Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms, The Complete First Book (11 page)

I laughed. “Remind me
not to eat the tacos in El Paso.”

I was elated. I’d
thought that I’d never laugh again. A moment earlier I honestly wouldn’t have
cared if I died, but now that Morgan was not only alive, but getting better, I
had a new hope that maybe things might turn out okay after all.

Bryce was here with me,
too, and he didn’t seem to want to leave. I would have been happy just to sit
here talking with him all day about anything other than whatever crazy shit was
happening in Muldoon.

I let go of Morgan’s
hand and sat back in the hay.

“So you never miss a
concert, or what?” I asked Bryce.

He shrugged and
smiled. “Not if I can help it.”

“How’d it all happen
for you? You just loved country music so much you couldn’t stop playing it, and
suddenly you were on tour?”

He laughed. “Not
exactly. To tell you the truth, I don’t really care for country music.”

“
Seriously
?”

“My mom used to make
me play it. She had me playing professionally by the time I was a teenager.
Honestly, I’m
kinda
tired of
it. I actually really like some of the indie stuff I’ve heard lately.” He
laughed. “Don’t tell anyone this, but who I really, really like is Lady Gaga. I
can’t stop listening to her.”

I broke out laughing.
“Are you kidding?”

“And you know what
else? Want to know what my real name is?”

“It’s not Bryce
Tripp?”

“Nope. It’s Reggie
Wislowski
.”

I laughed even harder
at this. “
Reggie?”

He laughed, too, and
tried to put his hand over my mouth while I swatted it back.

“Don’t laugh!” he
said. “I’ve gone by Bryce since I was a kid.” He sat back in the hay. “Don’t
tell anyone my secret.”

“I won’t.”

Bryce glanced at
Morgan again. She was sleeping peacefully and still breathing strongly. Even
the swelling around her eye had gone down.

“I guess you must
really regret coming to do this concert here, after all,” I said. “Don’t you?”

For a moment there was
a distant look in Bryce’s blue eyes. But then he looked right at me and gave my
shoulder a soft, playful push.
“Not so far, I don’t.”

I didn’t know what to
say. For a moment I forgot all about Mr. Hershel and Ian and Shawn. It really
was
a shame that I’d actually slept with
this staggeringly attractive country singer who had a secret passion for Lady
Gaga, but couldn’t remember a thing about it.

“Thank you,” I said.
“Really. Thank you so much for everything.”

“It’s nothing,” Bryce
said. “Look. You need to get back to your folks tonight. Why don’t I stay here
and look after Morgan?”

I didn’t want to leave
him, but it was an attractive offer—the chance to get a good night’s
sleep
and
wake up to find Bryce still
waiting for me, watching over Morgan as she healed in the hayloft. And he was
right. I did need to get back to my family—we were going to Mr. Hershel’s
funeral service tomorrow.

“You really don’t
mind?” I asked him. “Really?”

He shrugged and
smiled. “What else am I going to do with myself?”

* * *

The next
morning I woke up at dawn to the sound of a text message on my phone.

It was from Bryce.

I slipped out of my
old bedroom, tiptoed down the stairs, and ran to the shop.

All the way there I
thought about how at one point Morgan had seemed to be getting better, but she’d
only ended up getting worse. What if it had happened this time, too, and she’d
slipped back into that awful, feverish state of labored breathing? What if this
time she really had died?

I ran up the rickety
stairs that lead to the hayloft. I was moving so fast that one of the steps
cracked. My foot broke through, and I stumbled, but I caught myself on the next
step, which held. I peered into the loft.

Morgan was awake,
sitting up, and talking with Bryce. She was smiling.

I rushed to her and
hugged her.

“I see you’ve been
getting yourself into trouble while I wasn’t around to watch out for you,”
Morgan said. She smiled at me,
then
raised her
eyebrows in Bryce’s direction. “Don’t even try to tell me you two behaved
yourselves while I was out cold.”

“Shut up!” I laughed.

I hugged Morgan again.
Less than a day earlier, I’d thought she was dead. Now she was glowing, looking
healthier than ever. I tried not to start crying, but I failed.

“I’ll give you two a
moment,” Bryce said. He climbed down the stairs and left us alone, sitting in
the loose hay.

“How do you feel?” I
asked. “Honestly, you look great.” Even the swelling around her eyebrow had
almost completely gone away.

“I
feel
great,” she whispered, confused. “I
shouldn’t feel great, I know. Not after everything that happened. But I do. I
don’t understand it.”

“You remember what
happened? Everything?”

Morgan nodded. “I
think so,” she whispered. “I remember everything up to Ian shooting Robert.
Shooting Mr. Hershel, I mean. I remember that.”

“What happened after I
dropped you at your house? Did he break in?”

Morgan looked away.
“Not exactly.”

“What happened then?”

She took a deep
breath. “Okay. So,” she said, “you remember how I told you I was sleeping with
someone else besides Jason?”

I nodded.

“It was
him
. I was sleeping with Robert Hershel. I had been for a
couple weeks.”

I couldn’t believe it.
It was true that Mr. Hershel had always been one of those classically handsome
cowboy types—or he was before his death—but he was in his sixties at
least. He had a wife and grown kids. I couldn’t think of him as anything other
than a sweet old man—before he cracked up and went totally insane, that
is.

“You were having an
affair with
Mr. Hershel
?”

“You have no idea how much
we never knew about Robert,” Morgan said. “I couldn’t believe the secrets I
learned he’d been keeping. Did you know he used to have an account on this
website for married people who want to cheat on their spouses? I know that sounds
creepy. It is, I guess. But at the same time, he was actually, like, the
sweetest guy I’d ever met.” Now Morgan started to cry. She wiped her eyes. “I
think I was a little bit in love with him. I know it sounds stupid, but I was.”
She heaved a sigh. “But, then, I don’t know what happened. He started getting
more and more distant. Then he started getting really rough with me. And that
night I got home, and he was waiting for me in nothing but that stupid holster…
He liked to wear it when we were fooling around. But this time he was
completely out of his mind.” She shrugged and looked into the distance. “And
now he’s gone. So that’s the end of that.”

I wondered if Morgan
would say anything about Ian or about kissing him. But either she didn’t
remember, or she didn’t want to bring it up. I let it go.

“Morgan,” I said.
Mostly I couldn’t stop thinking about how much pain she’d been in when Ian and
I got to her house. “I’m so, so sorry for what he did to you.”

She shrugged. “I
lived.”

I put a hand on her
knee.

“Look. A lot’s
happened while you were unconscious,” I said. “Someone—the police or the
military or someone, I don’t know exactly—took Shawn and Ian from the
house. We can’t reach them. Their phones are off, and they’re not calling.”

Morgan shook her head.
“What the fuck is going on around here?”

“That’s not all,” I
said. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t think you’re safe, Morgan. Before Ian got
taken away, he was really worried about you. He thought someone would come
after you. I don’t know why or who. But that’s why we’re here.” I gestured at
the hayloft. “Bryce has been helping me keep you hidden.”

“But… What? I don’t
get it,” she said. “What would anyone want with me?”

“I don’t know, not
exactly. But I think it has something to do with how you got so sick. I know
you’re feeling better now, but Ian didn’t want to take you to the hospital
because he was worried about what they’d do to you there.”

I looked at my phone.
I was going to be late for the funeral.

“I have to go to Mr.
Hershel’s service,” I said. “There’s no way I can get out of it. I don’t know
if you’d even want to go, but you don’t really have the option. We can’t let
anyone know where you are right now. You’ll have to stay here with Bryce. I
promise I’ll be back in a couple hours. We’ll figure out what to do then.
Okay?”

Morgan nodded. “Okay,”
she said. “I won’t go anywhere. Look, I trust you. Just hurry back. Seriously.
Hurry back.”

* * *

Mr.
Hershel’s service was at the farmhouse where he’d been born, grown up, and
spent his entire life.

Because the roads were
blocked off surrounding Muldoon and nothing could be shipped in or out, my Dad
had volunteered to build a coffin from scratch. Mr. Hershel had been well over
six feet tall, and the large, rough-hewn box dominated one end of the living
room. Its lid was closed.

Hardly anyone came.
Mrs. Hershel sat silently throughout the service in the front row of plastic
chairs someone had set up, but otherwise there were only a few close neighbors.
Anyone who’d been able to leave Muldoon before the road blocks went up couldn’t
get back into town now, and most people who were trapped here were too afraid
to venture out of their homes.

Not only were Ian and
Shawn not there,
but
there wasn’t a single male who
wasn’t elderly or a child. I wondered if all the able-bodied men were being
whisked away, just like my husband and brother-in-law.

I tried not to think
about how the world seemed to be falling apart. I just needed to get through
the funeral so I could get back to Morgan and Bryce and figure out what to do
next.

But the pastor was
going on and on. Just as he was finally completing his closing prayer, I heard
someone rush into the room behind me.

I turned, terrified
that I’d see another military police officer sweeping into the room.

But it wasn’t the
military police. It was Bryce.

He kneeled to whisper
into my ear. I was embarrassed. I could feel the eyes of everyone at the
memorial service on me. Just about every one of them had seen
me drunk and dancing with Bryce at the bar,
and now here he
was disrupting the pastor’s funeral prayer by talking to me.

“What are you doing
here?” I demanded as quietly as I could. “Did you leave Morgan? Is she alone?”

“We have to get out of
here.” Bryce was scared. He was trying to pull me from my seat. “Someone came
to your house,” he said. “Men, armed. I heard them calling for Morgan.
But not just her, Ashley.
They were looking for
you,
too.”

The sound of boot
steps suddenly came from the porch. “
Now
,”
Bryce said. “We have to go now.”

He pulled me into the
adjoining kitchen just before a troop of armed military police filed into the
living room.

“What is this?” the
pastor complained.

“We have a warrant
issued for the immediate detention of Morgan Hall, Ashley Young, and Reginald
Wislowski
. If any of these individuals is present on these
premises, make yourself known.”

I turned to Bryce.
“They’re after
you
now, too?”

He whispered, frightened,
“What do they think I have to do with any of this?”

Thankfully, my dad had
the wherewithal to lie. “I’ve never heard of any Reginald whoever,” he said in
the other room, “but Ashley Young’s my daughter, and she’s not here. You know
where she is? She’s out looking for her husband. Her husband who
you
people detained without any goddamn
good reason.”

“Sir,” the military
police officer said. “You need to cooperate. We won’t hesitate to make arrests if
necessary.” He shouted, “Everybody out! One line in the driveway! Single file. Have
any personal identification you can provide at this time, ready.”

We kept as quiet as we
could in the kitchen while the living room emptied, but another squad of
military police appeared at the back door. One man peered in through the
kitchen window and moved to open the door. We had nowhere to flee other than back
into the living room.

We had seconds to
figure out what to do before the military police finished searching the kitchen
and pantry.

I scanned the small
living room for hiding spots. It had been mostly emptied to make space for the
rows of plastic chairs. Otherwise, the coffin was the only object.

Suddenly my thoughts
flashed to something Ian had said before he’d been taken away. He’d said that
he had to “take care” of Mr. Hershel’s body.

I still didn’t really
understand what that meant, but on a desperate hunch I lifted the coffin’s lid.

It was empty.

My hunch was right.
Ian must have hidden the body for some reason. But
who
was he trying to keep it from? And why? For now, I couldn’t waste time
wondering.

“In here,” I said to
Bryce, holding the coffin’s lid open.

It was our only
choice. We were surrounded. The only other option was to give
ourselves
up.

“No fucking way!”
Bryce stepped away from the strangely empty coffin.

My eyes darted to the
kitchen doorway. At any moment the military police would be in the living room.

“It’s your choice,” I whispered,
and, without any better plan in mind, I hopped up into the coffin.

In the kitchen, one of
the military police shouted, “Clear!” Footsteps approached down the hall.