The First Time Again: The Braddock Brotherhood, Book 3 (30 page)

But like a child who touches a hot stove for the second time, she hadn’t learned her lesson. No wonder she got burned again.

By the time Baylee had been photographed and processed, stripped of her purse, her jewelry and her shoelaces, and placed in a holding cell, she was numb. Her entire life seemed to have exploded right before her eyes. She thought this might be how NASA scientists felt when a rocket they’d spent ages planning and building blew up on the first launch. They’d have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what they’d done wrong. Baylee didn’t even want to do that.

She looked with distaste at the narrow, vinyl-covered cot which jutted out from the wall, but decided she couldn’t care less. She laid down on it, curled into the fetal position and tried not to think.

If only it were that easy. Her eyes hurt from holding back tears. Her throat was raw from swallowing the sobs begging for release. Her stomach was in a knot. Overlaying it all was a sort of dreary exhaustion. She hadn’t called anyone. Not Lisa or Jenny. Certainly not her father. An arrest on drug possession would simply be one more thing the fine citizens of Hendersonville, North Carolina, could add to the long list of what had happened to poor Baylee Westring.

Her sister the high school slut.

Her mother passing so young.

Her father a drunk.

Her husband gay.

Her adopted, trouble-making brother on eternal probation.

Her bank failed.

Her job lost.

Her home foreclosed.

Her near declaration of bankruptcy.

Then she took up with Trey Christopher. Why, everyone knew he was a drug addict. No wonder she went and got herself in trouble with him.

Oh, God,
Baylee pleaded silently,
make it stop.
She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to turn the gray cinderblock walls into her own private fortress and the scuffed vinyl beneath her into a canopy bed fit for a princess.

All I wanted was to be happy. Just a little bit of happiness. Was that too much to ask? To hope for?

When she got out of jail, she would leave. Even if she couldn’t
be
happy, she’d get as close as she could to the happiest place on earth. She’d get in her car and drive until she reached Orlando. She’d build a magical kingdom of her very own, and no one would take it away from her.

She escaped into her fantasy. She’d had enough of reality to last her a lifetime. Somehow, comforted by her fairy plum visions of the future, she must have dozed off.

Baylee shoved the hair out of her eyes and blinked at the female guard who’d opened the door to her cell. Slowly she sat up.

“You got a visitor,” the guard informed her.

“Who?” Baylee asked warily. She couldn’t think of anyone she wanted to see at the moment.

”Lawyer.” The guard was nothing if not succinct.

She hadn’t called a lawyer. The only one she knew was Ryan, and he was Trey’s attorney. Surely it would be a conflict of interest for him to represent her as well. Besides, if Ryan was now in Trey’s camp, she didn’t want him to help her anyway.

Baylee shuffled along in front of the guard through a few more locked doors which buzzed open as they approached, until the guard said, “Right here.” Baylee stopped, and the guard opened a metal door with a glass window checkered with metal lines. She stepped inside and the guard closed the door behind her. Baylee heard a lock click.

A woman maybe a few years older than her stood at a table. Her head had been bent as she looked at a file in front of her, but when Baylee entered, she smiled and came toward her with her hand outstretched. “Baylee? I’m Donica Hawthorne. I’m here to help you.”

Baylee shook hands with the woman, who had cool, slender fingers and a firm grip. She was professionally dressed in a well-fitted, navy-blue suit and white blouse. Tasteful jewelry peeked out from her earlobes and neckline. She had chin-length, wavy, dark hair and brown eyes that looked like they didn’t miss a trick.

She indicated the chair on the other side of the table, and Baylee sank into it. “Where’d you come from?” she asked. “I didn’t call anyone.”

“Ryan Reagle asked me to handle your case if you’re amenable. If you’d prefer to retain another attorney, you’re certainly free to do so.”

Baylee considered her options. Her current savings were earmarked for travel and finding a place to live once she reached Orlando. She had no intention of spending money she didn’t have on legal fees. If they threw the book at her for something she’d had no part in, she’d do her jail time and take off when she got out. What difference would a conviction or a jail term make on her already dismal résumé? “I don’t have money for an attorney.”

“My fees have already been taken care of,” Donica informed her.

“By whom?” Baylee asked suspiciously.

“Is that important?”

“I’d like to know.”

“Mr. Christopher.”

As it should be
, Baylee thought. She waited for Donica to continue. The woman took a seat and leafed through the pages in the file in front of her. “Tell me what happened.”

Baylee did, sticking to the facts. Donica asked a few questions about the manner in which they’d been pulled over, the way the search was conducted. “Did the pills in your purse belong to you?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea how they came to be in your purse?”

“Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t keep an eye on my purse twenty-four/seven. When I’m working, sometimes I leave it in my car, or I hang it on a hook in the mudroom or set it on the kitchen counter. I don’t carry it around with me all day.”

“What about when you’re at home?”

“I keep it in my room most of the time. Sometimes I leave it on the entry table by the front door.”

Donica asked other questions, sometimes the same questions in different ways, about who had access to Baylee’s purse. Donica seemed to be implying that she’d been set up.
Why? Who?
If she’d been set up, Trey had also.
I called him a liar.
What if he wasn’t? What if Trey was as innocent as she was? A victim of some crazy plot to ruin both their reputations?

Who would want to hurt both her and Trey?

She didn’t think she had any enemies. Although Trey had disappointed a lot of the locals, she doubted any of them would go to such lengths out of sheer spite or some misguided sense of seeing him get what they thought he deserved. Except one. Maybe.

Justin Spoley?

He’d had it in for Trey for years. Justin wasn’t her biggest fan either. He’d made no secret of his disappointment when she’d rebuffed his advances. He didn’t like the fact that she much preferred his twin brother’s company to his After the Fourth of July party, Justin had likely heard about the Trey and Baylee’s relationship through the local grapevine.

Baylee drummed her fingers on the table while her mind whirred and clicked, putting puzzle pieces into place.
If
Spoley was responsible, he had help.

“Baylee.” Donica patted her wrist to get her attention. Baylee realized she’d asked the same question twice.

“You might want to talk to Justin Spoley. He’s a deputy with the county sheriff’s department.”

“Why? You think he’d know something about this?”

Baylee hesitated. Dusty was one of her best friends. Tossing accusations at his brother might irrevocably damage their relationship. “He and Trey have had a few differences in the past. Justin’s not my biggest fan, either,” she said carefully.

“It’s a pretty big leap from having differences with someone and seeing them arrested on narcotics charges,” Donica said.

“I know. I was trying to think of anyone who’d want to make trouble for Trey.”

“And you.”

“Maybe. Maybe he had nothing to do with it. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”

Donica nodded. “I’ll talk to him anyway.” She stood and gathered her file together. “Your arraignment’s in a couple of hours. The judge will set bail.”

“I don’t have any money,” Baylee reminded her.

Donica held up a hand. “Mr. Christopher will pay your bail. For the record, he made it clear to me he wants the charges against you dropped because they’re entirely bogus.”

Baylee stared at her. She’d already blown it with Trey, and if she thought about what she’d done, what she’d said, she’d be reduced to a mass of blubbering emotion. She’d grabbed the first opportunity she had to destroy the happily ever after she wanted. She’d hurt Trey deeply with her lack of trust before he could trample on her heart and walk away from her.

Second chances were important to Trey. He’d given her one with him, and she’d destroyed it.

In her mind’s eye Baylee kept seeing Matty hand Trey a small plastic bag. Was Matty selling drugs? To Trey? She didn’t want to believe it. But she couldn’t discount what she’d seen, either. Flower seeds? Seriously?

“You might want to talk to my brother, Matty, also,” she told Donica.

“Is there some reason you think he’s involved?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t want to think any of this is happening. If he’s innocent, it won’t do any harm to ask him, though, will it?”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Donica reassured her. “Don’t worry.”

She pressed a button near the door, and the guard appeared to escort Baylee back to her cell.

Trey had counted to a thousand, done his deep breathing, searched for a modicum of Zen-like peace the entire time he’d been in the back of the patrol car. He knew enough to keep his mouth shut, even if doing so sent his blood pressure skyrocketing along with his temper.

He had the worst case of pissed off he’d ever had in his life. He’d known as the entire scene played itself out, the patrol car pulling him over, the search and seizure of those planted drugs, that Spoley was somehow behind it. He’d watched Baylee’s belief in him shatter before his eyes, and he’d been powerless to stop it. What was he going to say in that moment?
I didn’t do it?
She’d called him a liar. She might as well have stabbed him in the gut. She was the first woman in his life he’d never lied to.

Spoley had wanted to mess with Trey from the moment he’d blown back into town. By bringing back Trey’s past, throwing it in his face and in Baylee’s too, Spoley found a way to ruin everything. He’d interfered with the reputation Trey was trying to rebuild, with the relationship he was trying to forge with Baylee, with the fences he wanted to mend with everyone else, including his parents.

Damn him!
Trey could have torn the guy limb from limb given the opportunity, but he’d settle for seeing the guy humiliated, stripped of his badge and fired from the Henderson County Sheriff’s Department.

The first thing Trey did was call Ryan. He paced and waited in a small meeting room which held a table, a couple of uncomfortable chairs and nothing else.

He tried not to think about Baylee or what they might have done with her. Locked her up, he supposed. How had those pills come to be in her
purse?
There were pills everywhere all of a sudden. It was one thing for a cop to plant drugs in a vehicle during a search when the owner was otherwise occupied. But Trey had kept an eye on the deputy doing the search. Either he was a magician or the small plastic bags containing those pills were already in the Cayenne before they’d left the house this morning.
How though? And who?

Dan walked into his house and looked around at it with fresh eyes. He’d been out of rehab for two days and had just returned from an AA meeting at the church hall. He’d been surprised to discover a couple of guys he knew as well as an old friend of Diana’s. He vaguely remembered Diana mentioning that they’d drifted apart after the woman’s husband left her for another woman and she’d begun drinking heavily.

Over a Styrofoam cup of coffee after the meeting, she told Dan she’d been sober for two years and was getting her life back together. She’d squeezed his hand and told him how sorry she was about Diana’s death. She’d given him her phone number and told him if he ever needed to talk to call her.

Dan hadn’t felt so hopeful in, well, he couldn’t remember when. Certainly before Diana’s death. He’d been so lost these past few years. She’d kept him steady, and without her, he hadn’t known quite what to do. All he’d wanted to do was numb himself to the loss and the loneliness and the fear that he hadn’t deserved her in the first place. He hadn’t valued her enough, and that’s why she’d been taken away from him.

The living room looked sad. The furniture Diana had chosen years ago and lovingly cared for was sagging and worn. The coffee and end tables bore scratches from the twins’ rambunctious behavior. The walls needed a fresh coat of paint. Hell, the whole house needed a major overhaul.

A project like that would be good for him. It’d keep him occupied. He’d start with the living room. Between meetings he’d patch and paint and maybe even shop for a new sofa. He fingered the piece of paper in his pocket. Maybe Paula would like to go furniture shopping with him.

He started toward the kitchen, aware now of a foreign sound coming from that direction. He proceeded cautiously until he stood in the arched entrance. Matty was hunched over the kitchen table, his face buried in his folded arms, shoulders heaving.