Page 32 of The First Gentleman

CHAPTER 28

Litchfield, Connecticut

B etween brutal traffic on the Mass Pike and a slowdown on every back road in Connecticut, what should have been a three-hour drive is closer to four and a half.

I text Garrett a few times from the road, letting him know my ETA.

All I get back is K .

The little farmhouse we’re renting is outside of Litchfield on five acres not far from the Topsmead State Forest. It’s an hour drive to the Yale campus, but Garrett felt this need to be isolated from the world, so here we are.

As I turn into our winding driveway—more like a dirt road, really—I can see lights on in the living room.

There’s a strange car parked by the barn.

Oh, right. Garrett’s rental.

He’s home!

I park the Subaru out front and hurry inside.

“Garrett? You here?”

I see a hand wave from the top of the sofa.

I walk around and put down my bag.

And then I freeze.

Garrett’s lying under a thin blanket.

The right side of his face is bruised and swollen.

His forehead is scraped.

Bloody washcloths are piled on the wood floor.

I drop to my knees and put my hand on his shoulder.

My heart is pounding.

“Garrett! What happened? Can you talk?”

“I can talk,” he says.

“But my jaw hurts.”

“Jesus! Were you in an accident?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles.

“My face collided with Tony Romero’s fist.”

I grit my teeth.

“That mother—Did you call the police?”

Garrett shakes his head.

I run my hand down his side.

He flinches in pain.

His ribs! I move the blanket and pull up his shirt.

His whole torso is purple.

“You need to get to a hospital. I’m calling 911.” I pull my phone from my bag.

Garrett grabs it out of my hand.

“No!” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

“You could have internal bleeding!”

“If I start spitting up blood, I’ll go. I drove home like this. Leave it.”

“Don’t move,” I tell him.

I grab a roll of paper towels from the kitchen and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol from the bathroom.

“You think anything’s broken?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I cracked a rib playing soccer in high school. This doesn’t feel like that.”

I pour some alcohol on a paper towel and start wiping the crusted blood off his forehead.

“Did that son of a bitch Romero say anything useful before he started pounding on you?”

“He did. He gave me another reason to suspect Cole Wright.” Garrett pulls my hand away from his head and asks, “What did you find out? About the college reporter?”

“Well, the college reporter died in Afghanistan, but he told a friend about the assault after the homecoming game—and named Cole Wright as the girl’s attacker.”

Garrett groans as he sits up.

“Great. But that’s all hearsay. We need something more solid. Something firsthand.”

I put down the paper towel.

“I might have it.”

“How? Who?”

“Remember Teresa? Suzanne’s sister?”

“Hard to forget.”

“She managed to track down Suzanne’s old roommate. Living in Southie.”

“You found Amber Keenan?”

“She’s Lillian now. Working in an Irish bar. Our talk got cut short, but she promised to call me with more information.”

“Brea. This could be it. It would establish a pattern!”

I can see Garrett focusing through the pain.

I stroke his cheek—the one that’s not all beat up.

“You want some Tylenol?”

“I already took twice the daily limit. I just need to lie still.” He groans again as he eases back down on the sofa.

Night is falling; I look out the window and see empty fields and the woods on the far side of the road.

For the first time, the view creeps me out.

I pull the drapes tight.

I didn’t see anybody.

That doesn’t mean there’s nobody out there.