Chapter Fifty-Eight Aubrey
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Aubrey
One question answered. Just as I thought. Someone wanted me in the spotlight. Someone went in and out of my house to keep
Jeremy drugged and docile.
Someone would pay.
I paced the hospital hall, staying at the end farthest from Jeremy’s room. Away from the policeman talking to the nurse nearby.
The town likely didn’t have enough spare officers to station one at Daniela’s room and one at Jeremy’s room. Not if, as the
news claimed, law enforcement had been mobilized to investigate the links among the finding of my father’s remains, the fire,
and what looked like Jeremy’s disappearance.
Word was Jeremy survived his little stay at my house with minor injuries and a case of dehydration. He’d be going home soon,
but the drugs he’d been given during his kidnapping—the word felt like an exaggeration but fine—needed to fully wear off first.
Jeremy had gotten lucky. Tanners rarely got lucky. Tanner males never did.
Hanna stepped out of Jeremy’s room. Her head turned as if she sensed me standing there. Her gaze met mine. She started screaming a second later. “Security! Police! Someone, help!”
Not that she was afraid of me. No, not Hanna. She sprinted down the hall to get to me.
“How dare you show up here!” she bellowed, clearly not caring who heard her. “Security!”
The police officer stopped his pathetic flirting with the nurse and radioed for help. He also sprinted after Hanna and failed
to catch her.
I held up both hands. That meant surrender . . . or something close if television shows got the gesture correct. Whatever
it took to calm her down. Same as everyone else in this town, Hanna had the wrong target. I didn’t have the patience to reason
or tangle with her while she was in this mood.
“Hanna, stop—” She was on me before I got the rest of my warning out.
The police officer pulled her off me. Held her back.
Two security guards stalked up the hall behind me. “Ma’am, you shouldn’t be here.”
Hanna glared at the poor bastard who’d piped up. “Do not let her leave.”
Such a commanding voice. She had the men shaking. Me? Not so much.
I fell back on Gramps’s favorite game—gaslighting. “You need to make up your mind. Go. Stay. Which is it?”
Hanna shoved against the policeman’s arm, trying to break his hold. “Put her in jail.”
“Let’s not get ridiculous.” I sighed at her. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You kidnapped my son.”
Security and the police talked to each other. Over each other. Nurses scurried around, trying to maneuver our huddle to a
quieter, less obtrusive place. All they did was hustle us down the hall, closer to Jeremy’s room.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to step back,” the officer said to me.
“She’s the one who’s wild.”
Hanna looked positively feral. Kicking and shoving and aching to get free. “You grabbed Jeremy and held him at your house.
You drugged him.”
I didn’t care about any of this. “None of those things.”
Hanna couldn’t rein it in. She seethed. “He could have died or was that the plan?”
“I’m sure taking him out was the plan. Seems obvious someone was going for the death-by-overdose angle because his mommy lied
to him about his daddy.” I shrugged. “It’s not like he could have lived in that garage forever.”
“I’m going to kill you.” Hanna lunged but the policeman still held her.
Time to move on. “Look at me, Hanna.” I held my arms out wide. “How would I drag your six-one son anywhere? He’s taller. Heavier.” And I
had another point. “He wasn’t in that house, any part of it, the whole time. No way. I would have known.”
The last part was a stretch. I spent as little time as possible in the house that had swallowed up so much of my life and
chomped it into tiny, useless pieces. Gabe went in and out, testing the passageways, because he thought they were cool—his word, not mine.
During his escapades he somehow missed a body on the garage floor, and we’d have a talk about that, but even I’d been in the garage.
The car and the kid weren’t there the morning after he disappeared.
Hanna fought against the guard’s hold. Her instinct was to attack first and talk later. Not a bad strategy. I had the same
tendency. Of course she’d come out swinging. She had the most to lose, including her direct line to the deed to the Tanner
family fortune.
“Someone else put Jeremy on my property to blame me.” I’d spelled out this theory for her before. Maybe she’d hear me this
time.
She snorted. “Who else knew about the passageways and that spot in the garage?”
“Good question.” I mentally ran through the list on the way to the hospital. It was longer than I wanted it to be.
“If you think—”
“Ms. Sato?” a nurse called from the doorway to Jeremy’s room, cutting off whatever gem Hanna planned to launch next. “Your
son’s asking for you.”
Hanna took off, as if suddenly forgetting I stood there. I followed before the gentlemen guarding the situation could grab
me. They shouted and their footsteps hammered down the hall behind me, but I slipped inside the hospital room first.
Hanna sat on the edge of Jeremy’s bed. She looked over her shoulder at me. “Get out.”
“It wasn’t her.” Jeremy’s whisper cut through the chaos of storming cops and yelling nurses. The sound of his weak voice soared
over the bleeping of the machines attached to him and blunted Hanna’s wrath.
Hanna froze. “What?”
He shifted on the bed, then winced. “She wasn’t the one who hit Daniela. She’s not who I saw.”
Nicely done, Jeremy.
This debacle needed a solid witness and in stepped young Jeremy.
It was official. He was my favorite living relative. A pretty short list but he sat at the very top.
Hanna stared at me. She deserved a poke, so I gave her a verbal one. “I don’t expect an apology, but you’ll understand why
I must say what I say next.” I hesitated for a second. Just to let the reality sink in. “Told ya so.”
If I played this right Hanna would be the one to fire the next shot and unravel the town’s biggest secrets surrounding my
family.
This was going to be fun.