The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (4 page)

He nodded and kept poring over the items on the counter. “So you were watching your daughter swing. Then what happened?”

“I went upstairs. I heard a scream and a thud.” The echo of her scream sent a shiver down my sweat-covered back. “I ran out and found her on the staircase. She scared the shit out of me.” I took another sip of my water and watched the chief to see if he believed me. He was staring at me without a hint of kindness or understanding, so I added, “She still is . . . scaring me.”

“Were you two having any problems? Any recent arguments?”

“No. It was an accident. A horrible accident. Everything was perfect between us.”

Vincent Pratt didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He stood across the island from me, staring at me, and I wasn’t backing down. She was my wife, and I was the one here when she’d been hurt. A harsh vibrating sound came from under the contents of Meredith’s purse.

“What’s that?” Pratt asked without taking his eyes off me. Rather than no emotion, his jaw was now tight and his lips were almost in a sneer. He hated me, but I was probably imagining that. I was tired and worn. And Meredith still hadn’t woken up.

“It’s my phone,” I said and reached under the bag of Band-Aids from Meredith’s purse. I pulled the phone out and saw it was Dharma calling from her desk phone, which I’d told her a hundred times not to do.
Fucking idiot.
As if I didn’t have enough to deal with right now with this cop in my face.

“Aren’t you going to answer it? It could be the hospital.”

“No. It’s work.” This seemed to piss the chief off more than anything else.

I do work, after all.

I was losing my patience with him. “If you don’t mind, I need to sleep before my children and I go back to the hospital.”

He inspected every inch of me, and I still thought he wanted to kill me, but then his scowl broke into a kind smile, which was even more unsettling. “Of course. I’ll let you get some rest. When you see Meredith, tell her everyone at the station is asking about her.”

“I will.” I followed the bastard to the front door. He peered into the dining room again at her phone and then up to the stairs.

I opened the door and the bright sunshine beckoned him out of my house of horrors.

Get the fuck out, dude.

Chief Vincent Pratt

IF IT WEREN’T FOR MEREDITH’S
precious children sleeping in their beds after a night at the hospital with their mother, Brad Walsh would be dead. Meredith and I would become the
Dateline
episode she’d always predicted. If given the chance to convey what a complete asshole he was, I think a jury would let me off.

I called the station to check in. Really, it was just an excuse. I needed to use my phone and confirm it was still working. Why hadn’t the hospital called me yet? Brad needed to go to sleep, and Meredith needed to wake up. She needed to tell me exactly what happened so I could see him in handcuffs in the back seat of my car.
God help him.

Meredith was always honest with me, but there were subjects we rarely spoke about. Her husband and my wife were the main two. But even with only the few things she told me, I knew Brad and Meredith’s marriage wasn’t perfect. She’d been making love to me for almost a year, which kind of made perfect impossible.

Instead of speeding, I took my time. I rode with the windows down and let the heat fill the car. I needed to ground myself before I lost control, drove back to Meredith’s house, and beat her husband’s skull into the staircase that still had her blood all over it. She had to wake up soon.

I stopped the car, and the clicking of my turn signal increased my pulse. My mind fixated in on the rapid, repetitive sound until I was ready to kill someone. Brad Walsh. I steered the car onto Jenna and John’s lane, and the clicking stopped. I took a deep breath. My phone rang with a call from the hospital. I slammed on the brakes and answered before it rang a second time.

“Chief Pratt?”

“Yes. Dr. Evans, is she awake?” I needed to calm down. I’d have the whole town talking, and that was the last thing Meredith wanted.

“She was.” The doctor hesitated, and I threw the car in park and waited for what seemed like an hour for him to begin again. “Mrs. Walsh woke up. She was in a great deal of pain and agitated, so we sedated her for now. If you want to see her, try after dinner.”

“Besides the pain, is she going to be okay?”

“I think she’s going to be fine.”

“Did she say anything about how her injury occurred?” I held my breath.

“She doesn’t remember a thing. In fact, she seems to have lost her memory of several months before the accident.” I held my breath as every memory I had of Meredith flew through my mind. Her naked and laughing on the couch in my hunting cabin. The way her eyes deepened in the dim light of a hotel room in Philadelphia. Her low but powerful voice as she first told me she loved me. Meredith forgetting was impossible.

“How?”

“Amnesia is common with head trauma. There’s no definitive calculation for how far back the amnesia extends or how long it’ll take to regain the memories. We’ll know more when she wakes up again. We sent her down for another CT scan to make sure things are moving in the right direction.”

“Thanks for calling,” I managed to get out. The emptiness of the night before crushed me again. She was not with me. Not in any way.

“I’m sorry I don’t have more answers for you. We’ll have to wait for Meredith to tell us what happened. In her own time.”

“In her own time,” rang in my head, and for a second, I thought she hadn’t lost her memory. How could she forget? Meredith’s brain was superior to every other person’s I’d ever met. This was part of a game she was playing. Maybe to protect herself. She hadn’t really lost her memory. She just wanted everyone to think she did. When I went there, she’d remember me. The same way if I closed my eyes, I knew what her breast felt like beneath my fingertips or what her hair against my face felt like when I whispered, “I love you,” in her ear. I remembered every breath, every touch, every moment. She had to, too.

I pulled it together and walked the stepping-stones to Jenna’s front door. Her oldest son, John, opened it before I even knocked.

“Hi, Chief!”

“Hi there. Is your mom home? Or your dad?”

“Dad’s at work, but I’ll get Mom.” He proceeded to take a half step back from the door and yell, “Mom,” at the top of his lungs into the house.

“Stop yelling,” a female voice screamed. “For the love of everything holy in this world, please stop yelling.”

Jenna came to the door and stood in front of me, shocked. I hadn’t been to her house since the day she’d returned from rehab for a leg injury. The time I saw her before that was to charge her with DUI. But I’d known John and Jenna my whole life. It was how this town worked. I’d given her a DUI and then had eaten cake at her homecoming.

It really didn’t matter what I felt about Jenna, because Meredith loved her. At times, she was the only woman in this town Meredith could stand. I always thought it was because Jenna had alcohol and Meredith had secrets, but after the accident, Jenna sobered up, and Meredith had fallen even more in love with her. Once Meredith had accepted our relationship was possible—that it was real—she loved a lot of things around here.

“Have you heard about Meredith?” I asked.

“No.” She hurried to push the screen door out and pulled me inside. “What about her?”

“She fell in her house yesterday. She’s in the hospital.”

“What the fuck? Why the hell didn’t Brad call me?” Jenna was winding up, and her anger showed in her eyes and the tight muscles of her arms.

“I don’t know. She’s going to be okay, but I wanted to ask you some questions.”

“I need to get to the hospital.”

“She’s sedated right now.”

Jenna stared at me, probably wondering why I knew so much. “Questions about what?”

I followed her into the kitchen—the one I’d stood in with Meredith and begged her to reopen her e-mail account so I could talk to her again. The kitchen where I’d told her to just say the word, and I’d be at her side again. The deep burgundy color of the walls covered me with the desperate feeling of being without her.

I won’t go through that again.

“How was the Walsh’s marriage?” I asked.

Jenna stood perfectly still and watched me. She and Meredith were the kind of friends who’d take a bullet for one another. Women like that didn’t discuss each other’s marriages with people who knocked on their doors.

I continued, “I’m concerned it wasn’t an accident.”

That statement broke down her guard. She went from a statue to being lit on fire. “I’ll fucking kill him if he hurt her.”

“Jenna!” John yelled as he entered the house from the back door. Everyone yelled here.

“Hey, Vince. What’s up? Everything okay?” I’d seen the look a thousand times before. My presence, especially in uniform, rarely put people at ease.

“Mer fell yesterday. She’s in the hospital,” Jenna said and turned back to me.

“Oh, man. Is she going to be all right?” John asked, grabbing a soda from the fridge. He didn’t love Meredith the way Jenna and I did. How could he?

Jenna ignored John and crossed her arms. “Brad’s a dick, but I don’t think he’d ever hurt her.”

John walked over, intrigued by the conversation. “Brad would never hurt Meredith.” He shrugged the whole idea off. “The only time I’ve ever seen him pissed at her was when I told him about the Cub Scout campout.”

“What about it?” Jenna asked before I had a chance to.

John opened the refrigerator again and stared into it as Jenna and I hung on his every word. “The one Matt got his ass beat at.”

“What are you talking about? What Cub Scout campout?” Jenna wasn’t used to being in the dark.

John stood up and faced us, leaning on the refrigerator door. “Last spring, Brad was out of town and Meredith brought James to the campout.”

“Yeah . . .”

“Right before we put out the fire, Meredith and Matt Thompson were the only people by the bathrooms, and somehow Matt ended up face down on the ground with two black eyes.”

“What?” Jenna asked, and I stayed silent, knowing I’d delivered the black eyes when I’d caught Thompson on top of Meredith. “Why the hell was Brad pissed about that?”

“He was pissed Meredith never said anything about it. And he always thought Thompson was after his wife. Shit like that pisses guys off.”

“Meredith doesn’t give a fuck about Matt Thompson,” Jenna said convincingly to both of us. “The only people she cares about are Liv and James.” I could tell there was more. Jenna wasn’t telling me everything, but I was afraid
I
was the rest of it, even if Jenna didn’t know it.

“And her husband?” I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

“Brad isn’t around much. Those kids are her life.”

Brad Walsh

“I’M GOING TO BE AROUND
more,” I said to myself as I waited for the kids to close the car doors and follow me into the hospital.

She’s awake.

Everything would go back to normal. It would be better than normal. It would be the way it used to be. I’d go tell Dharma we were done, and then I was going to get my house in order, starting with my wife.