29
Let’s get out of here. The night’s a-wastin’!
The words . . . her voice . . . rouses me.
My eyes open, and I find I am swaddled in a thick mental haze. I blink slowly. My eyes don’t seem to want to work any other way. The light . . . the walls . . . things all run together like a bad impressionist painting. I turn away from the light pouring in from the windows. What time is it?
I swallow. My mouth feels weird. My whole body feels very strange. Like I’ve OD’d on some sort of drug.
I open my eyes again and blink more rapidly.
There’s still a bit of a haze, but I recognize my living room.
Okay. This is progress. Judging by the sunlight filling the room, I must have slept for hours.
If I can see and distinguish my surroundings.
I must not be dead. I turn my head, and it starts to spin. Nausea roils in my belly.
Close your eyes. Don’t move.
I close my eyes and hold my breath. Then slowly inhale. The spinning stops. I open my eyes again, and a face is right in front of mine. I jump. The shriek that spurts from my throat makes the face draw away.
“She’s coming around.”
Acacia. I recognize her voice. I blink some more and force my eyes to focus. She’s staring at me. Her mouth is moving, but I’m only hearing parts of the words. What the hell is wrong with me? And who is she talking to?
Has Phillip come back again? Or is it Rick? Worse, it could be Acacia’s boyfriend—Brian whatever. Definitely not good.
“What happened?” The words come from me though I didn’t realize they were past my lips until I heard them echo around me. This is utterly bizarre.
Acacia stares down at me. “It’ll come to you in a moment.”
I start to reach up and rub at my forehead, but I can’t move my arm—either arm—I realize as I try the other one.
Then I see the problem. I’m tied to a dining chair.
I recognize one of the scarves used to bind me, the red one.
The green one secures the other arm. It’s the scarves we used for that ride in the convertible.
“Acacia, what—”
The image of Helen in her car roars into my awareness like a shotgun blast. The barn. The sting at the back of my neck, near my shoulder.
Shit.
I stare at Acacia, my entire being reeling with drug-induced confusion and a brain far too fuzzy to form a coherent thought. “You . . . you killed Helen.”
Her eyes roll. “I did not kill her. She’s just secured and sleeping off the drug until I deem it’s time to do whatever I have to do next. To date,” she says with a scorching glower at me, “I have never killed anyone. But that may change very soon.”
“Liar.” I wish I could muster up a laugh. “You killed Eleanor.”
An affronted expression flashes briefly across her face. “I did not. My boyfriend did. He had to do his part if he wanted in on this. She had to go so I could take her place with you.”
More anger rushes through me. He will not get away with what he did to Eleanor. She won’t, either, by God.
I force myself to try to relax. I have to be calm.
Rational. Focused. “You drugged me again.” I remember now.
The sting. It was a needle. This loathsome bitch drugged me with something other than one of my leftover prescriptions.
Maybe more than once, considering how long I’ve been out.
What the ever loving fuck? I jerk at my bindings.
“I did.” Her arms cross over her chest, and she stares down at me matter-of-factly, as if she does this sort of thing all the time and dares me to do anything about it.
“But don’t worry. I knew just how much to give you.
I didn’t want to kill you.” She shrugs. “At least not yet. But the best part of the past few days was watching your paranoia the other night after the hit of meth I gave you. That was hilarious.”
She laughs, and I want to punch her in the face. Rage growls deep in my soul. No way in hell is this bitch going to have the pleasure of killing me.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” I dare her.
She dismisses my demand with a wave of her hand. “All in due time, Dr. Belmont. You’re not in charge anymore.”
That building fury twists my lips, but I refrain from responding. Damn, I wish this fuzzy feeling would go away. The nausea comes in spurts. I can deal with that, but I detest this sensation of being stuck in a pill bottle mostly stuffed full of cotton.
“Who are we waiting for?” It can only be one of two players—okay, maybe three if I count Rick. I’ve always believed to some degree that he knew more than he let on.
“You have no idea who I am,” she taunts. “You believe I’m Acacia Hanson, twenty-two, college dropout who cleans and takes care of other people’s houses.” She waves me off. “Don’t feel bad. Eleanor swallowed it hook, line, and sinker too.”
Outrage flames higher inside me. Let the psycho bitch brag. Let her believe she has fooled me all along. “You didn’t answer my question.”
She laughs and to someone beyond me says, “She still doesn’t get it.”
I struggle to turn around but I cannot. I’m too weak from the drugs to budge the chair with me in it. Damn it. “Who are you speaking to?” I can only hope it’s not the piece-of-shit boyfriend. The other option would perhaps be the lesser evil.
The pity on her face now makes me all the angrier. But I hold back. Let her believe she’s about to reveal the big surprise.
When she only stares at me as if she needs to savor the moment a bit longer, I jerk at my bindings for effect. “Let me loose,” I offer, “and we’ll pretend this never happened. Otherwise your probation is over and you’re fucking fired.”
She bends down and places her hands on my restrained forearms so that her face is really close to mine again. “Oh, this is happening.” Then she rears back, maybe afraid I’ll bite her. “It’s been in the works for nearly a year.”
I take a big leap toward calm. Maybe it’s her sheer arrogance or just the idea that she is too fucking stupid to understand I am fully aware of who she is and what she’s been doing—at least for the past several months.
But I hold back. Her daring admission about how long her game has been in play confirms who is behind this scheme.
I knew it. My only question is what the hell took so long.
“Let’s play this your way,” I propose. “Who are you?” I know all I need to, but I sense that she is anxious to grandstand a little more.
“Alicia Hopkins.” She extends her hand for a shake, then laughs at my restrained ones.
“From Long Island,” I say for her. “Barely managed to graduate high school. Didn’t make it in college.
Spent most of your free time working with your father the veterinarian.
” I shrug as the shock fully encompasses her face.
“You are the youngest of four children, and your family might have actually thrived if your mother hadn’t run off when you were twelve.
And if your father hadn’t been such a softy and had actually collected the fees owed to him for his veterinarian services.
But he could never turn down a sick or injured animal whether he would get paid or not.
Then after his heart attack, you tried to take over his clinic by forging the necessary paperwork.
Like most things you’ve done in your life, you failed miserably. ”
She slaps my face. My cheek burns, and my whole head hurts from the blow, but I manage a pathetic attempt at a laugh. She’s not feeling so cocky now.
Acacia—Alicia—squares her shoulders and appears to gather her composure. “Working with my father is where I learned to properly use ketamine. Horses? Humans?” She shrugs. “Not a lot of difference. It’s all about weight. Since you’re not dead, I think I have done a few things right.”
I was drugged with a horse tranquilizer? And meth. Not to mention the Valium. Great.
I wait for her to go on. There will be a sad story about having nothing and deciding it was time to change that unfair plight. Then someone came along and made her the offer of a lifetime. She only wants to have a better life.
When she doesn’t say more, I suggest, “Is this where I start guessing who hired you?”
She claps her hands. “Let’s do that!” she urges like a cheerleader boosting her team’s morale. “What’s your first guess?”
Okay. I’ll play. “I can rule out Phillip because he would never, ever have wanted anything to happen to Eleanor.”
She pouts. “You’re right. When you jumped to the conclusion that I was talking to him on the phone, I just let you think it.” She shrugs. “It was a ridiculous idea. He would never have me drugging you or anyone else. Phillip doesn’t just like pussy, he is a pussy.”
I can’t argue with that assessment.
“He didn’t tell me to plant the necklace either.” She laughs. “Poor man, he has no idea who he’s married to.”
Yeah. Yeah. Time for the big reveal, I guess.
“Since I’m confident Rick Howard would have chosen a vastly different strategy, we can rule him out as well.
” Really, why play all these games. The former special agent would probably just have killed me if he wanted me out of the way.
I decide to toss in the guy I hired just to make things more interesting.
“As for the mystery man who gave us that cryptic message through Helen, I’m thinking this is all just a little too long and drawn out for him.
Which,” I say as our gazes collide, “leaves only her.”
“Ding. Ding. Ding,” Acacia trills with a knowing glance beyond me, “we have a winner.”
It’s true then. The sensation of ice rushing through my veins steals my breath. She’s here . . . in the room. I can feel her now that the side effects of the drug are waning.
Alicia smiles and makes that little knowing sound in her throat. “Reality just hit you square in the face, didn’t it?” Her smile grows even wider and somehow more sinister as she leans close again. “I know exactly who you are and what you have done.”
“No.” I smile right back at her. “You don’t know the half of it. You only know her side.”
Movement to my right drags my attention there.
I squeeze my eyes shut, then force them open once more in hopes the last of the drug haze will be gone from my vision.
Twenty years of shock, anger, hatred, and disappointment whirl wildly inside me as I stare at the woman who was once my best friend—the one I worked so hard to become a better version of.
“Hello, Wendy,” she says.
It’s her . . . Julia.