6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
T he normally two-hour drive took him one and a half. By the time he reached campus, he knew several things. The hospital refused to give him any information. They wouldn’t even confirm Brooke had been admitted. He’d called the local police and campus security. Even though he was a lawyer and Brooke’s stepbrother—technically—he couldn’t get any information. Everywhere he turned, he met a brick wall.
No wonder the reporters didn’t have Brooke’s name as the latest victim. The police, the school, the hospital, all of them protected her identity. Cody could only think of one reason they’d do that. Brooke could identify the campus stalker. Also apparently, someone had shut everyone up. That meant money. That meant power. Whoever was behind this had both and was using them to keep everyone quiet. Including Brooke.
Two security guards met him outside the dorm entrance.
“I’m sorry, sir. Only students who live here and have ID are allowed in the building.”
“My name is Cody Jansen. I’m here to see Brooke Banks.”
The two guards exchanged a telling look and turned back to him.
“Are you with the press?” one of them asked.
“No. I’m her stepbrother.” He hated using that to get to her.
“We can’t let you in without her authorization.”
“Go in and get her. Tell her I’m here. She’ll want to see me.” He hoped that didn’t turn out to be a lie.
“She’s not to be disturbed tonight.”
The hospital had released her earlier today. The dean had given up that much, but Cody knew nothing of her condition or the severity of her injuries. Or what her injuries were to begin with. She’d presumably given birth prematurely, and the baby hadn’t made it.
He imagined that alone was horrific enough for her to deal with on her own.
That she’d been attacked by the campus stalker with a knife made matters worse.
Had he raped her like he had the last student?
The rage that had been smoldering inside him since he found out what happened flared to life yet again, but he held it together so the security guards didn’t send him away for good.
Cody had no idea what to expect when he saw her, but he couldn’t let his mind go down that road or he’d do something rash and upset her more. She needed him calm. She needed him to take care of her.
He kept his cool. Barely. “Brooke is family. She needs me.” And I need her. “So, please, let me in.”
“Listen, Mr. Jansen, we have strict orders from campus security and her lawyer that no one gets in to see her. Why don’t you talk to her lawyer and have him put you on the list of people allowed in? They’ll give you a visitor’s pass.”
He held up a hand. “Wait a second. She has a lawyer.” That shocked him.
Who the hell did she hire? And why?
The guard nodded, then looked past him toward the parking lot. “Yes. You just missed him.”
“Who is he?”
“Mr. Doug Wagner. He just left with his daughter. She’ll be back shortly.”
Doug Wagner, the top defense attorney in San Antonio and Mindy Sue’s father. No wonder everyone had sealed their lips. No one would go against Wagner. If he wanted the case handled discreetly, he’d get his way. Even the police chief was afraid of being sued by Wagner. Cody wanted to know just what the hell had happened to get him to shut everyone up.
Cody took out his cell phone and called the dean. “Dean Fitzpatrick. This is Cody Jansen again. I can’t get into Brooke’s dorm because two guards are stopping me. Take care of it.” Cody hung up and paced in front of the two security guards while he waited. It didn’t take long for one of their radios to beep. The security office had called to allow him entrance to the building. The guard verified Cody’s ID, then swiped his card down the lock. Cody ran in and rushed up the three flights of stairs to Brooke’s floor.
He walked the long hall. Unusually quiet. No one on this floor played their music too loud or ran up and down the halls between friends’ rooms. A few students eyed him suspiciously as he passed open doors. He stood outside Brooke’s door at the end of the hall and stared at the many get-well messages on her white board. Below it, several photos of Brooke, Mindy Sue, and lots of other girls covered a bulletin board. Brooke had a lot of friends.
He raised his hand to knock, but stopped at the last second when someone pounded up the stairs and yelled, “Stop.” He turned and found Mindy Sue jogging toward him with Brooke’s messenger bag over her shoulder, hair disheveled. Blue smudges darkened the underside of her eyes, and even the weary way she moved told him how bad things had been over the last few days.
“Don’t knock. You’ll wake her up. It took me forty-five minutes and a sedative to get her to go to sleep.”
Cody put his palm to the door with his fingers splayed. He leaned forward and rested his head on the back of his hand.
She was right behind this door. It had been months since he’d seen her. He didn’t want to wait a second longer.
Mindy Sue’s hand pressed on his shoulder. “Let her sleep. I’ll let you in to see her after we talk. Okay?”
What choice did he have? Two brand-new deadbolts on the door were a cold, grim reminder of the reason he was here. He wasn’t getting in unless he woke up Brooke, or Mindy Sue opened the door.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed Mindy Sue down the hallway. She took him to a small room that served as a kitchenette with cupboards, microwaves, and two refrigerators that all the students shared. They both took a seat at the small, round table by the only window. Mindy Sue set the bag on the table between them, running her hands over the material. He’d given the bag to Brooke right before she’d left home for her freshman year.
“She has a term paper due in one of her classes, but the police had her bag. My father got it back along with her laptop.”
He looked up at her then. He didn’t really care about the bag. “Start with when she came back from Christmas break and work your way up to what happened five days ago, and why no one called her mother, or me.” Controlled rage laced his voice, but it didn’t deter Mindy Sue’s cold stare.
“I understand that kind of fury. I’ve felt it for the last five days. The last six months that asshole stalked and terrorized her.”
Those words fell on Cody like a ton of bricks. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she tell me? Her mom? The police?”
“You know why she didn’t want either of you to know. She reported it to both campus security and local law enforcement. They’ve been investigating. A fat lot of good that did. They couldn’t trace the gifts he sent because he paid with cash or gift cards for everything. The pictures…well, any number of people could have taken them on campus, in town, anywhere and everywhere she went. He never relented. It never stopped. He just let her know he was out there, watching her, knowing her every move. And then he nearly killed her.”
“Start at the beginning,” Cody demanded, trying to understand how this happened.
Mindy Sue glared harder.
He fisted his hands on the table, feeling helpless. “Please.”
“Brooke came back to school early. You know that. She was upset you’d decided to marry Kristi.”
“Kristi was pregnant,” he defended himself. But there was no defense for the way he’d treated Brooke, his best friend. She’d left home, pregnant with his baby, without saying a word. For months. Did he have a right to be angry? Yes. No. How was she supposed to tell him after he chose another woman? Not once. But twice.
Fuck!
“I’m sorry for your loss.” She was the first to say that to him since Susanne held him after he confessed the loss to her. He and Kristi had kept the pregnancy mostly a secret. No one outside of Brooke and Susanne knew about it and the miscarriage.
Well, and Mindy Sue. Because Brooke told her best friend everything.
Which meant Mindy Sue knew what happened between him and Brooke and how Brooke had been feeling about everything these last many months.
It hit him all of a sudden that Kristi had simply moved on like the miscarriage never happened. He supposed it could have been because it was so early in the pregnancy, she never actually felt like it was real. The end of the pregnancy happened because nature took its course.
He still felt the weight of the loss.
Kristi never wanted to talk about it. For him, it faded into the background, then popped into his mind at odd moments. Once, he’d told Kristi that and asked if it was the same for her. She said no. It just wasn’t meant to be. She looked forward to the wedding and their life together. He supposed that was one way to cope. He wallowed in the what ifs and what could have been if only their child were here.
How did Brooke feel?
The miscarriage hurt but it was nothing compared to seeing that condolence card and knowing that his baby, six months along in Brooke’s belly, died without ever taking a breath.
Mindy Sue brought him back to the present. “Brooke listened to your message…I don’t know how many times. It killed her to know that after Kristi lost the baby, you still chose her.”
“Kristi and I… It doesn't matter now." The reality was, he’d feared that Brooke wouldn’t take him back after what happened.
That was just an excuse for not trying and risking the rejection and possibly making things worse between him and Brooke.
He’d thought things couldn’t get any worse than them not speaking anymore.
He’d been wrong.
This was so much worse.
Now that he’d decided to end things with Kristi, did this change whether or not Brooke would take him back?
No. He wouldn’t let anything stand in his way.
She loved him. He knew she did. All he had to do was convince her that he loved her and no one else.
Mindy Sue sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. “She had no reason to believe you wanted her after…”
“I asked Kristi to marry me.” He’d given up Brooke, and true love and happiness, to give his child a whole family.
“The way Brooke explained it, you didn’t ask so much as tell Kristi that’s what would happen.”
“I thought it was the right thing to do.”
“We’ll agree to disagree on that,” she snapped. “Anyway, Brooke understood you wanted to do the right thing by Kristi and the baby. It hurt. But those were the circumstances, and Brooke made it easy for you by stepping out of the picture.”
“When did she find out she was pregnant?”
“I imagine she figured it out when she started throwing up, then feeling fine, then feeling sick again. But she realized she didn’t just have a bug one afternoon when we went out with Julie for lunch.” Mindy Sue turned thoughtful for a moment. “Adam, Jeremiah, and Simon showed up and joined us. She ordered the fried chicken salad. Her favorite. But when the waitress set it in front of her…the smell made her sick. She ran to the bathroom. I followed her to make sure she was okay. We both suspected she was pregnant. We left the restaurant, hit the drugstore, went back to the dorms, she peed on the stick, we celebrated.”
He would have loved to be there for that.
Mindy Sue smiled softly over the memory. “Beyond excited, she didn’t care about feeling sick or tired all the time. Even in her sadness over you, she was happy about the baby.” Mindy Sue met his gaze. “Really, really happy, Cody.”
His heart ached with that news. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She expected you to get married within a few weeks of her discovering she was carrying your child. She didn’t want to ruin your wedding to Kristi, so she planned to tell you when you returned from your honeymoon.”
“She had to know I’d have changed my plans and been there for her and the baby.”
“She didn’t know that. She thought you loved Kristi more because you chose her,” Mindy Sue shot back, staring him down. “You and Brooke had an amazing night. You knew she was in love with you, but you never said anything about how you really felt about her. Kristi turns up the next morning pregnant, you bought her a ring, told her parents, and started planning your wedding within hours. You told Brooke that’s the way it had to be and sent her back to school.”
“I didn’t want to. I wanted her.” I still want her. He fisted his hands again, feeling like he should have done something. He would have if he’d known any of this.
“She woke up to you telling her you’d figure everything out, so you could be together, and then you put a ring on Kristi’s finger. But for you, Brooke held off telling you about the baby, so that you didn’t feel like you had to choose between her and Kristi. She didn’t want to put you through that, and she didn’t want to put herself through hearing you choose Kristi. Again .” Mindy Sue smacked her hand on the table. “You can’t blame her for trying to salvage a little of her pride.”
No. He couldn’t. He didn’t know what he’d have done in her place. “I hoped we could work things out. That’s why I texted her after Kristi lost the baby, asking if we could talk. But she said she was already having enough trouble with her boyfriend and didn’t want any more Kristi drama.”
Mindy Sue’s eyes went wide. “She told you she had a boyfriend? That can’t be right.”
“She said something about having trouble with someone else. I just assumed that’s what she meant.”
Mindy Sue shook her head. “I’m guessing she said someone else instead of stalker to tell you something was going on without lying to you outright. She hasn’t been seeing anyone. Not while pregnant with your baby.”
“Well, I didn’t fucking know that because she wouldn’t talk to me,” he snapped and ran his fingers roughly through his hair. “Fuck. If she hadn’t said that, I wouldn’t have stayed with Kristi. I wanted to ask if she still loved me. If she wanted us to try again.”
Tears welled in Mindy Sue’s eyes. “Text messages are not how you ask that.”
“She wouldn’t answer my calls.”
Mindy Sue stared up at the ceiling for a moment and let out a heavy sigh. “All this over a miscommunication.” Mindy Sue shook her head. “You two could have been together all this time. She would have opened up to you about what was happening.”
Cody scrubbed his hands over his face. “All I had to go on was what she said in those messages.”
“Yeah, well, you were very clear when you said you were still marrying Kristi. Brooke didn’t fit in your world. Right?” She rolled her eyes.
Cody had to admit, it sounded rather lame. Another excuse.
But he’d stopped making those five days ago when he had that bad dream and decided to end things with Kristi.
Wait.
Five days ago.
The night Brooke was attacked.
Fuck.
That was some kind of kismet or cosmic nudge.
He felt more connected to Brooke than ever.
He hated that she thought he loved Kristi more than he loved her. And why wouldn’t she? He’d made it seem that way by continuing his relationship with Kristi for all the wrong reasons when deep down he wanted to be with Brooke.
Mindy Sue sighed, fatigue sinking her shoulders. “I told her to call you. She refused. She didn’t want to use the baby and make you think you had some obligation to her.”
“She and my child are not an obligation. They’re…everything.”
“Then maybe you should have taken a breath after Kristi told you her news, given yourself a day or two to think about all your options, and told Brooke what that night meant to you and that things had changed about how you felt about her, even if you felt like you couldn’t be with her.”
Cody wanted to slam his head into a wall. So many small mistakes added up to one huge one with Brooke. He could have been with her all these months. He could have helped her through the pregnancy. He would have married her. Because he loved her. Not because of the baby. Months of scattered thoughts and emotions crystallized into true reality.
“I should have just told her about Kristi losing the baby and asked her to call me. She would have, and we’d have talked, and there’s no way I wouldn’t have begged her to come home.”
“Shoulda, coulda, woulda.” Mindy Sue shrugged. “It’s too late for all that. You two weren’t talking. You stayed with Kristi and set a new wedding date, so Brooke planned to tell you right after your honeymoon, so you two could figure out how you’d share custody of her.”
“Her?” Cody asked, the single word clogging his throat.
Mindy Sue smiled sadly. “Yes. Her. A girl. We went to the ultrasound a few weeks ago and the doctor was able to see the sex. Brooke was over the moon in love with that baby. While the doctor did the ultrasound, Brooke sat talking to the baby. She would move around, and we watched her. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Brooke has the pictures and a short video. They’re all that’s left of her. And her ashes.”
“Brooke had her cremated?”
Mindy Sue nodded. “We’ll get to that.”
“Why didn’t Brooke tell her mom about the baby? She must have wanted to share that with Susanne and get her mom’s advice.” The wedge between Brooke and Susanne was his fault.
“She didn’t want to put her mom in that position. And…she wanted to tell you first.”
Susanne probably wouldn’t have kept the secret from him and would have demanded that he do right by her daughter.
“We celebrated her birthday with a few friends at an ice cream parlor. She’s had the biggest craving you’ve ever seen for ice cream almost the entire pregnancy.” Mindy Sue pulled out her cell phone and showed him the picture of Brooke at her birthday party.
She stood sideways, showing off her baby bump, with a hot fudge sundae in her hand. She held the spoon with a big bite about to go into her mouth. She smiled brightly, her whole face aglow.
He took the phone and stared at Brooke, so carefree and happy. Nothing else had really changed in her appearance, except for her rounded belly.
She looked lovely pregnant.
And now, she wasn’t, and their baby was dead.
He put his head on his arms on the table and just took it all in. Tears came to his eyes, but he wasn’t able to shed a single one. He looked up at Mindy Sue, now crying herself. She took the phone from him and glanced at the picture again before tucking it away.
He waited, but Mindy Sue sat silently looking out the window. “She didn’t like going out anymore, but that night, she put you and her stalker out of her mind for just a little while. She didn’t look over her shoulder every five seconds or let her anxiety drive her back to our room where she locked herself away all the time.” Mindy Sue finally looked at him again. “You made her night when you called. She loved the gift you sent. She’s still wearing your earrings.”
His chest went tight, knowing that he’d brightened her birthday and that she’d been happy to hear from him.
Mindy Sue’s gaze darkened with rage again. “Then we came back here, found yet another present he left for her, and the next morning she found out he’d raped someone at the same time we were out celebrating her birthday.”
Whoever was doing this was sick in the head.
“Had this stalker tried to hurt her before? Did he threaten her?”
Mindy Sue frowned. “No. That’s why campus security and the local police couldn’t really do anything. But it freaked her out to know someone was out there, watching her all the time. The gifts he sent, they were things she’d see in a store but didn’t buy herself. A scarf. A pair of earrings. A bracelet. He’d leave her favorite donuts at our door. He’d have her favorite pizza delivered for her lunch while she sat in the quad working on a paper. Things that on the surface seem nice, but when done without you knowing who is doing it, why, and what they want from you…”
“It’s creepy. I’d have been just as concerned as her. I’d have probably made her come home.” He’d have protected her.
“She wanted to go home, but she knew she couldn’t hide. What good would that do? He hadn’t done anything really threatening, except follow her around.”
Cody thought about it. “But she knew, like you and I know, he’d eventually approach her. And she didn’t want me to find out about the baby.”
Brooke had handled all of this on her own. He should have been there for her. He shouldn’t have allowed this many months to go by without checking in with her in person and seeing for himself that everything was okay.
“After the first three campus stalker attacks, the police told Brooke they suspected her stalker was the guy attacking those women.”
That spiked his attention. “Why did they think that?”
“Because all the girls looked like Brooke.”
Fuck . That hit him hard. While the news had reported the attacks, none of the victims were shown on TV, only the description of the stalker. “She knew they all looked like her but still didn’t come home. She didn’t call to tell us she was in danger.”
Mindy Sue didn’t respond.
How could she? He’d done this to Brooke and himself. He’d left her no way to come home or talk to him.
“He wore a mask, so none of his victims could ID him. He picked easy targets. All the girls were drunk and walking alone. So Brooke never went anywhere alone anymore.” Mindy Sue’s gaze drifted back out the window and her eyes filled with tears.
“If Brooke never went anywhere alone, how did he get his hands on her? What happened, Mindy Sue? What happened to Brooke and my baby?”
She finally turned back to look at him. The tremendous guilt in her eyes unsettled him. “It’s my fault. I was late. I had a movie date with Tony. We were on our way to pick up Brooke at the library. Brooke was there working on her term paper and studying for a final exam. It’s tomorrow,” she said absently.
“Everyone on campus was warned not to walk alone at night. That’s when all the attacks happened. She waited inside the library as long as she could, but they closed. I spoke to her on the phone. I was only minutes away. To save time, she said she’d walk to the parking lot behind the library, and we’d meet there. She followed a few other students out.” Mindy Sue’s voice drifted off, then came back on a whisper. “We should have gotten there just a minute or two after her. We hit every red light on the way, delaying us even more.” Her watery gaze met his again. “That’s all it took. Just her falling behind those other students, and he grabbed her and dragged her into the bushes and trees.”
Cody scooted his chair around the table, close to Mindy Sue’s, and took her hands. They were as cold as his whole being felt from the inside out. “Go on. What happened next?”
The tears swimming in her eyes fell one after the next. “He grabbed her as she came around the side of the building. He said he had a surprise for her, or something. She tried to play along. It seemed like he thought she knew who he was, but he was behind her so she couldn’t see him. But she thought she recognized his voice.”
Cody waited. Whatever was coming was difficult for Mindy Sue to say, and it was going to be even harder to hear.
“My father thinks she was his ultimate goal. The other girls were just…practice. He wanted her, had fixated on her. He dragged her farther away from the library. He told her he had a car. But then…”
“What?”
“She begged him not to hurt her or the baby, and he snapped. He didn’t know she was pregnant. She hadn’t gained a lot of weight, and all of it was in her boobs and belly. We joked that being pregnant would be the only time we’d ever have a really great rack.”
Cody almost found a smile. Brooke had a good sense of humor. It sounded like she was happy with the pregnancy and looking forward to the baby coming, even though she didn’t have his support. She had her friends. She had Mindy Sue.
“She only really popped in the last few weeks. Besides that, to be more comfortable, she mostly wore loose dresses and a cardigan. I think you gave it to her for Christmas and her mom sent it because she’d left all her gifts at the ranch. Anyway…the clothes made it hard to tell if she was pregnant, which is what the police advised her to do.”
Cody got the gist of that statement. The police thought the stalker would take exception to Brooke being pregnant with someone else’s baby.
Mindy Sue carried on with the disturbing story. “That night, she was wearing leggings and a tunic that showed everything off. My father thinks until that moment and because he grabbed her from behind, he didn’t get a good look at her until he turned her around.” She stopped and wiped away tears. “He went nuts and said she’d betrayed him. He stabbed her twice in the shoulder.”
Cody gasped and rocked back into the seat.
Mindy Sue went silent.
“Go on. I need to know everything.” So he could help Brooke get through this.
Mindy Sue sucked in a breath. “The stabbings didn’t stop her. She fought hard to save herself and the baby. At one point, she ripped off the ski mask. She knew him. She said something to him, I’m not sure what, and it sent him into a rage again. He still had the knife and sliced up her hands and arms as she tried to fend him off. She never gave up. Not even when…he stabbed her in the stomach.”
Cody’s heart slammed against his chest in deep aching beats. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think past the grotesque images assailing his mind.
Mindy Sue’s voice droned on and echoed through his mind. “The knife came out of his grip, so he grabbed her arm and threw her to the ground. He broke her wrist. She tried to get away even then. He held on to her foot and twisted it pretty good. It’s in a brace now. When he got her back under him, he looked down at her and realized what he’d done. She said he looked horrified. He ran. She heard the sirens and the police calling for her. She called out to them but there was nothing they could do to save her .”
Her . His daughter.
Tears fell down Cody’s face. His heart barely beat. He couldn’t get a breath. “He stabbed the baby?” Cody asked, not really believing that’s what happened.
“I’m so sorry. The umbilical cord had been severed. Brooke’s heart was literally pumping the blood right out of her.”
Cody shook with the revelation of how close he’d come to losing Brooke, too.
“They delivered the baby by C-section. It’s left a large scar. All her other wounds weren’t life threatening. Her shoulder required some surgical repair to the muscle and tissue and another bad bleed. Her broken wrist will be in a brace for several weeks. They stitched the worst of the cuts on her hands and arms. The others were minor and will heal on their own. And none of those things is as bad as looking into her empty eyes.”
Mindy Sue raked her fingers through her already disheveled hair. “In the hospital…even now…I feel so inadequate to take care of her. Nothing I say or do will make Brooke feel better. She hasn’t slept much. She’s in a lot of pain, but even that doesn’t compare to how much she misses the baby. They wouldn’t let Brooke hold her, or see her. They said it was for the best. My father and I set up the cremation at her request. He got the funeral home to do it immediately, so she could have her baby back. My father and I picked up the ashes today and delivered them to Brooke before she left the hospital. I think it broke her, holding her baby for the first time, only she was in a silver vessel and not a pink blanket.”
Cody wiped away more tears. “Who did this to her? Who killed our baby?”
“She made me promise not to call you or her mom before they loaded her into the ambulance. I wasn’t sure she was going to make it. Not with that much blood loss. As soon as I got to the hospital, I called my dad. He arrived immediately and shut everyone up. Her name was kept quiet. He made sure she got everything medically necessary. The police weren’t able to see her that first night. In the morning, they tried to talk to her, but her baby was gone, and she only stared into space. She wouldn’t speak. They asked me to go in, and my father thought it was a good idea if I tried to find out what happened, and who attacked her.
“When I went into the room, she had her eyes closed and tears ran down her face and into her hair like a river. She told me her baby was gone and I held her.”
Tears continued to run down her face and she could barely speak anymore. She swiped at them, but more came.
Cody wiped his own face, crying with her. All of this pain because a madman wanted to possess someone.
“She asked my father if he’d help her. He agreed and no one has been allowed to speak to her again. No one, except one man. He came to see her that night, although my father made sure no one saw him come or go.”
“Who came to see her?”
She met his gaze. “The governor.”
It took Cody only a second to realize the implications of that visit. Rage exploded through him in an eruption of fury and heat. That fucking little punk hurt Brooke and killed his baby. “Adam.”
Mindy Sue nodded that she’d come to the same conclusion. “I’ll remind you that Adam was at the Fourth of July picnic and the Christmas party. Right before the fireworks went off at the picnic, Brooke thought she saw someone upstairs in her bedroom window. At the Christmas party, the person she believed was just a follower on her social media left a message about how good she looked in her dress.”
“He was already stalking her.”
“She thinks it started at the picnic. We knew it was someone there, but there were so many people, several of them friends of ours. We knew it could be one of them, but they never gave us any kind of strange vibes.”
“You said Adam showed up that day you went out to eat and she got sick, then took the pregnancy test.”
“Yes. We’d met up with him a few times. But he was always with Jeremiah and Simon. They were all so nice. Shy. Well, not Jeremiah, but Adam and Simon. She was never alone with him. She never got a weird vibe from him. He was so careful. I mean, you could tell he liked her, but he never flirted or anything. He never asked her out." Mindy Sue tilted her head. "Why didn’t he just ask her out?”
Cody didn’t get it either. “I don’t know.”
Brooke was kind. She’d have tried to spare his feelings and let him down easy. She’d have still been his friend.
Fuck!
All this time, Adam had been close to her. Right in front of her.
Cody wanted to hit something. Preferably the asshole responsible for tormenting Brooke.
But he was out of reach, wasn’t he? The governor had already taken care of that. And he had the audacity to sneak into Brooke’s room in the dead of night to…what? What could he possibly say to her after she lost her child?
Had he threatened her? If he had, Cody would put him in the ground.
The governor and his people were working with the police and the hospital to cover up the real story of what happened that night. A man had gotten away with murder and attacking five women all because his father was the governor of the state.
Mindy Sue’s furious voice broke the silence. “No one will ever know the governor’s son attempted suicide because he couldn’t live with what he’d done to Brooke.”
Cody couldn’t believe this was truly happening. No wonder no one was talking. It was a cover-up of monumental proportions. The governor lied and hid his son in a private hospital.
Cody wanted to get his hands on the son of a bitch, so he could kill him. Slowly. Painfully.
If Adam went to trial and got the death penalty, would his own father pardon him?
Unreasonable and selfish things ran through Cody’s mind about what he’d like to happen to the governor’s son. He indulged in them for a moment before realizing there was nothing he could do while Adam was locked away in a mental ward. No one, not even Cody, would ever get to him.
It was futile to try to go after Adam now. But somehow, some way, very soon, he’d get justice for Brooke and his daughter.
Right now Cody needed to protect and take care of Brooke. She needed him.
They’d lost their daughter.
He had to see her.
“Is that everything?”
Mindy Sue swept her blonde hair back over her shoulder. “That’s all I know. She’s determined to turn in her term paper and take her exam tomorrow, though I don’t know how she’ll do it. She’s a basket case. She can’t hold a thought for more than a moment. She sits for long periods just staring into nothing and cries for hours. The doctors say she needs time to process everything that’s happened and to grieve for her daughter. I’ve spent the last few days with her, and I can tell you, she’s only gotten worse.”
“I’ll take her back to the ranch. I’ll get her whatever help she needs. I’ll take care of her.”
“I don’t think taking her back to the ranch is a good idea. Not with Kristi there and the wedding in a couple weeks.”
He didn’t want to think about anything but Brooke. The wedding, everything, everyone could go to hell. He’d lost a daughter, and all he wanted to do was take care of his baby girl’s mother.