems to think it’s OK to dump their emotional baggage on me. And then confess to murder while telling me how much they like me. It’s a little my fault I used that to my advantage. I’m a work in progress.”

Blister began informing Sev of his rights when Jess noted, “Uh, he’s a lawyer, he’s aware.”

“He’s a lawyer who didn’t think to check behind a hospital curtain while confessing to one murder and attempting another. I’m covering my ass,” Blister retorted. “It’s the law.”

Jess nodded. “I see your point.”

Dean opened Jess’s hospital door. He gaped at Jess. “What is happening?”

“Your girlfriend managed to entrap a lawyer into a semi-sort-of murder confession,” Blister groused at him.

“Blister likes me,” Jess told Dean. “He’s just cranky ’cause I cursed in front of him. He’s very proper. I think I need to go home. Nobody tries to kill me or confess to murder around me at home.”

“I don’t think you need to be left alone just yet,” Dean told her, touching her cheek. Jess grumbled.

“I’m gonna need to make some calls,” Blister said, shoving Sev toward the door. “A lot of calls. Your woods are going to be crawling with search and rescue squads. And then I’ll be back for your statement, Miss Jess, again. ”

Dean asked, “Are you OK?”

“No. You know, that’s the second person who only admitted to crimes in front of me because they planned to kill me,” Jess mused, feeling suddenly tired. “It’s starting to hurt my feelings a little bit.”

***

The Osbournes agreed that it was no longer a reasonable option to leave Jess under her own supervision. Owen cleared her to leave the clinic that night as long as he was right next door to check on her, and she agreed not to try to extract any more confessions from suspected criminals.

Though she was sleeping at Dean’s, she spent most of the first night “home” at Jonquil and Beth’s. Now she was being force-fed Beth’s homemade chicken noodle soup on the front porch while giving the Osbournes a heavily edited version of Sev’s story. She’d already talked to Dean, but he wanted to be with his family when they heard of Emma Lee’s fate.

“So, he just…left her there?” Sis said, the color leached from her face. “He didn’t even try to get her help?”

“He was young and scared,” Jess replied from her place on the porch swing. She was sitting next to Dean, covered in a throw so soft she could barely feel it over her feet. The rest of the family was perched on various outdoor items as she revealed Sev’s involvement in Emma Lee’s fate. “It’s not an excuse. It’s just…the reason Sev gave. He couldn’t remember where he’d left her. I think he kind of told himself he couldn’t help anyway, so he might as well protect himself.”

“I don’t know if Emma Lee would have done that,” Poppy said from her place on the wicker sofa, under Owen’s arm. “Would she really blackmail Sev for college money?”

“To get away from her parents?” Dean nodded. “Yeah.”

“Blister checked with the bank manager, and he looked into Emma Lee’s accounts,” Jess told them. She’d earned a little “informational grace” with the grumpy lawman, as long as she agreed to leave town. “Two days before she disappeared, Emma Lee’s mama came into the downtown branch and cleared out her savings account. The manager remembered because it just so happened to be a week before the bank was going to be foreclosing on the Redferns’ house. And, miracles of miracles, right around the same time, Mrs. Redfern managed to come up with just enough to hold the bank off.”

“Wait, so Emma Lee’s mom stole all of her college tuition money to keep a roof over her own head?” Jonquil said, marveling.

“Tina Redfern was a survivor,” Sis said. “She would have kept her head above water even if it meant stepping on her daughter’s back.”

“The manager remembered Emma Lee coming into the bank and making quite the scene over her balance, or lack of it,” Jess said.

“And he didn’t think to mention that to the police when she disappeared?” Dean asked, his voice quavering.

Jess shrugged. “He thought it was a family matter, wanted to keep it private.”

“In other words, they didn’t want it getting out that they’d let the parent of one of their account holders drain their money without permission,” Poppy guessed.

“I think we can trust Sev’s version of events,” Jess told Dean, taking his hand. She hated that it was the same hand that was holding Sev’s just before he confessed to hurting Emma Lee, but she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to comfort Dean. “He had no reason to lie, and he thought he was about to eliminate the person hearing his version of those events. Kind of a double-blind study, in terms of confessions.”

“I don’t think that’s what that means,” Sis told her.

Dean’s expression was heartbreaking. “I wish she would have told me. I don’t know if we could have helped her, but she wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

“Emma Lee always did things her own way,” Sis reminded him gently. “She wanted her independence.”

“She didn’t leave me,” Dean sighed, sinking against Jess’s side. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or not. It’s awful, no matter how you look at it. She was taken from us, and that’s worse, in a way, but also, at least she didn’t just walk away and pretend we were never part of her life.”

“I think that’s a good way to look at it,” Sis assured him. “And now you can bring her home.”

Dean squeezed Jess to his side and pressed a kiss to her hair. She hissed at the pain radiating through her head, even though it hurt a bit less than this morning.

“We’ll leave you two to it,” Poppy said, pulling Sis and Jonquil up from their seats on the porch steps.

“Ibuprofen and plenty of fluids,” Owen told her, even as he checked the saline bag they’d hung on a planter hook as an impromptu IV pole.

“And no more tricking confessions out of murderers without backup,” Beth told her. “Or at least, legal counsel.”

“I’m sure it was just a one-time thing,” Jess told them.

“Happened twice,” Jonquil called over her shoulder as Beth led her into the house.

Dean kissed her, soft and sweet, and tilted his forehead against hers. “I’m gonna need more time. I’m gonna need to work through a lot of stuff. But when I come out on the other side of it, I hope you’ll be there to talk about long-term sandwich-based commitments.”

“I’m going to negotiate for at least one cheeseburger per week.”

He chuckled. “I can manage that.”