The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (3 page)

I read her e-mails. Every single one of them. There had to be over a thousand—teachers, volunteers, mothers, coaches, etc. Again, all of it pertained to our children. One group was about a lunch date with her friend, Christine, but that was a year ago. I kept going back. A few e-mails from college friends. All were innocent. Not one shred of evidence there was a part of Meredith’s life I didn’t know about. I listened to her voicemails. Most were from me. I scrolled through the Instagram account she clearly never went on, and finally Facebook. I went right to the messages and found nothing. Nothing noteworthy at least. It was as if Meredith’s entire existence stemmed from Liv and James. I looked through her profile and ran my finger across the pictures she’d been tagged in from Christine’s wedding and Sarah’s Christmas party. Both events I’d sent her to alone. She hadn’t even shown me a picture when I’d returned. I wasn’t a part of them.

It was crazy. The whole fucking thing was crazy. My heartbeat pounded in my head. It blocked out my thoughts and forced me to look at the staircase. The sight of the pooled blood sent the pounding to the back of my throat. I turned away, unable to face the evidence of her injury. My wife, the mother of my children’s blood was on the stairs, and she was in the hospital. This couldn’t be my life.

I abandoned her phone on the dining room table and walked into the kitchen. The refrigerator was filled with birthday party invitations and schedules for the kids’ teams. There were pictures of Liv and James covering every other inch of the door.

I’d imagined the whole thing. I was going to go upstairs and sleep, and when I woke up, she was going to be here kissing James’s forehead or laughing with Liv.

The humid wind blew outside, and I opened the kitchen door. The heat hit my face as I watched the swing blow toward the trees. I was standing in the exact same spot we’d stood in when I’d said the words to her. The words that had been eating away at me. The words I knew meant more than I’d ever let myself believe.

“Say the word,” I said again, this time to no one.

The last time I’d said those words, her neck had been in my hands, and she’d been watching Liv swing. If I hadn’t known every inch of her body as well as my own, I might have missed the catching of her breath. I’d fought against my hands tightening around her neck, and Meredith’s breathing had returned to normal within a half second. She’d made some joke, but I wasn’t listening. I hadn’t heard a word she said. All I remember was the anger that crept up inside me. I’d had to leave the room and find some place I could process her reaction to a text I couldn’t understand. A text that no matter how many times I told myself meant nothing, taunted me until I finally said it to her.

And even though it still made no sense, I couldn’t let go of the idea that there was someone else. I grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter and rummaged through it. Frustrated with all the pockets inside, I turned it over. Band-Aids, ChapStick, the kids’ favorite gum, and a random assortment of other things spilled onto the countertop. Even her purse was depressing. There was an empty Ziploc bag, and as soon as I opened the seal, I knew the bag had held a joint at one point. Based on the rest of her life, I no longer blamed her for smoking.

Nothing.

Not one thing came out of her purse that told me anything. But I knew. I knew she wouldn’t be in the hospital if I hadn’t said those words, and those words wouldn’t have set the ugliness into motion if she weren’t hiding something or someone from me. I pulled myself up the back staircase. I would search through her nightstand and her entire closet, but even before I began, I knew I wouldn’t find anything. Meredith was smarter than I was, and she would never have an affair. She was better than that.

Better than me.

Chief Vincent Pratt

I SAW BRAD WALSH’S CAR.
I almost turned around, but I had to see Meredith first. I pulled the cruiser into a spot right out front and grazed the hood with my hand as I walked toward the entrance of the emergency room. I was going to grab him by the shirt collar and bang his head against the hood of the car until he told me exactly what he’d done to her.

The image of her on top of that same hood fought past my rage at him. Meredith had texted me: This is me. Saying the word. It was the phrase that would finally end our separation, and I’d sent back: Nibac, telling her in code to meet me at the cabin. When she got there, I’d put her on top of the car and took back what was mine.

I closed my eyes right before walking into the ER, and in my mind, I could still see her that day. She’d been flustered and angry, and then she’d surrendered to me, confessing for the first time that she loved me.

“Chief Pratt, what can I help you with today?” The receptionist’s voice reminded me I was in uniform. I was in the real world.

“Morning, Delores. I heard one of our employees was brought in yesterday, and I wanted to check on her.” My voice was light. As if Meredith was not the center of my world. As if I hadn’t spent the entire night twisted in knots of worry and fear because I hadn’t spoken with her. “Meredith Walsh.”

Recognition spread across Delores’s face. It was a small town with a small hospital, but if Delores heard about a patient brought in yesterday, there was a story to tell. “She’s in ICU. Go ahead up.”

The questions raced through my mind, but I had to see her. I skipped the elevator and took the stairs two at a time, racing toward her and pulling one deep breath into my lungs before opening the door on the third floor.

“Hi, Chief,” the first nurse who saw me said, as if this were just any Monday morning.

“I need to see Meredith Walsh.”

Keep it light, colonel.
I heard Meredith’s voice in my head, calling me colonel so if she ever spoke in her sleep, no one would know it was me she was talking about.

“Oh, ‘tranquility.’ That’s what everyone on the floor’s calling her. She hasn’t made a sound.” I kept a straight face. “How do you know her?”

The muscles in my chest tightened, threatening to rob me of my fake, easy demeanor.

Why is she silent?

“She works at the police station.”

“Oh. We had no idea. I would have called you.” I moved toward the patient hallway, hoping the nurse would move too. “You can see her.” She stood and stepped out of the nurses’ station with me an inch behind her. “She hasn’t woken up yet, though.”

I dropped back a step and tried to regain some control over myself.

She hasn’t woken up yet.

I turned the corner into her room door and relaxed at the sight of her. Meredith looked like herself. She was here. We were together. But when I walked farther into the room, I saw the ugly purple bruise on the other side of her face. It disappeared under the white bandage circling her head. The anger was choking me. I held on to the footboard of her bed and fought the urge to pick her up, carry her to my car, and take her away.

“What happened?” I asked to no one, but the nurse assumed it was to her.

“Her husband said she fell on the stairs and hit her head.” The e-mail with no subject and no body flashed through my mind, and on the heels of that was the image of Brad’s neck in my hands. “Wooden stairs. That’s why I made my husband put carpet on all our stairs. For God’s sake, look at her. It could have been a baseball bat that hit her.”

I studied Meredith’s marred face. The image burned itself into my mind, and she was never going home to her husband. The deal was off. “Who’s her attending?”

“Dr. Evans.”

“Where is he?” I stared at Meredith, willing her to wake up.

“I’ll call him for you.” The nurse’s voice was low. I was scaring her, but she was moving faster than she was before. She left the room and left Meredith and me alone. I buried the need to lean down, kiss her, and whisper in her ear that I was here and I loved her. I knew it would only make her mad. She wouldn’t want our relationship to come out like this. The last thing she’d done before whatever happened was protect our secret. She’d sent the e-mail.

Dr. Evans came within minutes. He shook my hand, and I hid the tension coursing below my skin. He reviewed her chart and read every word before addressing me. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Was the first thing he said, and I wanted him to stay away from her, too.

“What’s going on?”

“They brought her in yesterday. Unresponsive from a fall down a wooden staircase. No broken bones, but there’s some swelling and it’s causing pressure on her brain. We drained some fluid last night. We’re just waiting for her to regain consciousness.”

“Do you think she fell?” My fingers dug into the footboard until pain shot through my nailbeds.

“It’s hard to say. It must have been a violent collision. I’ve never seen a fall this bad, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.”

I pulled my card from my wallet and handed it to the doctor. “Call me as soon as she wakes up. Before you call anyone else.”

“She’s going to have one hell of a headache.”

“Call me.” I held his eyes for a moment too long, but I needed to be here before Brad Walsh.

Brad Walsh

EVEN FROM THE BACK OF
Meredith’s giant closet, I could hear the knocking. It was like a battering ram on the wooden front door.

Who the fuck?

Deciding it was probably just a nosy neighbor, I continued to shift through another section of jackets, checking the pockets as I went. Whoever it was, they didn’t seem to take a hint, though, because they were still pounding on the door. It continued until I thought the door was going to collapse under the force of it, and I had no choice but to answer.

I was halfway down the stairs when I spotted the police cruiser in the driveway.
Great.
Meredith’s new coworkers were now involved in this mess. I expected it to be one of the young officers, checking in since I hadn’t called and she was supposed to be at work. When I opened the door, Chief Vincent Pratt was standing in front of me.

“Hi, Brad,” he said pleasantly through a taut jaw.

“Hi, Chief. You here about Meredith?”

“I am. Do you mind if I come in?” He nodded toward the house as he asked but walked past me without waiting for a reply. I kept my eyes on him as I closed the front door. He scanned the living room, the dining room where Meredith’s phone lay on the table, still agitating me, and finally, his scrutiny froze on the bloodstained staircase. We both stared at it. The guilt rose in the back of my throat, and I hated this dickhead for being here with me.

“Sorry I didn’t call and let you know she wouldn’t be in. It’s been a long night.” I was a victim here, too.
You’ve got this, Brad.
“I’m sure you understand.”

The chief nodded. He was used to conversations like this. I was not. “What happened?” He turned toward the stairs again, his eyes fixed on where the blood pooled on the tenth step. It was the tenth out of thirteen. It ran down the side of the stairs and splattered against the wall behind them. A few drops had landed on the ninth stair. I counted them again. One, two, three . . . yes, the ninth stair. “Brad?”

“Sorry.” I looked away from the grotesque scene. I ran my hand across the back of my neck and massaged the sore muscle near my shoulder. I needed to sleep. “I’m not really sure what happened,” I lied.

“Well, just tell me the parts you are sure about.”

“We were watching Liv swing out back. She was going so high, and Meredith insisted I come see her.” He stared at me. I wanted him to look away. Look back at the bloody stairs, anywhere but at me. I started to sweat, which I didn’t want him to see. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Sure.” He waited for me to lead the way. I realized he’d never been here before. I walked into the kitchen with the chief behind me, opened the cabinet, and reached up for two tumblers. I pulled the water pitcher Meredith always kept full from the refrigerator and filled the glasses. When I turned around, he was touching her wallet, pushing it away from the rest of the contents of her purse. “Looking for something?” he asked.

I took my time and a sip of water. He couldn’t rush me. Even if I did just want him to leave. “Her insurance card. Apparently, the hospital likes you better if you have insurance.”