Page 129 of The New Couple in 5B

But she’s gone nearly catatonic, rocking.

“You killed him,” she says over and over. I look at Charles in horror. He’s pale and so still, but I think I see him breathing. I leave Chad to approach them, then I bend down beside him and feel his throat. There’s a weak pulse.

“He’s alive, Ella,” I say. But she doesn’t seem to hear.

Suddenly, I am overcome with sadness that money could bring people so low. People who I thought were our friends, were plotting against us all along.

And then there are voices, shouting. Footsteps coming loudly down the stairs.

“Rosie! Rosie Lowan!”

“We’re over here,” I yell, running for the door.

I never thought I’d be glad to see Detective Crowe, but I am. Max is right behind him looking frantic.

“Rosie,” says Max, grabbing me. “Whathappened?”

I’m still piecing that together. He holds me a moment and heads over to Olivia. I watch as he lifts her into his arms and rocks her until the paramedics come racing through the door. Sarah drops beside me and wraps me in her arms. I sink into her and start to cry.

“Please,” says Max, desperate. “Tell me what is happening here.”

But I don’t have any answers, only a million questions. They all jam up in my throat.

forty-three

Later, I sit in the quiet dark beside Chad’s hospital bed, trying not to think about the fact that we don’t have medical insurance.

He’s received a dose of Narcan, is on IV fluids and has yet to regain consciousness. He’s severely dehydrated, but he’ll be okay, the doctor says.

We’llbe okay. That’s what matters now.

Olivia, too.

Charles sustained a head injury, but he, too, will survive this nightmare. Abi and Ella have been taken into custody. There’s no comfort in that, somehow.

There are still a thousand questions. Like how Chad and Olivia both wound up in the basement of our building, how long they’d been there.

I wait, glad for the quiet and the night. My nerves are still tingling, a terrible ringing in my ears. My sister sleeps fitfully, uncomfortably, in the chair beside me. Max is with Olivia somewhere in the same hospital. The heart monitor beeps, a beautiful reminder that Chad is alive and well. We survived this, whatever it was. Where there is life, there is hope.

A shadow in the doorway draws my attention. Detective Crowe.

I get up and follow him out into the hallway.

He takes an evidence baggie out of his pocket. “We found this in the Aldridges’ kitchen.”

“What is it?”

He shakes the bottle of pills. “It’s fentanyl, a powerful opioid, about eighty times stronger than morphine.”

I stare at it.

“That’s what she put in my soup?” I say.

He keeps his eyes on me. “She says she put it in Chad’s coffee, as well. According to Abi, he stopped to see the Aldridges on his way out of town. Once Chad was unconscious, they bound him and put him in the basement. You’re lucky. It could have easily killed you.”

“And Olivia?”

“They coerced your husband to call her, under threat of harm to you. Chad told Olivia that it was an emergency, to please come. She did. Apparently, Abi took her to the basement where he and Charles accosted her, held her captive. They convinced her to draw up the paperwork they needed, promising they’d let her, and Chad, go. Once she’d done the work, they put a fentanyl patch on her, bound her and put her in the basement with him.”